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The Syndrome of Decay
The ballot is stronger than the bullet. Sexual relations between family members who are not spouses, formally known as incest, is illegal across the United States of America because of the harm that it can cause to family relationships. With genetic inbreeding there is a high rate of birth defects. Incest has long been taboo and has been the subjects of myths, legends and literature (for example Oedipus—the tragedy of Sophocles). A large number of sources explain why incest should be banned. The reasons for the band range from psychodynamic traditions to genetic, sociological, religious, and historical needs in relations between kinship systems. Peter Choate and Radha Sharan note a high incidence of pathological genes in offspring. If incest leads to pregnancy and childbirth, the risk of genetic defects in such offspring is higher than that of offspring of unrelated couples—especially if both partners have a recessive gene in incest. The pathology of incestuous fixation depends obviously on the level of regression. In the most benign cases there is hardly any pathology to speak of except, perhaps, a slight overdependence on and fear of women. The deeper the level of regression the more intense are both the dependence and the fear. On the most archaic level, both dependence and fear have reached a degree which conflicts with sane living. There are other elements of pathology which also depend on the depth of regression. The incestuous orientation conflicts, as narcissism does, with reason and objectivity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
If I fail to cut the umbilical cord, if I insist on worshipping the idol of certainty and protection, then the idol becomes sacred. It must not be criticized. If “mother” cannot be wrong, how can I judge anyone else objectively if he is in conflict with “mother” or disapproved of by her? This form of impairment of judgement is much less obvious when the object of fixation is not mother but the family, the nation, or the race. Since these fixations are supposed to be virtues, a strong national or religious fixation easily leads to biased and distorted judgments which are taken for truth because they are shared by all others who participate in the same fixation. After the distortion of reason, the second most important pathological trait in incestuous fixation is the lack of experiencing another being as fully human. Only those who share the same blood or soil are felt to be human; the “stranger” is a barbarian. As a consequence I remain also a “stranger” to myself, since I cannot experience humanity beyond that crippled form in which it is shared by the group united by common blood. Incestuous fixation impairs or destroys—in accordance with the degree of regression—the capacity to love. The third pathological symptom of incestuous fixation is conflict with independence and integrity. The person bound to mother and tribe is not free to be himself, to have a conviction of his own, to be committed. He cannot be open to the World, nor can he embrace it; he is always in the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Man is only fully born, and thus free to move forward and to become himself, to the degree to which he liberates himself from all forms of incestuous fixation. Incestuous fixation is usually recognized as such, or it is rationalized in such a way as to make it appear reasonable. Somebody strongly bound to his mother may rationalize his incestuous tie in various ways: It is my duty to serve her; or, She did no much for men and I owe her my life; or, She has suffered so much; or She is so wonderful. If the object of fixation is not the individual mother but the nation, the rationalizations is the concept that one owes everything to the nation, or that the nation is so extraordinary and so wonderful. The tendency to remain bound to the mothering person and her equivalents—to blood, family, tribe—is inherent in all men and women. It is constantly in conflict with the opposite tendency—to be born, to progress, to grow. In the case of normal development, the tendency for growth wins. In the case of severe pathology, the regressive tendency for symbiotic union wins, and it results in the person’s more or less total incapacitation. Dr. Freud’s concept of the incestuous strivings to be found in any child is perfectly correct. Yet the significance of this concept transcends Dr. Freud’s own assumption. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Incestuous wishes are not primarily a result of sexual desire, but constitute one of the most fundamental in man: the wish to remain tied to where he came from, the fear of being free, and the fear of being destroyed by the very figure toward whom he had made himself helpless, renouncing any independence. In their less severe manifestations, necrophilia, narcissism, and incestuous fixation are quite different from each other, and very often a person may have one of these orientations without sharing in the others. Also, in their non-malignant forms no one of these orientations causes grave incapacitation of reason and love, or creates intense destructiveness. (As an example for this, I would like to mention the person of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was moderately mother-fixed, moderately narcissistic, and a strongly biophilous person. In contrast, Mr. Hitler was an almost totally necrophilous, narcissistic and incestuous person.) However, the more malignant the three orientations are, the more they converge. First of all there is a close affinity between incestuous fixation and narcissism. Inasmuch as the individual has not yet fully emerged from mother’s womb or mother’s breast, he is not free to relate to others or to love others. He and his mother (as one) are the object of his narcissism. This can be seen most clearly where the personal narcissism has been transformed into group narcissism. There we find very clearly incestuous fixation blended with narcissism. It is this particular blend which explains the power and the irrationality of all national, racial, religious, and political fanaticism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the most archaic forms of incestuous symbiosis and narcissism they are joined by necrophilia. The craving to return to the womb and to the past is at the same time the craving for death and destruction. If extreme forms of necrophilia, narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis are blended, we can speak of a syndrome which I propose to call the “syndrome of decay.” The person suffering from the syndrome is indeed evil, since he betrays life and growth and is a devotee of death and crippledness. Th best-documented example of a man suffering from the “syndrome of decay” is Mr. Hitler. He was deeply attracted to death and destruction; he was an extremely narcissistic person for whom the only reality was his own wishes and thoughts. Finally, he was an extremely incestuous person. Whatever his relationship to his mother may have been, his incestuousness was mainly expressed in his fanatical devotion to the race, the people who shared the same blood. He was obsessed by the idea of saving the Germanic race by preventing its blood from being poisoned. First of all, as he expressed it in Mein Kampf, to save it from syphilis; second, to save it from being polluted by Jewish people. Narcissism, death, and incest were the fatal blend which made a man like Mr. Hitler one of the enemies of mankind and of life. This triade of traits has been most succinctly described by Richard Hughes in The Fox in the Attic: #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
“After all, how could that monistic “I” of Hitler’s ever without forfeit succumb to the entire act of sex, the whole essence of which is recognition of other “Other”? Without damage I mean to his fixed conviction that he was the universe’s unique sentient centre, the sole authentic incarnate Will it contained or had ever contained? Because this of course was the rationale of his supernal inner ‘Power’: Hitler existed alone. ‘I am, none else beside me.’ The universe contained no other persons than him, only things; and thus for him the whole gamut of the ‘personal’ pronouns lacked wholly its normal emotional content. This left Hitler’s designing and creating motions enormous and without curb: it was only natural for this architect to turn also politician for he saw no real distinction in the new things to be handled: thee ‘men’ were merely him-mimicking ‘things,’ in the same category as other tools and stones. All tools have handles—this sort was fitted with ears. And it is nonsensical to love or hate or pity (or tell the truth to) stones. Hitler’s then was that rare diseased state of the personality, an ego virtually without penumbra: rare and diseased, that is, when abnormally such an ego survives in an otherwise mature adult intelligence clinically sane (for in the new-born doubtless it is a beginning normal enough and even surviving into the young child.) Hitler’s adult “I” had developed thus—into a larger but still undifferentiated structure, as a malignant growth does. The tortured, demented creature tossed on his bed. ‘Rienzi-night,’ that night on the Freinberg over Linz after the opera: that surely had been the climatic night of his boyhood for it was then he had first confirmed that lonely omnipotence within him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
“Impelled to go up there in the darkness into that high place he had not been shown there all earthly kingdoms in a moment of time? And facing there the ancient gospel question had not his whole being been one assenting Yea? Had he not struck the everlasting bargain there on the high mountain under the witnessing November stars? Yet now…now, when he had seemed to be Rienzi-like the crest of the wave, the irresistible wave which with mounting force should have carried him to Berlin, that crest had begun to curl: it had curled and broken and toppled on him, thrusting him down, down in the green thundering water, deep. Tossing desperately on his bed, he gasped—he was drowning (what of all things always Hitler most feared). Drowning? Then…that suicidal boyhood moment’s teetering long ago on the Danube bridge at Linz…after all the melancholic boy had leaped that long-ago day, and everything since was dream! Then this noise now was the mighty Danube singing in his dreaming drowning ears. In the green watery light surrounding him a dead face was floating towards him upturned: a dead face with his own slightly-bulging eyes in it unclosed: his dead Mother’s face as he has last seen it with unclosed eyes white on the white pillow. Dead, and white, and vacant even of its love for him. But now that face was multiplied—it was all around him in the water. So his Mother was this water, these waters drowning him! At that he ceased to struggle. He drew up his knees to his chin in the primal attitude and lay there, letting himself down. So Hitler slept at last.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
In this short passage all the elements of the “syndrome of decay” have been brought together in the way only a great writer can do. We see Mr. Hitler’s narcissism, his longing to drown—the water being his mother—and his affinity to death, symbolized by his dead mother’s face. The regression to the womb is symbolized in his posture, with his knees drawn up to his chin in the primal attitude. Mr. Hitler is only one outstanding example of the “syndrome of decay.” There are many who thrive on violence, hate, racism, and narcissistic nationalism, and who suffer from this syndrome. They are the leaders of or the “true believers” in violence, war, and destruction. Only the most unbalanced and sick among them will express their true aims explicitly, or even be aware of them consciously. They will tend to rationalize their orientation as love of country, duty, honor, et cetera. However, when the forms of normal civilized life have broken down, as happens in international war or civil war, such people no longer need to repress their deepest desires; they will sing hymns of hate; they will come to life and unfold all their energies at times when they can serve death. Indeed, war and an atmosphere of violence is the situation in which the person with the “syndrome of decay” becomes fully himself. Most likely it is only a minority of the population who are motivated by this syndrome. Yet the very fact that neither they nor those who are not so motivated are aware of the real motivation makes them dangerous carriers of an infectious disease, a hate infection, in times of strife, conflict, cold and hot war. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Hence it is important that they be recognized for what they are: men who love death, who are afraid of independence, for whom only the needs of their own group have reality. They would not have to be isolated physically, as is done with lepers; it would be sufficient if persons who are normal were to understand their crippledness and the malignancy of the strivings hidden being their pious rationalizations, in order that normal persons might acquire a certain degree of immunity to their pathological influence. In order to do this it is, of course, necessary to learn one thing: not to take words for reality, and to see through the deceptive rationalizations of those who suffer from a sickness that only man is capable of suffering from: the negation of life before life has vanished. The recognition of neurotic trend, means the recognition of a driving force in the disturbance of the personality, and this knowledge in itself has a certain value for therapy. Formerly the person felt powerless, at the mercy of intangible forces. The recognition of even one of these forces not only means a general gain in insight but also dispels some of the bewildered helplessness. Knowledge of the concrete reason for a disturbance provides a realization that there is a chance to do something about it. This change may be illustrated with a simple example. A farmer wants to grow fruit trees, but his trees do not thrive, though he puts great efforts into their care and tries all the remedies he knows. After some time he becomes discouraged. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
However, finally he discovers that the trees have a special disease or need a special ingredient in the soil, and there is an immediate change in his outlook on the matter and his mood regarding it, though nothing has changed as yet in the trees themselves. The only difference in the external situation is that there is now a possibility of goal-directed action. Sometimes the mere uncovering of a neurotic trend is sufficient to cure a neurotic upset. A capable executive, for instance, was deeply disturbed because the attitude of his employees, which had always been one of devotion, changed for reasons outside his control. Instead of settling differences in an amicable way, they started to make belligerent and unreasonable demands. Although he was a highly resourceful person in most matter he felt utterly incapable of coping with this new situation, and reached such a measure of resentment and despair that he considered withdrawing from the business. In this instance the mere uncovering of his deep need for devotion of people dependent on him sufficed to remedy the situation. Usually, however, the mere recognition of a neurotic trend does not engender any radical change. In the first place, the willingness to change which is elicited by the discovery of such a trend is equivocal and hence lacks forcefulness, and, in the second place, a willingness to change, even if it amounts to an unambiguous wish, is not yet an ability to change. This ability develops only later. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The reason why the initial willingness to overcome a neurotic trend does not usually constitute a reliable force, despite the enthusiasm that often goes with it, is that the trend has also a subjective value which the person does not want to relinquish. When the prospect arises of overcoming a particular compulsive need, those force are mobilized which want to maintain it. In other words, soon after the first liberating effect of the discovery the person is confronted with a conflict: he wants to change and he does not want to chance. This conflict usually remains unconscious because he does not like to admit that he wants to adhere to something which is against reason and self-interest. If for any reason the determination not to change prevails, the liberating effect of the discovery will be only a fleeting relief followed by a deeper discouragement. To return to the analogy of the farmer, if he knows or believes that the required remedy is not available to him, his change in spirit will not last long. Fortunately these negative reactions are not too frequent. More often the willingness and the unwillingness to change tend to compromise. The patient then sticks to his resolution to change, but want to get away with as little as possible. If he uncovers the origin of the trend in childhood, or if her merely makes resolution to change, or he may hope that it will be enough, or he will fall back on the delusion that a mere recognition of the trend will change everything overnight. Earlier attempts to train experts in neuropsychiatry have largely failed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Medical education is still struggling, without notable success, to produce physicians who can understand not only the peculiarities and limitations of the biological apparatus with which man has to effect his adaptations, but who can appreciate the problems of man in making the psychosocial adaptations demanded by modern culture. Neuropsychiatry has been replaced in recent time by the separate specialties of psychiatry and neurology. And within psychiatry there is growing evidence of a “working” schism—on the other hand, there are psychiatrists who treat almost exclusively by the administration of drugs, electroshock, or other physical means, and on the other hand, there are psychiatrist who almost exclusively treat by conversation. In his own nature, man is not a complex of dissociated parts and functions. He is a unity. A proper pill will lift his spirits, so will a proper word. It is probably that an appropriately integrated application of medicine and conversation will accomplish more thorough and lasting therapeutic benefit than will either alone. We do not now understand all that we must in order to be able to prescribe and administer optimally integrated therapy to the emotionally ill, but even if we had such knowledge there are strong forces that would continue to work toward fractioned, one-sided treatment. A very provocative study points up not only the marked dualism in the therapeutic activities of psychiatrists, but also indicates that the selection of physical or psychological treatment is determined less by the nature of the illness than it is by the social class of the patient. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Members of the higher social class (defined by education, occupation, and residence) are much more likely to receive psychotherapy than are members of the lower social class who typically receive electroshock therapy or custodial hospitalization. With this comparison we can once again look at the treatment of mental illness in historical perspective. Today we recognize three major forms of treatment: chemotherapy (the tranquilizers, anti-depressants, and other drugs), shock therapies (electroshock, insulin coma therapy, and variants of these), and psychotherapy. The use of drugs in treatment of emotionally disturbed persons has a long history. The current upsurge of interest and enthusiasm with the advent of the ataractic (tranquilizing) medications is responsive to a technology advance in drug chemistry rather than to any basically new idea. The ancient physicians of Greece had their pharmacopoeia; though their medications were selected with less knowledge both of chemistry and physiology, they allowed for the ubiquitous and potent effect of suggestion which is almost inextricably associated with any clinical use of medication. The Greeks were not without enthusiasm for their prescriptions. While electroshock therapy represents a highly refined and nicely controlled administration of a physical agent to produce sudden unconsciousness, the general notion of severe stimulation and violent psychological shock was a stock-in-trade of early physicians, exempli gratia, immersion to the point of drowning, the “surprise bath,” and comparable procedures. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The physical and chemical treatments of the early physicians are better recorded than are their prescriptions for psychological counseling, but we do know that the ancients were not totally ignorant of psychogenic factors in hysteria and melancholy and it is likely that therapeutic conversation was effectively engaged in, although the forerunner of our modern psychotherapist may not have been aware that his words were having beneficial impact. If we look to ancillary treatments such as music therapy, recreational therapy, and milieu therapy, we readily find their counterparts in the descriptions of the Aesculapian sanitaria. Objective observation of distinctive avenues of therapeutic approach to the psychiatric patient would suggest that time has brought chiefly refinement and extension rather than basic innovation. Psychotherapy is practiced on a broader scale than ever before in history and with a greatly increased knowledge of psychopathology. When seen in full perspective this historical development constitutes less progress than suggested at first glance. The availability of therapeutic conversion, which many authorities would hold to be the most thorough and effective of psychiatric therapies, is largely restricted by social class membership. It has been true throughout history that the treatment of the emotionally ill person has been determined less by the nature of his illness, less by his need, less by what promised cure than by his ability to pay. Sedation, seclusion, recreation, and extended personal access to the physician for support, reassurance, and exhortation (and possibly insight), have been the prescription for the wealthy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Institutionalization, restraint, and shock therapy have been the prescription for the indigent psychiatric patient. Neither the essential content and nature of psychiatric treatment nor its distribution have really changed markedly over the centuries. With the development of dynamic psychiatry based upon the more fundamental and durable of psychoanalytic insight, with the modern developments in chemotherapy, and with the growing availability of community mental health centers, it is possible for an enlightened public with the help of the pertinent professions to develop now a truly integrated and logistically feasible program for the treatment of mental illness, with treatment optimally prescribed in accord with the needs of the individual rather than dictated by irrelevant economic factors or denied by an artificially limited supply of personnel. Closely bound up with the wrestling of the spirit is the necessity of prayer—not so much the prayer of petition to a Father as the prayer of one joined in spirit with the Son of God, his will fused with His—declaring to the enemy the authority of Christ over all their power. Sometimes the self-actualized has to “wrestle” in order to pray; at other times, to pray in order to wrestle. If he cannot “fight” he must pray, and if he cannot pray, he must fight. To further highlight this illustration, if the self-actualized is conscious of a weight on his spirit, he must get rid of the weight by refusing all the “causes” of the weight—for it I necessary to keep the spirit unburdened to fight, and to retain the power of detection. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The delicate spirit-sense becomes dull under “weights” or pressure upon it; hence the enemy’s ceaseless tactics to get “burdens” or pressure on the spirit, unrecognized as from the foe, or else recognized and allowed to remain. The man may feel “bound up” and the cause be in others, for there may be no open spirit or open mind in another disciple to receive from the spirit and mind of the one who feels bound up; there may be no capacity in the other to receive any message of truth; there may be no capacity in the other to receive any message of truth; there may be some thought in the mind of the other which is checking the flow of the spirit. If in the morning the self-actualized finds a “weight” or heaviness on his spirit, and it is not dealt with, he is sure to lose his position of victory through the day. In dealing with weight on the spirit, the moment it is recognized the self-actualized must at once act in spirit, and stand withstand and resist the powers of darkness. Each of these positions requires spirit-action, for these words do not describe a “state” or an “attitude,” nor an act by soul or body. To “stand” is a spirit-action repelling an aggressive move of the enemy; to “withstand” is to make an aggressive move against them; and to “resist” is actively to fight with his spirit, even as a man “resists” with his body another who is physically attacking him. When we consider the Christ of Culture, there is a pro-culture people, those who feel no great tension between church and World, the social laws and the Gospel, the workings of divine grace and human effort, the ethics of salvation and the ethic of social conservation or progress. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
They interpret the culture through Christ and Christ through culture. They establish this harmony by selecting the best elements of civilization and matching them with the eternally true, rational principles exemplified in Christianity. There are, however, several objections to the Christ-of-culture position. First, it constructs apocryphal gospels by exclusive attention to a single trait of Jesus, such as spiritual knowledge, reason, a sense for the infinite, the moral law, or brotherly love. The result is that loyalty to contemporary culture has so far qualified the loyalty to Christ that he has been abandoned in favour of an idol called by his name. Secondly, the culture Christian dilutes the radical power of sin by explaining it as ignorance, superstition, or stupidity which is dispelled by the pure light of reason refracted through Christ. Finally, cultural Christianity is embarrassed by the doctrine of grace because it seems to demean the natural goodness of human nature. Still, we consider Jesus the Christ and the New Being. We recognize the fact of universal estrangement, and the power of sin to tear the cultural fabric asunder. And, we know that the all-pervading influence of grace grasps the human spirit in an ultimate concern and reveals the religious depths of cultural creations. The cultural Christians operate at the level of morality. They are content with the essential harmony of Christ and the World. They are confident in the power of man’s rational spirit, while we rely upon the grace of the divine Spirit. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The “True” and the “Apparent World”—the seductions that emanate from this concept are of three kinds: An unknown World: we are inquisitive adventurers—the known World seems to make us weary (the danger of the concept lies in its insinuating that “this” World is known to us). Another World, where things are different: something in us recalculates; our silent acquiescence, or reticence thereby lose their value—perhaps everything will be fine, we have not hoped in vain. The World where things are different, where we ourselves (who knows?) are different. A true World: this is the most amazing trick and offense that has ever been perpetrated against us; so much has gotten encrusted on the word true that we unwittingly offer it all up as a present to the “true World”—the true World must also be a truthful World, one that does not cheat us, does not make fools of us: believing in it is virtually having to believe (out of decency, as it is among those worthy of confidence). The concept “the unknown World” insinuates that this World is “known” (as tedious); the concept “the other World” insinuates that the World could be otherwise—supersedes necessity and fate (unnecessary to submit, to adapt); the concept “the true World” insinuates that this World is untruthful, deceitful, dishonest, inauthentic, inessential—and, consequently, not a World adapted to our needs (inadvisable to adapt to it; better to resist it). We therefore divest from “this” World in three ways: With our inquisitiveness—as if the most interesting part were elsewhere; with our submission—as if it were not necessary to submit; as if this World were not a necessity of the highest order; with our sympathy and respect—as if this World did not deserve them, were impure, had been dishonest with us. We have revolted three ways—we have made an x into a critique of the “known World.” I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The Sacramento Fire Department has courage, integrity, selflessness, and determination. They help humanity progress and prosper by saving lives and property. Please make a donation to these heroes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Eternal Life Contradicts the Symbols of Heaven and Hell
The reasonable man adapts himself to the World; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the World to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. The narcissistic person has not even necessarily taken one’s whole person as the object of one’s narcissism. Often one had cathexed a partial aspect of one’s personality with one’s narcissism; for instance, one’s honor, one’s intelligence, one’s physical prowess, one’s wit, one’s good looks (sometimes even narrowed down to such details as one’s hair or one’s nose). Sometimes one’s narcissism refers to qualities about which normally a person would not be proud, such as one’s capacity to be afraid and thus to foretell danger. “One” becomes identified with a partial aspect of oneself. If we ask who “he” or “she” is, the proper answer would be that “he” or “she” is one’s brain, one’s frame, one’s wealth, one’s private parts, one’s conscience, and so on. All the idols of the various religions represent so many partial aspects of human beings. In the narcissistic person the object of one’s narcissism is any one of these partial qualities which constitute for one one’s self. The one whose self is represented by one’s property can take very well a threat to one’s dignity, but a threat to one’s property is like a threat to one’s life. On the other hand, for the one whose self is represented by one’s intelligence, the fact of having said something unintelligent is so painful that it may result in a mood of serious depression. However, the more intense the narcissism is, the les will the narcissistic person accept the fact of failure on one’s side, or any legitimate criticism from others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
One will feel outraged by the insulting behaviour of the other person, or believe that the other person is too insensitive, uneducated, et cetera, to have proper judgment. (I think, in this connection, of a brilliant, yet highly narcissistic individual who, when confronted with the results of a Rorschach test one had taken and which fell short of the ideal picture one had of oneself, and said, “I am sorry for the psychologist who did this test; he must be very paranoid.”) Just as the narcissistic person has made one’s “self-image” the object of one’s narcissistic attachment, one does the same with everything connected with one. One’s ideas, one’s knowledge, one’s house, but also people in one’s “sphere of interest” become objects of one’s narcissistic attachment. As Dr. Freud pointed out, the most frequent example is probably the narcissistic attachment to one’s children. Many parents believe that their own children are the most beautiful, intelligent, et cetera, in comparison with other children. It seems that the younger the children are, the more intense is this narcissistic bias. The parents’ love, and especially the mother’s love for the infant, is to a considerable extent love for the infant as an extension of oneself. Adult love between man and woman also has often a narcissistic quality. The man who is in love with a woman may transfer his narcissism to her once she had become “his.” He admires and worships her for qualities which he has conferred upon here; precisely because of her being part of him, she becomes the bearer of extraordinary qualities. Such a man will often also think that all things he possesses are extraordinarily wonderful, and he will be “in love” with them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Narcissism is a passion the intensity of which in many individuals can only be compared with desire for pleasures of the flesh and the desire to stay alive. In fact, many times it proves to be stronger than either. Even in the average individual in whom it does not reach such intensity, there remains a narcissistic core which appears to be almost indestructible. This being so we might suspect that like pleasures of the flesh and survival, the narcissistic passion also has an important biological function. Once we raise this question the answer comes readily. Unless the individual’s bodily needs, one’s interests, one’s desires, were charged with much energy, how could the individual survive? Biologically, from the standpoint of survival, humans must attribute to themselves an importance far above what one gives to anybody else. If one did not do so, from where would one take the energy and interest to defend oneself against others, to work for one’s subsistence, to fight for one’s survival, to press one’s claims against those of others? Without narcissism one might be a saint—but do saints have a high survival rate? What from a spiritual standpoint would be most desirable—absence of narcissism—would be most dangerous from the mundane standpoint of survival. Speaking teleologically, we can say that nature had to endow man with a great amount of narcissism to enable him to do what is necessary for survival. This is true especially because nature has not endowed man with well-developed instincts such as the animal has. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The animal has no “problems” of survival in the sense that its built-in instinctive nature takes care of survival in such a way that the animal does not have to consider or decide whether or not it wants to make an effort. In man the instinctive apparatus has lost most of its efficacy—hence narcissism assumes a very necessary biological function. However, once we recognize that narcissism fulfills an important biological function, we are confronted to others, incapable of giving second place to one’s own needs when this is necessary for co-operation with others? Does not narcissism make the man asocial and, in fact, when it reaches an extreme degree, insane? There can be no doubt that extreme individual narcissism would be a sever obstacle to all social life. However, if this is so, narcissism must be said to be in conflict with the principle of survival, for only if one organizes oneself in groups, can the individual survive; hardly anyone would be able to protect oneself all alone against the dangers of nature, nor would one be able to do many kinds of work which can only be done in groups. We arrive then at the paradoxical result that narcissism is necessary for survival, and at the same time that it is a threat to survival. The solution of this paradox lies in two directions. One is that optimal rather than maximal narcissism serves survival; that is to say, the biologically necessary degree of narcissism is reduced to the degree of narcissism that is compatible with social co-operation. The other lies in the fact that individual narcissism is transformed into group narcissism, that the clan, nation, religion, race, et cetera, become the objects of narcissistic passion instead of the individual. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Thus, narcissistic energy is maintained but used in the interests of the survival of the group rather than for the survival of the individual. There is a pathology of narcissism. The most dangerous result of narcissistic attachment is the distortion of rational judgment. The object of narcissistic attachment is thought to be valuable (good, beautiful, wise, et cetera) not on the basis of an objective value-judgment is prejudiced and biased. Usually this prejudice is rationalized in one form or another, and this rationalization may be ore or less deceptive according to the intelligence and sophistication of the person involved. In the drunkard’s narcissism the distortion is usually obvious. What we see is a human who talks in a superficial and banal way, yet with the air and intonation of voicing the most wonderful and interesting words. Subjectively one has a euphoric “on-top-of-the-World” feeling, while in reality one is in a state of self-inflation. All this does not mean to say that the highly narcissistic person’s utterances are necessarily boring. If one is gifted or intelligent one will produce interesting ideas, and if one evaluates them highly, one’s judgment will not be entirely wrong. However, the narcissistic person tends to evaluate one’s own productions highly anyway, and their real quality is not decisive in reaching this evaluation. (In the case of “negative narcissism” the opposite is true. Such a person tends to underevaluate everything that is one’s own, and one’s judgment is equally biased.) If one was aware of the distorted nature of one’s narcissistic judgments, the results would not be so bad. One would—and could—take a humorous attitude toward one’s narcissistic bias. However, this is rare. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Usually the person is convinced that there is no bias, and that one’s judgment is objective and realistic. This leads to a severe distortion of one’s capacity to think and to judge, since this capacity is blunted again and again when one deals with oneself and what is one’s. Correspondingly, the narcissistic person’s judgment is also biased against that which is not “he” or “she” or not his/hers. The extraneous (“not me”) World is inferior, dangerous, immoral. The narcissistic person then, ends up with an enormous distortion. One and one’s are overevaluated. Everything outside is underevaluated. The damage to reason and objectivity is obvious. The inflexible, all-pervasive nature of the neurotic trends has a significant implication for therapy. Patients often expect that as soon as they have detected their compulsive needs they will be able to relinquish them. If the hold these trends have over them persists in scarcely diminished intensity, they are then disappointed. It is true that these hopes are not entirely fantastic: when it is recognized, in mild neuroses the neurotic trend may indeed disappear. However, in all more intricate neuroses such expectations are as futile as it would be to expect that a social calamity such as unemployment would cease to exist merely because it is recognized as a problem. If possible to influence those forces which have created the disruptive trend and which account for its persistence, in each instance, social or personal, it is necessary to study. There is a security offered by the neurotic trends. This attribute account for their compulsive character. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, the part played by the feeling of satisfaction that they engender, or the hope for satisfaction, should not be underrated. This feeling or hope is never missing, though its intensity varies. In some neurotic trends, such as the need for perfection or the compulsion toward modesty, the defensive aspect is predominant. In others the satisfaction attained or hoped for through the success of the striving can be so strong that the latter takes on the character of a devouring passion. The neurotic need for dependency, for example, usually entails a vivid expectation of happiness with that person who will take one’ life into one’s hands. A strong tinge of attained or anticipated satisfaction renders a trend less accessible to therapy. Neurotic trends may be classified in various ways. Those entailing strivings for closeness with others might be contrasted with those aiming at aloofness and distance. Those impelling toward one or another kind of dependency might be bundled together in contrast with those stressing independence. Trends toward expansiveness stand against those working toward a constriction of life. Trends toward an accentuation of personal peculiarities could be contrasted with those aiming at adaptations or at an eradication of the individual self, those toward self-aggrandizement with those that entail self-belittling. However, to carry through such classifications would not make the picture clearer, because the categories are overlapping. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The neurotic need for affection and approval: Indiscriminate need to please others and to be liked and approved of by others; automatic living up to the expectations of others; automatic living up to the expectations of others; wishes and opinions the only thing that counts; dread of self-assertion; dread of hostility on the part of others or of hostile feeling within self. The neurotic need for a “partner” who will take over one’s life. Center of gravity entirely in the “partner,” who is to fulfill all expectations of life and take responsibility for good and evil, one’s successful manipulation becoming the predominant task; overevaluation of “love” because “love” is supposed to solve all problems; dread of desertion; dread of being alone. The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders; necessity to be undemanding and content with little, and to restrict ambitions and wishes for material things; necessity to remain inconspicuous and to take second place; belittling of existing faculties and potentialities, with modesty the supreme value. Urger to save rather than to spend; dread of making any demands; dread of having or asserting expansive wishes. These three trends are often found together, and might be expected, because they all entail an admission of weakness and constitute attempts to arrange life on that basis. They are the opposite of trends toward relying on one’s own strength or taking responsibility upon oneself. The three of them do not, however, constitute a syndrome. The third may exist without the other two playing any noteworthy role. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
Nationally, there are 56,536 practicing psychiatrists in America. That is 1 psychiatrist for every 5,872 people. The number of psychiatrists needed by our society is due to the maladjustment (ranging, for example, from chronic psychosis at one extreme to marital dissatisfaction at another extreme) is the appropriate and necessary charge of the psychiatrist, and the assumption that these wide boundaries define “mental illness.” Fully qualified psychiatrists are certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. They are graduate physicians who, in addition to the required one-year internship following completion of the four years of medical school, have had not less than three years of supervised training (the psychiatric residency) in an approved psychiatric setting, plus two years of appropriate experience in psychiatric practice. With this background of training and experience they become eligible for the board examinations, which are a “means of distinguishing the fully qualified specialist from the would-be specialist of inferior training and inadequate experience. A psychiatrist may be defined somewhat less strictly. Full membership in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) requires that the graduate physician will have had not less than one year of “practice” in a mental hospital and an additional three years of specialization in the practice of psychiatry. Psychoanalysts play a very significant roles as teachers and, to a lesser extent, as researchers. They have generated a truly voluminous literature on the etiology and treatment of neuroses. However, their direct contribution to the care of the mentally ill has been insignificant, and will probably continue to be so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
An exhaustive analysis of the sources both of supply and of demand for professional mental healthy personnel ends in the conclusion that we face a future of continuing, drastic shortages of personnel in all aspects of our mental health programs. In addition to psychiatry, two other professions play major roles in meeting the demands for mental health services: clinical psychology and psychiatric social work. For both of these professions, also, demand for personnel considerable exceeds supply. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and public health scientists who have concerned themselves with the epidemiological aspects of mental illness and with estimation of the public’s need for mental hygiene services have had several goals. At a pure research level, knowledge of the over-all incidence of mental illness in relation to a complex of socioeconomic, ecological, biological, and cultural factors would stimulate hypotheses about and investigation of suggested determinants of the occurrence and typing of psychological breakdown. At an applied research level, such precise knowledge of the extent and distribution of cases would enhance the assignment of therapeutic resources, the application of prophylactic measures, and reasonably controlled evaluation of both. Administratively, it would facilitate estimation of the personnel needs in the mental health sciences and furnish material for educational efforts to engage the interest and resources of the public in support of such needs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Pursuit of these goals would seem to serve public interest. However, knowledge does not immediately and uniformly contribute in an all-or-none manner either positively or negatively to social welfare. Discovery sometimes results in mixed blessings. Witness the history of explosives! Investigators of the epidemiology of mental illness have not characteristically manifested awareness of the functional dependence of their findings upon their formal definition of a case, or upon their operational biases as expressed in the training and orientation of the persons conducting surveys and identifying cases. Incidence of illness will wary as a function of what is formally defined as pathology and what is recognized as requiring a specified therapy. Failure to give due consideration to the semantic and cultural relativities has encouraged a careless disdain for certain case-finding approaches as too artificial and limited (exempli gratia, definitions of “cases” as only those persons in treatment by a psychiatrist). Such disdain is absurd in the context of a search for the “true” number of cases, when such a search implies a limit and the limit involves defining propositions that share that “artificiality” (or better, arbitrariness) that is inherent in all symbolic systems. In addition to a failure to appreciate the significant interpretive problems stemming from the semantic slipperiness of this research phenomenon, these surveyors have not generally acknowledged the fact that their efforts at measurement may very well disturb the material being investigated. Most simply, case-finding tends frequently to result in case-making. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
We may conjecture that a necessary element in the condition of mental illness is some degree of introspection and an awareness of distress or dysfunction. The existence of a mental health survey or the conceptual climate (value system) in which such a survey is undertaken may provide the crucial stimulus to such introspection and to the resulting awareness of an “acceptable” compliant. Again, there is a way in which illness, or at least some aspect of the total condition of illness, comes first into existence with formal definition of the illness or the making of a diagnosis. In a very real sense, the patient suffering from cancer has a new dimension to one’s illness after the diagnosis which translates one’s distress into a Sickness. In this way, it is possible to conceive of a process whereby a pre-existing psychological and physical state blossoms into illness when a culture instructs in self-examination and defines symptoms. Some case-finding may be case-making. The desirable goals of determining the extent of mental illness are confounded by the fact that the survey process can contribute subtly to psychological distress. The individual who is dissatisfied with one’s work, unhappy in one’s social relationships, lacking in recreational skills, devoid of long-range goals, and without a personal philosophy is not helped by sensitization to the notion that one is “sick.” Particularly is one not helped if such sensitization occurs in a situation in which professional aid is not available to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, for logical thought and inference to operate, this condition must be treated as if having been fulfilled. That is, the will to be logical truth can be exercises only after a fundamental falsification of all events has been assumed. From which it follows that a drive is at work here that has two means at its disposal: first falsification, then implementation of its own point of view—logic does not stem from the will to truth. Not to “know” but to schematize—to impose on chaos as much regularity and form as is required by our practical needs. In the formation of reason, logic, the categories, need is what has been decisive: the need not to “know” but to subsume, to schematize, for the purpose of understanding, of calculation—(Adjustment, devising ways of assimilating, of equating—the same process that every sense impression undergoes—such is the development of reason!) Here, no preexisting “idea” is at work; rather, the practicality that only if we see things crudely and leveled off do they become calculable and manageable for us—Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: with any other kind of reason, to which there are constant impulses, life miscarries—it becomes unsurveyable—too unequal—the categories are “truths” only in the sense that they are life conditioning for us: Euclidean space is one such conditioning “truth.” (To speak plainly: since no one will maintain that it was necessary that man should exist, reason, as well as Euclidean space, is a mere idiosyncrasy of a particular species of animal, and just one among many others…) #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The subjective constraint of not being able to contradict here is a biological constraint: the instinct of utility of inferring as we infer is rooted in our bodies, we virtually are this instinct…but what naivete to derive from this an argument that we are in possession of a “truth in itself”!…Not being able to contradiction demonstrates an incapacity, not a “truth.” The relationship between aggressive warfare and freshly discovered “ground” given to deceiving psychological offenders is important. Every new ground discovered as given to them means, when refused, a renewed liberation of the spirit. This produces deepened enmity to the foe as one’s subtle deceptions are increasingly exposed, and consequently more war upon the ultimate negative and one’s minions. It means more deliverance from their power, and less ground in the believer as one realizes that “symptoms,” “effects” and “manifestations” are not abstract things but revelations of active, personal agencies, against whom one must war persistently. Moreover, all growth in this practical knowledge means increased protection against the deceiving enemy. As new ground is revealed, and fresh truth about the powers of darkness and the way of victory over them is understood, the truth delivers from their deceptions, and hence protects the believer—up to the extent of one’s knowledge—from further deception. One finds in experience that as soon as the truth ceases to operate by one’s active use of it, one is open to attack from the watching foe, who ceaselessly plans against one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
For example, should the believer who has been undeceived cease to use the truth of the existence of psychopathological offenders, their persistent watching to deceive one again, the need for perpetual resistance and fight against them, the keeping of one’s spirit in purity and strength in cooperation with the Spirit of God, and other truths parallel with these—the knowledge of which one has gained through so much suffering—one will sink down again into passivity, and possibly deeper depths of deception. For the Holy Spirit needs the believer’s use of truth to work with in energizing and strengthening one for conflict and victory, and does not guard one from the enemy apart from one’s cooperation in watching and prayer. Thus far, Eternal Life has been discussed in general terms, for it is the telos of all creation. However, the destiny of the individual person requires special treatment, for one’s relation to Eternal Life is qualified by the fact that one alone is aware of one’s telos and is free to reject it. Estrangement witnesses to man’s turning away from Eternal Life at the same time that one aspires to it. Essentialization, therefore, is dialectical. Thus, the telos of man as an individual is determined by the decision one makes in existence on the basis of the potentialities given to one by destiny. The freedom of each human differs from the freedom of every other human due to the conditioning of their respective concrete destinies. Moreover, although humans can recklessly squander their potentialities, some of them will be fulfilled, just as one will never realize all of them, even though one ambitions total fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In other words, there are “degrees of essentialization,” a sliding scale of Eternal Life which contradicts the absolute interpretation of symbols such as Heaven and Hell, eternal death and eternal bliss. However, despite the relativity of essentialization, the seriousness of the failure to attain Eternal Life is not diminished. For essentialization is not an automatic restitution, and what is restored can either exceed or fall short of the original created essence. Falling short of total essentialization is a waste of potentialities that brings with it a corresponding measure of despair. On the basis of essentialization, the individual is never in isolation. One always participates in a community, one’s spirit depends upon a physical and biological foundation, and one’s freedom is inextricably implicated with one’s temporal destiny, so that it becomes impossible to separate one’s individual eternal destiny from the destiny of humankind and of the whole Universe. This doctrine of universal essentialization can be applied to that area of the problem of evil where humans are prevented from achieving fulfillment because of premature death or destructive environments. That solution is “vicarious fulfilment.” Vicarious fulfilment is the essence of the least actualized individual, the essences of other individuals and, indirectly, of all beings are present. Whoever condemns anyone to eternal death condemns oneself, because one’s essence and that of the other cannot be absolutely separated. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
And one who is estranged from one’s own essential being and experiences the despair of total self-rejection must be told that one’s essence participates in the essence of all those who have reached a high degree of fulfilment and through this participation one’s being is eternally affirmed. The essentialization of human beings is the end of history. It has nothing to do with the temporal duration of the World. If history were to end tomorrow, it would till have eternal significance, because the depth of all things become manifest in one being, and the name of that being is man, and you and I are men!…there is one man in whom God found his image undistorted, and who stands for all mankind—the one, who for this reason, is called the Son and the Christ. 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! Two things have I asked of Thee, O Lord; deny me them not before I die:–please remove far from me falsehood and lies; please give me neither poverty nor riches, but please feed me with mine allotted bread, lest I become arrogant and defiant, saying, “Who is the Lord?” Or t least I become poor and be tempted to steal, thus profaning the name of my God, Better is a little with righteousness, than great wealth with injustice. Better is the poor that walks in one’s integrity than the rich that is perverse in one’s way. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
In the Victorian Era, parlour accoutrements were often a piano or organ (for those not wealthy enough to have a separate music room), other tables, marble-topped if the pocketbook allowed, for displaying works of art, photo albums, and travel mementos. Until the Arts and Crafts Movement at the end of the century contracted the excesses of Victorian décor with the suggestion that austerity would be the new theme, fabric was everywhere, outside the usual bounds of window covering and upholstery. “Tidies,” small pieces of lace or embroidered fabric, covered chair backs to prevent soil from hair-oil staining the material. Mantles, tables, and shelves, in addition to windows, were covered by lambrequins.
Lambrequins, a fancy word from the French meaning decorative drapery, were made of embroidered fabric, chintz, or of fringed damask. A lambrequin atop window was used to hide the workings of the draper, much like a valance is today. Lace was also heavily used on windows to soften the glare and to provide a pleasing contrast to the heavier velvet or damask curtains. Curtains called portieres (again, the French influence), were also used to cover doors, as ornamentation when draped around the doorway, and to eliminate drafts when hung loose to cover the closed door or entranceway. Sometimes more than a dozen patterns, between wallpaper, carpet, lambrequins, and curtains, were combined in the Victorian parlour, helping to create the notion we have today of Victorian clutter.
When the parlor contained an organ or piano depended on the family’s religious and social aspirations. A parlour organ, as an accompaniment to hymn singing, enabled the family to incorporate more religious experience into the home life. The piano, on the other hand, was more historically linked to European culture, and therefore more of a status symbol. By mid-century pianos began to be mass-produced and were affordable by the middle class. In larger homes, a separate room was devoted to music and guests were invited specifically for the purpose of enjoying an evening of musical entertainment. Piano or organ playing was an ability encouraged in women especially, and listening to a performance on the parlour piano was as pervasive than as watching television is now. The Winchester Mystery House has two ballrooms. The Grand Ball Room tends to be a favorite of many guests.
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What the F–Business Must be Conducted with Glass Pockets!
Although you make think “What the F!” has a negative connotation, it is not a curse word. It means “What the Ferry!” It is what Ferry calls his live resonation radio show. Ferry Coresten is one of the most talented disc jockeys in the World. Mr. Coresten is Dutch disc jockey, record producer and remixer. Defining, understanding, and discovering the conditions that lead to peace is an intellectual challenge with a long and rich traditional with the social sciences. Nevertheless, it remains central today, not simply for academics but to the broader populations as well. The notion that peace is at hand as soon as there is no ongoing, large-scale organized violence is not only the most common idea today but also a way of viewing peace that goes back at least to antiquity. We sometimes achieve peace through military preparations and deterrence, or the military defeat of adversaries. The quantitative research on conflict, violence, and peace is an already large subject area within the social sciences, and it is undergoing yet another growth spurt in the aftermath of 9/11, with increasing discussion of terrorism, restriction of civil liberties, torture, invasion, insurgency, counterinsurgency, revolution, counterrevolution, mass protest, and protest policing. Many people think we already live in a police state, but they have not seen anything yet. In 2007, alarm companies did not want to install security cameras on homes because they warned home owners that footage could be obtained by anyone and put on the Internet without their consent, but now people are going as far as having cameras places in their home that security companies monitor. Before long, the streets and highways in the United States of American will be full of license plate readers, which automatically issues tickets for speeding, which will make the road less safe as less officers will be out to stop illegal vehicles and vehicle violating law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
We will also have police drones patrolling neighbourhoods, roads, and highways recording information and acting as law enforcement agents, so there will be virtually no privacy and anything that is done can be pulled up and reviewed for later enforcement of the law. Therefore, it is critical to study peace as something more than merely the absence of overt violence. Peace is defined only as the absence of some violent actions. This form of peace, as “no violence,” can range from brutal dictatorships to democracies that fully respect human rights, from states that remain at peace only for brief periods of time between recurring bought of violence to societies that have not experienced overt hostilities for hundreds of years, and from states that consistently remain prepared for “hot” conflict to those that do not consider preparing for it. If peace is an inherent dichotomy, then war and genocide are the opposite. Personal relationship, closeness and warmth, Christian community—these are just what I have experienced in East Germany when I have visited. Over the years the society has always come through with insightful and perceptive judgments. The new paradigm of just peacemaking is grounded in the historical experience of people who have lived in the face of oppression, violation of their basic rights, and the nuclear threat, and who, together with political scientist, Christian ethicists, and activists, fashioned realistic steps of peacemaking that enabled them to begin living in the time after the Cold War even before the Wall came down. Though oppressed and constricted, they began to live our future. Because the paradigm is grounded in realistic but persistent hope-creating experience, attention must be paid to critical perspectives external to Christian faith; and since the heart of the story is consent to all God’s creating and the practice of forgiveness and love, an ethic is to be tested by its ability to be inclusive rather than to repress important standards of human life, or other members of the human community. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
We have all known we needed to develop new methods for achieving change without violence. Now we have seen nonviolent revolutions in Iran (where the revolution was nonviolent but not the subsequent regime) in Philippines, in Argentina, throughout Eastern Europe, and in the peoples’ defeat of the coup in the Soviet Union, and there is hope for them in South Africa and perhaps Palestine (where parts of the movement are nonviolent, and other parts are not). Human rights movements must refrain from violence. They must take the beneficial action of clearly articulating the human rights that need to be established. The breakdown of the medieval system of feudal society had one main significance for all classes of society: the individual was left alone and isolated. He was free. This freedom had a twofold result. Man was deprived of the security he had enjoyed, of the unquestionable feeling of belonging, and he was torn loose from the World which had satisfied his quest for security both economically and spiritually. He felt alone and anxious. However, he was also free to act and to think independently, to become his own master and do with his life as he could—not as he was told to do. However, according to the real life situation of the members of different social classes, these two kind of freedom were of unequal weight. Only the most successful class of society profited from rising capitalism to an extent which gave them real wealth and power. They could expand, conquer, rule and amass fortunes as a result of their own activity and rational calculations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This new aristocracy of money, combined with that of birth, was in a position where they could enjoy the fruits of the new freedom and acquire a new feeling of mastery and individual initiative. On the other hand, they had to dominate the masses and to fight against each other, and thus their position, too, was not free from a fundamental insecurity and anxiety. But, on the whole, the positive meaning of freedom was dominant for the new capitalist. It was expressed in the culture which grew on the social of the new aristocracy, the culture of the Renaissance. In its art and in its philosophy it expressed the new spirit of human dignity, will, and mastery, although often enough despair and skepticism also. The same emphasis on the strength of individual activity and will is to be found in the theological teachings of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages. The Schoolmen of that period did not rebel against authority, they accepted its guidance; but they stressed the positive meaning of freedom, man’s share in the determination of his fate, his strength, his dignity, and the freedom of his will. On the other hand, the lower classes, the poor population of the cities, and especially the peasants, were impelled by a new quest for freedom and an ardent hope to end the growing economic and personal oppression. They had little to lose and much to gain. They were not interested in dogmatic subtleties, but rather in the fundamental principles of the Christian Bible: brotherliness and justice. Their hopes took active form in a number of political revolts and in religious movements which were characterized by the uncompromising spirit typical of the very beginning of Christianity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Rising capitalism, although it made also for their increased independence and initiative, was greatly a threat. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the individual of the middle class could not yet grain much power and security from the new freedom. Freedom brought isolation and personal insignificance more than strength and confidence. Besides that, he was filled with burning resentment against the luxury and power of the wealthy classes, including the hierarchy of the Roman Church. Protestantism gave expression to the feelings of insignificance and resentment; it destroyed the confidence of man in God’s unconditional love; it taught man to despise and distrust himself and others; it made him a tool instead of an end; it capitulated before secular power and relinquished the principle that secular power is not justified because of its mere existence if it contradicts moral principles; ad in doing all this it relinquished elements that had been the foundations of Judaeo-Christian tradition. Its doctrines presented a picture of the individual, God, and the World, in which these feelings were justified by the belief that the insignificance and powerlessness which an individual felt came from the qualities of man as such and that he ought to feel as he felt. Thereby the new religious doctrines not only gave expression to what the average member of the middle class felt, but, by rationalizing and systematizing this attitude, they also increased and strengthened it. However, they did more than that; they also showed the individual a way to cope with his anxiety. They taught him that by fully accepting his powerlessness and the evilness of his nature, by considering his whole life an atonement for his sins, by the utmost self-humiliation, and also by unceasing effort, he could overcome his doubt and his anxiety; that by complete submission he could be loved by God and could at least hope to belong to those whom God has decided to save. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of the frightened, uprooted, and isolated individual who had to orient and to relate himself to a new World. The new character structure, resulting from economic and social changes and intensified by religious doctrines, became in its turn an important factor in shaping the further social and economic development. Those very qualities which were rooted in this character structure—compulsion to work, passion for thrift, the readiness to make one’s life a tool for the purposes of an extra personal power, asceticism, and a compulsive sense of duty—were character trait which became productive forces in capitalistic society and without which modern economic and social development are unthinkable; they were the specific forms into which human energy was shaped and in which it became one of the productive forces within the social process. To act in accord with the newly formed character traits was advantageous from the standpoint of economic necessities; it was also satisfying psychologically, since such action answered the needs and anxieties of this new kind of personality. To put the same principle in more general terms: the social process, by determining the mode of life of the individual, that is, his relation to others and to work, molds his character structure; new ideologies—religious, philosophical, or political—result from and appeal to this changed character structure and thus intensify, satisfy, and stabilize it; the newly formed character traits in their turn become important factors in further economic development and influence the social process; while originally they have developed as a reaction to the threat of new economic forces, they slowly become productive force, furthering and intensifying the new economic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The system of rules and their enforcement itself must first establish a reputation for integrity and efficacy. This takes a long time and strict supervision even given much good will. In many countries, the great difficulties experienced by the governments of most transition economies in their attempts at such reputation-building require attempts of the top levels of the government at making and enforcing reliable governance systems. However, they can be ruined by some middle-level officials who attempt to make quick profit from their newfound power. There are evident problems of this in most transition economies. Also, in the phase when the system of rules in imperfect but improving, it can offer better outside payoffs to the participants in the prevailing relation-based system. By thus increasing their incentives to cheat their current partners, it can worsen the outcomes of the relation-based system. The policies required to initiate a transition from low-income equilibrium to a state of rapid growth may be qualitatively different from those required to reignite growth for a middle-income country. At low levels of income, with reasonable institutions and reasonable policies, it may be easy to achieve high growth up to semi-industrialization. However, the institutional requirements of reigniting growth in a middle-income country can be significantly more demanding. Growth starting from a low level can be achieved using relation-based governance in small communities of traders with good relationships and information networks, so long as the state does not actually inhibit such developments with its policies. However, to go beyond the middle-income level requires greater integration into a large economy, where relation-based governance is inadequate. The necessary shift toward rule-based governance is more demanding because it must overcome the additional problems of collective action, vested interest and so on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
How might such investment in the framework of rules get made? In 1898, when Elbert Gary and J. Pierpont Morgan started Federal Steel, they took the then unusual step of issuing quarterly reports because both men believed that corporations issuing publicly traded securities had to account for their financial performance. At first there was no public process such as external audits to guarantee the truthfulness of these accounts; presumably Mr. Morgan’s own reputation and integrity, acquired in the prevailing relation-based system of finance, gave them credibility. However, the public gradually found that inadequate, perhaps because others entering the arena of raising finance from the general public did not have the same reputation. A few years later, then president Theodore Roosevelt said that he would not “accept the publication of what some particular company chooses to publish as a favor, instead of demanding what we think ought to be published from all companies as a right” (Strouse 2000, p. 439). And still later, Mr. Morgan said that “business in the twentieth century would have to be conducted with glass pockets” (Strouse 2000, p. 600). This episode serves to emphasize the endogeneity of verifiability, and the value of making more information publicly verifiable. Forces operate on the other side to undermine a relation-based system when it comes into contact with other rule-based systems. If capital-owners in the relation-based system become able to invest abroad under a rule-based system and earn the going return there, that will raise the outside opportunities of the participants in each ongoing repeated game of relation-based finance, and thereby unravel its tacit cooperation equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Similarly, as improvements in transportation technology or lowering of trade barrier with other countries, or liberalization of regulation within or across countries, bring a relation-based production system into contact with other economies and other markets, its firms will discover better opportunities outside their previous relationships; this can undermine the previous repeated game equilibrium. If or when a relation-based economy needs to import capital, whether financial or direct investment, it will find it difficult to do so. Unless foreigners are misinformed or gradually develop relationships with host-country businesses, they will be reluctant to lend. Conversely, firms in a relation-based system may be reluctant to borrow from lenders who are not part of their relation network, for fear that the strangers may withdraw their capital suddenly. So, if it needs foreign capital, a relation-based economy may fail to grow unless it changes over successfully to a rule-based system where anyone can invest with the confidence that the only uncertainties will be those arising from natural economic shocks, not those of borrowers’ strategic default or fraud or lenders’ capital flight. Of course the difficulties of brining together two such different systems of financial transactions are not insurmountable. Intermediaries can develop relations on both sides, and profit by providing these services for a fee. The Rothschilds did this in Europe with great success for over a century, literally be having relations on both or all sides. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States of America was a major capital importer. This was facilitated by the Morgans—Junius S. operating in London and J. Pierpont in New York—who established a relation-based chain of trust between borrowers in the United States of America and lenders in the United Kingdom and Europe. In modern times, Hong Kong served a similar role, dealing with lenders—Western ones on a basis of rules and overseas Chinese ones on the basis of relations—and with borrowers—investing firms in mainland China on a basis of relations. In countries shaken by the Third Wave, the truly poor no longer necessarily have numbers on their side. In a good many countries they—like everyone ese—have become a minority. Not only is majority rule therefore no longer adequate as a legitimating principle, it is no longer necessarily humanizing or democratic in societies moving into the Third Wave. Second Wave ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. Rather than seeing in this enriched diversity an opportunity for human development, they attack it as “fragmentation” and “Balkanization” and attribute it to the aroused “selfishness” of minorities. This trivial explanation substitutes effect for cause. For the rising activism of minorities is not the result of a sudden onset of selfishness; it is, among other things, a reflection of the needs of a new system of production which requires for its very existence a far more varied, colourful, open and diverse society than any we have ever known. We can either resist the thrust toward diversity, in a futile last-ditch effort to save our Second Wave political institutions, or we can acknowledge diversity and change those institutions accordingly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The former strategy can only be implemented by totalitarian means and must result in economic and cultural stagnation; the latter leads toward social evolution and a minority-based twenty-first-century democracy. To reconstitute democracy in Third Wave terms, we need to jettison the frightening but false assumption that increased diversity automatically brings increased tension and conflict in society. Indeed, the exact reverse can be true. Conflict in society is not only necessary, it is, within limits, desirable. If one hundred men all desperately want the same brass ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand, if each of the hundred has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade, cooperate and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social arrangements, diversity can make for a secure and stable civilization. It is the lack of appropriate political institutions today that unnecessarily sharpens conflict between minorities to the knife-edge violence. It is the lack of such institutions that makes the majority harder and harder to find. The answer to these problems is not to stifle dissent or to charge minorities with selfishness (as though the elites and their experts are not similarly self-interested). The answer lies in imaginative new arrangements for accommodating the legitimating diversity—new institutions that are sensitive to the rapidly shifting needs of changing and multiplying minorities. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Today however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny minorities to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other minorities. This is why we must drastically revise the crude Second Wave methods by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of minorities—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse minorities, yet permit them to form majorities. In Second Wave societies, voting to determine the popular will provide an important source of intermittent feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and fifty-one percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parities, alter policies, or make some other accommodations. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the fifty-one percent principle was a decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people at a given moment want X, but not how badly they want it. Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X—crucial information in a society made up of many minorities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
When a minority feels so threatened or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue that its views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight, nor does it signal us then. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most minorities lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Third Wave society, the feedback systems of the industrial past may be considered too crude. Thus we will have no use voting and the polls in a radically new way. Also, because the de-massification and redistribution of media outlets, we are no longer creating stars as famous Worldwide as Aaliyah, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, Tyson Beckford, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Lopez, or Lucy Lui. Fortunately, Third Wave technologies provide pathways toward Third Wave democracy. They reopen, in a startling new context, fundamental issues that our founders considered two hundred years ago. These technologies make possible new, hitherto impractical forms of democracy. Although the transition from the problem phase to the proposal phase of planning is usually gradual, the formulation of proposals is qualitatively distinct from the definition of public and problem. Proposals are creative responses; they call for imagination, invention, even genius. The making of proposals has to be properly timed, not coming too early in the planning process. For any given problem there may be a number of solutions, and thus new potentialities of divergence are introduced into the public’s discussion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If those who make proposals are anxious that they be accepted or at least taken seriously and attended to, they should ideally wait until a public has become quite clear and coherent s to the nature of its problem and its desire to act. This is especially true when a proposal is likely to threaten this or that section of the public’s interest; a premature proposal is more easily exiled from discussion by an alter minority, or even without opposition may lose force, when its relevance is not yet apparent. Perhaps the proposal phase could be said to begin where “to act or not to act” ceases to be the question and consideration turns to serious alternatives. It ends when the proposal or proposals go before a policy-making body for decision. If the outcome is to be a full-fledged proposal of the planning type, during the interim a considerable number of developments ideally must occur. During this phase, proposals may be legion, running from the most casual sort of suggestion to massive reports prepared by many experts and taking years of work. If it is to deserve serious considerations, despite such variation in their elaborateness, the proposal must contain some basic elements. There must be a statement of an effective and feasible way of solving the problem as it has been defined. An estimate of the resources, human and material, required for carrying out the proposal. A schedule of the rate at which these recourses will be applied. A statement of certain quantitative goals for achievement within the schedule set. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Any proposal containing these elements is a planning proposal, and is often called a plan, sometimes with the name of its author prefixed, exempli gratia, the Marshall Plan (although technically it does not become a plan until it has been subject to a policy commitment, and then of course it becomes a program). The injection of proposals into the public’s discussion of the problem is frequently, at first, on what might be called an amateur basis. While each serious proposal may contain the four essential elements, their development is neither elaborate nor exact. The multiplicity of proposals and their rudimentary nature, given a strong feeling of concern, then quite readily lead to a conscious demand for more careful study of the situation and comparative examination of the proposals. Then, and not before then in most cases, is the appropriate time for commencing the formal organization of the public. At this point, another custom is often to constitute some expert committee, commission, or board and to charge it with making a study and some definite recommendations for action. The composition of the more successful committees tends to be drawn, with certain exceptions, from all the significant elements in the public to which the situation is a problem. To give them their charge may call for further definition of the appropriate scope of the planning area. This calls for judgment and may itself be a matter of disagreement. If action is truly desired, the planning area ought to be confined to those to whom the situation is definitely a problem in which they are actively involved, and it ought not to include everyone who might potentially experience some consequence from the action taken. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
After admitting the possibility of deception in supernatural things, and a doubt has come into mind whether certain “experiences,” either personal or otherwise, were of God after all, the next stages are: The discovery of the deception. Light and truth alone can make free, and when once a doubt comes in and the man opens his mind to the truth that he is as liable to be deceived as anyone else, then to the mind and attitude light is given (John 3.21). Sometimes the specific deception is seen at once, but more often the discovery is gradual, and patience is needed while the light slowly dawns. Certain fact in connection with various experiences of the past, which the believer has failed to note, may now emerge into the light, and the half-truths which the Adversary had used to deceive are clearly seen: the twisting of words, the wrenching of sentences out of their context in the Scriptures—all come into a view as the light is given. Then comes: the acknowledgement of the deception. This is now imperative. The truth must not only be faced but owned up to, so that things are called by their right names, and the father of lies defeated by the weapon of truth. The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible keeps one from sin, and draws one near to virtue. You shall teach diligently the word of God to your children. The moral World is maintained by the instruction of our young; their education shall not be interrupted even to rebuild the Temple. When parents encourage their children to study The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible, their influence lives beyond the grave. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
One who has studied in one’s youth may be compared to writing set down on new parchment; but one who begins to study when one is old, is like writing set down on re-used parchment. If one studies The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible in one’s youth, its words are woven into the texture of one’s life. Train a child in the way one should go, and when one is older, one will not depart from it. As long as the voices of children resound with the study of The Book of Mormon and the Holy Chistian Bible, no enemy can triumph over America. The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible are each a Tree of Life; happy are they who understand its teachings, and fulfill God’s commandments. The significance of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ can be summed up in one word: salvation. One can be saved from many things, but salvation is salvation from the ultimate negativity. Salvation is healing for healing means reuniting that which is estranged, giving a center to what is split, overcoming the split between God and man, man and his Worl, man and himself. It is the revelation of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ which brings salvation. Consequently, where there is revelation, there is salvation, for the revelation of the ground of being transforms and heals. Revelation and salvation are identified. The revelational history of mankind—preparatory revelation before the appearance of the New Being, and receiving revelation afterwards—testifies that men have shared in the healing power of the New Bring, or else they would have succumbed to the destructive tendencies of existential estrangement and have ceased to exist. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Traditional theology has presented the rigid alternatives of total condemnation and total salvation. However, we reject them both, for, although the healing power of the New Being is never absent, even those who experience it are healed but fragmentarily. The divine act overcomes estrangement by removing guilt, and man reacts by accepting reconciliation. The effects of atonement are threefold, and together they constitute the meaning of salvation: Regeneration, Justification, and Sanctification, or, in Tillichian terminology, participation, acceptance, and transformation. Regeneration stresses the objective power of the New Being to grasp estranged mankind and draw it into itself. Man participates in the new reality revealed in Christ only by being seized by it. Thus, Regeneration is the new state of things, the new eon, which the Christ brought; the individual enters it, and in so doing he himself participates in it and is reborn through participation. Since Regeneration is participation in the objective power of the New Being, it precedes Justification, for faith as the state of being grasped by the divine presence is not a human act, but the work of the Spirit. Justification is acceptance. It is the act of God by which He accepts sinful man in spite of his guilt. It is also the act of man by which man accepts God’s saving mercy. Indeed, there is nothing in man which enables God to accept him. However, man must accept just this. He must accept that he is accepted; he must accept acceptance. This in spite of his anxiety, man accepts God’s justifying act. In spite of is the paradox of simual peccator, simul Justus. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
As a divine act, Regeneration and Justification are one, for Regeneration is the actual reunion of the estranged, and Justification is its paradoxical character. Sanctification is distinct from both of them in the sense that a process is distinguished from the event in which it is initiated. Sanctification is the process in which the New Being transforms both individuals and communities. Sanctification, as transformation, takes place both within religion and outside it in the secular realm. Up to now emphasis has been laid upon the individual man as the one who is saved. However, our vision is broader than that. At the crucifixion of Jesus the sun was darkened, the temple veil split, rocks cracked, and the dead rose. Nature was in an uproar, and the event at Golgotha is one which concerns the Universe, including all nature and history. The Christ cannot be restricted to one area; Christology must be cosmic. Salvation extends to the whole World, and World means nature as well as man. It is through man, the microcosm, that the saving power of the New Being reaches out to the Universe. The tragedy of nature is bound to the tragedy of man, as the salvation of nature and nature is in man. Consequently, the impact of the Spiritual Presence upon beings inferior to man is indirect and, in a quantitative sense, severely limited. However, in a qualitative sense it is enormous. Salvation is found within the Kingdom of God which embraces the Universe. It is the place where there is complete transparency of everything for the divine to shine through it. In His fulfilled kingdom, God is everything for everything. Salvation, the healing of the disrupted, is brought about by love, for love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. The New Being is the love of Jesus who is the Christ, reuniting estranged mankind with its ground. The Spiritual Presence manifests itself as love. After distinguishing divine love from human love, we come to an understanding that man’s love for God is the drive toward the reunion of the separated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, since salvation is an act of God, God’s love must first extend to man and grasp him. The distinction between faith and love disappears, for being grasped by God in faith and adhering to Him in love is one and the same state of creaturely life. We belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by Christianity is that we also participate in the New Creation. What is this New Being? The only thing that counts, regardless of faith, is the union with Him in whom the New Reality is present. No religion matters—only a new state of things. The New Creation—this is our ultimate concern; this should be our infinite passion—the infinite passion of every human being. This matters; this alone matters ultimately. In comparison with it everything else, even religion or non-religion, even Christianity or non-Christianity, matters very little—and ultimately nothing. And now again we ask: What is this New Being? It is a renewal of the Old which has been corrupted, distorted, split, and almost destroyed. Therefore, we can speak of the New in terms of a re-newal: The threefold “re,” namely, re-conciliation, re-union, re-surrection. The word “resurrection” has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. However, resurrection means the victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of death of the Old. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow…Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things had appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you. And like God saves all, the Fire Department will rescue you no matter how rich or poor you are, no matter or age, or what you look like or where you live! Be sure to thank your local heroes, and feel free to make donations to them, they are understaffed and underfunded. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Everyone is Afraid of the Dark
Magnolias, orange trees, thick evergreen and palm trees sprouted from the sweeping lawns growing tall, as their green leaves beautifully filled the sky providing shade from the hot sun. Shielded behind the lush proliferation of gardens stood gorgeous Llanada Villa built in the Queen Anne Victorian style with soaring roofs and columned porticoes. The farmland provided crops for food. It was Sunday January, 1888, and the famers and servants were buoyant with excitement, undampened by undue religious solemnity. Good nature was inescapable that Sunday. Conversation abounded with joy and optimism. Several planters, dressed in gloves, hats, and cravat, strolled my estate. The road bustled with carriages and horses; men and women strolled along the green lawns in their Sunday finery; and the servants hunted and played games in the field. Somehow, in the midst of it all, I had grown tired and went to my bedroom to rest. It was past midnight when I awoke, and when I looked out the moon was rising over the Observational Tower. I heard a battle, but I could not see it for the smoke and flames, and the broken marble battering me from all sides. Doors were broken from their hinges, and the light bulbs exploded, and in the darkness, I was thrown against the walls or the floors. I felt an intense heat pass over me, and I struggled to get to my feet as the broken and fragmented tiles swirled about the chamber. Ghastly screams came from Arkie, the son of one of the farmers. “I have seen an evil thing this night,” he said. “Tell me what you have seen,” I replied. Arkie told me everything he had seen. “The estate was covered with smoke, through which, through which flashes were incessant, whilst the air seemed filled with shell, whose sharp explosions, with the hurling of their fragments hurling between flashes. Flashes that lit up the night sky. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
“We were at war against a monstrous progeny of demon-possessed men and women, wearing velvet tunics and stockings, and marvelous cloaks trimmed in rare fur. They brandished huge glittering swords. The fountains bulled over, flowing with blood. Several of the servant fled through the streets, yards, and orchards, many taking refuge in the Victorian cottages, outbuildings, and mansion already filled with the wounded and dying. The smoke was so dense we could not perceive an object ten feet in front of us. The gloom of the moment was beyond description. We felt and heard the tread of our enemy, our minds were in tumult, whether to lie still, to yield, or to die fighting. I jumped in and found myself confronted by a giant’s sword pointed by my breast. I grasped the blade and reversed the handle of my sword in a twinkle and offered to surrender. The beast said in the excitement, he thought I had run him through and he dropped his sword.” I was so thankful for each servant who fought for my home, their families, and their way of life, even though death was knocking on their door. A few days later, it was a dark moonless night, and as silent as a tomb. Arkie was still shaken up by the events that had recently taken place. There was a terrible fear, a physiological fear. Something beyond life that I was able to catch for a second. The air was cold now, icy all around me. It suddenly felt as though time stood still and yet as a foggy substance silently closed in the air was getting cold enough to freeze the blood. My nose, face, hands and feet felt ice cold. I was standing in silence, as I watched what was unfolding before my eyes. This misty essence was swirling noiselessly around us as we stood, observing a steam so fine the scene felt surreal. Along with the white mist came a whirl of emotions and confusion. What was happening in my home? I braced myself for some hellish effects. It swirled around us as though blown by a high wind, rising above our heads and dropping as it was moving quickly and yet we felt only a gentle breeze. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
Like a scene from the spectral World, the abnormal foggy essence swirled in vortex shapes and at time, it resembled horses running past us, but the curtains did not move, though we felt air currents around us. We felt vulnerable and somewhat uneasy. I could not for my life keep back a loud scream—the second I had emitted that night. It echoed and echoed through the dim vaultings of my mansion, and I had to choke back a flood of reaction that threated to burst out. Arkie saw a pale figure heading toward him as he ran from the parlor. He quivered when the thing growled at him. It stood out like white chalk on a black board, moving in darkness, seeking. It moved rapidly and just as suddenly as it have moved through the gallery, it suddenly was gone. When I looked around, I saw nothing of the foggy mist that surrounded and chilled us to the bone; it had vanished. The room was clear and felt warmer. What seemed like a long time in the fog had only been a few short minutes! When Arkie and I talked, we were both in awe at what we had experienced. Words were few as we tried to make sense of the incident. Arkie’s hair used to be dark brown, with grizzled streaks about the temples; in less than a month from that day he was a gray as badger, and he has never been quite the same man since that night. I do not believe anybody had ever felt so much sheer hell in one night. Gargoyles and chimeras, we saw all sorts of things, as if it was some passage from the Middle Ages. Arkie said my home repelled him more and more every day, and frightened him, as its features and expressions developed in a way he did not like; in a way that was not human. He felt like a ghoul had been feeding on his soul. He proceeded to leave the hose and suddenly jumped back a foot and started to cry. A dark figure draped in a black tattered robe with a deep hood that concealed his face stoop there, blocking the entrance. My heart sank centuries away as the soul goes as the awful, blasphemous horror touched quite beyond the power of words to classify. I shivered slightly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
“What are you?” Arkie cried out desperately to the figure robed in black. There was only silence. He knew the horrible figure we be upon us soon. He flung his sword at the figure in black, and the dark robed figured answered back by point a half-rotted finger at Arkie. The sword flew backwards from his hand. He quickly spun around only to find, to his surprise, that the dreadful ghoul had not emerged from the hallway yet, but we could hear it coming. Arkie’s eyes widened in horror and his heart sank further as he looked to see that his sword hung in the air. Utter fear and hopelessness played on his mind. The ghoul was breathing like a wild beast; and I heard an evil sound also, with blows of something violently driven through flesh and bone, as the sword moved on its own, staking Arkie in the heart. I cried out for mercy as the ghoul approached, but was frozen in fear. Its deathly yellow eyes looked on me with hate and savage hunger. Yellow ooze dripped from its frightful maw. And its long fingernails danced in my hair, before it devoured what remained. As the ghoul kneeled, gnawing at Arkie’s head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy, the shadowy specter looked at me and spoke with it’s a hollow voice, saying “There is no shame in what you have done. Your former life is behind you.” I felt that any moment it might drop its present pray and seek a juicier morsal. But, the nearly eight-foot ghoul grabbed the blood-soaked sword and fled with it. This strange proceeding gave rise to many inquiries. Only a few could answer them. My home is dreaming gorgeously and overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace. It can truly catch the night spirit of antique horror, terror, as well a beauty from life. The haunting apparitions were seldom completely human. Occasionally things would leap through open windows at night, or could be seen squatting on the chest of sleepers, worrying at their throats. The utter inhumanity and callous cruelty of the things torture the brain and flesh. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
Unlocking the front doors, one is ushered into decorative hallways with splendid mahogany paneling—thrilling and suggestive of the time. Ancient paneled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry, there is even a narrow staircase the leads to the ceiling where a ghost is said to reside. Servants have felt temperature changes upon entering the room and sensed an unknown presence next to them. Others have glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that lope and trot and crawl up the stairs and through the ceiling. We saw the demons themselves and were afraid of them. My shocked scream had waked unaccustomed echoes in the labyrinth. It was more of the physical than the spiritual. I was paralyzed for an instant. I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of squeals or beats in a direction I could not determine. Then there came a subdued sort of clatter which somehow set me all in gooseflesh—a furtive, groping kind of clatter. It was like heavy wood falling on stone or brick—wood on brick—what did that make me think of? It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp grating noise. The archaic tunnels in my basement touched graveyard and witch-den. But whatever was in them was devilish anxious to get out. Accidents had happened, but I have never seen what I saw this night—that creature was neither alive nor dead, it abided neither above ground nor in the grave. It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man. However, it was not even the fiendish apparition that made such an immortal fountainhead of all panic—not that, nor the face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose and drooling lips. It was not the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body, nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, through any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness. It was the curse, the impious, the unnatural endless cycle of terror. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
These monsters were there—they glared and gnawed and gnawed and glared—and I knew that only a suspension of Nature’s laws would ever let a person be terrorized like this—it was truly some glimpse of the netherworld which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever endured. I had to hide this well-established horror-World which I saw fully, brilliantly, squarely and unfalteringly. Fair sized rooms, with wooden floors and furnished were bricked up with extreme care, to conceal the ghastly demons and nauseous monstrosities that leered around from every side of the rooms. I always knew William, no matter how beautiful and pure he was, was not strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he had found a way to unlock the forbidden gate. There are secrets, you know, which might come down from old Salem times, Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. In the Dark Ages, belief in apparitions, vampires, hell hounds, and demons were commonplace. While belief in ghosts declined in the eighteenth century, it was revitalized in the nineteenth century with the Society of Psychical research. While culture differ in their beliefs about what happens after death, most cultures believe that a ghost can return to the World of the living, with either good or bad intent. In Western cultures, it is most commonly believed that a ghost is the soul of the deceased who cannot find peace or does not know they are dead, leading them to haunt places where they lived or died or objects that caused their death, sometimes they even haunt bloodlines. It may be that they have unfinished business on the Earthly plane, perhaps to protect a loved one, or impart information or reenact the death. I do not think that any power on Earth could make anyone speak of what happened in my home, even old priests were too frightened to look in. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
It has been said that Mrs. Winchester slept in a different bedroom every night, supposedly in order to confuse evil spirts. Mrs. Winchester was deeply concerned with the welfare of her servants and their families. They were well paid and often additionally rewarded with gifts, even homes, or real estate and lifetime pensions. The full scope of her generosity charity and many kind acts will forever remain unknwn and such was her sincere desire. Her donations were never made public. She contributed to charities of all faiths. In 1911 in New Haven, Connecticut, she established the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Sanitorium for Tuberculosis (also known as low consumption), endowing it with $1,200,000.00 (2023 inflation adjusted $38,540,084.21). Visitors to The Winchester Mystery House are bound to run into others who are curious about the spirit World. It may seem that our intents have been to weave a cloak of vindication and protection covering our lady’s eccentricities, so many to this day still unexplainable. In truth, volumes could be written extolling her many virtues and justifying the construction of one of the largest and most significant architectural structures in the World. Still the Question remains—Why? Why? The enigma of The Mystery House that tragedy and a rifle built is perhaps unanswerable. The present generation must weigh and draw its own conclusions about this Valley’s most interesting, most controversial, most unappreciated and surely our most mysterious First Lady! No one will ever know, but this beautiful and bizarre mansion has, we think, allowed Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester, Lady of Mystery, to achieve a unique kind of eternal life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
The spirit World and the human World were once so closely interwoven as to be indivisible. Look at monument, such as The Winchester Mystery House, that our ancient predecessors erected, and the traditions devised, to house, honour, and succor the dead. We still retain enough of our ancestors’ belief that our dead are aware of how we treat them, that we try to ensue they do not have anything thing to complain about. And we listen with widening eyes and quickening heartbeats to the stories told about the ghost that exist and have been recorded throughout time. The Winchester Mystery Houses catches the overtones of the soul, and you will not find those in a modern or renovated home because it has had no time to pick memories and attract local spirits. Placed like Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester’s home was not merely made, but it actually grew. Generation after Generation lived there and felt and died there, and in days when people were not afraid to live and feel and die. This house has stood for almost two centuries and what it has witnessed would make a modern house crumbled into powder. What do modern know of life and the forced behind it? This mansion once had a set of tunnels that kept it in touched with over Victorian houses on the estate. There is hardly a month that you do not read of carpenters finding bricked-up arches and wells leading nowhere in this or that old section of the house. During the time of the construction of this mansion, there were witches and what their spells summoned; pirated and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; privateers—and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to enlarge the bounds of life, in the old time! #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
While cleaning the mansion one night, a tour guide noticed a man in 19th century clothes, very pale, with pale blue eyes approaching the Venetian Dining Room. The tour guided continued to work until the mane came very close and stood directly over him. Becoming a bit uneasy at the man’s silence, the tour guide finally asked him, without looking of, if he wished to tour the mansion. When the “guest” did not reply, the tour guide stopped dusting underneath the table, and looked up at the silent man. The man’s face was contorted with rage; his lips moved furiously and he gestured as if he were shouting, but he made no sound. The tour guide fell onto the floor. Before he could turn and flee, the guest disappeared. Terrified, the tour guide ran until he came to an assistant manager. “I saw a ghost,” the tour guide grasped, out of breath. “The ghost of one of the carpenters has come back.” The ghost appeared in August of 2006, to another tour guide. He had entered the Daisy Bedroom and found a fellow tour guide leaning against the wall. Surprised by his presence, he had begun to question the man when he melted into the wall. When he reported the incident, one of his coworkers dismissed it as imagination. A few days later, two tour guides saw the same carpenter. They were locking up the mansion and the lights had not been off more than a few minutes when the sound of footsteps caused both tour guides to stop in their tracks. Before either of them could move, a door swung open and a young man entered. He gestured wildly and seemed to be shouting at the two tour guides, neither of whom could testify that any sound issued from the angry visitor. When one of the tour guides turned on the light, the figure faded before their astonished eyes. They quickly had the mansion secured and order all exists guarded. Guards reported that no person had attempted to leave the building. After the guards had conducted a search of the rooms, they were convinced that their visitor had not been a living man. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The room count of California’s most mysterious mansion has just increased by one, rounding out at 161 chambers (that we know of). Preservationists at The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose have found a previously unknown room in the attic of the house, and in it was a pump organ, a dress form, a sewing machine, a Victorian sofa, and several paintings.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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If you forget to purchase something during your visit, you can order any gift item by calling 408-247-2000 and charging them to your credit card. You can also place an order through the mail. Be sure to include a daytime telephone number with area code. Write to: Winchester Mystery House.
An Artifact from Another Level of Being
The silence closed in. Something was building in Llanada Villa. Something was happening in the very air itself. Something changed in the golden glow of a late autumn afternoon. And as I heard the music, a long stab of terror drove through my heart. I assented to the window. As I looked out, I saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. I saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet cloak. He looked about him at the others as he went on, his voice ringing clear in the silence. “Never such a place as this has existed before. A place where demons have been invented by aggrieved souls. I wondered if Mrs. Winchester was perhaps a member of the Freemasons, or some other secret society. Maybe she holds some exalted rank.” I felt a great shudder pass through me at these words. However, there had been a conviction in those appalling words. Secret societies were very fashionable just then. Secret societies and psychiatry were the contrasting en vogue activities of the moment. I folded my arms and leaned against the frame of the door, obscuring for the moment the light behind me. I had an urge to venture outside, to walk in silence amongst the trees. However, the fruit orchard was dark enough even in daylight; by moonlight it would be all too easy to imagine terrors—as I keep imagining I can hear soft footsteps moving across the floor above my head. But when I sit on the sofa to listen, I hear only the beating of my heart. I walked for hours examining the trees and the splendid fruit that would be harvested. Before long, I was overtaken by night while still in the fruit orchard. Utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, I had lain down near the root of a large plumb tree and fallen into a dreamless sleep. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God’s mysterious messengers, gliding ahead pronounced the awakening word in my ear. Waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of what seemed like a forest, front among the tree on either side I caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strong tongue which I partly understood. They seemed to me fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against my body and soul. It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable fruit orchard through which I journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lamination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old well met my eye with a crimson gleam. I stooped and plunged my hand into it. It stained by fingers; it was blood! Blood, I then observed, was about me everywhere. The fallen fruit showed blots and splashes of blood. The girds of the orchards were pitted and spattered as with red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage. All this I observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. It seemed to me that it was all in expiation of some crime. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxious plants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholy or baleful character, so openly in my sight conspired against my peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of Earth—that I could endure no longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound my faculties to silence and inaction, I screamed with the full strength of my lungs! #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
My voice was broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the orchard, died into silence, and all was as before. Despair succeeded hope. Gratitude gave place to curse. As I preceded down the path, sobbing quietly to myself, in the misery of fear, the stern light of the Observational Tower became a tiny speck, yellower but scarcely bigger than some of the stars, which here and there shone between the clouds. Nearly twenty minutes passed, and my fatigue began to change to exhaustion. The overpowering sense of the inevitable pressed upon me. With the weariness came a strange comfort. On, and on I went through the thicket of trees. I knew of my probable presence in the spirit World. The moon, then in her third quarter, pushed out from behind the concealing clouds and shed a pale, soft glitter upon my mansion. My last appeal had been heard. I made it home. About half an hour after getting home, I still felt energized but I began to feel a sensation around my forehead as I have many times since. I suddenly felt weak. I went in and sat at the foot of my bed and passed out. I have never been given to fainting or passing-out spells, but I did not fall asleep—I passed out cold. When I woke up, I had no concept of time. When I woke up, a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measuresless distance away, and growing even louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of loon; a laugh which culminated an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withing over the verge of the World whence it had come. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Sitting here in my temple of a house, I felt trapped and compromised, and even terrified. I got a feeling that the presence was still nearby and had not moved. A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of my body and my mind. I could not say which, if any, of my sense were affected; I felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about me, and superior to them in power. I knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching me; from what direction I did not know—dated not conjecture. All my former fears were forgotten and merged in the gigantic terror that now held me in thrall. Powers were traversing my haunted mansion. My senses were heightened as I found myself starting into the sharply dawn face and blank, dead eyes of my own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave! The apparition confronting me—the thing so like, yet so unlike my mother—was horrible! It stirred no lover nor longing in my heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past—inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. I turned to turn and run from before it, but my legs were as lead; I was unable to life my feet from the floor. My arms hung helpless at my sides; of my eyes only I retained controlled, and these I dared not remove from the lusterless orbs of the apparition, which I knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences infesting my haunted mansion—a body without a soul! #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
In its blank state was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence—nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. For a time, which seemed so long that the World grew gray with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of my consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding me with a mindless malevolence of wild brute; then thrust its hand forward and sprang upon me with appalling ferocity! The act released my physical energies without an unfettering my will; my mind was still spellbound, but my powerful body was and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant I seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator. Despite my struggles—despite my strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, I felt the cold fingers close upon my throat. Brorne backward to the floor, I saw above me the dead and drawn face within a hands breadth of my own. Its eyes were shallow to the point of blankness, and then all was black. Until I awoke, the passage outside my room had been pitch dark. Now the gasoliers illuminated the hall, but the glass was so blackened that they yielded only a dim, murky light. The air was stale and close. Expecting at every turn to find a housemaid awaiting me with a smile, I made my way through the gloom to the landing. The double doors to the gallery stood open. Along each wall, a row of wavering light receded. Transom windows shone with a faint cold light; higher still, the ceiling was shrouded in darkness. Some twenty feet away from me, candles burned upon a small round table, lighting of the face of the pale man and Mrs. Haas. “Ah, there you are, my dear,” said he, just as if he had last seen my five minutes—rather than several days—ago. I moved reluctantly to join them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Mrs. Haas, resplendent in crimson silk and displaying a large expanse of white bosom, greeted me with disdain. Behind them, the wall at the far end of my gallery was dominated by the immense fireplace, and the armour towering in the shadows beside it. The sword glittered beneath its gloved hand; in the shifting light it seemed alert, alive, watchful. Within the fireplace was a massive chest of dark metal. “Dr. Cottam was about to tell us,” said Mrs. Haas impatiently, “of a discovery he had made amongst your late husband’s papers.” He spoke as if I had kept them waiting. “Indeed I was.” His tone was as cordial as ever, but with an edge of anticipation. His teeth caught the light as he smiled; the pupils of his eyes shone like twin flames. “Now, in going through his study the other day, I found a page of notes you must have missed after relocating from New Haven—scrawled in haste, and sometimes quite impenetrable—which had slipped behind a row of books.” On the table was a crumpled sheet of paper. “I shall not weary you with the tale of my efforts to decipher this. He believed that if he were inside the armour when lighting struck, he would pass unharmed into the next World, jut as the risen body, according to Scripture, will ascend to Heaven upon the day of judgement.” “Oh dear Heavens,” cried Mrs. Haas. “Mrs. Winchester, I have been dying for a grand tour of your estate. My companion Dr. Cottam is rather a bore with such foolish tales of science fiction!” “There is a theory, you know, that the basis of spirit may be electrical. For spirits to communicate with the living,” expressed Dr. Cottam, the man with the very pale face. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
“Dr. Cottom, I have begun to wonder whether your obsession with William Winchester is not, perhaps, quite as mad as I assumed,” explained Mrs. Haas, “but I do wish to get on with this tour. Mrs. Winchester has already delayed us several hours after he invitation, and I am growing quit weary.” “Well, Mrs. Haas, as I do recall, Gods are often said to wield lightening; and whilst this represents primitive awe at the power of nature, it may also shroud a genuine intuition. The same applies to the spiritualist practice of linking hands around a table. Ghosts and spirits are generally depicted as emanations of light; one thinks of St. Elmo’s fire or the very rare phenomenon of ball lightning…a far fetched analogy, you may say, but just as a magnetic field will cause a heap of iron filings to arrange themselves into a complex pattern, so the soul, the vital principle—call it what you will—animates the Earthly body. Might it not be that the vital principle is electrical, perhaps in some subtler form that science has not yet grasped?” said Dr. Cottam. “Dr. Cottam, while your theories are very fascinating, I fear Mrs. Haas is growing impatient and I should like to give her a tour now,” I explained. I liked Mrs. Haas more and more every minute. Her gossip, without being ill-natured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great World. I thought what life she would give to my sometimes-lonely evenings at home. There was a ball going on in the Grand Ballroom, this house seemed to run itself sometimes, which would not be over until the morning sun had almost reached the horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people could not go away, or think of bed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
We had just got through a crowded parlor, when Dr. Cottam asked me what had become of Mrs. Haas. I though she had been by his side, and he fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her. All my efforts to find her were in vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in the confusion of the momentary separation from us, other people for her new friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us. Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was not till near two o’clock next day that we heard anything of Mrs. Haas. At about that time a servant knocked at my door, to say that he had been earnestly requested by a young, who appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could find Mrs. Winchester and Dr. Cottam. There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy that my friend had turned up. I had a housemaid go to the guest room and summon Dr. Cottam. I went down to the parlor and reunited with Mrs. Haas. She told me a story to account for having failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she made a detour and wandered around, not before long becoming afraid and getting lost. She got into the Crystal Bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball. It the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of far more urgent kind presented itself. My dear friend began to lose her looks and health, and that in manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
People, since as long ago as the 1800s, have reported a vast array of unexplained events, experiences, and sightings at what is now known as The Winchester Mystery House. Over the years, people have reported bone-chilling sightings ghosts, angels, demons, fairies, giants, orbs, lights, mist, vampires, witches, warlocks and werewolves. In 2007, a man was attending Santa Clara University, and he was lucky enough to get hired as a tour guide at The Winchester Mystery House. He had no sooner moved into his apartment and had the telephone installed when he received a call warning him never to return to Sacramento again. During a later call, a woman with a high-pitched voice informed “G” that he was being kept under surveillance by a group who felt that he had acted unjustly in the past by not returning things to their proper owners. G emphasized that he had led a very quiet life as an undergraduate.
Yet he probably received 30 or more telephone calls from anonymous voices advising him not to return to Sacramento. The voices reprimanded him for having taken something that did not belong to him. G said that he did not carry anything with him that was from Sacramento and did not often visit the beautiful city, and he seldom discussed his life with any but a few of his closet acquaintances. He wondered who could have possibly taken such a long-term interest in him? About the third year after working at The Winchester Mystery House, a guest unknown to him stopped to say hello. G knew that such an act was hardly unusual, since guests will often do this to find out interest facts about tour guides and secrets about Sarah L. Winchester’s mansion. However, he noticed the boy was strangely inquisitive. G was astonished when the teenager drew a design on a piece of paper that he had seen somewhere in the mansion. He smiled at G, then asked if he knew what the symbol meant.
When G pressed the boy, in turn for some answers, the guest threw away the design, laughed, and said that he was just fooling around, that he did not mean anything about it. G never saw the alleged guest again. He descried him to a could of tour guides, but no one was able to identify him. After several years of watching at The Winchester Mystery House, G graduated from University. He had not been in possession of his diploma for more than four days when someone rang his apartment and scolded him for taking things that did not belong to him. The voice told G that he should always leave things where they were. He reported to his supervisors that he kept receiving mysterious calls. On one occasion the voice told G that he has discovered a strange key to other dimensions, but the entities had long since reclaimed it. However, apparently, some spirit masqueraders were determined that he should never forget the day he came into contact with an artifact from another level of being. What is The Winchester Mystery House?
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Los Angeles Will be Two and a Half Hours from Tokyo
Given that burglars are disproportionately young, poor, city-dweller, they tend to have frequent contact with other habitual offenders. There are various structures and processes that go along with the “stolen property system”—the underground market through which in-demand goods are stolen, housed, marketed, and resold on the street of America. Burglary is a crime that is marked by varied levels of social organization. Only on rare occasions do we find burglars who work as loners or within formal organizations. More often, burglars will operate as colleagues—the offender commits the crime along but relies on other members of the criminal subculture to supply him or her with inside information or to assist in converting stolen property into cash. Burglars who take the situation to the next level and enlist help in the actual break-in follow a more peerlike existence. Here, loose partnerships are maintained and invoked when a burglary opportunity presents itself. A primitive example of the peer model would be two or three drug users who randomly stumble upon an unlocked home or unsupervised business and decide to work together to take it down. In some cases, burglary offenders will align themselves in a teamlike format. These offenders invoke a division of labor with each participant serving an owned predetermined role and duties. One person might be assigned to lookout/driver role. Another might serve as the entry specialist, defeating any lock and alarms that are confronted. Still another person can take on the “muscle” role, responsible for doing the heavy lifting. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Socialization scripts play an important part in how and why burglars commit their crimes. Interview-based research suggests that novice or occasional burglars often rely on the tutelage of more seasoned offenders as a way of learning the proverbial ropes of burglary. Novices receive advice and instructions on issues such as target selection, how to foster informants, how to defeat burglary countermeasures, and how to best convert stolen goods into cash. This socialization generally takes shape as informal street corner conversations or jailhouse bravado. On paper, burglary appears to receive serious treatment from the criminal justice system. The Model Penal Code classifies burglary as a felony in the third degree. In most jurisdictions, such as offense is subject to 1 to 5 years in prison. If the burglar is armed or threatens or inflicts bodily harm on another while unlawfully within a dwelling, that individual might see the charges elevated to second degree felony. In practice, however, burglary receives mixed levels of formal response from the various components of the criminal justice system. First, let us consider the response of law enforcement authorities. Police agencies were able to effect an arrest for only 13 percent of the nearly 2.1 million burglaries that were reported to them in 2022. No other form of index crime yields such a dismal clearance rate. Some of this slippage can be attributed to the covert nature of the crime—police often have no witnesses and minimal clues to guide the investigation. However, these low clearance rates are also impacted by the fact that many police officers and police agencies afford a low priority to burglary cases. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Court data reveal a different trend in terms of the veracity with which burglary cases are adjudicated. U.S.A. courts produced nearly 90,000 felony burglary cases in 2022. This figure represents 10 percent of all felony convictions that year. In fact, 68 percent of the burglary cases that were tried resulted in a conviction for the same offense and only 24 percent avoided some sort of conviction. The researchers found that burglary defendants do not receive a reprieve from the courts when it comes time for sentencing. A full 74 percent of the convicted burglars were sentenced to time behind bars. This rate was surpassed only by murder, robbery, drug trafficking, and driving-related offenses. While the median prison sentence for a convicted burglar was 41 months, nearly 10 percent received sentences in excess of 10 years. Our correctional system does not appear to be particularly forgiving to persons who are convicted of burglary. On average, burglary offenders can expect to serve almost half of their sentence—roughly two years. These time-served figures are on par with those of other property offenses (theft, fraud, and motor vehicle theft) but somewhat lower than that observed for violent (54 percent) and weapon-related offenses (60 percent). Accounts from known burglars clearly suggest that informal social control efforts go as long way to deter and/or displace burglary activity. A minimal amount of vigilance on the part of homeowners can go a long way. Measures designed to combat the relatively small population of high incidence “professional” burglars tends to overemphasize the skill and determination of most burglars. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Burglaries are expensive, complex, and require long term commitment at many levels. In fact, most burglars are young, unskilled, and opportunistic. This suggests that emphasis should be directed at such factors as surveillability, occupancy, and accessibility. More specifically, dogs, good locks, and alarm systems deter most burglars. Community-level informal social control can also play an important role in burglary prevention. When it comes to surveillability cues, burglars tend to avoid neighborhoods with a lot of foot traffic or active neighborhood watches. This implies that observant or even nosy neighbors can have a measurable impact on burglary. However, these types of collective efforts are difficult to enact and maintain in the areas that burglars most prefer—urban neighborhoods. If nothing else, tenants of “crime prevention through environmental design” should be considered at a neighborhood level. Simple environmental characteristics such as cul-de-sac street design, high levels of lightening, and well pruned landscaping that minimizes unobservable entry and exit points can have a significant impact on burglary victimization levels in a given community. The aforementioned informal social control efforts represent examples of target hardening strategies aimed at deterring would-be burglars from victimizing a given house or displacing offenders from a given community. Also, measures should be designed that aim to undermine offenders’ strong attachment to street culture. Expanded employment opportunities are one possible, but foreboding avenue to lure offenders out of street life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
There exist even more simple and realistic measures that might effect change in this area. For example, a coordinated burglary prevention program that was implemented in a midsize U.S.A. city during the early 1980s. Community activism and community involvement (id est, block meetings, neighborhood cleanups, and raised awareness of vulnerabilities and potential offenders) showed promise for reducing burglary. If community members care about the condition of their neighborhood and are willing to take steps to clean it up and exercise vigilance over problem people and places, there is hope for reducing burglary and other forms of street crime. Most crime occurs during the nighttime. A close examination of NCVS and UCR data suggests that 50 percent to 60 percent of all residential burglaries go unreported. The figure reported here was derived by adding the NCVS data on residential burglaries to an adjusted estimate of nonresidential burglaries that were reported in the UCR—one that factors a 60 percent nonreporting rate. These data must be viewed with caution because 50 to 60 percent of all burglaries go unreported to police and only 14 percent of these lead to arrest. Over time, the crime of burglary has slowly slipped down the list of crime fighting priorities. At present, less than half of all burglaries get reported to police, and only 13 percent of those result in an arrest. What kinds of social and legal factors have contributed to this present level of empathy when it comes to the formal and informal society control of burglary? #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Adjudication data suggest that accused burglars face a high certainty of being convicted and sentenced to prison. This should send a message to police that burglary is a high priority for our nation’s prosecutors and judges. Still, burglary investigation and arrest efforts remain lukewarm at best. What kinds of factors contribute to police officers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding burglary patrol and enforcement? Considerable evidence suggests that burglars refine strategies and cues that help them identify soft and potentially lucrative targets. Does this mean that burglars are more rational and planful than other types of criminals? The Lord has declared that “no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of Heaven,” reports Alma 11.37. Our sins make us unclean—unworthy to return and dwell in the presence of our Heavenly Father. They also bring anguish to our soul in this life. Repentance is sometimes a painful process, but it leads to forgiveness and lasting peace. The power of sin is great. To become free from it, we must turn to your Heavenly Father, pray in faith, and act as He asks us to. The Holy Spirit should never become the center and object of thought and worship, place which He Himself does not desire, and which it is not the purpose of the Father in Heaven that He should have or occupy. “He shall not speak from Himself,” reports John 16.13, said that Lod Jesus before Calvary, as He foretold the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost. He would act as Teacher (John 14.26), but teaching the words of Another, not to Himself (John 15.26); He would only glorify Another, not His own; He would bear witness to Another, not Himself (John 16.14); He would only speak what was given Him to spear by Another (John 16.13). #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The Spirit’s entire work would be to lead souls into union with the Son and give proper knowledge of the Father in Heaven, while He Himself directed and worked in the background. If a man who is untaught in the scriptural statements about the work of the Triune God makes “obeying the Spirit” his supreme purpose, the deceiver will aim to counterfeit the guidance of the Spirit, and even the presence of the Spirit Himself. It is just here that the ignorance of the seeker about the spiritual Word now opened to one, the working of evil powers in that realm, and the conditions upon which God works in and through one, gives the enemy his opportunity. It becomes the time of greatest peril for anyone unless one is instructed and prepared by the Lord, as the disciples were for three whole years. The danger lies in the area of supernatural “guidance,” for one must know the conditions of cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the cooperation with the Holy Spirit in order to discern the will of God and be able to recognize counterfeit manifestations. The “discerning of spirits” is required to detect the workings of the false angel of light, for he is able to bring about counterfeit gifts of prophecy, tongues, healing, and other spiritual experiences connected with the work of the Holy Ghost. Those who have their eyes opened to the opposing forces of the metaphysical realm understand that very few believers can guarantee that they are obeying God and God only, in directly supernatural guidance, because there are so many factors liable to intervene, such as the believer’s own mind, spirit, or will and the deceptive intrusion of the powers of darkness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Knowledge is essential here. Scripture teaches that there is a God-given gift of “discerning of spirits” (1 Cor. 12.10) which enables one to detect that an unwelcome spirit is at work, but there is also a test of spirits which is doctrinal (1 John 4.1-6). In the former, a believer can discern in his spirit that lying spirits are at work in a meeting, or in a person, but one may not have the understanding needed for testing the doctrines being set forth by the teacher. One needs a level of knowledge in both cases: knowledge to read one’s spirit with assurance in the face of all contrary appearances, that the supernatural workings are not “of God,” and knowledge to detect the subtlety of “teachings” bearing certain infallible indications that they emanate from the pit, even while appearing to be from God. As to personal obedience to God, the believer can detect whether or not one is obeying God in some “command” by judging its fruits, and by being aware of the character of God—such as the truth that God has always a purpose in His commands, and He will give no command out of harmony with His character and Word. Often times people wait for something to happen, for some sure way to nurture oneself, to live from within. Music, art, poetry, hot baths, savory foods, wind, rain—nothing affects them. In the past, within days after a solitary retreat, many had found solace and strength in their loneliness. They had always found a way, at least a beginning that would lead to action and to life with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
However, it is impossible to find what one is looking for, and one is still on a lonely journey, waiting from a spark from within. Because some people feel empty and eroded inside, they avoid all significant communication. More than anything else the interpersonal aspects of living exhaust some and move them to withdraw from real meetings with others. This leaves an individual certain that one does not want to struggle anymore. Doubt, risk and anxiety—inherent elements of faith—can be overcome only by another of its elements, courage. Courage is an ontological concept, the self-affirmation of being in spite of non-being. Faith is the experience of the holy; it is the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself. From this experience flows the power to assert oneself in the face of anxiety. Faith is participation in the object of faith, and yet is the separation from it. In spite of separation, courage expresses participation in the power of being and meaning. This in spite of element is the courage that takes all doubt, risk, and anxiety into itself and overcomes them without removing them. Faith, then, is the basis of courage, and courage is the manifestation of faith. In the extreme situation of a person seized by radical doubt and confronted with the specter of universal meaninglessness, the question arises: Is there such a thing as the courage of despair? Such a courage is entirely possible, for that act of accepting meaninglessness is in itself a meaningful act. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The courage of despair enables one, even while in the grip of meaninglessness, to declare one’s situation, and this declaration has meaning. In other words, there cannot be an infinite regression of negatives—in this case, negativity of meaning. At least, one has to admit, negation of meaning is meaningful, or meaninglessness will have lost all meaning. The faith which feeds the courage of despair is called “absolute faith,” for it can have no specific content. Its content is indefinable, since everything defined is dissolved by doubt and meaninglessness. However, certain elements that constitute absolute faith can be discerned. There is an experience of the power of being in the face of nonbeing, an awareness of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning. There is the dependence of nonbeing upon being, of meaninglessness upon meaning, of the negative upon the positive. And, lastly, there is the acceptance of the power to accept meaninglessness. Thus, absolute faith is faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be. Faith is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the “God above God.” When people speak of God, they usually refer to the God of theism. Now theism can mean either a vague, unspecified affirmation of God, or a divine-human encounter of persons, or theological theism which makes God a being beside other beings. However, the God of absolute faith is above and beyond the God of any theism, for the God above God is the power of absolute faith as experience of the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
The morning traffic from Oakland to San Francisco across the Bay Bridge gets backed up from 7.30 to 11.00 A.M. Until the jam clears at 11.00, each additional car that enters the traffic makes all those who come later wait just a little longer. The right way to measure this cost is to sum up the additional waiting-times across everyone who is delayed. What is the total waiting-time cost imposed by one additional car that crosses the bridge at 9.00 A.M.? You may be thinking you do not know enough information. A remarkable feature to this problem is that the externality can be calculated based on the little amount you have been told. You do not need to know how long it takes the cars to cross the toll plaza, nor the distribution of cars that arrive after 9.00. The answer is that same whether the length of the traffic jam stays constant or varies widely until it cleans. The trick is to see that all that matters is the sum of the waiting time. We are not concerned with who waits. (In other circumstances, we might want to weigh the waiting times by the monetary value of time for those caught in the jam.) The simplest way to figure out the total extra waiting time is to shuffle around who waits, putting all the burden on one person. Imagine that the extra driver, instead of crossing the bridge at 9.00 A.M., pulls his car over to the side and lets all the other drivers pass. If he passes up his turn in this way, the other drivers are no longer delayed by the extra car. Of course, he has to wait two hours before the traffic clears and the road is clear. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
However, these two hours exactly equal the total waiting time imposed on all the other drivers if he were to cross the bridge rather than wait on the sidelines. The reason is straightforward. The total waiting time is the time it takes for everyone to cross the bridge. Any solution that involves everyone crossing the bridge gives the same total waiting time, but distributed differently. Looking at the solution in which the extra car does all the extra waiting is the easiest way to add up the new total waiting time. Looming on the horizon is a dangerous de-coupling of the fast economies from the slow, an event that would spark enormous power shifts throughout the so-called South-with big impacts on the planet as a whole. The new wealth-creation system holds the possibility of a far better future for vast populations who are now among the planet’s poor. Unless the leaders of the less developed countries (LCDs) anticipate these changes, however, they will condemn their people to perpetuated misery—and themselves to impotence. For even as Chinese manufacturers wait for their steel, and traditional economies around the World to crawl slowly through their paces, the United States of America, Japan, Europe, and in this case the Soviets, too, are pressing forward with plans to build hypersonic jets capable of moving 250 tons of people and cargo at Mach 5, meaning that cities like New York, Sydney, London, and Los Angeles will be two and a half hours from Tokyo. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Jiro Tokuyama, former head of the prestigious Nomura Research Institute, and now a senior adviser to the Mitsui Research Institute, heads a fifteen-nation study of what are called the “three T’s:” telecommunications, transportation, and tourism. Sponsored by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, the study focuses on three key factors likely to accelerate the pace of economic processes in the region still further. According to Tokuyama, Pacific air-passenger traffic is likely to reach 134 million…at the turn of the century. The Society of Japanese Aerospace Companies, Tokuyama adds, estimates that five hundred to one thousand hypersonic jets must be built. Many of these will ply Pacific routes, speeding further the economic development of the region, and promoting faster telecommunications as well. In a paper prepared for the Three T’s study, Tokuyama spells out the commercial, social, and political implications of this development. He also describes a proposal by Taisei, the Japanese construction firm, to build an artificial island five kilometers in length to serve as a “VAA,” or “value added airport,” capable of handling hypersonics and providing an interactional conference center, shops, and other facilities to be linked by high-speed linear trains to a densely populated area. In Texas, meanwhile, billionaire H. Ross Perot is building an airport to be surrounded by advanced manufacturing facilities. As conceived by him, planes could roar in a day and night bearing components for overnight processing or assembly in facilities at the airport. The next morning the jets would carry them to all parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Simultaneously, on the telecommunications front, the advanced economies are investing billions in the electronic infrastructure essential to operations in the super-fast economy. The spread of extra-intelligence nets is moving swiftly, and there are now proposals afoot to create special higher-speed fiber optic networks linking supercomputer all across the United States of America with thousands of laboratories and research groups. (Existing networks are regarded as too slow. The proposed new nets would send 319 Terabits per second streaming across the country). The new network is needed because the existing slower nets are already choked and overloaded. They argue that the project merits government backing because it would help the United States of America keep ahead of Europe and Japan in a field it now leads. This, however, is only a special case of a more general clamor. In the words of Mitch Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development Corporation, the software giant, “We need to build a national infrastructure that will be the information equivalent of the national highway-building of the ‘50s and ‘60s.” An even more appropriate analogy would compare today’s computerized telecom infrastructures with the rail and road networks needed at the beginning of the industrial revolution. What is happening, therefore, is the emergence of an electronic neural system for the economy—without which any nation, no matter how many smokestacks it has, will be domed to backwardness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
In its commercial service trade, in 2021, India trade balance for 2021 USD$-79.19, a 665.96 percent increase from 2020. The United States of America is the largest services exporter in the World. In 2019, U.S.A. exports of service were USD $875.8 billion, up 1.6 percent (USD $13 billion) from 2018. U.S.A. exports of services account for 35 percent of over all U.S.A. exports in 2019. Germany World Development Indicators (WDI) 2020: trade balance in USD$221,534 million. Trade services as a percentage of GDP is 5.82 percent. Trade in services with the United Kingdom (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $140.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were USD $78.3 billion; services imports were USD $62.3 billion. The U.S.A. services trade surplus with United Kingdom was USD $16.0 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $56.0 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $40.4 billion; services imports were USD $15.6 billion. The U.S.A. service trade surplus with China was USD $24.8 billion in 2020. Trade in services with Japan (exports and imports) totaled an estimated USD $68.6 billion in 2020. Services exports were USD $38.0 billion; services imports were USD $30.6 billion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The U.S.A. services trade surplus with Japan was USD $7.4 billion in 2020. Japan was the United States of Americas’ 4th largest goods export market in 2020. As for the services, France exported around USD $303 billion worth of services in 2021, while it imported services for the total value of USD $258.3 billion. Service trade in Italy in 2020, Italy exported $73.1B worth of services. The outsized U.S.A.-Ireland commercial relationship, which exceeded USD $1 trillion in 2021 is significant by international standards and is particularly impressive relative to the country’s population of five million people. In 2021, U.S.A. good exported to Ireland exceeded USD $13.8 billion. The statistics for services from 2012 record the value of U.S.A. service exports to Ireland at $74.8 billion. In 2021, global services exports were valued at USD $6.1 trillion, representing 6.3 percent of total World trade in both goods and services. Overall, as far as the nations’ trade balances are concerned, the picture in the services sector is almost the opposite of the one in the merchandise trade. In services, the West has a significant competitive edge versus China and is in a good position to establish a much wider presence in the Chinese market. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Hypnotized, Mesmerized by What My Eyes Have Seen?
Hostility—Probably the most common expression of aggression, ranging from mildly edgy to snarling. Being on the receiving end of hostility can be not only very unpleasant but also sometimes scary, because we know that whoever is delivering it has us in their sights and out of their heart, with attack weaponry ready for reloading. The majority of gang rapes by students are women. This behavior simply cannot be understood—although the volumes of commentary and analysis generated about the Central Park gang rape case in the Spring of 1989 have attempted to do so—without consideration of the perpetrators’ attitudes toward women and of women’s roles in the society and subcultures in which group sexual assaults are practiced and tolerated. A large number of recent studies of college students have identified the relationship between traditional sex-role attitudes to be more strongly correlated than antisocial personality with tolerance to rape. Traditional gender-role orientation are associated with rape-tolerant attitudes, and traditional attitudes toward female sexuality are associated with higher levels of sexual aggression. Some fraternity men are seen as more sexually aggressive than other college men and this may be due to a combination of reasons such as fraternities that are investigated are disproportionately ones with aggressive sex-role attitudes and socialization. For example, 156 tribal societies are been discovered and classified as rape-free or rape-prone. Most of the rape-probe cultures have prescriptions for gang rape, rather than individual rape. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Fraternities can be described as tribal societies as they form their own culture and associate with their own people. One cultural characteristic that was strongly associated with the prevalence of rape was having special places for men and special places for women. Among many fraternities and sororities, for example, each college campus (village) has a men’s house, where all the men live together; women and children live in separate dwellings. Thus, it is postulated here that group sexual assaults are most likely to occur in sex-segregated men’s housing or college campuses. Perhaps recognition of this patterned was formulated by democrats who want to do away with gender segregation and make it seem like requiring admission of women to fraternities will reduce aggressive and antisocial behavior. However, men should be able to have boys clubs, boys sports, which are allowed to remain segregated. If someone wants sports and clubs to have coed admission, perhaps they should form another society. Some parents do not want their boys to be distracted by hanging out with females. They would rather have them learn to socialize with other men, focus on their studies and work, and occasionally have coed parties. What should be done to reduce aggression and inform students of what rape is needs to be accomplished through education and keeping students from binge drinking by teaching them their limit. All we can do is provide people with better educations, but we cannot prohibit everything, nor change everything. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
In rape prone societies, the genders are separated not only physically but also by rigid gender-role differentiation in which the male role is more valued. Thus, we might expect gang rapes to be most common among men who not only live apart from women but also perform roles closed to women (exempli gratia, football players and fraternity members). Allowing men to become cheerleaders is seen as welcomed because they are able to help the women highlight their skills and talent, but it is still a female dominated sport. Many people would actually like to see more cheerleaders perform on campus and on TV because dance has become so advance these days that it is impressive. Also, the traditional looking men and women, in their respective uniforms, is a sign of assimilation, which people from the old World like because it looks neat, much like the cookie-cutter houses in the suburbs. People like clean lines and organization. Nonetheless, in rape prone societies, which are sometimes labeled as male-dominated, a woman’s violation of her prescribed gender role may be punished by rape or the threat of rape. One of these prescriptions is that women are supposed to be sexually naïve and inexperienced. Gang rape is a punishment for promiscuity and can be seen as means of controlling women’s sexuality. Adulterous or promiscuous women are punished with gang in some cultures. Cultures believe they much discipline female receptivity to maintain the family structure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
However, one of our goals in society should be to teach men and women to have more respect with each other. It has been noted that men who grow up around women and are taken in by them and seen as an individual, tend to have more respect for women, and are less likely to be interested in them sexually, even if they are heterosexual. The idea in our culture is that all boys and men should be taught to respect women and ask themselves, how would they want someone to treat their mother, daughter or sister in that particular situation in which they find themselves in. And women should also ask themselves the same questions when it comes to dealing with men. How would they want someone to treat their brother, son, or father. We have to go from this thesis that these are the end of days and the World is a wild and out of control savage land and understand that we are not savages and can do better. We have to live in accordance with God’s rules and laws and treat others as we would want to be treated. Nonetheless, male student attempted to explain to me why a woman who charged several football players with rape and assault had not in fact been raped. Hi explanation was that, by dating two of the men who were close friend and having sex with each, she had hurt their feelings. They were angry at her for being sexually indiscriminate and, joined by other players, “ganged up” on her in revenge when she came to visit. The norm is that women are supposed to be sexually selective. If they are not, they may be “fair game,” or worse. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
However, we are a society that is very advance and we have words. Perhaps we need to teach our children what rape is, how to avoid it, and to learn to communicate with each other when their feelings are hurt, instead of acting like heathens and assaulting people or damaging property. You also have to understand that while a man or a woman may flirt with you, even to the point of rolling around in your bed with you, that is they say “Stop!” that they may not be ready to have sex. They may want to wait or may need to attend to hygiene matters and will be more willing at another time. In the 1970s, women would say things like, “Let me go powder my nose” or “Let me freshen up a bit.” Those phrases may be safe ways of saying stop or giving one a chance to actually freshen up and may be accept by a man better than a hard “No!” or “Stop!” That way, he may not get angry or feel rejected, and it could give one a chance to escape a dangerous situation. A student at another college told me of plans his fraternity made for “running a train.” The woman was selected weeks in advance. They believed she was sexually promiscuous and therefore would not “mind.” If a young unmarried women in some societies takes a lover, she is supposed to be available to all men. If she refuses, she will be gang raped. Therefore, also have an idea about the type of person you are getting involved with, get to know them and their culture. They may not be the right one for you. Characteristics of gang-rape victims—the mean age of the victim in the 24 cases of campus gang rapes discussed in this view was 18; usually they were first-year students who were inexperienced with campus life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Victims of group assaults b acquaintances at fraternities and men’s dorms tend to have to characteristics: They are naïve, but they have somehow gained a reputation among the men for being promiscuous. A “perfect victim,” from that point of view, was the complaining witness in a Sacramento State case. At the age of 21, he was divorcing the man she had dated from the age of 15; she had been at the university for a few weeks. To the 18- and 19-year-old men she accused, she seemed a racy character. Not only was she older and a divorcee, but also she had sneaked into the men’s form on prior occasion. One mad told the other, as they rode a bus to a football game that she looked like a “fourth of July slut,” and that he had had sex with her that first evening, within hours of meeting her. (She denied it.) Generally, women who habitually socialize with a group of men, and therefore are more often available to them, are no more likely to be victims of a group sexual assault than social outsiders are. The reason seems to be that social insiders are cognizant of the group mores. Sorority women learn from their sisters what different behaviours “mean” within the system. For example, they learn not to go upstairs to the bathroom at a fraternity party unless accompanied by another woman and that getting drunk is taken by the men as a signal of availability. Also, many of these men may be drunk and have no idea what they are doing. They could be in the “blackout” state and not even realize it. Women who are not part of the same social set as the men may be ignorant of the rules. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Consequently, they miscommunicate their intentions by violating the norms or may unknowingly take risks, and become target of sexual assault. Despite their knowledge of these rules, several of the victims in the 24 case were girlfriends or long-term friends of the perpetrator who were lulled into trust, thought they were protected in violating the rules, and found themselves betrayed. The measures being taken on college campuses to reduce the frequency of sexual assault may not ameliorate the problem of acquaintance gang rapes. Such measures include having separate forms for men and women, restricting visitation, and having better campus lighting. These policies and practices admittedly re designed to prevent sexual interactions among college students altogether or are orientated toward reducing the incidence of stranger rape. The cultural and attitudinal correlates of group sexual assault and the conditions under which campus gang rapes have occurred demonstrate that restricted access between the genders have occurred demonstrate that restricted access between the genders will not remedy the problem. Profound attitude change is necessary. With a few notable exceptions, educational efforts to reduce rape are primarily directed at or attended by college women rather than men. Although such education may help women to recognize when they have been raped, it will be less effective in reducing group assault than would educating those who have a choice about engaging in it. Prevention must begin with education of young men, particularly those who belong to male groups. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Attitude change in two areas will be necessary for men in groups to desist from joining in sexual assaults. The first such needed change is in attitudes toward women and understanding of women’s sexuality. It seems to be particularly important to convey that a woman who chooses to be sexual, perhaps with several different individuals, is still sexually selective and is not available to the population at large. Also, women should be allowed to dress sexy without being seen as whores of sluts. It is a misconception common among society that any woman who dresses or behaves “provocatively” is thought to be directing her seduction at all men who happen to see her and not at a particular men. Some people who dress provocatively are only doing so as a means of seeing how attractive they are or because they really like the fashion trends and want to be on the cutting edge of high fashion. For some women, dressing sexy boosts their self-esteem, not because of the attention they get, but because it makes them feel better about themselves. Wear as wearing baggy jeans, sneakers, messy hair and a sweatshirt every day might depress them because that is not what they consider attractive. It does not mean she is inviting you to harass her, that is just how she likes to look and she has every right to. An even more difficult area of change that would effectively reduce sexual assault is men’s attitudes toward themselves and their own sexuality. It is instructive to consider how men involved in group sexual assaults or “trains” may differ from those who find the practice unappealing and would not participate. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
My interviews have yielded two characteristic attitudes of men who are repulsed by the notion. They feel that sex is private (they reject sex as an arena for “cooperation and competition”); and they feel tht sex is intimate (they reject sex without caring about their partner). Although attitude change at the individual level might reduce the campus acquaintance rape rate, it does not address the problem of group norms and group pressure. Yet, attempts to educate the groups as such will probably succeed only when the perspective presented is endorsed by highly regarded group members. In the absence of such leadership, an alternative is to diminish group cohesion and decrease opportunities for group assaults by dispersing members throughout campus residences. Comparing practical strategies, breaking up male groups would probably be more effective in reducing group assault than attempting to keep women out of men’s dorms, but it also could cause men to drop out or not enroll in college. Kids from wealthy families may simply go work for their parents after high school and universities would lose out on a lot of funding and they may start downsizing and shutting down. The anti-hero exhibits some of the qualities associated with the villain, ranging from brutality to cynicism to an apparent lack of empathy, yet is capable of taking heroic action, albeit in a far less glamorous or admirable way than the hero. The anti-he is a shadow-infused hero, a tortured rebel, brooding visionary, a morally complex revolutionary, a deeply flawed doer of good alone with considerable damage. The anti-hero is messy. Our darkness unleased with just enough light and care, seizing our attention and perhaps also our begrudging admiration. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
As an example of the utility of the situational view, consider this. In mental hospitals, we usually find that behavior is tolerated which would cause witnesses great anxiety on the outside. In fact, patients are often employed within the hospital community in the most exacting of tasks for persons of their socioeconomic status, even while exhibiting the most garish situational improprieties. This functioning is called “a good hospital adjustment,” and the apparent capacity of these patients tend to be attributed to the “protectiveness” of the hospital environment, an explanation that allows everyone to go on thinking of the patient as sick. Upon examination, however, we find that a basic way in which social life on the inside differs from that on the outside is that insiders are persons whose threat to the situational order has been beautifully met by according them the status, with its accompanying incarcerations and stigmatization, of hospitalized mental patients. There is no need to sanction negatively each infraction because the very setting in which these infractions occur is, in itself, a continuous negative sanction. The infraction is something that has been paid for in advance. What was dangerously offensive to the public weal on the outside is an unimportant thing on the inside. The patient who actually come to like the hospital life may do so partly for this very reason. Being thoroughly accused of insanity, they need not fear the profound humiliation and embarrassment which often follows when this accusation is made by previously unsuspecting people. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
A situational analysis, then, suggest some alternatives to the psychiatric view, but in so doing points up the social functions of the medical model. Psychiatry and mental hospitalization in part can serve as the therapy that our society gives to its threatened proprieties. However, this is, alas, a costly cure, one part of which is grimly borne by the state, and one part by the offender. There remains at least one serious question. Granted that symptoms of mental disorder are often instances of situational impropriety, it cannot be because of this (it is argued) that psychiatry is concerned, because there are other situational offenses and situational licenses with which it is not concerned. Insolence, contempt, indifference, presumption—all are qualities expressed through situational impropriety, and yet it is appreciated that persons expressing these qualities need not be sick. Similarly, men at conventions may indulge in all kinds of antics; but no one would automatically claim that such persons were insane. So, too, there have been notable aristocratic eccentrics who have affronted many proprieties and in spite of this escaped the charge of insanity. “Given the situation,” one would say, all of these antics are understandable and perfectly consistent with mental health. A problem here is the term “situation,” for in this context is has a special meaning. The situation’s gathering, as used in this report, is affronted in many of these cases. However, the social circumstances of the offender are such as to render one immune to penalization. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Whether we deal with one offender or with a group of them indulging jointly in the same offensive practice is not the issue; the question is whether the offender is in a position to commit situational offenses. Society, indeed, might get hopelessly clogged without such deviation. A mental symptom, however, is a situational offense that the offender does not get away with; one is in a position neither to force others to accept the affront nor to convince them that other explanatory grounds ought to be accepted. Situational requirements are of a moral character: the individual is obliged to maintain them; one is expected to desire to do so; and if one fails, some kind of public cognizance is taken of one’s failure. However, once this character of situational obligations is granted, we must see that a study of them leads off in may different directions. We may expect to find many different motives for complying with them, many different reasons for breaking them, many different ways of concealing or excusing infractions, many different ways of dealing with offenders. We may also expect to find that rules maintained or broken before one audience will not be handled in the same way by the same person when one is before another audience. And, of course, we find that an involvement ruling upheld in one community will not be honored in the next. One theme of this study, then, is that a moral rule is not something that can be used as a means of dichotomizing the World into upholders and offenders. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Indeed, the more comparative information we gather about a moral rule, the less easy it becomes to make statements about an individual who breaks it. Certainly we should hesitate to accept without further evidence the common-sense and psychiatric view that there is a unique class of situational offense that requires the student to shift from the social plane to a special one bearing on the profoundest aspects of the personality. If, then, we see inmates of mental hospitals as individuals who infringe involvement rules, and if we obtain a more sophisticated view of these rules, it will be possible to question somewhat the hard-earned conception that inmates necessarily are “sick persons.” Even a loosely defined social gathering is still a tight little room; there are more doors leading out of it and more psychologically normal reasons for stepping though them than are dreamt of by those who are always loyal to situational society. The regulation of communication conduct is not all there is to public order, but certainly this regulation is important enough to consider on its own, with concepts tailored to its particular demands. A special concern is that the symptomatology of the “mentally ill” may sometimes have more to do with the structure of public order than with the nature of disordered minds. By virtue of being in a social situation that is itself lodged within a social occasion, individuals modify their conduct in many normatively guides ways. The persons present to one another are thus transformed from a mere aggregate into a little society, a little group, a little deposit of social organization. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Similarly, the modifications in their behaviour which they suffer by virtue of finding themselves in a particular social situation—their enactment of situational proprieties—constitute, when taken together, a little social system. May I repeat: when in the presence of others, the individual is guided by a special set of rules, which have here been called situation properties. Upon examination, these rules prove to govern the allocation of the individual’s involvement within the situation, as expressed through a conventionalized idiom of behavioural cues. This allocation entails appropriate handling of matters we can discern as occasioned main involvements, “aways,” occult involvements, auto-involvements, mutual-involvements, margin of disinvolvement, and so forth. The enemy is a deceiver, and as a deceiver one will work and prevail in the later times. “Success” or “defeat” is no criterion of a work being of God or Satan. To some Satan is an anti-hero, he is not the Anti-Christ. The Anti-Christ is opposite of God. There could be an entity, other than Satan, who is by far darker and more destructive. Recall, Satan was the bringer of light and has some evil qualities. Nonetheless, calvary stands forever as the revelation of God’s way in working out His redemptive purposes. Satan work for time, for he knows his time is short, but God works for eternity. Through death to life, through defeat to triumph, through suffering to joy—this is God’s way. Knowledge of truth is the primary safeguard against deception. The “elect” must know, and they must learn to test and “prove the spirits” until they do know what is of God and what is of Satan. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The words of the Master, “Take heed, I have told you,” plainly imply that personal knowledge of danger is part of the Lord’s way of guarding His own. Those who blindly rely upon “the keeping power of God” without seeking to understand how to escape deception, when forewarned to “take heed” by the Lord, will surely find themselves entrapped by the subtle foe. Mechanical decisions and mechanical actions always contradict the methods of the work, and harm your work and your position in the work. If you cannot decide yourself what is more important and which way to choose, you must ask me. If you are seriously in the work and want to be in the work, you must not make any decision which may affect your life without first asking my opinion. Your own decisions in serious cases are bound to be based on self-will. However, you cannot ask my opinion or my decision when your decision is already made and you have already begun to act on the basis of it, because that means self-will in action, and in such a case it I too late to ask me. Questions as to my opinion and my decision when your decisions are already made, are really manifestations on insincerity with yourself and attempts to deceive me by false pretences. Try to realize that mechanical actions and mechanical decisions are always based on considerations outside the work (even if you persuade yourself that the result will be useful for your work), considerations of pleasure, of convenience or comfort; or they result from negative emotions or imagination. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If you are in the work and wish to be in the work, try to understand the most mechanical manifestation is lying to me or suppressing the truth for me. Demand for complete truth does not refer to people only beginning to work with me. They must make long preliminary work on mind and consciousness before complete truth becomes necessary and obligatory. However, when they realize the necessity for personal help, and when I find that they are ready and can help them, the principle of complete truth becomes obligatory. And it is certainly obligatory for all people who have been in the work for five years and also for some who have been in the work much less but have already formulated their aim. Remember that your chief work mut be on self-will. One begins to give up one’s self-will by accepting rules, but one must be sincere about it. Later one must give up one’s self-will in all serious matters and accept another person’s will, in this case, mine. Only by doing this, and doing it with full understanding of the necessity for doing so, one will begin to acquire slowly one’s own will. Really, the very act of giving up one’s self-will is the first act and the first manifestation of real will. The four lines of work on oneself can be designated: intellectual work—preparation; work on consciousness—aim; work on emotions—means, energy; work on will—control, and also energy. There can be discovered a beautiful insight into the human soul. One must become aware of the loneliness we experience as human beings. The truth is that no one can actually experience the deep emotions another person feels. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
When one is forced to search further within oneself and accept the feelings one has repressed and refused to remember, the truly disturbing memories will be revealed. One can then think about one’s illness in terms of something real that has occurred in one’s life. When reliving all the memories that had been previously buried, it will release a tremendous need to relate to how one feels. You may not even want to suppress your thoughts any longer because they are so very real and need to be communicated to someone. When another person becomes a significant part in your self-awareness and helps you to become more of a real person, this can make one want to express one’s feelings to you. Only one knows the torment of one’s pain and somehow is able to endure it. No one else can feel the terror you hide deep in yourself. People need to speak to you, love you, and attempt to experience your distress. Violent convulsions and pangs are attached to the soul and medication may only provide temporary calm. A person’s eyes can reveal one’s agonies. And when people gaze into a tortured person’s eyes, the heartache the see and feel can sometimes only be described through tears. Sometimes we can only respond to one who has been hurt in the depths of their heart and to the bottom of their soul with love, our heart, and by sending our sweet soul to them. We want so desperately to help other, but sometimes there is so little we can do to eliminate their despair. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The process in which the diseases of violence and hate destroys a victim’s mind and body is heartbreaking. One’s body may become completely rigid, the head may lean backwards creating a sort of backward arc. It is in this rigid state that the body becomes so strained that one is in the most pain they have endure physically and emotionally. To the victim, this can be terrifying, and those who care are unable to part from the victim’s side. Thankfully, the hospital staff and the doctors are often warm and understanding because sometimes only bedside manner is what keeps people alive. However, even medical staff are unable to restrain from becoming emotionally distressed when observing the terrible pain. Words cannot adequately describe how empathy and compassion can save a life. Each stage of a victim’s degeneration is hard to endure. The high fevers, bleeding, weakness. The best thing that can be done in these cases is praying to God to let the torment cease and that He allows the victim to find his or her peace. Payers may not be answered for what seems like an eternity. Every part of one who loves you can feel your pain; their hearts, their body, their very soul wants to help the victim, to somehow make one aware of how you know they are suffering and that you too are feeling the pain deep within your heart. You loved ones want you to always be aware of their love, your warmth, and their compassion. They hope within their heart and soul that the victim knows that he or she is deeply loved by every heart that takes care of them and has tried to ease their pain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
When it comes to hindrances in system negotiations, one important element that determines how the pie will be split is each side’s cost of waiting. Although both sides my lose an equal amount of profits, one party may have other alternatives that help partially recapture this loss. Suppose that the member of the union can earn $300 a day in outside activities while negotiations with the hotel management go on. Now each time the management’s turn comes, it must offer the union not only what the union could get a day later, but also at least $300 for the current day. The entries in our table change in the union’s favor; we show this in a new table. Once again the agreement occurs at the season opening without any strike, but the union does much better. #RandolphHarri 19 of 21
The result can be seen as a natural modification of the principle of equal division, to allow for the possibility that the parties start the process with different “hinderance,” as in golf. The union starts at $300, the sum its members could earn on the outside. This leaves $700 to be negotiated, and the principle is to split it evenly, $350 for each side. Therefore the union gets $650 and the management only $350. In other circumstances the management could have an advantage. For example, it might be able to operate the hotel using substitute employees while the negotiations with the union go on. However, because those workers are less efficient or must be paid more, or because some guests are reluctant to cross the union’s picket lines, the management’s profit from such operation will be only $500 a day. Suppose the union members have no outside income possibilities. Once again there will be an immediate settlement with the union without an actual strike. However, the prospect of the substitute employee operation will give the management an advantage in the negotiation, and it will get $750 a day while the union gets $250. If the union members have an outside income possibility of $300 and the management can operate the hotel with a profit of $500 during negotiations, then only $200 remains free to be bargained over. The management gets $600 and the union gets $400. The general idea is that the better a party can do by itself in the absence of an agreement, the higher will be its share of the pie that is the subject of the bargaining. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
To “fusion” must be added “diffusion,” for no part of the World is now completely cut off from the rest. Messages get through the most tightly guarded borders. Despite Mr. Ceausescu’s perceived cruel censorship, many Romanians were able to pick up Bulgarian television from across the border. (Many Bulgarians, in turn, preferred Soviet television to their own.) Even before the revolution, Romanians knew the names of the anti-Ceausescu dissidents who risked imprisonment by calling for human rights. Their names were familiar from foreign broadcasts beamed into Romania. Most East Germans were able to watch West German television stations, which told them things their Communist government would have preferred to suppress. (Much like FOXNEWS on cable tells us things the communist democrats want to suppress.) Thus in 1989, when big anti-government demonstrations occurred in Leipzig, East Germans learned about it from West German transmissions. In the same way, they found out when Hungary opened its borders to East German refugees and where cracks were opening in the Berlin Wall. Those out of reach of these West German TV transmissions lived mainly in the Dresden region, which was spoken of as the “Valley of Ignorance.” These “valleys” are getting smaller. Cross-border television “leakage” is hardly new, nor is the fact that Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and others beamed shortwave programming into the communist countries. The Voice of America broadcast eleven and a half hours day, reaching an estimated 100 million Chinese listeners. It even broadcast simple instructions on how to avoid government attempts to “jam” the transmissions. What is different now, however, is the subversive media strategy employed by today’s revolutionaries. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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You Do Not Know My Pain
From ancient times, people have looked for positive guidance from the spirit World. However, they believed demons caused most of the World’s problems. Demons were said to cause comets, volcanic eruptions, and eclipses. Some people believed demons were the reason for illness, while others believed that demons possessed great powers of healing. For instance, pilgrimages to Epidaurus, in Greece, became World famous, and a night’s sleep in the sacred temple cured thousands. Appolonius of Tyana (3 B.C.—A.D. 96) was a well-known miracle worker who effected magic cures and was regarded by many as “a heathen Christ.” In the temple of Serapis at Alexandria, Egypt, multitudes of pagans were remarkably healed. The World in which Sarah Winchester lived was full of demons. Unlike most, Mrs. Winchester knew that demonic powers did not exist in just in the imagination of frightened men, and that they could not only cause harm, but she also knew of miracles through demon-energized healers and magic workers. It was a lustrous motionless day. Autumn bloom lay on the Winchester Estate, on heavy trees of the weald, on streams moving indolently, far across the fruit orchards. Mrs. Winchester held her breath and gazes. A silence distilled from years of solitude lay on the lawns and Victorian garden. Vying in evil, sorcerers cursed the Winchester family and their fortune. A succession of deaths, allowed Mrs. Winchester to build one of the most unique and beautiful mansions in the World and made her heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Evil spells casted by Witches claimed the life of Mrs. Winchester’s husband, William Wirt Winchester, and her new born daughter, Annie Winchester. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Although she was stricken by grief, Mrs. Winchester went on to led an active, independent, and decided life. Her home became the focus of her life, and her mission was to continue its construction to ward off any demonic curse. “I shall never leave it!” she said, her heart swelling as if she had taken the vow to a lover. Legions of souls preserved the house in its integrity; and that was worthwhile. Mrs. Winchester was satisfied to carry on such a legacy. That even, when supper was finished, Mrs. Winchester sat with her niece Daisy by the fire she had lit in the salon. It provided a sense of radiance and gave the great room an air of expectancy and welcome. The portraits, the Italian Baroque Walnut cabinets, the Victorian needlepoint parlor Cherub face arm chairs, and charming English needlepoint rugs all look as if they had just been produced. “My dear, what a fine room!” said Daisy. “Yes! It is a delicious room. One of the warmest of the house. This is perfect.” Daisy had still to see the library, cozy and inviting, the Venetian dining room, the breakfast parlor, and the many bed rooms. As they crossed the threshold of the Blue Séance Room, guided by some light from its western window, someone was in the room already; they felt rather than saw another presence. Daisy, behind her, paused also; she did not speak or move. What she saw, or thought she saw, was simply a man in a hooked black cloak turning away from the mahogany desk. Almost before Mrs. Winchester had received the pression there was no one there; only the slightest stir of the needlework curtain over the widow. She heard no step or other sound. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
They drank coffee in the Blue Séance Room. Daisy was a lovely woman, delicate of feature and voice, she could speak home décor one moment and her usual Parisian French the next. A faint shadow of pain passed over Mrs. Winchester’s face. Daisy looked out the window at the drifts of ivy hanging from the evergreen trees. Mrs. Winchester had exulted in her resolve to keep the Winchester Mansion to herself until she and the house should have time to make friend. But the uneasy feeling she had left her wanting to take the chill off. The house was enormous, mysterious, and drawn into its own secret past. “Why not come stay with me?” she said. “I know you would like to settle down somewhere in the country where you will not be disturbed, and I have plenty of room.” “Well, Aunt Sarah, your home certainly does provide the requisite seclusion. I would be honored to.” “I promise no one shall bother you—” Mrs. Winchester added, half-nervously: “Not even the spirits.” Was the solitude already making Mrs. Winchester superstitious? Mrs. Winchester walked Daisy to the bedroom she was to sleep in. They parted ways. While Daisy was dressing for bed she heard a knock, and saw Kaspian Gosta, the Butler’s round face just inside the door. “Is there anything wrong with your accommodations, my lady?” “Yes, what’s wrong is that it freezes in here.” “Nothing can be done, my lady. Everything has been tried.” “That will do, Mr. Gosta. I want a fire to be lit in the fireplace,” said Daisy.” “Yes, my lady.” The door closed on the butler. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
It was the witching hour, or so it seemed. Lights out, and only far-off sounds: a woman laughing hysterically, the crack of a gun. It seemed for a while there had been the faint thudding of drums. Daisy awoke. There was a man standing over her, he was hot, covered with sweat, he stretched uneasily in his clothes. The man emitted inhuman sounds: a piglike squeal. This reduced Daisy to a nervous wreck. She screamed and the made quickly faded away. She heard rapid foot steps in the hallway and then a knock at the door. “Come in,” she said. “My lady, are you okay?” “No, Mr. Gosta. There was someone in my room,” Daisy explained. “That is what I tried to warn you about, my lady. The specter like to keep the heat down in the house.” The next morning, she did not want to be alone in the house for more than a few minutes at a time. However, whenever she would go to Mrs. Winchester there was a strange wind that seemed to repel her from her door. Always, there was something not quite right about the Winchester Mansion, as far back as Daisy could remember. Neighbors and friends suggested that the Winchester fortune was cursed. “I never would believe it,” Daisy said. “That is not how I was brought up.” In her bedroom, she undressed and lied down, holding her rosary beads to her heart, as she hoped and prayed, just as she has over so many nights, that the freezing cold and the specters would stop. Mrs. Winchester employed a small workforce of men and women. By December, the fruit harvest in the orchards had been picked, packages, and dispatched to the respective buyers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
On October 25, 1896, shortly after she had gone to sleep, Daisy was wakened by a series of loud poundings and scratching noises on the ceiling. She could not tell where they were coming from. She left her bed—and met Mrs. Winchester on the stairs. She was agitated. “Were you making that racket?” Mrs. Winchester asked. “No, Aunt Sarah. I thought it was someone else.” They found all the first-floor gasoliers on and no one about. Mrs. Winchester asked who was last downstairs, if perhaps Mr. Gosta forgot to switch off the lights. However, Daisy was the last one and she swore she had turned everything off. There was a tangible presence in the Winchester mansion. One could hear it at all hours of the day and night. “I would be sitting and would hear it shuffling about,” Daisy recalls. “Not footsteps as such, but rustling and shuffling. I could not see anything. Not at first.” As the months passed, the presence gradually made itself known. Around the middle of January 1897, the Winchester mansion was awakened by a blood curdling scream in the night. Daisy was crying and shaking with fear. After a few hours she calmed down and went back to sleep when she felt something on her back. It was pushing her out of bed, but when she looked around, there was no one there. However, it felt as though someone was trying to eject her from the bed, as if she did not belong there. Then suddenly, the duvet was ripped off the bed, leaving her shivering. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
The next morning, Mrs. Winchester glanced about the great room, with its circle of warmth and light by the hearth, and the sullen shadows huddled at its father end, as if hungrily listening. She noticed that things moved in the room. Doors were left opened—drawers and things have shuffled through. In the night she would hear a lot of running and banging and the sound of horses’ hooves. It was like a cavalry of horsemen passing through the halls. When Mrs. Winchester drew back the curtains and looked out, the lamps on the gateposts were bathing the roadway in a soft light. There were no horses, but the sounds were still coming from the hallway. When she opened the door of her bedroom, the noises got louder, and she could hear men conversing, and shouting at each other. Mrs. Winchester could not understand what they were saying. She had no idea if it was even English. But the galloping and hammering and sawing continued, which was always followed by a terrible howl at dusk. As the peered through the sky, Mrs. Winchester would open her door and be surprised to find that certain rooms had been sealed off and new additions added to the house, along with the most exquisite furnishings. The next night while she was sleeping. Mrs. Winchester was awakened by a ferocious thud on the floor, and she heard Daisy screaming and hollering like she was in great pain. Mrs. Winchester quickly rushed to see what was wrong and found her limp on the floor, unable to move. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
Mrs. Winchester was terrified. The room was as cold as an icebox and seemed darker than usual. Daisy’s face was white as milk. Dr. Odin rushed to the Winchester Estate, finding Daisy immobile and unable to communicate. He said that Daisy’s vocal cords were hoarse and that she had suffered a serious spinal injury with resultant loss of sight. After months of suffering and pain, on April 22, 1897, she was suddenly cured of her blindness. On May 31, 1897, Daisy was cured of her spinal trouble. The cures had apparently been wrought by Mrs. Winchester through séances. Satan is willing and able to perform diabolic miracles. Satanic healings, however, shift the physical disorder into the psychic plane by bringing the “healed” person into some type of occult bondage. The ability of such magicians is conditioned on the human plane by their inherent psychic power, and on the supernatural plane. Black magicians differ in strength and psychic ability to perform magical feats often described as Satanic Miracles. Strong magicians usually own their success to innate psychic powers. Very frequently they come from a family where the occult arts have flourished for generations. Their innate and inherited occult powers are frequently cultivated and enhanced by séances. To enlist the help of Satan and demons, a pact is often made with the powers of evil. The subject consciously and willingly gives oneself over to Satan and demonic agencies who will help one perform healing conjurations and other supernatural feats. Ordinarily the body is cut and the compact with the devil is written and signed in one’s own blood. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Everything was all right for a while, but the house became disturbed again at night by the sawing of wood. Daisy pushed on the gasoliers and could not believe her eyes. Men were in the hallway sawing wood really fast. She was surprised to find Mrs. Winchester and Mr. Gosta in the front parlor. “What’s going on?” Daisy asked? Mrs. Winchester was in a flood of tears. “Mrs. Winchester thought she saw a black monster with hooves in the bathroom,” Mr. Gosta explained. “But it is gone now.” What was happening in the Winchester Mansion was unnatural. The things were real, but they were not only under attack, the were also being protected by demons. The next time, Daisy was awakened by a loud thud in the far corner of the bedroom. There was an old woman with long, gray hair falling over her face, and a young man with heavy boots, and a dark stain down the front of his shirt. The old woman came towards her with her arms outstretched. Daisy ran to the door but it would not open. And through the door came a deep set of ancient eyes with a demonic face starting into her eyes. From that day on, the smile on her face died. She was always trembling. She stared almost blankly, and was always cold. Never had things in the mansion been so scary. Mrs. Winchester was amazed to see the change in her. Daisy was positively shaken. Mrs. Winchester would ask Daisy, “My dear, what is the matter.” And in a flat, cold tone, Daisy would reply, “You do not know my pain.” And she would look away. Although it heals, many people are psychically ruined through magic. Sometimes violet and sinister forces appear. This indicates that the origin of the damage is primarily of a spiritual nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
I conjure thee, O fire, by him who made thee and all other creatures for good in the World. Welcome Spirit Botis and your 60 Legions of Spirits, O most noble King! I say thou art welcome unto me, because I have called thee through Him who has created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is in them contained, and because also thou hast obeyed. By that same power by the which I have called thee forth, I bind thee, that thou remain affably and visibly here before this Circle so constant and so long as I shall have occasion for thy presence; and not to depart without my license until thou hast duly and faithfully performed my will without any falsity. BY THE PENTACLE OF SOLOMON HAVE I CALLED THEE! GIVE UNTO ME A TRUE ANSWER. Please blessed this house with great prosperity, abundance, wisdom, power and longevity. I think you for your empowerments which have served to assist my evolution toward divinity and power. Please take the spiritual wisdom that you bring and open the paths for more prosperity to flow into my life. Allow this sorcerous current to be a conduit of information which comes with it, and become more away of the precise reasons for the work upon the Pathway of Pacts. Allow me to understand this symbolism as well as the most powerful goal of the process. Meratsav tadad oybugird miy a iaruha acmerhtahsx iadzam hsuehgna mananahtoayhs ohgnanam adzad hsuehgnav acah tictahas hsutar ahta oyriav uha ahtay x7. Show various paths to self-mastery through the seven powers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
The Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House is elegant, powerful, beautiful, mysterious and insidiously successful in whatever it does. It is a powerful aphrodisiac for certain occultists who are impatient with “parlor” esoteria. Where old systems weakened or visions grew dim, new ones were invented. It is impossible to find a single ideological thread uniting the Winchester Mystery House in its spiritual pilgrimage. One might glace at some choices, none of which stands up to scrutiny. Come and take a tour of the 110 of the remaining 160 rooms of amazement and wonder. Perhaps you will make contact with something special? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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Computer Output is Still Regarded as Gospel
Criminal behaviour is a topic that captures the attention of the average American. There is simply something about the darker side of human behaviour that peaks our interest. Consider the familiarity of the following scenarios. While involved in a manic run of high-speed channel surfing, an image of Charles Manson or Osama bin Laden suddenly flashes across the television screen. The image is gone as fast as it arrived and your eyes adjust to the next channel. Almost instinctively, you find yourself flipping back to the previous channel and you proceed to fixate upon what is being said about these individuals some people perceive as monsters of modern time. You are sitting alone in public place. Suddenly, you hear a nearby voice telling a friend how he broke the law the past weekend but presumes that he was lucky enough to evade suspicion…perhaps the person is describing how he filed a false tax return or got into fisticuffs at the local pub the night before. Your ears quickly perk up as you anxiously eavesdrop on the crime-related confessional. These anecdotes speak to the armchair criminologist that seems to exist in all of us. When we see or hear about criminal behaviour, we want to know more. When the topic comes up in conversation, we are always willing to add our proverbial two cents. Americans clearly have a healthy appetite for crime. Day in and day out, television viewers have a long list of reality-based/ crime drama network television shows (exempli gratia, SWAT, Chicago P.D., Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, FBI, FBI International, FBI Most Wanted, CSI, X-Files, Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Organized Crime), or cable station documentaries (exempli gratia, Court TV, The Discovery Channel, A&E) from which to choose, as network executives scramble to quench our thirst for crime-related subject matter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
What is more, it is rare to find a front page of a newspaper or popular magazine that does not flaunt a crime-related story prominently in the headlines. Even mainstream lifestyle magazines, such as women’s Cosmopolitan and Glamour or their male equivalents, GQ and Maxim, now include regular features on “true crime.” Having established that crime sells, the obvious question becomes, Why? The answer is simple—we are feverishly attracted to that which we do not fully understand. Like a puppy chasing its tail, we spin around and around searching for ever-elusive answers. The average citizen is not alone in this ongoing quest for enlightenment. Year in and year out, legions of scholars, criminal justice practitioners, and politicians spend billions of dollars, kill millions of trees, and exhaust countless hours trying to understand, explain, and prevent the exorbitant amount of criminal behaviour that exists in today’s society. Just think about how much written and spoken commentary has ever been directed toward understanding the behaviour and mindset of modern terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden! Efforts to describe and explain crime and criminality overload shelves with books, journals, and reports that details various theoretical and policy initiatives. What is the net gain of this sustained investigation? Or, have we made any substantial progress toward solving this problem? The harsh reality is that we as “learned professionals” have not made nearly as much progress as we would like; and we certainly have not made anywhere near as much progress as the general public expects. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Part of the problem with the criminological enterprise is that it is difficult to come to grips with the parameters of our substantive discussion and approach. First, one must address two fundamental questions: (1) What is the subject matter that we should be studying? (2) What is the best way to study it? Surely, coming up with an acceptable definition of crime should be enough. After all, crime is a routine topic in our daily conversations, it is a mainstay in media reports, and serve as a popular topic for books. However, upon closer examination, we see that “crime” is a relatively slippery concept. By crime do we mean all those acts or omissions of act that are defined by criminal law? Many sociologists consider this sort of legally bound definition of crime to be overly constraining. The “collective conscience” of society can be far more offended by non-criminal acts of deviance (id est, social norm transgressions) than it is by some violations of the law. For example, although it may not be illegal to shout racial lurs in public, there tends to be a much more resounding public outcry against this form of behaviour than there is when a minor law violation such as speeding or littering takes place. Many scholars acknowledge this point, but opt instead to pursue the path of least resistance—they contend that the subject matter in question should include only violations of the criminal law. This definitional parameter is convenient because it immediately limits the discussion to a much more identifiable and manageable set of behaviours. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
More importantly, violations of the criminal law (id est, criminal act) are subject to formal, state-imposed sanctions, while violations of customs or norms (id est, deviant acts) are subject to informal, peer-imposed reprimands. This difference in the nature and process of social control efforts has long been seen as a critical issue that separates crime from deviance. The laws of the land are passed by a legislative body and recorded for dexterity purposes in a document knows as the criminal code. This is the document that police officers and prosecutors use to guide their daily activities. One must recognize, however, that a definition of “crime” that is based solely on existing criminal codes will still produce an exceedingly long list of offense. At the most basic level, one must content with the fact that there exists no single, definitive criminal code. Instead, each jurisdiction, ranging from the federal to the state to the thousands of local jurisdictions, has in place a slightly different criminal code that it calls its own. As such, an effort to compile an exhaustive list of every law violation that is currently “on the books” would result in a truly massive, unmanageable, and often conflicting list of criminal statutes. So let us assume that you could settle on a single criminal code, one from the federal, state, or local jurisdiction of your choice. Such a code would include high-profile offenses such as murder, rape, robbery, and theft. However, the complete list would be far more expansive, including thousands of law violations—everything from jaywalking to murder. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In addition, criminal codes routinely contain a host of obscure, outdated, and rarely enforced statutes. Seuling (1975) provides a long list of the more ridiculous examples, including: In Kansas City, Missouri, it is illegal for children to buy cap pistols, but not shotguns. Killing an animal with “malicious intent” can result in first-degree murder charges in Oklahoma. It is illegal to have a bathtub in your house in Virginia. Few people are willing to afford equal weight to all of the behaviours detailed in a given criminal code. Instead, one is inclined to set aside the “petty” and “outdated” offenses and focus the discussion on the more “serious” categories of crime. Most scholars follow suit Some turn to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for direction. The UCR is an annual effort to document the number of reported and cleared (id est, a perpetrator has been identified) cases (and arrests) of murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto theft, and arson that are encountered by the various law enforcement agencies across the United States of America. These eight offense types are called Part I offenses. The FBI asks all law enforcement agencies to provide host of offense and offender data tht are then used to generate descriptive crime statistics (exempli gratia, demographic profiles and crime rates). #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The difficulty of keeping in touch with the social occasion while at the same time becoming spontaneously involved in situated engagements is often reduced by the arts of concealment. Apparently one of the most significant involvement shields is that afforded by a conversational circle itself. In fact, there seem to be few conversational clusters in which control of facial and bodily expression is not employed to conceal either a deadness to the content of the encounter or an improper drift from the spirit of the occasion. A conversation occurring within a situation, then, is likely to present something of a collusion against the gathering at large; Mrs. Toplofty’s multiplication tables, previously cited, are merely an extreme instance. And yet, of course, the very possibility that conversational content can be shieled from the gathering as a whole removes some of the threat that such smaller circles might have for the larger inclusive one if the drift or deadness were open and visible. We can thus appreciate why some “informal” sociable gatherings are deemed “successful” when each cluster carries away its participants to the point where they can barely conceal their departure. The possibility of sustaining a concealed activity within conversations can become somewhat recognized and institutionalized, so that two different phases of a social occasion can simultaneously occur in the same place among the same participants, one phase being restricted to unfocused interaction and the other to matters that can be parceled out to conversations and concealed in them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
One phrase is likely, then, to be defined as dominant and the other subordinate. For example, in Lincoln, California it was obligatory for male neighbours and male extended kin to attend funerals dressed quite decorously in black, even to the point sometimes of wearing a black cap reserved only for such occasions. It was also obligatory for these male mourners to stand quietly and sedately outside of the cottage in which the deceased was laid out. However, while thus standing, it was quite permissible to carry on entertaining conversational chats with one’s fellow-mourners. To be sure, the sound level of these talks and the features of the talkers were respectfully modulated to fit funeral requirements, but the content of the talk went in another direction. In some cases it was even understood to be in bad taste to turn the topic from the ordinary pleasantries of neighbourly talk to the deceased; attendance and funeral garb were what one owed the other present. The involvement shield provided by a conversation is somewhat portable, because the participants can together move about a room and take their talk with them. Perhaps the most important recently developed portable shield for encounters is the automobile. The protection provided by the back seat has already made social history, and use of the front seat in drive-in movies has become a kind of inadvertent outdoor shrine for paying homage to our society’s use of shielding arrangements. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Mutual-involvement has been treated simply as one variety of situated involvement; the rules regulating situated involvements apply, in fact, with extra force. There are differences, however, between mutual-involvements and other kinds. For one thing, mutual-involvements improperly maintained by the individual necessarily involve others directly; further, of all objects of involvement, other individuals seem to be the most enticing and hence, in turn, the most in need of social control. However, further issues are also to be found. An unengaged individual may easily exhibit the kind of involvement which gives others the impression that one is indeed in a pathological state; the same consequence, however, is rarely possible for persons improperly involved together. Except for the very marginal phenomenon of folie a deux (or a trois, a quatre, etcetera), it seems to be assumed that as long as two individuals are in communication with each other—as long as they are joined in an encounter—whatever they are doing is not occult, however esoteric and opaque it may appear to be. This helps to explain why a person who is “with” another tends to feel free to engage in all kinds of antics, since one can assume one’s contact with the other will guarantee one’s sanity to bystanders. A parallel phenomenon has been observed in connection with the frame of reference by which criminality is imputed (as opposed to mental illness). Apparently there are depredations which can be interpreted as a game when committed by a group of youths, but which are viewed as crime when committed by a solitary offender. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Let us speak about the relation of false personality to other parts of man. In every man at every moment, his development proceeds by what may be called a static triad. This triad is called aa static triad because body, soul, and essence always stay in the same place and act as the neutralizing force, while the other force change only very slowly. So the whole triad is more or less in the same place all the time. There is Body, Soul, Essence at the top of the triangle, the “I” and the left, and False personality at the right. The first triangle forms the state of man in ordinary life; the second forms his state when he begins to develop. There are long period between the state of the first and the state of the second triangle, and still longer between them and the third triangle. Actually, there are many intermediate stages but these three are sufficient to form the way of development in relation to false personality. It is necessary to remember that none of these states is permanent. Any state may last for about half an hour and then another state may come, then again a different state. The triad is made by the body, the soul and the essence at the apex. At the second point if “I”; that is, the many “I”s which are the person, that is to say, all feelings and sensations which do not form a part of false personality. The third point of the triangle is held by false personality (id est, the imaginary picture of self). In an ordinary man false personality calls itself “I”, but after some time, if a man is capable of development, magnetic center begins to grow in one. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
One may call it “special interests,” “ideals,” “ideas,” or something like that. However, when one begins to feel this magnetic center in one, one finds a separate part of oneself, and from this part of one’s growth begins. This growth can take pace only at the expense of false personality because false personality cannot appear at the same time as magnetic center. If magnetic center is formed in a man one may meet a school, and when one begins to work one must work against false personality. This does not mean that false personality disappears; it only means that it is not always present. In the beginning it is nearly always present but when magnetic center begins to grow it disappears, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes even for a day. Then it comes back and stays for a week! So all our work must be directed against false personality. When false personality disappears for a short time, “I” becomes stronger, only it is not really “I,” it is many “I”s. The longer the periods for which false personality disappears, the stronger the “I” composed of many “I”s becomes. Magnetic center may be transformed into deputy steward, and when deputy steward acquires control of false personality it really transfers all the unnecessary things to the side of false personality, and only the necessary things remain on the side of “I.” Then, at a still further stage, it may be that permanent “I” which will come on the “I” side with all that belongs to it. Permanent “I” has quite different functions, quite a different point of view from anything we are accustomed to. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The static triad shows that either personal work or degeneration is going on in relation to different manifestations of false personality, but that body, soul, and essence remain the same all the time. After some time they too will be affected, but they do not enter into the initial stages. Body will remain the same body, essence will change later, but it does not enter the beginning of the work. According to this system, essence enters only as much as it is mixed with personality. We do not take it separately because, as already explained, we have no means of working on essence apart from personality. “What is it,” someone asked, “that makes the real ‘I’ begin to develop and false personality to fade?” First of all it is a question of time. Say false personality in ordinary life is there for twenty-three hours our of every twenty-two hours only and magnetic center will be present for an hour longer than usual. Then, in time, all false personality will diminish and will become less important. (This is shown in the second stage of the where false personality has become passive and the man “I”s surrounding magnetic center have become active.) You cannot diminish false personality in the sense of size but you can diminish it in the sense of time. Somebody else said, “I had the impression until now that false personality was the collection of all the many ‘I’s. This concept has made things a little obscure to me.” Among these many “I”s there are many passive “I”s which may be the beginning of other personality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
False personality cannot develop; it is all wrong. That is why I said that all work has to be against false personality. If one fails it is because one has to be against false personality. If one fails it is because one has not given enough attention to false personality, has not studied it, has not worked against it. False personality is made up of many “I”s and they are all imaginary. “I do not understand what you mean by passive ‘I’s.” “I” which are controlled by some other, active “I.” For instance, good intentions are controlled by laziness. Laziness is active, good intensions passive. The “I” or combination of “I”s in control is active. The “I”s which are controlled or drive are passive. Understand it quite simply. There are three different states of man beginning from the most elementary. In the most elementary state false personality is active and “I” is passive. Body, soul, and essence always remain neutralizing. When, after many stages, permanent “I” comes, then “I” becomes active, many “I”s become passive and false personality disappears. Many different examples can be drawn between these two extremes, and further than that there are several possibilities. In 1944, the Allies were planning an operation for the liberation of Europe, and the Nazis were planning their defense against it. There were two possibilities for the initial landing –the Normandy beaches and Pas de Calais. A landing would surely succeed against a weak defense, so the Germans would have to concentrate their attention on one of these two places. Calais was more difficult to invade, but more valuable to win, being closer to the Allies’ ultimate targets in France, Belgium, and Germany itself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The payoffs are given on a scale of 0 to 100. The Allies count a successful landing at Calais as 100, a successful landing at Normandy as 80, and a failure at either place as 0 (and the Germans get the negative of these payoffs). Put yourself simultaneously in the boots of General Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, and Field Mashal Rommel, the German commander of their coastal defenses in France. What strategies would you choose? There is no equilibrium in the basic strategies, and we must look for mixtures. Allies should choose to land at Normandy or Calais with the odds of (100-20): (80-60), or 4:1, while the Germans should deploy their defenses at Normandy or Calais with the odds (80-20): (100-60), or 3:2. The average point score for the Allies when both use their best mixture is 68. The probabilities and point scores we chose are plausible, but it is hard to be precise or dogmatic about such matters. Therefore let us compare our results with what actually happened. In retrospect, we know that the Allies’ mixing proportions were overwhelmingly weighted toward Normandy, and that is what they in fact chose. For the Germans, it was a closer call. It is less surprising, therefore, that the German decision-making was swayed by the Allies’ double-agent trick, differences of opinion in their commanding ranks, and some plain bad luck, such as Rommel being away from the front at the crucial time. They failed to commit their reserves on the afternoon of D-Day when the Allied landings at Normandy seemed to be succeeding, believing that a bigger landing at Calais would come. Even then, the fate of Omaha Beach was in the balance for a while. However, the Allies gained and consolidated their foothold on Normandy. The rest you know. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
When it comes to voter fraud, the vulnerability is not just inside the computers, or at election times, but in the way computer-generated data, information, and knowledge are used and misused. Smart politicians and officials, of course, do what smart people in general have always done when presented with new information. They demand to know more about its source and the reliability of the data behind it; they ask how samples were drawn in polls and what the response rates were; they note whether there are inconsistencies or gaps; they question statistics that are too “pat”; they evaluate the logic, and so forth. Smarter power players also take into account the channels through which the information arrived and intuitively review in their minds the various interests who might have “massaged” the information in transit. The smartest people—a minority of a tiny minority—do al the above, but also question assumptions and even the deeper assumptions on which the more superficial assumptions are based. Finally, imaginative people—perhaps the fewest of all—question the entire frame of reference. Government officials are found in all four categories. However, in all the high-tech countries they are so harried, so pressured, that they typically lack the time and attention span, if not the brains, to think past the surface “fact” on which they are pressures to make decisions. Worse yet, all bureaucracies discourage out-of-frame thinking and the examination of root premises. Power-players take advantage of this fact. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When David Stockman , who headed the U.S.A. Office of Management and Budget, proposed budget cuts to the President and White House staff, he carefully chose the reductions from programs accounting for only 12 percent of the total budget. In discussing these cuts with high higher-ups, he never provided context. Telling tells out of school, he later wrote: “What they did not realize—because I never made it clear—was that we were working in only a small corner of the total budget. We hadn’t even looked at three giant programs that accounted for over half of the domestic budget: Social Security, veterans’ benefits, and Medicare. Those three alone cost $250 billion per year.” (As of 2023, that figure is $1.8 trillion per year.) “The projects we had cut saved $25 billion. The President and White House staff were seeing the tip of the budget iceberg; they were not finding out about the huge mass which lurked below the waterline. No one raised any questions about what wasn’t being reviewed.” Were they willfully ignorant, too much in a hurry to ask or blinded by Stockman, a master of statistical legerdemain? Or were they just “snowed” by all the computer-generated numbers? A political speech is barely worth making these days unless it is stuffed with computer-derived statistics. Yet most decision-makers seldom question the numbers that have been crunched for the. Thus Sidney Jones, a former Under Secretary of Commerce, once proposed setting up a Council of Statistical Advisers to serve the President. Presumably they would have been able to tell the President how the notorious “body count” statistics during the Vietnam War were being massaged. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Or why the CIA and the Pentagon could not agree on how powerful Soviet nuclear tests were, and therefore on whether or not the U.S.S.R. was violating the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1975. Or why the Commerce Department figures on gross national output were wildly exaggerated at one time, then corrected down to show the economy in a near-recession. The reasons in every case were highly technical—but they were also, inevitably, political. Even the most objective-seeming numbers have been hammered into shape by the push and pull of political power struggle. The U.S.A. Census Bureau takes more pains than most agencies to make public its definitions and statistical procedures so that users can form their own judgments about the validity of its figures. Its top experts readily admit, however, that such reservations and footnotes are routinely ignored in Washington. Accord to one Census staffer: “The politicians and the press do not care. All they say is ‘Gimme a number!’” There are two reasons for this. One is mere naivete. Despite all we have learned in the past generation about the spurious quality of much seemingly hard computer data, according to the Census official responsible for automatic data processing and planning, “Computer output is still regarded as Gospel.” However, there is a deeper reason. For political tacticians are not in search of scholarly “truth” or even simple accuracy. They are looking for ammunition to use in the info-wars. Data, information, and knowledge do not have to be “accurate” or “true” to blast an opponent out of the water. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Some truisms: Almost any technology is subject to use, misuse, abuse, and accident. The more powerful a technology is when properly used, the worse it is likely to be when abused. Any powerful technology in human hands can be the subject of accidents. Nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing replaces modern industry, and if its nanotechnological products replace most modern technologies, then most future accidents will have to involve nanotechnology. Another truism: In a diverse, competitive World, any reasonably inexpensive technology with enormous commercial, medical, and military applications will almost surely be developed and used. It is hard to envision a scenario (short of the collapse of civilization) in which nanotechnology will not make its appearance; it seems inevitable. If so, then its problems, however tough, must be dealt with. Like trucks, aircraft, biotechnology, rockets, computers, boots, and warm clothes, nanotechnology has the potential for both peaceful and aggressive uses. In peaceful uses (by definition), harm to people occurs either by accident or as an unintended consequence. In aggressive uses, harm is deliberate. In a peaceful context, the proper question to ask is Can fallible people of goodwill, pursuing normal human purposes, use nanotechnology in a way that reduces risk and harm to others? In an aggressive, military context, the proper question to ask is Can we somehow keep the peace? Our answer to the first will be a clear yes, and to the second, an apprehensive maybe. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Throughout this discussion, we assume that most people will be alert in matters concerning World safety. During the 1970, people awakening to the new large-scale, long-term problems of technology was out of their control, in the hands of shortsighted and irresponsible groups. Today, there are still battles to be fought, but the tide has turned. When a concern arises regarding a new, obvious technology, it is now much easier to get a hearing in the media, in the courts, and in the political arena. Improving these mechanisms for social vigilance and the political control of technology is an important challenge. Current mechanisms are imperfect, but they can still give a big push in the right directions. Though we assume alertness, alertness can be a scarce resource. The total amount of concern and energy available for focusing on long-term problems is so limited that it must be used carefully, not squandered on problems that are trivial or illusory. Part of our aim is to help sort out these issues raised by nanotechnology so that attention can be focused on problems that must be solved, but might not be. For instance, fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry products are potential vehicles for the transmission of human pathogens leading to foodborne disease outbreaks, which draw public attention to food safety. Therefore, there is a need to develop new antimicrobials to ensure food safety. Because of the antimicrobial properties of nanomaterials, nanotechnology offers great potential for novel antimicrobial agents for the food and food-related industries. The use of nano-antimicrobial agents added directly to foods or through antimicrobial packaging is an effective approach. As a result, the use of nanotechnology by the food and food-related industries is expected to increase, impacting the food system at all stages from food production to processing, packaging, transportation, storage, security, safety and quality. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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In more fluid, changing societies we are more apt to find controls that are internalized—that do not depend to so great an extent on control and enforcement by external agents. However, regardless of the congruence between socialization practices and adult norms, any extreme pattern of training will produce stress for the individuals involved. The deviations that have been considered all deny in some way the domination of the individual by the social occasion in which he finds himself. From this, however, it should not be assumed that propriety in situations can be guaranteed by a complete investment of self in an occasioned main involvement. Whatever the prescribed main involvements, and whatever their society, that the individual is required to give visible evidence that he has not wholly given himself up to this main focus of attention. Some slight margin of self-command and self-possession will typically be required and exhibited. This is the case even though this obligation often must be balanced against the previously mentioned obligation to maintain a minimum of an acceptable main involvement. Ordinarily the individual can so successfully maintain an impression of due disinvolvement that we tend to overlook this complete absorption in a situated task, the crisis itself, as a new social occasion, may conceal, exonerate, and even oblige what would otherwise be a situational delict. During minor crises, however, when the individual has cause to withdraw from general orientation to the gathering but has no license to do so, we may witness wonderfully earnest attempts to demonstrate proper disinvolvement in spite of difficulties. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Thus, when a man fully invests himself in running to catch a bus, or finds himself slipping on an icy pavement, he may hold his body optimistically stiff and erect, wearing a painful little smile on his face, as if to say that he is really not much involved in his scramble and has remained in situationally appropriate possession of himself. There are, apparently, different kinds of overinvolvement in himself in cheering at an amateur boxing match or silently overimmerses himself in a chess problem. Again one sees how activities which differ so very much on the surface can have the same expressive significance. Interestingly enough, evidence of the quieter kind of overinvolvement often comes to us through a special class of fuguelike side involvements, these repetitive acts implying that the individual is very deeply involved in a task, often an occasioned one. Along with these fuguelike signs we are likely to find disarray of posture (and by implication some evidence of rules regarding posture). One of the early—and one of the few—students of ordinary social gatherings comments: “When a student in the class-room becomes really absorbed in the problem in hand, he is likely to slip down on his shoulder blades, spread his feet, ruffle his hair, and do any number of other unconventional deeds. Let the spell be broken, and he sits, rearranges his clothes, and again become socially proper. There seem to be few situations defined to allow such withdrawal into an activity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Therefore, when an intensely involved individual is caught out in one of these dissociated side involvements, he typically reacts with embarrassment, hastily reallocating his involvement is firmly tied to the purpose of the occasion, are deep risk involvements likely to be tolerated. A very common form of involvement control occurs at mealtimes, where in many sections of Anglo-American society, the individual is expected to eat relatively slowly, not to take food from his neighbour’s plate, and in general to conduct himself as if getting his fill were not the most important thing in the World—as if, in fact, eating required very little attention itself. (In Shetland Isle, for example, a community in which most persons were always a little hungry, it was difficult to find an instance where an individual accepting a second helping of food did not first avow that he had had enough and next proclaim that he had been given too much.) In mental hospitals, staff pay tribute to these rulings by constructing social types to epitomize patients who flagrantly break them. There is, for example, the “stuffer,” who presses food into his mouth until his cheeks bulge and he turns red and grasps for want of air; there is also the “food grabber,” who, not being trusted to respect his neighbour’s plate, will either be served alone or tied to his chair during mealtime by means of a sash looped through his shirt collar, like a dogs on a leash, to keep him out of other people’s territory. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Other, less extreme instances found in the hospital form a bridge to behaviour found in free society. At Central Hospital, for example, it was characteristic of some of the “sicker” adult patients to eat their dessert first, thus suggesting too little control of their desire for sweets and too much involvement in eating. This, of course, is a delict often found in small children, who must be taught to conceal both “overeagerness” for oral indulgences and “oversatisfaction” while consuming them. Appetitive self-control and other involvement rulings are an important part of what parents must teach their children. One basis for the often-stated similarity between mental patients and children is that both groupings must be pressed into compliance with involvement rulings by those in charge. It can be claimed, then, that “regression” is not a return to an infantile state of libidinal organization but rather a manifestation of those problems of situational discipline that incidentally are found among children. In our society, one interesting sign that is taken as evidence of overinvolvement is perspiration; another is a “shaky” voice. More important than these is the phenomenon of shaky hands, a problem for senior citizens. Individuals with chronic tremors of this kind become “faulty persons,” burdening all ordinary interaction with a display of what can be take as insufficient control over the self. Certain strategies, perhaps independently hit upon, are employed to conceal this sign and to prevent it from giving the lie to the front of proper involvement maintained by the rest of the individual’s body. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
One technique is for the individual to put his hands in his pockets’ another, to hold them fast on the table; a third, to hold one shaky hand with the other, while resting one elbow on the table for support. It may be suggested that the tendency to hold something of himself in reserve may so colour an individual’s activity that, in those special situations where relatively complete abandonment to a main involvement is required, he may find that he is unable to let himself go. Perhaps the incidence of middle-class frigidity can be understood partly in these terms. In any case, pleasures of the flesh in our society is preferably carried on under the involvement of shield darkness, for darkness can allow participants to enjoy some of the liberty of not being in a situation at all. This problem, but not this solution, is found, of course, in other settings. Thus, the sharing of an office with another often means a limit on work, because extreme concentration and immersion in a task will become an improper handling of oneself in the situation. Some co-workers apparently resolve the issue by gradually according each other the status of nonperson, this allowing a relaxation of situational properties and an increase in situated concentration. This may even be carried to the point where one individual allows himself half-audible “progress grunts” such as, “What do you know!” “Hm hm,” “Let us see,” without excusing himself to his co-worker. If an individual feels obliged to affect deep immersion in some focus of attention, he may of course affect these expressions. Other dissociated side involvements such as hair twisting may also be indulged in and tolerated in such circumstances. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Many professors have been killing science in the same way as priests are killing religion. None of the established sciences go far enough in exploring the other dimensions which surely exist; they stop at a blank wall. There is great importance of working upon one’s own development with, and through, a school or structured group environment. Man is a machine, moving through is existence in a dream-like, mechanistic state, and in order to tap his full potential he has to awake through a disciplined attempt to self-remember—to be able to become fully aware of oneself at anytime. Self-remembering is difficult, requiring a series of steps in definite order together with the help of a school; the eventual reward, through self-study, control, and the transformation of negative emotions, was the attainment of objective consciousness. This is an awakened state in which a human, released from one’s state of “waking sleep,” is capable of seeing the higher reality (“esoteric knowledge”) invisible to one in one’s ordinary, undeveloped level of being. They key in all of this, of course, is school work based on the principle that development of knowledge and growth of being must proceed together for right understanding. Unlike many other systems, this cannot be learned solely through a book. Words well put together on a page cannot convey a thought as ordinary speech can; on the other hand, a less-than-perfect written sentence could, by its very ambiguity, obscure more than it revealed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Humans have occasional moments of self-consciousness, but they have no command over them. They come and go by themselves, being controlled by external circumstances and occasional associations or emotions. The question arises: is it possible to acquire command over these fleeting moments of consciousness, to evoke them more often and to keep them longer, or even make them permanent? Consciousness, not as it is defined by the medical sciences but as something else—is an awareness and perception of the World above and beyond our ordinary experience. In addition, throughout the so-called “legitimate science” there has been a renewed and serious study in those areas once labelled part of the Occult: extrasensory perception, psychic phenomena, additional dimensions, bio-feedback, telepathy, and other subjects once considered the province of witches and warlocks. It could be said that the entire everyday World is coming around to observation made over four hundred years ago in Hamlet: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” There is a knowledge which surpasses all ordinary human knowledge and is inaccessible to ordinary people but which exists somewhere and belongs to somebody. Do not accept any ideas that cannot be prove in practice. What is necessary is the willingness to accept one’s own mechanicalness and lack of unifying consciousness, and to summon the will to self-remember in order to overcome the one and acquire the other. The aim of this system is to bring man to conscience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
In reality, we remember very little of our lives, and that is because we remember only conscious moments. Consciousness is not merely the opposite of sleep, or unconsciousness; it is an awareness of self, a self-remembering. The chief feature of our being is that we are many, not one. Because man is not fully aware of himself, he is also not aware of many contradictory desires, beliefs, emotions, and prejudices which sway him from one moment to the next; her has no center of gravity, and, lacking that, is incapable of sustaining a fixed goal for any length of time. Although he may believe he is determining his own life’s direction, a man is actually buffered from one desire to another by an assortment of outside influences. Man can overcome this state only be becoming aware of his multiple selves and by seeking to develop his true self by stopping the expression of negative emotions, identification, lying, and other elements of “false personality.” Man has no will, only self-will (“wanting to have our own way”) and willfulness (“wanting to do something simply because we should not”). Both grow out of the momentary passing desires of the man “I’s,” or selves, of which man consists. True will is present only in conscious man and is a goal to be obtained through the system; we gain will by exercising in work through the system, in a school situation. Self-will and willfulness are particularly difficult to obliterate because they are part of our illusion that we are already conscious and able to “do”—that is, accomplish something by original intent rather thanas a mechanistic, reflex response to outside influences. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Negative emotions are all emotions of violence or depression. Such emotions are useless and destructive, and despite our protests to the contrary they arise not from outside provocations but from within ourselves. However, negative emotions are artificial—arising out of identification (our incapability of separating ourselves from the objects, people, or emotions around us)—and hence can be destroyed once we become aware of them and attempt to suppress them through self-remembering. The first step in eliminating negative emotions is to limit their expression; when this happens, it will then become possible to get at the root of negative emotions themselves. Think very seriously before you decide to work on yourself with the idea of changing yourself…this work admits of no compromise and it requires a great amount of self-discipline and readiness to obey all rules. Very few people actually realize just how much emphasis people place on appearance. One does not have to be flashy to get visual attention either. Despite the sound of your voice, your scent or the texture of your skin, your appearance must command attention. If you are unusual looking and act like you do not really think so, trying to look as much like the others as possible, they will still talk behind your back, but a little more cruelly. When you are in their presence their guilt at having done so, combined with the fear of weakening your apparent self-confidence, will cause them to be extremely patronizing. Neither of these patterns really gains you respect but only sympathy. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Respect based on accomplishment can only be given by those who are humble, wise, and themselves worthy of respect. From those who have achieved little or nothing and are ego-starved and insecure, respect can only be gained through fear. Through accomplishment, you will gain respect from those who are just. With your awesomeness, you will gain respect from those who are unenlightened. If you are truly beyond the help of glamorizing techniques, take the Devil’s name and play the Devil’s game and let people know it. Learn a skill. Paint, play, sculpt, write, draw, read—so that those who matter will respect you because you are unusual, wise and capable. Let your status be known. Do everything in accordance with your type. You will then be perfect. You will be outrageous, because everything about you will fit, despite your homeliness; and with your hint of secret powers, the small-minded will fear you, and well they should, for you follow this advice, you will have those powers. The kind of people you attract will depend on the kind of theatre you are working! Remember that attractiveness is a universal appeal and is not limited to a certain economic or cultural level. If you utilize certain tricks that will create compulsion in enough people, you will soon be able to see the right face in the crowd, and the old adage, “Them that has, gets,” will take on new meaning. A most devastating stigma that can confront any person is the fear of being “phoney.” If you are afraid of being considered phoney, you will surely fail. No matter what you do appear otherwise, if you succeed in anything, there will always be the charge of phoneyness leveled against you by those who either cannot stand your success, do not have the guts to do what you are doing or wish they had thought of it first! #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
If you remain in the bounds of public propriety (and most outrageous tactics are!), perform your tasks or responsibilities in an efficient manner and are civil and courteous, you would be surprised at the things you can get away with in your appearance. Everyone who was ever a guest of William Randolph Hearst was astonished at the range and diversity of his knowledge. Whether his visitor was a cowboy or a Rough Rider, a New York politician or a diplomat, William Randolph Hearst knew what to say. And how was it done? Whenever Hearst expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested. For Hearst knew, all leaders know, that the royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things one treasures most. If you want to get to know a person, find out what interests them—what catches their enthusiasm. You can ask around about a person, or get to know things they said in the past, you can even interview a person, but you will not get to know them until you interact with them. And the best way to do that is to find out what they are interested in and let that be catalyst that builds the friendship. For instance, you may find discover someone belongs to a society of hotel executives called the Hotel Greeters of America. And perhaps their bubbling enthusiasm has made that individual president of the organization, and president of the International Greeters. No matter where its conventions are here, is there. If you talk to him about his interests, he will be willing to open up and express his hobby with vibrant enthusiasm. You may discover that one’s hobby is the passion of one’s life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
So, instead of getting to know a person by asking them what kind of music they like or whatever, find out what their hobby is before you meet them and then talk to them about it. Talking in terms of the other person’s interests pays off for both parties. The reward you get from this will be an enlargement of your life each time you speak to someone. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. One of the simplest mechanisms that can modify interaction patterns arises from one agent’s staying near another. The most basic examples of this mechanism involve staying nearby in a physical space. The general character of the mechanism persists even when the proximity is conceptual rather than physical. The biological prototype of this mechanism is adhesion, in which one organism stick to another or stays close to it. It is seen all over the biological World, from a virus that sticks to cell surfaces, to a flea that visits the Human World in the company of a rodent, to a baby kangaroo that travels with its mother by staying in her pouch. The effect is that the “following” agent experiences a patten of interactions similar to that of the “leading” agent. In addition, there is also more interaction between the follower and the leader. In daily life we spend time with out relatives, co-workers, and friends, and by “sticking with them,” we also meet the people they know. There are many follow-the-leader mechanisms beyond these simplest ones. For example, there is apprenticeship, in which the apprentice stays close to, and shares many experiences of, the master of some trade. Beyond formal apprenticeship, there are still other forms of what has been called “legitimate peripheral participation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
These arrangements not only let the trainee see how an expert individual works but also allow access to social interactions that are essential to the effectiveness of the leading agent. Other instances of modifying interaction by staying close to another agent include: hospital rounds; “big brother” relationships—either with real siblings or deliberately arranged mentors; following a guide around a tourist site or other new place; research training; going to work with a parent; or attending the school of a widely known teacher who has attracted other students with the same interests. All of these familiar procedures of the social World, and many more, share an element of acquiring the interaction patterns as well as the strategies of a leading agent, who serves a kind of template. In the World of computer networks, this kind of mechanisms has been generalized. “Recommender” systems allow users to “adhere” to the tastes of others, in order to interact with the persons and objects they have encountered. In such systems, the user provides some profile of interest, say by rating a sample of films. Then the system tells the user about films that were liked by other raters whose patten of evaluation is similar to the user’s own. Comparable methods have been constructed for finding other “taste goods,” such as books and music, for finding professional assistance (dentists, stockbrokers), and for finding online discussion groups or World Wide web pages of interest. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
In fact, most people on social media are marketing or advertising and only a small few respond to messages. It has become like an unorganized confusion of information. America Online (AOL) used to have chat rooms were people actually communicated and could send private message, in addition to public messages in a chat room. That for of social media might be conducive to make social media more about socializing. It gets kind of boring just look at people’s pictures and videos and not actually having discussions with people who have an interest similar to yours. These electronic versions imitate the wisdom of the now faded time when library books had signed checkout cards and it was possible to see who had previously read a book. In the contemporary on-line versions, however, you may not need to recognize the names of the others. Indeed, the Information Revolution makes possible recommendations based on statistical synthesis of others that might be closer to predicting your tastes than any other single users, or even a professional critic. Such systems are often able to help users find other agents or objects they will enjoy. These mechanisms for following an agent present an intricate mix of advantages and disadvantages. Among the sources of benefits and problems, we focus on two. The first is the ability to acquire interaction patterns implicitly without having a good theory of how things work. The second is living in the kind of clustered social network that results from wide use of the mechanism, a network where many of the other agents have strongly overlapping knowledge and social contacts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Using mechanisms for following, an agent can tacitly pick up the contact patterns of a leading agent without necessarily understanding the causes or the effects of that pattern. Although there are problems that we return to below, not having to understand the situation can be an important advantage. Indeed, most of the accomplishments of biological evolution, and much human social change, have occurred without the benefit of such explicit knowledge, let alone theoretical understanding. Nature can make a quite efficient food web without the science of ecology. Of course, theories are powerful when we can achieve them. (With scientific understanding, we could have foreseen the consequences of actions like introducing rabbits to Australia, where natural predators were absent.) However, good theories are extraordinarily costly to create and share with others. For many complex domains, they may long remain beyond our capabilities. In addition to three basic strategic moves, there are more complicated options. Instead of establishing a response rule directly, you can purposefully allow someone else to take advantage of one of these strategies. Three options are: You may allow someone to make an unconditional move before you respond. You may wait for a threat before taking any action. You may wait for a promise before taking any action. We have already seen examples in which someone who could move first does even better by relinquishing this option, allowing the other side to make an unconditional move. This is trye whenever t is better to follow than to lead, as in the tales of the America’s Cup race and gambling at the Cambridge May Ball. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
While it can be advantageous to give up the initiative, this is not a general rule. Sometimes your goal will be to prevent your opponent from making an unconditional commitment. When you surround an enemy, leave an outlet free. One leaves an outlet free so that the enemy may believe there is a road to safety. If the enemy does not see an escape outlet, he or she will fight with the courage of desperation. Deny the enemy an opportunity to make his or her own very credible commitment of fighting to the death. It is never advantageous to allow others to threaten you. You could always do what they wanted you to do without the threat. The fact that they can make you worse off if you do not cooperate cannot help, because it limits your available options. However, this maxim applies only to allowing threats alone. If the other side can make both promises and threats, then you can both be better off. When the body’s working, building, and battling go awry, we turn to medicine for diagnosis and treatment. Today’s methods, though, have obvious shortcomings. Diagnostic procedures vary widely, from asking a patient questions, through looking at X-ray shadows, through exploratory surgery and the microscopic and chemical analysis of materials from the body. Doctors can diagnose many ills, but others remain mysteries. Even a diagnosis does not imply understanding: doctors could diagnose many syndromes with unknown cases. After years of experimentation and untold loss of life, they can even treat what they do not understand—a drug may help, though no one knows why. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Leaving aside such therapies as heating, massaging, irradiating, and so forth, the two main forms of treatment are surgery and drugs. From a molecular perspective neither is sophisticated. Surgery is a direct, manual approach to fixing the body, now practiced by highly trained specialists. Surgeons sew together torn tissues and skin to enable healing, cut out cancer, clear out clogged arteries, and even install pacemakers and replacement organs. It is direct, but it can be dangerous: anesthetics, infections, organ rejection, and missed cancer cells can all cause failure. Surgeons lack fine-scale control. The body works by means of molecular machines, most working inside cells. Surgeons can see neither molecules nor cells, and can repair neither. Drug therapies affect the body at the molecular level. Some therapies—like insulin for diabetics—provide materials the body lacks. Most—like antibiotics for infections—introduce materials no human body produces. A drug consists of small molecules; in our simulated molecular World, many would fit in the palm of your hand. These molecules are dumped into the body (sometimes directed to a particular region by a needle or the like), where they mix and wander through blood and tissue. They typically bump into other molecules of all sorts in all places, but only stick to and affect molecules of certain kinds. Antibiotics like penicillin are selective poisons. They stick to molecular machines in bacteria and jam them, thus fighting infection. Viruses are a harder case because they are simpler and have fewer vulnerable molecular machines. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Worms, fungi, and protozoa are also difficult, because their molecular machines are more like those found in the human body, and hence harder to jam selectively. Cancer is the most difficult of all. Cancerous growths consist of human cells, and attempts to poison the cancer cells typically poison the rest of the patient as well. Other drug molecules bind to molecules in the human body and modify their behavior. Some decrease the secretion of stomach acid, other stimulate the kidneys, many affect the molecular dynamics of the brain. Designing drug molecules to bind to specific targets is a growth industry today, and provides one of the many short-term payoffs that is spurring development in molecular engineering. Current medicine is limited both by its understanding and by its tools. In many ways, it is till more an art than a science. In some areas, medicine has become much more scientific, and in others not much at all. We are still short of what I would consider a reasonable scientific level. Many people do not realize that we just do not know fundamentally how things work. It is like having a BMW, and hoping that by taking things apart, we will understand something of how they operate. We know that there is an engine in the front and we know it is under the hood, we have an idea that it is big and heavy, but we do not really see the rings that allow the pistons to slide in the block. We do not even understand that controlled explosions are responsible for providing the energy that drives the machine. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Better tools could provide both better knowledge and better ways to apply that knowledge for healing. Today’s surgery can rearrange blood vessels, but is far too coarse to rearrange or repair cells. Today’s drug therapies can target some specific molecules, but only some, and only on the basis of type. Doctors today cannot affect molecules in one cell while leaving identical molecules in a neighbouring cell untouched because medicine today cannot apply surgical control to the molecular level. Now for even better news. We have not run out of energy sources. Energy can be harvested from innumerable sources, including some that at first glance seem outlandish—as the steam engine did in its early days. Clunky and no doubt expensive by the standards of time, it was designed to increase energy supply by helping to pump water out of coal mines Craig Venter, the man who led the successful private effort to decode the human genome, is working toward the creation of artificial organisms that can clean up pollution—and create energy. “Biology,” he says, “can change our dependency on fossil fuels.” He is not alone. Stanford professors and graduate students are also pursuing the biological production of hydrogen from genetically engineered bacteria. Entrepreneur Howard Berke’s team is working to develop a material as thin as plastic wrap to directly convert sunlight into electricity capable of recharging cell phones, GPS, and other devices. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Others are taking advantage of waves and tides to pull energy out of the oceans. The La Rance tidal-power station in France turns out 240 megawatts of power. Other tidal systems are used in Norway, Canada, Russian, and China. In addition, every day the sun transfers the thermal-energy equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil to the oceans, and we already have technologies that can convert it to electricity. Farther out in both time and space is another potentially huge source of energy—the moon. It turns out that the moon is rich in helium 3—and helium-3, if combined with the hydrogen isotope deuterium, can tun out awesome amounts of energy. Indeed, just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the U.S.A. for one full year. The moon contains ten times more energy in the form of helium-3 than all the fossil fuels on the Earth. Add to these a long list of other potential sources, and it becomes clear that there is no absolute shortage of energy available to the human race. What we need are new, creative ways to access that supply. And today there are more scientists, engineers, inventors and sources of finance and venture capital than any time in history. We are also likely to see the de-massification process at work as the World energy system assumes a new structure more compatible with the needs of advanced knowledge-based economies. This suggests a multiplication of energy sources so that the system is no longer overwhelmingly dependent on coal, oil, and gas. It means more different sources and more different technologies matched by more different players and producers—including prosumers who, with their fuel cells or wind towers or other personal technologies, will increasing meet their own power needs. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
The central question, then is not whether we will overcome the energy disaster heading towards us but how soon. And that will depend in good measure on the outcome of wave conflict between vested interests still benefitting from our industrial-era energy systems and the pioneers researching, designing, and fighting for breakthrough alternatives. Faced with this battle, we should not let the pessimists’ warnings narrow our views of the possible. It helps to remember an earlier crisis that also involved energy—in this case nuclear. In August 1945, the entire World shook when two atomic bombs—the worst weapons ever seen—were dropped on Japan, bringing World War II to a fiery end. These weapons of mass destruction perfectly paralleled the mass production of the industrial age. Yet, miraculously, for the next half century no atomic weapon has been exploded in combat anywhere. Today we worry about nuclear proliferation and fear that terrorists may acquire one or more of these bombs. These are realistic worries. However, the danger does not even approach that which existed when the United States of America and the Soviet Union aimed literally thousands of missiles with atomic warheads at each other with triggers set to go off instantly. Still, I bet the state of the World in 2023 makes a lot of people want to start building basements and stock piling food and water. Speaking of food, not long ago Wendy’s International, whose 3,700 fast-food restaurants stretch from the United States of America to Japan to Greece and Guam, introduced an “Express Pak” order for drive-in customers. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
The Express Pak consisted of a hamburger, French fries, and a Coke. However, the customer had to order only the words Express Pak instead of specifying each item separately. The idea was to accelerate the service. In the words of one Wendy’s spokesperson, “We may be taking three seconds. But the cumulative effect can be significant.” This seemingly trivial business innovation tells us a lot about the future of power. For the speed with which we exchange information—even seemingly insignificant information—is related to the rise of a complex new system for wealth creation. And that lies behind the most important power shifts in our time. In itself, course, how quickly Wendy’s sells hamburgers is not exactly a matter of earth-shaking significance. However, one of the most important things to know about any system, and particularly any economic system, is its “clock-time,” the speed with which it operates. Every system—from the human body’s circulatory system to the society’s wealth creation system—can operate only at certain speeds. Too slow and it breaks down; too fast and it flies apart. All systems consist of subsystems, which likewise function only within a certain speed range. The “pace” of the whole system can be thought of as the average of the rates of change in its various parts. Each national economy and each system of wealth creation operates at its own characteristic pace. Each has, as it were, a unique metabolic rate. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
We can measure the speed of a wealth-making system in many ways: in terms of machine processes, business transactions, communication flows, the speed with which laboratory knowledge is translated into commercial products, or the length of time needed to make certain decisions, lead times for delivery, and so on. When we compare the overall pace of First Wave or agrarian systems of wealth creation with that of Second Wave or industrial systems, it becomes clear that smokestack economics run faster than traditional agricultural economies. Wherever the industrial revolution passed, it shifted economic processes into a higher gear. By the same token, the new system of wealth creation described in these pages operates at speeds unimaginable even a generation or two ago. Today’s economic metabolism would have broken the system in an earlier day. A new “heteojunction” microchip that switches on and off in two trillions of a second symbolized the new pace. The acceleration of change will transform society, and cause it to exceed their adaptive capabilities. Acceleration itself has effects independent of nature of the change involved. Hidden within this finding is an economic insight that goes beyond the old “time is money” cliché. The acceleration effect, indeed, implies a powerful new law of economics. This law can be stated simply: When the pace of economic activity speeds up, each unit of time comes to be worth more money. This powerful law, as we shall see, hold profound implications not just for individual businesses, but for whole economies and for global relations among economies. It has a special meaning for the relations between the World’s rich and poor. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 