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The Big, Blonde, Democratic Teuton
The expression of compassion for others is the essence of the gospel of Jesus as the Christ. It is meaningful to observe that Jesus’s compassionate acts were not occasional, nor mandated manifestations based on a list of tasks to be completed but everyday expressions of the reality of His pure love for God and His children and His abiding desire to help. One of the most poignant examples of kindness in the Christian Bible is when Jesus showed compassion at the grave of Lazarus. When Jesus saw Lazarus’ friends weeping, he wept alongside them (John 11.33-35). Over and over, our Lord Jesus felt compassion on people, healing them and comforting them. He saw the large crowd as sheep without a shepherd and he came to give them purpose and shelter. As the Son of God, Jesus possessed more than we can ever imagine. Even so, he gave up everything, voluntarily and selflessly sacrificing Himself for us so that we can have eternal life. In that sacrifice, we see the greatest example of compassion in the Bible. The stories of compassion in the Bible should motivate us to put compassion into action. Those who cannot make the leap and rise above human love to their higher self—with its impersonality and immateriality—may continue to draw a happiness from it. However, the limitations will be there, inexorable, unconquerable, of time and body, relativity, and change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
One of the most important scriptures in the Bible is Hebrews 13.2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Now, what are angels? Angels are messengers of God. Therefore, what this scripture could also mean is to show compassion to others, not only does how you treat people reflect on your and your family, but you could also be entertaining people who have great power and influence in this World. If you want to get ahead in life, the right way, it is important that people see you as a good person. Fear weakens a man, hate destroys him in the end, but love brings him his best. If everyone in the World would practice universal love, then the whole World would enjoy peace and order. We must learn to rise above our emotions, and understand by this kind of love a state of mind, not a state of emotion. When two people confront each other, there are six ego states involved, three in each person. Since ego states are as different from each other as actual people are, it is important to know which ego state is active in each person when something takes place between them. The exasperating response is where someone who wants sympathy gets facts instead. This is known as a child/parent-adult/adult. Impudence is where someone who expects compliance gets what is consider a “smart aleck” response instead, in the form of a factual statement. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
There are 812 or 6561 different types of duplex transactions possible. For example, if we engage in only three transactions, and each time we have a choice among 6597 varieties, then we have our three transactions in 65973 ways. This gives us about 300 billion different ways of structuring our three exchanges with each other. That certainly gives us all the room we need to express our individualities. Since most people engage in hundreds or thousands of transactions every day, each person has trillions and trillions of combinations at his disposal. Even if he has an aversion to 5000 of the 6597 possible types of transactions, and never gets into them, there is still plenty of room to maneuver in, and there is no necessity for his behaviour to be stereotyped unless he himself sets it up that way. If he does so, as most people do, that is not the fault of transactional analysis, but of others influences that form the chief subject matt of this report. Since this system, in all its branches, is referred to as transactional analysis, what has been described above, the analysis of single transactions, is called transactional analysis proper, which is the second step after structural analysis. Transactional analysis proper gives a rigorous definition of the system, which will be of interest principally to those trained in scientific methodology. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
A transaction consisting of a single stimulus and a single response, verbal or non-verbal, is the unit of social action. It is called a transaction because each party gains something from it, and that is why he engages in it. Anything that happens between two or more people can be broken down into a series of single transactions, and this gives all the advantages which any science attains when it has a well-defined system of units. Transactional analysis is a theory of personality and social action, and a clinical method of psychotherapy, based on the analysis of all possible transactions between two or more people, on the basis of specifically defined ego states, into a finite number of established types (nine complementary, 72 crossed, 6480 duplex, and 36 angular). Only about 15 of these commonly occur in ordinary practice; the rest are largely of academic interest. Any system or approach which is not based on the rigorous analysis of single transactions into their component specific ego states is not transactional analysis. This definition, in effect, purports to set up a model for all possible forms of human social behaviour. This model is efficient because it follows the principle of scientific economy (sometimes knows as “Occam’s razor”), making only two assumptions: that human beings can change from one ego state to another, and that if A says something and B says something shortly thereafter, it can be verified whether what B said was a response to what A said. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
It is also very effective because, so far, no examples have been found among thousands or millions of interchanges between human beings which could not be dealt with by the model; and it is rigorous as well, because it is limited by simple arithmetical considerations. The best way to understand the “transactional viewpoint” is to ask: “What would a one- or two- or three-year-old child do that would correspond to this grownup’s behaviour?” Eastern philosophers are fond of pointing out how Westerns live with a “divided” consciousness, experiencing a gulf between mind and body, between self and nature. Divided consciousness is a chronic self-consciousness, such that the person is always aware of self. Whether the person is watching a sunset, enjoying pleasures of the flesh, or playing a game of tennis, he or she is always aware of self as the “subject, whereas that which the person is noticing is experienced as the “object,” as “out there,” distance from the self. Even our language, with its grammatical structure, encourages us to enter a chronic state of self-consciousness, of reflection upon our experiencing. A child, before taking on language, apparently has the capacity to perceive in selfless fashion. Eventually, the child learns to monitor experience and action, after having learned that he or she will be called on to give an account of thoughts and actions. The child is to become a spy or witness of his or her own actions, and is to give a report to parents upon request. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
As the child grows older, such self-vigilance becomes habitual, and the rift in consciousness that hinders spontaneity has been permanently inserted. When a happening fully absorbs someone’s attention, the person may re-experience the long-lost mode of unreflective, unself-conscious perception. This is a terrible way to live—always to be watching one’s self. The capacity to be self-conscious is unique to human beings, because of the relative seize of the human cerebral cortex. Doubtless, the ability to observe the flow of one’s experiencing has some adaptive and adjustive value. However, chronic self-consciousness is agonizing, and it destroys enjoyment of living; in extreme instances, self-consciousness can so limit a person that he or she becomes unable to act at all until having first checked and rechecked the proposed action or communication. When self-consciousness is carried to this extreme, the individual may become nearly paralyzed by doubt and indecision, as in a pattern of neurosis called doubting compulsion. When used to “mirror” self and know how you are perceived by others, the gift of reflecting consciousness is helpful. Prayer to God and His Son, Jesus Christ, was developed as a means of healing the breach in consciousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The purpose of prayer is to help a person “transcend” the ego and experience a unification of self with all that exists. When such enlightenment and unification occur, the person becomes more capable of effortless action, grace of movement, and power of reason, because the person is not doing two things at once, that is, doing something and reflecting upon what is being done. Prayer is one of the greatest blessings we have while we are here on Earth. Through prayer we can communicate with our Heavenly Father and seek His guidance daily. Prayer is a sincere, heartfelt talk with our Heavenly Father. We should pray to God and to no one else. We do not pray to any other being or to anything made by man or God. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the water under the Earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,” reports Exodus 20.3-5. Prayer has been an important part of the gospel from the beginning of the World. An angel of the Lord commanded Adam and Eve to repent and call upon God in the name of the Son. “Wherefore, thou salth do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore,” reports Moses 5.8. This commandment has never been taken away. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Prayer will help us draw closer to God. All our thoughts, our words, and our actions are influenced by our prayers. The experience of overcoming chronic fixation upon a self-conscious, reflective state of awareness, so that one begins to smell and taste, and remember and imagine with greater vividness, can easily be described as “an enlargement of the World,” a rebirth, or a self-unification. Yet reflection, or self-witnessing, helps a person to learn skills. Self-consciousness may rob action of its spontaneity and of its joy. The aim of healthy personality is to be able to reflect upon experience when it is appropriate to do so, and to engage unself-consciously like a child in action, and in personal relationships, when there is no need to reflect. Action is one way to obtain temporary respite from self-consciousness. Warm-up exercises, followed by intense involvement in a game of tennis or basketball, or in dance, enable a person to be engaged without reflection. Other means for temporarily suppressing the act of reflection include listening to music, engaging in hobbies, and absorption in a book or a drama on a video steaming service or DVD. Dialogue with another person that fully engages one’s attention is also a means of overcoming self-consciousness. When such dialogue is going on, each person is responding to the other without premediated efforts to produce a particular impression in the experience of the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The Darwinian mood sustained the belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority which obsessed many American thinkers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The measure of World dominion already achieved by the “race” seemed to prove it the fittest. Also, in the 1870’s and 1880’s many of the historical conceptions of the Anglo-Saxon school began to reflect advances in biology and allied developments in other fields of thought. For a time, American historians fell under the spell of the scientific ideal and dreamed of evolving a science of history comparable to the biological sciences. The keynote of their faith could be found in E.A. Freeman’s Comparative Politics (1874), in which he allied the comparative method with the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority. “For the purposes of the study of Comparative Politics,” he had written, “a political constitution is a specimen to be studied, classified, and labeled, as a building or an animal to be studied, classified, and labeled by those to whom buildings or animals are objects to study.” If political constitutions were to be classified and compared by Victorian scholars as if they were animal forms, it was highly probable that the political methods of certain peoples would be favoured over others. Inspired by the results of the comparative method in philology and mythology, particularly by the work of Edward Tylor and Max Muller, Freeman tried, using this method, to trance the signs of original unity in the primitive institutions of the Aryans, particularly in the “three most illustrious branches of the common stock—the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
When Herbert Baxter Adams set up his great historical seminar at John Hopkins, it was with the official blessing of Freeman; and Freeman’s dictum, “History is past politics and politics is present history,” was emblazoned on the historical studies that came pouring forth from Adams’ seminar. A whole generation of historians receiving their inspiration from the John Hopkins school could have said with Henry Adams, “I flung myself obediently into the arms of the Anglo-Saxons in history.” The leading notion of the Anglo-Saxon school was that the democratic institutions of England and the United States of America, particularly the New England town meeting could be traced back to the primitive institutions of the early German tribes. Despite differences in detail, the Hopkins historians were in general agreement on their picture of the big, blonde, Democratic Teuton and on the Teutonic genealogy of self-government. The viewpoint of the school was given a fitting popular expression in 1890 with the publication of James K. Hosmer’s Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom, which drew upon the home literature of Anglo-Saxondom to establish the thesis that government of the people and by the people is of ancient Anglo-Saxon origin. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Wrote Hosmer: “Though Anglo-Saxon freedom in a partial form has been adopted (it would be better perhaps to say imitated) by every nation in Europe, but Russia, and in Asia by Japan, the hopes for that freedom, in the future, rest with the English-speaking race. By that race alone it has been preserved amidst a thousand perils; to that race alone is it thoroughly congenial; if we can conceive the possibility of the disappearance among peoples of that race, the chance would be small for that freedom’s survival.” Hosmer shared the optimism of his English contemporary John Richard Green, who believed that the English-speaking race would grow in enormous numbers and spread over the New World, Africa, and Australia. “The inevitable issues,” concluded Hosmer, “is to be that the primacy of the World will lie with us. English institutions, English speech, English thought, are to become the main features of the political, social, and intellectual life of mankind.” Thus would the survival of the fittest be written large in the World’s political future. What Hosmer did for Anglo-Saxon history, John W. Burgess did for political theory. His Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, published in the same year as Hosmer’s book, serves as a reminder of German as well as English influences in the American Anglo-Saxon cult; for Burgess, like Herbert Baxter Adams, had received a large part of his graduate training in Germany. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The peculiarity of his work, Burgess declared, it was method. “It is a comparative study. It is an attempt to apply the method, which has been found so productive in the domain of Natural Science, to Political Science and Jurisprudence.” It was Burgess’ contention that political capacity is not a gift common to all nations, but limited to a few. The highest capacity for political organization, he believed, has been shown, in unequal degrees by the Aryan nations. Of all these, only “the Teuton really dominates the World by his superior political genius.” It is therefore not to be assumed that every nation must become a state. If we may judge from history, The political subjection or attachment of unpolitical nations to those possessing political endowment appears to be as truly a part of the World’s civilization as is the national organization of states. I do not think that Asia and Africa can receive political organization in any other way…The national state is…the most modern and complete solution of the whole problem of political organization which the World has yet produced; and the fact that it is the creation of Teutonic political genius stamps the Teutonic nations as the political nations par excellence, and authorizes them, in the economy of the World, to assume the leadership in the establishment and administration of states. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The Teutonic nations can never regard the exercise of political power as a right of man. With them this power must be based upon capacity to discharge political duty, and they themselves are the best organs which have yet appeared to determine when and where this capacity exists. We see the beginnings of this, for instance, in songs like “We Shall Overcome,” which are living rituals, not just songs. A ritual like that of common silence as it has been practiced by the Friends as the center of their religious service could be acceptable to large groups of people; it could become a custom that every meeting of significance begins or ends with five or fifteen minutes of common silence given to prayer and concentration. It is not too farfetched an idea to suggest that, instead of prayers or patriotic formulae, classes in schools and special occasions in universities could be introduced by a period of common silence. We also have shared symbols, such as the dove and the outline of a human figure as symbols of peace and respect for man. There is no point in speculating about further details of possible common rituals and symbols outside church life, because they will grow naturally once the soil is prepared. In the field of art and music, there are innumerable possibilities for the creation of new ritual and symbolic expressions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Whatever new psychospiritual systems may arise, they will not be “fighting” religion, although they will be a challenge to those in the various religions who have made an ideology of religious teachings and an idol of God. Those who worship the “living God” will have no difficulty in sensing that they have more in common with the “unbelievers” than they have in what separates them; they will have a deep sense of solidarity with those who do not worship idols and who try to do what the believers call “God’s will.” I expect that to many the hope expressed here for new manifestations of man’s psychospiritual needs are too vague to form the basis of hope that such a development will happen. Those who want certainty and proof before they can take any hope seriously are right in reacting negatively. However, those who believe in the reality of the yet unborn will have more trust that man will find new forms of expressing vital needs, even though at this moment there is only a dove with an olive branch indicating the end of the flood. It is the rule rather than the exception in the historical process that ideas deteriorate into ideologies; mere words take the place of the human reality; these words are administered by a bureaucracy which thus succeeds in controlling people and gaining power and influence. And usually, the result is that the ideology, while still using the words of the original idea, in effect expresses the opposite meaning. This fate has happened to the great religions and to philosophical ideas; it has happened to Marx’s and to Dr. Freud’s ideas. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
What was Dr. Freud’s original system? First, it was radical thought; radical, in the original sense of the word, meaning going to the roots and—as Marx said—since the root is man, going to the very nature and essence of man. Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis was critical thought; critical first, of existing psychiatric ideas which took consciousness as the basic datum of psychiatry. However, Dr. Freud’s thought was critical in a much broader sense. It attacked many of the values and ideologies of the Victorian age; it attacked the notion that pleasures of the flesh were not a subject for rational and scientific investigation; it attacked the insincerity of Victorian morality; it attacked the sentimental notion of the “purity” and “innocence” of the child. However, its most important attack was directed against the notion that there is no psychic content transcending consciousness. Dr. Freud’s system was a challenge to existing ideas and prejudices; it opened a new era of thought corresponding to the new development in the natural sciences and in art. It might be called in this sense a revolutionary movement, even though despite his criticism of some aspects of society Dr. Freud did not transcend the existing social order, nor did he think of new social and political possibilities. What became of this radical and critical movement after the first thirty years of its existence? #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
First, psychoanalysis has become very successful, especially in the Protestant countries of Europe and in the United States of America, while, until the end of the First World War, it was mocked and derided by most “serious” psychiatrists and by the public in general There were many reasons for the growing success of psychoanalysis. The fact is that the movement, ridiculed during the first twenty years of its existence, came to be considered respectable in psychiatry, accepted by many social scientists, and popular among many literary men, some of whom—Thomas Mann, for example—were quite outstanding. However, this academic and intellectual recognition was not all; psychoanalysis became popular with the public; psychoanalysts found it difficult to take all the patients who asked for their help; in fact, the profession of psychoanalysis because one of the most rewarding from the economic standpoint and from that prestige. This successful development, however, was by no means paralleled by a corresponding richness and productivity of psychoanalytic discoveries as regards theory and therapy. In fact, it many be surmised that the very success of psychoanalysis contributed to its deterioration. Psychoanalysis lost is original radicalism and its critical and challenging character. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
An ability to recognize resistances demands some definite knowledge of their sources and their expressions. Hence it appears appropriate to recapitulate all that has been said about the subject in scattered places throughout this report—often without explicitly mentioning the term “resistance”—and to add certain points that are of special interest for self-analysis. The sources of resistance are the sum of a person’s interests in maintaining the status quo. These interests are not—and emphatically not—identical with a wish to remain ill. Everyone wants to get rid of limitations and sufferings, and in that wish, he is all for change, and for a quick change at that. What he wants to maintain is not “the neurosis” but those aspects of it which have proved to be of immense subjective value to him and which in his mind hold the promise of future security and gratification. The basis factors that no one wants to modify one iota are, briefly, those that concern his secret claims on life, his claims for “love,” for power, for independence and the like, his illusions about himself, the safety zones within which he moves with comparative ease. The exact nature of these factors depends on the nature of his neurotic trends. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In professional analysis the provocation for resistance is, in the great majority of cases, something that has occurred in the analysis itself. If strong secondary defenses have developed, the first resistances arise as soon as the analysts questions the validity of these defenses, that is, as soon as he casts any doubt on the rightness, goodness, or unalterability of any factor in the patient’s personality. Thus a patient whose secondary defenses consist in regarding everything concerning himself, faults included, as excellent and unique will develop a feeling of hopelessness as soon as any motivation of his is questioned. Another patient will react with a mixture of irritability and discouragement as soon as he encounters, or the analyst points out to him, any trace of irrationality within himself. It is in accordance with the function of the secondary defenses—protection of the whole system developed—that these defensive reactions are elicited not merely when a special repressed factor is in danger of being uncovered but when anything is questioned, regardless of content. However, if the secondary defenses are not of such vital strength, or if they have been uncovered and faced, resistances are for the most part a response to attacks on specific repressed factors. As soon as any domain is approached, closely or remotely, which is tabu for the patient he will react emotionally with fear or anger and will automatically set going a defensive action to prevent further trespassing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
This encroachment on a tabu need not be a specific attack but may be result merely from the analyst’s behaviour. Any thing he does or fails to do, says or fails to say, may hurt one of the patient’s vulnerable spots and create a conscious or unconscious resentment which for the time being blocks the co-operative work. However, resistances to analytical work can be elicited also by factors outside the analytical situation. If outside circumstances change during analysis in such a way as to favour a smooth functioning of the neurotic trends, or even to render them positively useful, the provocation for resistance is greatly increased; the reason is, of course, that the forces opposing change have been strengthened. However, resistance can be provoked also by unfavourable developments in daily life. If a patient feels, for example, that he has been unfairly dealt with by someone in his circle his indignation may be so great that he refuses any effort in analysis to seek the real reason why he felt injured or insulted, his entire energy being concentrated on revenge. If a repressed factor is touched upon, either specifically or remotely, a resistance may be produced by developments outside as well as within the analytical situation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Measurement is important using the Relationship Inventory. The Inventory contains statements regarding the degree to which the counselor is acceptant, empathic, and congruent, and the client responds by evaluating the statement on a six-point scale from “strongly true” to “definitely untrue.” Examples concerning empathy are: “He generally sense or realizes how I am feeling;” “He understands my words but does not realize how I feel.” In relationship to congruence sometimes items are: “He pretends that he likes me or understands me more than he really does.” The Inventory is scored for each of the four attitudinal elements, and there is also a total score. The counselor is the most significant factor in setting the level of conditions in the relationship, though the client, too, has some influence on the quality of the relationship. Clients who later show more change perceive more of these attitudinal conditions early in the relationship with their counselor or therapist. The more disturbed the client, the less he is likely to (or able to?) perceive these attitudes in the counselor. Counselor or therapists tend to be quite consistent in the level of attitudinal conditions which they offer to each client. The major finding from all of the studies is that those clients in relationships marked by a high level of counselor congruence, empathy and unconditional positive regard, show constructive personality development. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
These high levels of conditions are associated with positive changes on Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scales and indices, including ego-strength; positive change from the pre- to post-test battery as rated by clinicians working “blind”; decrease in anxiety scores and in a self-consciousness score; a higher level of Process Scales designed to measure process in therapy; and positive changes in counselor’s ratings. Clients relationships characterized by a low level of these attitudinal conditions show significantly less positive changes on these same indices. The client’s perception is the best predictor of change. This finding does not hold for the schizophrenic client, whose inner disturbance makes it difficult for him accurately to perceive the conditions offered by our conscientious and experienced therapist. With our schizophrenics, the rating of the conditions made by the unbiased raters is the best predictor of change. An unexpected finding with the schizophrenic clients is that low conditions in the relationship are associated with negative change in several respects. The clients not only fail to show constructive change but become worse in the judgment of clinicians rating their pre- and post-test batteries; show an increase in anxiety; are worse off than their matched no-therapy controls. Whether this finding holds for clinical clients who come for help has not yet been determined. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
As might be expected, more experienced counselors, when compared with inexperienced counselors, offer a higher level of these conditions, and are more successful in communicating these to their clients. Thus they are perceived as offering higher conditions, and their clients show more change over the course of the interviews. Many people are sent to counseling for romantic problems. Those who glorify romantic lover avert their eyes from the truth that there is a negative side to it. However ignored, it will one day come into focus. There is a common notion that love, to be worth its name, must be highly emotional and dramatically intense. That, of course, is one kind but it is not the best kind, which is calm, unchanging, and unexcited. The sentimental gush which is talked so often and so freely in religiomystic circles about loving one’s fellow humans is usually quite shallow and will not stand deep analysis. Nor is it the most important of all the virtues as such circles seem to believe. When a woman comes to a man for spiritual help or even spiritual companionship, he should not ask her for more than the chance to serve. Even if she is not conscious of having been sent to him for this purpose, or even if she mistakes the spiritual attraction for merely a human one, this remains true. It would be a spiritual failure on his part to ask for more then the opportunity to serve her. The service he gives must be given with a pure motive. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Therefore, he appearance in his life is a test for him. Should he fall in love with her the test still holds good, but its character may change. He is to keep the relationship at a high level. He is not to attempt to possess her but to be content with knowing and loving her. He must accept the situation with calm resignation and complete nonattachment. Does the unified man have to like everyone he meets? Some students believe that Jesus as the Christ commanded us to “love thy neighbour as thyself” and this question ought to be answered with a resounding Yes! However, in actual life we find that some unified men succeed in doing this whereases others frankly do not feel that way nor make any such effort. To make the love of everybody else a compulsory ethic ought not to be demanded even from a quester, much less from the masses! To make the cultivation of goodwill desirable as a general attitude would be more reasonable. Even so it should grow naturally out of the cultivation, not be forced. When a man discovers that the same Overself dwells in his enemy as in his own heart, how can he ever again bring himself to hate or injure another? It is easy to believe more softness to be compassion. It is easy to deceive oneself in this way. However, a vigorous analysis of one’s thoughts and observation of their results in action will expose the very real differences between them. “Do not day: O God, I thank thee that we are better than our brethren; but rather say: O Lord, forgive my unworthiness, and remember my breathren in mercy—yea, acknowledge your unworthiness before God at all times,” reports Alma 38.14. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to providing citizens with a professional fire service that meets or exceeds professional standards and best practices from across the nation. “The State Department asked me to go to Russia and several other communist countries to speak about contemporary American literature to the writer’s unions, and to the English-speaking clubs of the universities. It was a great trip, because the Russian people are gregarious and full of subtle humor, though, before glasnost, the Russian authority seemed dark and pervasive, like a giant shadow. Consequently, I liked the people and the architecture but felt uncertain about the country. I kept asking to visit a Moscow fire station, and the authorities kept stonewalling me. Finally, after a week of telephone calls, they agreed to take me to one of their huge centralized fire stations where there are ten or so fire companies. This was pretty unusual, for the fire department is quasimiliatry, that is, run by and attached to the army, and they do not normally take Americans to military installations. A reporter came, but they wouldn’t let him in to the station, which was rimmed by a high wall, and he wrote a long story about it in the magazine. I was taken to a reception hall, where I met a group of pretty congenial officers, a general and some colonels, who ran the Russian Fire Service. I was pretty impressed, though I just wanted to talk to a few back-step firefighters. I wanted to hear what the Russian firefighters felt about false alarms or nuisance fires—if, indeed, they existed in that country. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“I sat at the head of a long table and began talking about the problems of fighting fires in a large city, in overcrowded buildings where impoverished people lived, where false alarms were as frequent as changing traffic signals, where my one company would respond to forty calls a day, every day. I talked a little about the personal challenge of firefighting, the renewed confrontation, never really resolved, one fire after another. The general stood and pointed to a colonel sitting down the table. The colonel stood as the general related with great price that this man personally had been in more than a hundred fires. ‘Very good,’ I said, ‘congratulations,’ thinking but of course not saying, that to us in Sacramento, a hundred fires represented not a lifetime’s work but a single weekend in July.” The Sacramento Fire Department strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and the remind them of the importance of education. Every single thing they learn in school can and will apply to the real 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. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Does the Unified Man Like Everyone He Meets?
The greater the crime perpetrated by the leadership, the less likely it is that the people will ever believe their leaders to be capable of perpetrating such an event. Fictional character, Henry Regan, on the popular CBS television show Blue Bloods, confessed that when he was an office back in the early 1900s, that his officers would ride around and when they saw someone they wanted to terrorize, they would put on pink bunny ears and beat the tar out of them. He admits that it sounded so ridiculous that no one would ever believe them. If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the most crude and stupid things. The brutality of all national development is apparent, and we make no excuse for it. To conceal it would be a denial of fact; to glamour it over, an apology to truth. There is little in life that is not brutal except our ideal. As we increase the aggregate of individuals and their collective activities, we increase proportionately their brutality. In this World the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolation ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. In 1898, The United States of America waged a three-month war with Spain. It took the Philippine Islands from Sapin by treaty and formally annexed the Hawaiian Islands. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In 1899, the United States of America partitioned the Samoan Islands by agreement with Germany, and expressed its policy toward western interests in China in the “Open Door” note. In 1900, Americans took part in suppressing the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. By 1902, the Amry had finally suppressed insurrection in the Philippines; and in that year, the islands were made an unorganized territory. As the United States of America stepped upon the stage of empire, American thought turned once again to the subjects of war and empire; opponents and defenders of expansion and conquest marshaled arguments for their causes. After the fashion of late nineteenth-century thought, they sought in the World of nature a larger justification for their ideas. The use of natural selection as a vindication of militarism or imperialism was not new in European or American thought. Imperialists, calling upon Darwinism in defense of the subjugation of weaker races, could point to The Origin of Species, which had referred in its subtitle to The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin had been talking about pigeons, but the imperialists saw no reason why his theories should not apply to men, and the whole spirit of the naturalistic Worldview seemed to call for a vigorous and unrelenting thoroughness in the application of biological concepts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Had not Darwin himself written complacently in The Descent of Man of the likelihood that backward races would disappear before the advance of higher civilization? Militarists could also point to the harsh fact of the elimination of the unfit as an urgent reason for cultivating the material virtues and keeping the national power dry. After the Franco-Prussian War both sides had for the first-time invoked Darwinism as an explanation of the facts of the battle. “The greatest authority of all the advocates of war is Darwin,” explained Max Nordau in the North American Review in 1889. “Since the theory of evolution has been promulgated, they can cover their natural barbarism with the name of Darwin and proclaim the sanguinary instincts of their inmost hearts as the last word of science.” It would nevertheless be easy to exaggerate the significance of Darwin for the theory of militarism either in the United States of America or in Western Europe. Neither the philosophy of force nor doctrines of Machtpolitik had to wait upon Darwin to make their appearance. Nor was racism strictly a post-Darwinian phenomenon. Gobineau’s Essai sur L’Inegalite des Races Humanies, a landmark in the history of Aryanism, was published in 1835-55 without benefit of the idea of natural selection. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
As for the United States of America, a people long familiar with Indian warfare on the frontier and the pro-slavery arguments of Southern politicians and publicists had been thoroughly grounded in notions of racial superiority. At the time when Darwin was still hesitantly outlining his theory in private, racial destiny had already been called upon by American expansionists to support the conquest of Mexico. “The Mexican race now see in the fate of the aborigines of the north, their own inevitably destiny,” an expansionist had written. “They must amalgamate or be lost in the superior vigor of the Anglo-Saxon race, or they must utterly perish.” This Anglo-Saxon doctrine because the chief element in American racism in the imperial era; but the mystique of Anglo-Saxonism, which for a time had a particularly powerful grip on American historians, did not depend upon Darwinism either for its inception or for its development. It is doubtful that such monuments of English Anglo-Saxon historical writings as Edward Augustus Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest of England (1867-79) or Charles Kingsley’s The Roman and the Teuton (1864) owed much to biology; and certainly John Mitchell Kemble’s The Saxons in England in England (1849) was not inspired by the survival of the fittest. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Like other varieties of racism, Anglo-Saxonism was a product of nationalism and the romantic movement rather than an outgrowth of biological science. Even the idea that a nation is an organism that must either grow or fall into decay, which doubtless received an additional impetus from Darwinism, had been invoked before 1859 by the proponents of “Manifest Destiny.” Still, Darwinism was put in the service of the imperial urge. Although Darwinism was not the primary source of the belligerent ideology and dogmatic racism of the late nineteenth century, it did become a new instrument in the hands of the theorists of race and struggle. The likeness of the Darwinian portrait of nature as a field of battle to the prevailing conceptions of a militant age in which von Moltke could write that “war is an element of the order of the World established by God…[without which] the World would stagnate and lose itself in materialism,” was too great to escape attention. In the United States of America, however, such frank and brutal militarism was far less common than a benevolent conception of Anglo-Saxon World domination in the interests of peace and freedom. In the decades after 1885, Anglo-Saxonism, belligerent or pacific, was the dominant abstract rationale of American imperialism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The radial humanists have the conviction that there is a hierarchy of values in which those of the lower orders follow from the highest value, and these values are binding and compelling principles for the practice of life—individual and social. There may be difference in the radicalism about the affirmation of these values in the practice of one’s life, just as there are in Christianity or in Buddhism among those who lead the monastic life and those who do not. However, all these differences are relatively unimportant beside the principle that there are certain values which cannot be compromised. I submit that if people would truly accept the Ten Commandments as the effective principles to guide their lives, a dramatic change in our whole culture would take place. There is no need at this point to argue about details of the values which need to be practiced, for what matters is to gather those who accept the principle of practice rather of submission to an ideology. Another common principle is the solidarity of all men and the loyalty to life and to humanity which must always take precedence over the loyalty to any group. In fact, even this way of putting it is not correct. Any true love for another person has a particular quality: for I love in that person not only the person but humanity itself, or, as a Christian or Jewish believer would say: God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In the same way, if I love my country, this love is at the same time a love for man and mankind; and if it is not that, it is an attachment based on one’s incapacity for independence and, in the last analysis, another manifestation of idolatry. The crucial question is how these new-old principles can become effective. Those inside religion hope that they can transform their religion into the full practice of humanism, but many of them know that while this may prove to be true for some sectors of the population, there are others who for many obvious reasons cannot accept the theistic concepts and rituals so closely interwoven with them that it is almost impossible to separate the two. What hope is there for that part of the population which cannot even enter the ranks of the living Church? Can a new religion be founded which has no premises such as those in Revelation, or any kind of mythology? Obviously religions are manifestations of the spirit within the concrete, historical process and the specific, social, and cultural circumstances of any given society. One cannot found a religion by putting together principles. Religions are founded by rare and charismatic personalities of extraordinary genius. Such a personality has not appeared yet on today’s horizon, although there is no reason to assume that he has not been born. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, in the meantime, we cannot wait for a new Moses or a new Jesus; we must make do with what we have, and perhaps at this moment of history this is all to the good because the new religious leader might too quickly be transformed into a new idol and his religion might be transformed into idolatry before it had a chance to penetrate the hearts and minds of men. And we then left with nothing but some general principles and values? I do not believe so. If the constructive forces within industrial society which are choked by a deadening bureaucracy, by artificial consumption, and manipulated boredom are released by a new mood of hope, by the social and cultural transformations discussed in his report, if the individual regains his confidence in himself, and if people make contact with each other in spontaneous and genuine group life, new forms of psycho spiritual practices will emerge and grow which might be unified eventually in a total and socially acceptable system. Here, as well as with reference to many other points we have discussed, all depends on the courage of the individual to be fully alive and to seek solutions to the problem of his existence without waiting for the bureaucrats or the concepts to give him answers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
For Dr. Freud, as we have indicated before, growing civilization means growing repression—hence social evolution does not lead to the dissolution of repression but rather to its reinforcement. For Marx, on the other hand, repression is essentially the result of contradictions between the need for the full development of man and the given social structure—hence the fully developed society in which exploitation and class conflict have disappeared does not need ideologies and can dispense with repression. In the fully humanized society, there would be no need for repression, hence there would be no social unconscious. According to Dr. Freud, repression increases; according to Marx, it decreases in the process of social evolution. There is another difference between Freudian and Marxian thought which has not been sufficiently emphasized. Through rationalization one tries to make it appear as though an action is motivated by reasonable and moral motives, thus covering up the fact that it is caused by motives which contrast with a person’s conscious thinking. The rationalization is mostly sham, and has only the negative function of permitting a person to act wrongly, yet without awareness that he is acting irrationally or immorally. The ideology has a similar function, yet in one point there is an important difference. Take the example of Christian teaching: the teachings of Christ, the ideals of humility, brotherly love, justice, charity, etcetera, were once genuine ideals which moved the hearts of people to such a degree that they were willing to give their lives for the sake of these ideals. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, throughout history these ideals have been misused to serve as rationalizations for purposes which were their very opposite. Independent and rebellious spirits have been killed, peasants have been exploited and oppressed, wars have been blessed, hatred of the enemy has been encouraged in the name of these very ideals. Inasmuch as this was the case, ideology was not different from rationalization. However, history shows us that an ideology has also a life of its own. Even though the words of Christ were misused, they were kept alive, they remained in the memory of the people, and again and again they were taken seriously and retransformed, as it were, from ideologies into ideals. This happened in the Protestant sects before and after the Reformation; it is happening today in those Protestant and Catholic minorities which are fighting for peace and against hate in a World which professes to hold Chrisitan ideals, yet uses them as ideologies. The task of the critique is not to denounce the ideals, but to show their transformation into ideologies, and to challenge the ideology in the name of the betrayed ideal. The basic interest of transactional analysis is the study of ego states, which are coherent systems of thought and feeling manifested by corresponding patterns of behaviour. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Each human being exhibits three types of ego states. Those derived from parental figures, colloquially called the Parent. In this state, he feels, thinks, acts, talks, and responds just as one of his parents did when he was little. This ego state is active, for example, in raising his own children. Even when he is not actually exhibiting this ego state, it influences his behaviour as the “Parental influences,” performing the functions of a conscience. The ego state in which he appraises his environment objectively, and calculates its possibilities and probabilities on the basis of past experience, is called the Adult ego state, or the Adult. The Adult functions like a computer. Each person carries within a little boy or little girl, who feels, thinks, acts, talks, and responds just the way he or she did when he or she was a child of a certain age. This ego state is called the Child. The Child is not regarded as “childish” or “immature,” which are Parental words, but as childlike, meaning like a child of a certain age, and the important factors here is the age, which may be anywhere between two and give years in ordinary circumstances. It is important for the individual to understand his Child, not only because it is going to be with him all his life, but also because it is the most valuable part of his personality. Through careful study it is evident that two Parental components in most cases, one derived from the father, the other from the mother; it will also uncover within the Child ego state the Parent, Adult, and Child components which were already there when the Child was fixated, as can be verified by observing actual children. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
This second order analysis reveals that the separation of one feeling-and-behaviour pattern from another in diagnosing ego states is called structural analysis. The extent to which a person is factually helpless toward resistances depends not only on their overt but also on their hidden strengths—in other words, the degree to which they are discernible. To be sure, they may be discovered and met in open battle; a patient may be fully aware, for example, that he has a resistance against coming to analysis, or he may even realize that he is fighting tooth and nail against relinquishing a neurotic trend, as Clare did in her eventual battle for and against her dependency. More often resistances sneak up on him in disguised forms, without his recognizing them as such. In that case he does not know that resisting forces are operating; he is merely unproductive, or feels listless, tired, discouraged. And he is, of course, helpless when he is thus confronted with an enemy which is not only invisible but, as far as he knows, does not even exist. One of the most important reasons why he may not recognize the presence of a resistance is the fact that defensive processes are set in motion not only when he is directly confronted with the problems involved, that is, when his secret claims on life are laid bare, his illusions questioned, his security measures jeopardized, but also when he remotely approaches these domains. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The more intent he is on keeping them intact, the more sensitive he is to an approach even from the far distance. He is like a person who is frightened by thunderstorms and who is not only terrified by thunder and lightening but reacts with apprehension even to a cloud that appears on the far horizon. These long-distance reactions escape attention so easily because they arise with the emergence of a subject that is apparently innocuous, one that does not seem likely to stir up strong feelings of any kind. Certainly, the professional person who holds the view that individuals are essentially objects to be manipulated for the welfare of the state, or the good of the educational institution, or “for their own good,” or to satisfy his own need for power and control, would not experience the attitudinal elements I have described as constituting growth-promoting relationships. So, these conditions are congenial and natural in certain philosophical context but not in others. Members of the psychotherapeutic professions can function as representative of prevailing views of truth and reality; they are not agents for enlightenment and growth, but agents of social control, dismissing dissenting perspectives as “insane.” A person’s perspective is vulnerable to being so altered, through contact with others, that the person’s action no longer serves his or her own need, but those of the other persons. When this happens, the person is said to be mystified. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The idea that ordinary people can love one another, including those they have never met as well as those they meet day after day, is a pleasant piece of sentimentalism. It sounds well when solemnly uttered by ministers of religion before their respectful congregations or when published as advice by professional psychologists. However, where are the individuals who succeed in following it? If we look at history or at the cities and villages we already know, we find that the only form where something like it is discovered is that of organized philanthropy. This is excellent, this is commendable, but still it is not strictly love. Most ordinary people cannot get closer than this to the full sympathetic identification which another person which love really is. Only saints can achieve complete empathy; only they can wash the leper’s sores. For all others, the idea is vague and unreal, although convenient to use in talk at Christmas time. Karamazov, a character in one of Dostoevski’s Russian novels, drily said, “One can love one’s neighbour in an abstract way occasionally perhaps, even from afar, but in close contact, almost never…It is precisely the neighbour, the one who is physically close to us, whom one cannot possibly love. At best, one can love those who are far away.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Now this may be a little exaggerated but it does speak openly of the difficulty many people experience in their attitude towards those with whom they are in daily contact. If they are forced to live with unscrupulous or unliked people, it is still more difficult. Then it will be all they can do to numb their revulsions. However, ordinary people must come to terms with their associates or have at least to take care not to show their dislike. They must particularly learn to endure others who are thoroughly repulsive to them. Unless they do achieve this capacity, there is no hope for the human race, which most otherwise go on fighting and warring until, with the frightful weapons now coming into its hands, it destroys itself. Such tolerance is still only the first station of the route to that active goodwill which the more idealistic persons who take the Quest seriously must try to achieve eventually. Many of them find it hard to each even this first halt. They are sensitive, they are often heterodox, and they cannot warm up to those whose ideas, habits, mannerisms, or orthodoxies irritate them. The Quester who does not eat meat, for instance, may not enjoy sitting down at table with those who delight in it. If he has the fortunate circumstances to do as he likes, he need not do so. However, most are not so free. He may put up with meat-laden table and its diners with bad grace or good grace, but put up with them he must. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Or take another case, that of having perforce to associate with someone who indulges in frequent sniffles when such a personal habit is felt to be most repulsive. Again, if he is a Quester and if he is free to do as he likes and to avoid the other person, he is entitled to do so. However, suppose he is not free? Instead of straining himself in the futile task of trying to love unlovable people, it is better to learn how to give them enough goodwill to tolerate them. This is withing his capacity. If he must live with them, or associate with them, he must try to put up with them, which means trying to put himself in their place. And that is a most desirable spiritual exercise, an advanced stepping-stone toward love itself. The practice of goodwill helps the practiser by attracting more of God’s grace and shaping good character. The thought of it, habitual and sustained, helps those who touch, or move within, his orbit. The profound meditation upon it repays him with blissful feelings and mystical harmony. If a man can be nothing else, let him be kind to others. Each time he does this he goes out of his own little ego. He comes a little closer to expressing the spiritual self-dwelling hidden in his heart. Some people believe that love shown to a terrorist would call forth its like from him. This is a typical belief among mystics down through the centuries. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
When tested by experience, we find that it is successful in some cases but failure in many more. And where it fails it harms the criminal because he believes the more strongly that his crimes go unpunished, and it harms society because it is a misapplication of a good ideal. Everything, even love, must be applied at the right time and at the right place, for when misapplied even a virtue becomes a vice. We must not forget that wise old Latin proverb which warms us that when the best is corrupted it becomes the worst of all. The love for all humanity which many religionist professes to feel would not need much testing to find out the shallowness of its reality. The saint possessed by his higher self may, perhaps out of excessive kindness, be able to give it to the undesirable and the disgusting types. However, the more impersonal philosopher has a wide goodwill, which is not the same as love. When one’s love for another is of the highest type and leads to an expansion of understanding, compassion, and tolerance of others, he has glimpsed the greater purpose of personal love: how the surrender of his “heart” may lead to its opening to, and becoming united with, Universal Love. Being aware of the weaknesses or faults of another does not necessarily mean we love him less. It is an essential part of the message of love that we learn how to forgive surface characteristics by contemplating the essence of the beloved, to see what “is,” while also seeing deeper to what truly IS—the Divine evidenced in a particular form. Only when love ceases to be personal and becomes impersonal, when it passes out of the local into the universal, does it fulfill itself and attain its own unmixed and unadulterated integrity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The Sacramento Fire Department helps people every day. They focus on the value and safety of people as they strive for excellence in providing service to their neighbourhoods and community. “What does it mean to a firefight to work in low-income neighborhood? It means that most of the firefighters you find there are the most dedicated ones. They have a higher rate of activity, more fire activity, and they are in more danger. And there were times, not so much recently but five of six years ago, when some of the citizens did not appreciate us being here. Now that has changed. I tell this when I teach recruits in firefighting. Did you ever notice, when you get a kitchen fire in a nice suburban neighborhood, they make sure to put themselves up in the Marriott for a few months? When they come back, did you ever notice their house? It’s nicer than it was before. New curtains, new draperies, new wallpaper, new granite countertop. They probably lit the thing to begin with, either intentionally or they were just careless. Probably intentionally. Let’s face it, most of our fires are. What about a poor person? They haven’t got a pot to pee in. When you look at that burned-out hulk, you know they are going to be sleeping in that house tonight. So, the harder we work and the more diligent we are in fighting the fires in poor areas, the more those people are going to be materially benefitted. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“I thank God I was born into a family with good economic means. These people are less fortunate. They didn’t ask to be born into a horrible situation, but they were. In a way, it makes you feel good to help people who really need the help. I think that most firefighters who work in those neighborhoods, whether they’re churchgoing folk, Christians, or whatever, feel the same way. We’ve had training and classes on the problem of AIDS and hepatitis B in medical emergency situations, and we take precautionary measures. We’re required to wear rubber gloves, and if it’s a situation that warrants it, we’ll put on goggles or glasses to protect our eyes. And we’ll even wear a mask or a bandanna to protect our lungs. I don’t recollect that I’ve ever been exposed to those two things, but I was on the rescue unit where there were a lot of medical emergences of various types, so I’ve been exposed to some things. And I’ve been tested to make sure I haven’t contracted those things. I did it on my own. I went in a could of weeks ago for a personal checkup and a blood test, just to make sure. I think all firefighters should do that one time to time. One of the nurses down at the hospital drew blood one a patient who had infectious hepatitis and ended up getting stuck by the needle and died. Our fire department takes pretty good care of us in that they provide us with nutritional training. They have our physical evaluation every year where they measure our body fat, see how much weight we can push, and have us do a series of push-ups and that sort of thing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“As this AIDS thing becomes more prevalent, if they have any questions about it, firemen should check it out. We fill out injury slips or exposure reports when we get hurt or get smoke in our lungs. So we would pursue thing new stuff through a doctor. If we have any question that we’ve been exposed to AIDS, I believe that guys—women, too—should pursue the testing for their own health” The Sacramento Fire Department continues to grow and evolve throughout their careers in public service. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember, parents, raise your children to love God, Jesus Christ, and America. Every child should grow up proud to be citizen of the United States of America. Also, we must remember to respect the property of others, respect law and order, treat others with respect, especially our elders. Real love is not something to be withdrawn abruptly when the person who is its object annoys or offends you. If the human race had not yet learnt to love its neighbour, it is not likely to take the farther step of loving its enemy. 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. Rock of Ages, let our song praise Thy saving power; Thou amidst the raging foes, wast our shelt’ring tower. Furious they assailed us, but Thine arm availed us, and Thy word broke their sword when our own strength failed us. Children of the martyr-race, whether free or fettered, wake the echoes of the songs, where ye may be scattered. Yours the message cheering that time is nearing which will see all men free, tyrants disappearing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Energetic and enthusiastic scare actors who love Halloween and wish to join our spooktacular team for speaking and non-speaking roles can apply today for our 2024 Halloween experience! In person auditions will be held on Friday, August 2nd from 4pm to 9pm and Saturday, August 3rd from 12pm to 4pm. See link in bio for more details.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
I Love Myself and Use You to Satisfy My Interest or Feelings
We have been told by well-meaning ministers of religion and counsellors in psychology to practice Jesus’s words, “Love thy neighbour.” Now there are two different ways in which we can do so, because there are two different interpretations of these words—the religious and the philosophic. According to the first, we have at least to be amiable toward our next-door neighbour, or at most to throw our arms around him and express our warm feeling for hum in a gushy, sentimental, hyper-emotional manner. According to the second and philosophic interpretation, we must understand that every person who crosses our path is our neighbour, everyone with whom we are thrown into momentary or continuous contact is our neighbour, whether at home or at work. It is in these immediate contacts that irritations are bred, differences are noted, and dislikes appear. It is much easier to love humanity as a whole or in the abstract than it is to love humanity in the individual and in the concrete. Despite the instinctive urge to manifest irritability, dislike, anger, resentment, or even hatred against those with whom you are thrown in contact, you can steel your will and resist the negative feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If you can take all these negative feelings and sublimate them into understanding, tolerance, and goodwill based on the teachings of philosophy, you are loving your neighbour in the sense that Jesus meant it. You will then see that such philosophic love is far removed from and far superior to the hyper-emotionalism which slows hot and cold. How can I love my enemy, it is asked, or anyone who is outwardly or inwardly repugnant to me? We are not called on to love what is evil in our enemy nor what is ugly in anyone. We are called on, however, to remember that alongside of the evil there is the divine soul in him, alongside of the ugliness there is the divine beauty in him. His non-awareness of it does not alter the fact of its existence. And because he is a bearer of something grander than himself, unconscious of it though he be, we are to meet his hostility with our goodwill, his baseness with out nobility, and thus help him by our thought or our example to move onward—even if no more than one millimeter—towards the discovery and realization of his own divine soul. When we are enjoined to love others, we are really enjoined to sympathize with them as fellow living creatures and to have compassion for their sufferings or ignorance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
If the thought of our enemy arouses hatred, dislike, or fear, he will continue to haunt. The only way to free him is to arouse our compassion for him, to extend goodwill toward him. In the moment that we feel like this we exorcise his wrath and are liberated. “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” the dictum preached by Jesus and practiced by the self-actualized Christians, seems to offer a remote and unapproachable ideal. However, if we come to understand what Jesus meant and how the self-actualized Christian can realize it, it will not seem so. Every man does indeed love himself, but he does not love the whole of himself. There are defects and weaknesses in himself which he hates. He cannot therefore be expected to love them in his Neighbour. However, if he perceives that these faults eventually bring painful Karmic results, he can be expected to feel compassion for those who suffer from them. In the case of the self-actualized Christian, not only is such a consideration operative but also the perception of his neighbour’s existence within the one universal Mind in which he feels himself to be rooted. It is easy and natural for him, therefore, to practice loving kindness towards his neighbour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Here, at this final stage of knowledge, which is Christianity, the “I” in a man becomes inseparable from the “you.” Both exist simultaneously within him, whereas in the ordinary man they stand fundamentally opposed to each other. No longer is the personality the sole content of the mind: it is now but a partial content. In his inmost attitude he is conscious of unity with others and consequently emanates a perfect sympathy towards them. This is not the sentimental attitude which often goes with the superficial emotion called love. It is profoundly deeper. It can never change, whereas emotional love may turn to dislike or even hate. This inner sense of unity can in no wise alter it is always there. Nor can it even be impeded by physical or selfish considerations. There is nothing in another man’s face or body, fortune or misfortune, mind, or heart, which can obstruct the ceaseless flow of the blesser. “We two are rooted in the same Overself” is the remembrance which he cherishes in himself. He has understood the inner penetration of the many in the One and of the One with the many. What he feels for himself is not different from what he feels for others; but what he does for himself will be necessarily different, because wisdom demands recognition of the superior and hence more responsible role which has been allotted to him in his game of life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Many patients who come to a psychiatrist for the first time introduce themselves and shake hands when he invites them into his office. Some psychiatrists, indeed, offer their own hands first. I have a different policy about handshakes. If the patient proffers his hand in a hearty way, I will shake it to avoid being rude, but in a noncommittal fashion, because I am wondering why he is being so hearty. If he offers it in a way which merely suggests that he considers it good manners, I will return the compliment in such a way which indicates that he is desperate, then I will shake it firmly and reassuringly to let him know that I understand his need. However, my manner when I enter the waiting room, the expression on my face and the position of my arms, indicates clearly enough to most newcomers that this amenity will be omitted unless they insist upon it. This is intended to establish, and usually does establish, that we are both there for a more serious purpose than to prove that we are good fellows or to exchange courtesies. Mainly, I do not shake hands with them because I do not know them, and I do not expect them to shake hands with me, because they do not know me; also, some people who come to psychiatrist’s object to being touched, and it is a courtesy to them to refrain from doing so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The ending of the interview is a different matter. By that time, I know a great deal about the patient, and he knows something about me. Thus, when he leaves, I make a point of shaking hands with him, and I know enough about him to know how to do it properly. This handshake means something particularly important to him: that I am accepting him even after he has told me all the “bad” things about himself. (“Acceptance” is not used here in it ill-defined, sentimental sense; it means, specifically, that I am willing to spend more time with him. This involves a serious commitment which may, in some cases, mean one or more years of patience, effort, ups and downs, and getting up in the morning.” If he needs comforting, my handshake is such that it will comfort him; if he needs assertion of his masculinity, my handshake will evoke his masculinity This is not a carefully thought-out device to seduce the patient; it is a spontaneous and freely-given recognition of him as I now know him after talking for an hour with him about his most intimate concerns. On the other side, if he has lied to me out of malice rather than natural embarrassment, or tried to exploit or browbeat me, I will not shake hands with him, so that he knows he will have to behave differently if he wants me on his side. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
With women, it is slightly different. If one needs a palpable sign that I accept her, I will shape hands in a way suitable to her needs; if (as I know by this time) another shrinks from contact with men, I will say farewell in a correct way but let her pass without a handshake. This latter cause illustrates most clearly the reason for not shaking hands as a greeting: if I shake hands, I awaken her abhorrence. I have, in effect, intruded upon and insulted her before the interview, by forcing her, out of good manners, and against her inclination, to touch me and let me touch her, however courteously. In therapy groups, I follow a similar policy. I do not say Hello on entering, because I have not seen the members for a whole week, and I do not know to whim I am saying Hello. A light or cordial Hello might be quite out of place in the light of something that has happened to them in the interval. However, I do make an extraordinarily strong point of saying Good-by to each member at the end of the meeting, because then I know to whom I am saying Good-by, and how to say it in each case. For example, suppose one woman’s mother has died since the last meeting. A genial Hello from me would seem out of place to her. She might forgive me for it, but there is no need to put that strain on her. By the time the meeting is over, I know how to say Good-by to her in her bereavement. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Socially, it is different, since friends are for stroking. With them, Hello and Good-by range from an open handshake to a big hug, depending on what they are ready for or need; or sometimes it is josh and jive to keep from getting too involved, a “smile when you say that.” However, one thing in life is more certain than taxes and just as certain as death: the sooner you make new friends, the sooner you will have old ones. So much for Hello and Good-by. What happens in between falls into the framework of a specific theory of personality and group dynamics, which is also a therapeutic method, knows as transactional analysis. To appreciate what follows, it is first necessary to understand the principles of this approach. Plotinus’ belief that in all his lesser loves, man is seeking the divine, that it is the object he permanently wants much more than these temporary ones, is the truth to which he must come one day. And he will come by a double movement: the first, away from them by successive disenchantments, the second by progressive glimpses of the divine beauty. A life without love is a life emotionally starved and therefore stunted in growth. However, do not limit the meaning of the word love either to a selfish or animalistic definition. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
How many unreflective and selfish persons have uttered the words “I love you” to someone else—wife, friend, or teacher when what they actually, if unconsciously meant was, “I love myself and use you to serve my interests or to satisfy my feelings.” A merely physical or purely emotional love will fade and die when events test if it really seeks the happiness of the beloved rather than the pleasure of the lover. Despite its fundamental conservatism, the eugenics craze had about it the air of a “reform,” for it emerged at a time when most Americans liked to think of themselves as reformers. Like the reform movements, eugenics accepted the principle of state action toward a common end and spoke in terms of the collective destiny of the group rather than of the individual success. This is significant of the general trend of thought in the Progressive era. A rising regard for the collective aspects of life was one of the outstanding characteristics of the shift in the dominant pattern of thought. The new collectivism was not socialistic, but was based upon an increasing recognition of the psychological and moral relatedness of men in society. It saw in the coexistence of baronial spledour and grinding poverty something more than the accidental dispensation of Providence. Refusing to depend upon individual self-assertion as an adequate remedy, men turned toward collective. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The change in the political outlook of the common man was responsible for a change in the fundamental mechanisms of thought among workers in the social sciences. The formalistic thought of the nineteenth century had been built upon an atomistic individualism. Society, men had believed, was a loose collection of individual agents; social advance depended upon improvements in the personal qualities of these individuals, their increased energy and frugality; among these individuals the strongest and best rose to the top and gave leadership to the rest; their heroic accomplishments were the ideal subject matter of history; the best laws were those that gave them the greatest scope for their activities; the best nations were those that produces most leaders of this type; the way of salvation was to leave unhindered the natural processes that produced these leaders and gave the affairs of the World into their hands. This pattern of thought was static; instead of inquiry it seemed to encourage deductive speculation; its essential function was the rationalization of existing institutions. Those who were satisfied with it had felt relatively little need for concrete investigation or even for significant novelty in their abstractions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Between the Spanish-American War and the outbreak of the First World War there was a great restlessness sin American society, which inevitably affected the patterns of speculative thought. The old scheme of thought was repeatedly assailed by critics who were in sympathy with the new spirit of the Progressive era. The intellectual friction engendered by this discontent fired the energies and released the critical talents of new minds in history, economics, sociology, anthropology, and law. The result was a minor renaissance in American social thought, a renaissance which saw in relatively short span of years the rise to prominence of Charles A. Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, John Dewey, Franz Boas, Louis D. Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is easier to enumerate the achievements of this renaissance than to characterize its intellectual assumptions, but certainly its leading figures did share a common consciousness of society as a collective whole rather than a congeries of individual atoms. They shared also an understanding of the need for empirical research and accurate description rather than theoretical speculation cast in some traditional mold. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
A drastic departure from ancestor worship in history was marked by Charles Beard’s study of the origins of the Constitution by Frederick Jackson Turner’s quest for environmental and economic explanations of American development. Brandies opened new possibilities in law by drafting for the first time a factual sociological brief in defense of a state law regulating conditions in labour in private enterprise. Franz Boas led a generation of anthropologists away from unilinear evolutionary theory toward cultural history and took pioneer steps in the criticism of race theory. John Dewey made philosophy a working instrument in other disciplines, applying it fruitfully to psychology, sociology, education, and politics. Veblen exposed the intellectual sterility of prevailing economic theory, and pointed the way to an institutional analysis of the facts of economic life. In accordance with the spirit of the times, the most original thinkers in social science had ceased to make their main aim the justification and perpetuation of existing society in all its details. They were trying to describe it with accuracy, to understand it in new terms, and to improve it. Man’s development requires his capacity to transcend the narrow prison of his ego, his greed, his selfishness, his separation from his fellow man, and hence, his basic loneliness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
This transcendence is the condition for being open and related to the World, vulnerable, and yet with an experience of identity and integrity; of man’s capacity to enjoy all that is alive, to pour out his faculties into the World around him, to be “interested”; to be rather than to have and to use are consequences of the step to overcome greed an egomania. From an entirely different standpoint, the principle shared by all racial humanists is that of negating and combating idolatry in every form and shape—idolatry, in the prophetic sense of worshiping the work of one’s own hands and hence making man subservient to things, and in this process becoming a thing himself. The idols against which the Old Testament prophets fought were idols in stone or wood, or trees or hills; the idols of our day are leaders, institutions, especially the State, the nation, production, law and order, and every man-made thing. Whether or not one believes in God is a question secondary to whether one denies idols. The concept of alienation is the same as the Christian Bible concept of idolatry. It is man’s submission to the things of his creation and to the circumstances of his doing. If they are true to their common tradition, whatever may divine believers and nonbelievers, there is something which unites them, and that is the common fight against idolatry and the deep conviction that no thing and no institution must ever take the place of God or, as a non-believer may prefer to say, of that empty place which is reserved for No-thing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Dr. Freud was mainly concerned with the uncovering of the individual unconscious. While he assumed that society enforced repressions, these were the repression of instinctual forces, and not the social repression which really matter—the repressions of the awareness of social contradictions, socially produced suffering, of the failure of authority, of feelings of malaise and dissatisfaction, etcetera. Freudian analysis has shown that it is possible to some degree to make the individual unconscious conscious, without touching the social unconscious. However, it follows from the premises which were present thus far, that any attempt for de-repression which excludes the social sphere must remain limited. Only if it transcends the individual realm, and if the process includes the analysis of the social unconscious, is the full awareness of what had been repressed is possible. The reasons for this proposition follows from what has been said before. Unless a person can transcend his society and see how it furthers or hinders the development of human potentialities, he cannot be fully in touch with his own humanity. Socially conditioned taboos and restrictions must appear as “natural” to him, and human nature must appear in a distorted form, if he does not recognize the distortion of human nature by the society, he happens to live in. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
If uncovering the unconscious means arriving at the experience of one’s own humanity, then, indeed, it cannot stop with the individual but must proceed to the uncovering of the social unconscious. This implies the understanding of social dynamics and the critical appraisal of one’s own society from the standpoint of universal human values. The very insight into society which Marx has given us is a condition for becoming aware of the social unconscious, and hence for the full awakening (“depression”) of an individual. If the “should be Ego where there was Id,” humanistic social criticism is a necessary precondition. Otherwise, the person will become aware only of certain aspects of his individual unconscious, yet in other aspects hardly more awake as a total person than the rest. It must be added, however, that not only is critical understanding of society important for the analytic understanding of oneself, but that the analytic understanding of the individual unconscious is also a significant contribution to the understanding of society. Only if one has experienced the dimension of the unconscious in one’s personal life can one fully appreciate how it is possible that social life is determined by ideologies which are neither truths nor lies or, to put it differently, which are both truths and lies in the sense that they are rationalizations which have the function of hiding the real motivation of social and political actions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Recently, I had occasion to listen to some recorded interviews by a young counselor of elementary school children. She was very warm and optimistic in her attitude toward her clients, yet she was ineffective. She seemed to be responding warmly only to the superficial aspects of each child and so the contacts were charry, social, and friendly, but it was clear she was not reaching the real person of the child. Yet in a few ways, she rated reasonably high on each of the conditions I have described. So perhaps there are still elements missing which I have not captured in my formulation. I am also aware of the possibility that different kinds of helping relationships may be effective with different kinds of people Some of our therapists working with schizophrenics are effective when they appear to be highly conditional, when they do not accept some of the bizarre behaviour of the psychotic. This can be interpreted in two ways. Perhaps a conditional set is more helpful with these individuals. Or perhaps—and this seems to me to fit the facts better—these psychotic individuals perceive a conditional attitude as meaning that the therapist really cares, where an unconditional attitude may be interpreted as apathetic noncaring. In any event, I do want to make it clear that what I have given are beginning formulations which surely will be modified and corrected from further learnings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
In the major part of analytical literature it is an implicit or explicit axiom that we are helpless toward our resistances, that is, that we cannot overcome them without expert help. This conviction will be held as the strongest argument against the idea of self-analysis. And it is an argument that will carrying heavy weight, not only with analysts but also with every patient who has been analyzed, because both analyst and patient know the tenacious and devious struggles that arise when precarious territory is approached. However, an appeal to experience can never be a conclusive argument, because experience itself is determined by the whole complex of ruling concepts and customs, and by our mentality. More specifically, analytical experience is determined by the fact that the patient is not given a chance to cope alone with his resistances. The stronger consideration is the theoretical premise that underlies the analyst’s conviction, which is no more and no less than Dr. Freud’s whole philosophy of the nature of man. This subject is too intricate to delve into here. Only this much: if man is driven by instincts and if among them a destruction instinct plays a prominent role—as was the contention of Dr. Freud—not much, if any, space is left in human nature for constructive forces that might strive toward growth and development. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
And it is these constructive forces that constitute the dynamic counterpole to the forces producing the resistances. A denial of them by necessity lead to a defeatists attitude toward the possibility of overcoming our resistances through our own efforts. I do not share this part of the Freudian philosophy, but I do not deny that the question of resistance remains a serious consideration. The outcome of self-analysis, as of every analysis, depends by and large on the strength of the resisting forces and the strength of the self to deal with them. No two persons can occupy the same space, and so each has a different place from which to view the World. It follows that, if there are eight billion human beings in the World, there are 8 billion ways for this World to be experienced, none more real or valid than another. If each person embodies a unique perspective, then it is a momentous thing indeed to invalidate or destroy it. This is one cruel feature of colonial exploitation, which destroyed the perspectives of black Africans, Australian aborigines, and Native American Indians. Women and African Americas around the World have complained, legitimately, that their perspectives are often ignored or invalidated by the dominate European male populations. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
With the advent of the various liberation movements, the neglected perspective are revealed to the World, and an enriched existence accrues to all concerned. The growing interest of young people in the religion and the lifestyles of traditional peoples such as the American Indians and Africans, and Mormons, is a quest for perspectives upon self and World that are experienced as more life giving then the perspective of White, male, middle-class American. The human race is a myriad of refractive surfaces staining the White radiance of eternity. Each surface refracts the refractions of refractions of refractions. Each self refracts the refractions of others’ refractions of self’s refractions of others’ refractions…Here is glory and wonder and mystery, yet too often we wish to ignore or destroy those points of view that refract the light differently from out own. 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. Unto the hills I life mine eyes, whence comes my help that lies in God, who is enthroned above the skies, who made the Heavens and Earth to be. He guides thy foot over mountains steeps, he slumbers not, they soul He keeps; behold, He slumbers not nor sleeps, of American the guardian He. He is thy rock, thy shield, and stay, on thy right hand a shade always; the sun never smiteth thee by day, the moon at night never troubles thee. The Lord will guard thy soul from sin, thy life from harm without, within, thy going out and coming in, from this time forth eternally. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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An Altar Boy Just Escaped from Mass or Something
The choices you make—mission, education, marriage, career, and faith in God—will shape your eternal destiny. Much has been written and said about today’s generation of young adults. Research shows that many resist organized religion. Many are in debt and unemployed. A majority like the idea of marriage, but many are reluctant to take that step. A growing number do not want children. Without the gospel and inspired guidance, many are wandering in strange paths and losing their way. However, your righteous choices will keep you from getting off course. Think of it: If you choose not to take a drink of alcohol, you will not become an alcoholic! If you never choose to go into debt, you will avoid the possibility of bankruptcy! The Lord will always keep Hos promise: “I will lead you along.” The only question is, will we let ourselves be led? Will we hear His voice and the voice of His servants? If you are there for the Lord, I testify that He will be there for you. If you love Him and Keep His commandments, you will have His Spirit to be with you and guide you. “Put your trust in that Spirit which leadeth to do good…By this shall you know, all things…pertaining unto things…pertaining unto things of righteousness.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
If we are steadfast and immovable in doing good, our customs will help us to stay on the covenant path. We all have customs and traditions that are personal, from our family, or from the community in which we live, and we hope to keep all those that align with the principles of the gospel. Edifying customs and traditions are fundamental to our efforts to stay on the covenant path, and those that are an obstacle, we ought to reject. A custom is the practice or the frequent and habitual way of thinking for a person, culture, or tradition. Frequently, the things we think and do in a habitual way we recognize as normal. Few people know what love really means because with nearly all it is filtered through the screens of bodily and selfish considerations. In its pure native state, it is the first attribute of the divine soul and consequently it is one of the most important qualities which the seeker has to cultivate. The love for which man is searching exists; it is as perfect, as beautiful, as perpetual, and as healing as he can imagine it to be. However, it does not exist where one wants to find it. Only the inner kingdom holds and gives it at the end of his search. No other human being can do so unless he or she has previously entered the kingdom, and then only through all the limitations and colourings of the Earthly consciousness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Although we have learned that a love restricted to the limited circle of wife, family, or friends is unphilosophic and should be extended in universal compassion to all mankind, this should not be mistaken to mean that such a restricted love ought to be abandoned. On the contrary, it should have its fullest place within the larger one. We also believe that “love” is one of the most misused words in English. We may now add that it is also one of the most debased words. Why? Because, very often, it is based on sheer self-interest and not on the beloved’s interest and gives only so lang as it gets; because, not seldom, the greater the ardour with which it begins, the greater the antipathy with which it ends; and because it frequently mistakes the goading of animal glands for the awakening of human affection. True love does not change or falter because the beloved has changed and wavered or because the physical circumstances wherein it was born have become different. It cannot be blown hither and thither by the accidents of destiny. It is not merely an emotional attraction, although it will include this. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, …O no! it is an ever-fixed mark…” wrote Shakespeare. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
It expressed itself outwardly in an exceptionally kindly behaviour. He will not hurt others unnecessarily. He feels that one of the best pieces of advice he can give others is: “Be kind.” In this way you abrase your own egoism and show forth something—just an echo—of this love which emanates from the indwelling spiritual self. The cost in thus weakly and briefly identifying yourself with others is little: the gain in moral growth is large. When your duties, activities, or responsibilities in life call for critical judgment of any person, that is allowable. However, when you fall into it for the sake of idle gossip or, what is worse, when you are nastily censorious, slanderously back-biting, for the sake of malice, that is unkind and unpardonable. Above his own deliberate willing or wishing, quite spontaneously and impulsively, a feeling of pure love begins to well up within him. It is unconnected with physical or egoistic causes, for all those who touch his orbit benefit by it. If they are foolish or dreadful, sinful or deformed, unclean or disagreeable, it does not stop flowing. No one has ever unraveled the mystery of love as it exists between a man and a woman. Since it is usually beyond our power to accept or reject, we should regard it as a Divine Message and seek out its meaning to our spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
What is normal for some may be odd for others, depending on their customs and traditions. Which customs and traditions are normal in our lives? Today, we often hear about “a new normal.” If you really want to embrace a new normal, I invite you to turn your heart, mind, and soul increasingly to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus as the Christ. Let that be your new normal. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things,” reports Articles of Faith 1.13. At its peak moments, which can arise only in its first or last stages and which belong only to its affectional rather than passional side, human love catches and reflects feebly the nature of divine love. The romantic aureole which young persons put around love, the demands made on it for that which it cannot give, point to the need of maturer instruction. Yet there is a relationship where two can grow in virtues side by side, learning wisdom from one another, harmonizing more and more with each other. However, this calls for self-control, eliminating negatives, cultivating positives. No one has the right to bind, hinder, or restrict the free spiritual movement of another person—no matter how close his blood, contractual, or emotional relationship may be—who enters into the pursuit of higher well-being. If it is done in the name of love, then that word has its meaningly sorely misrepresented, for it is really being done in selfishness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
This quality of “love” is not to be measured by the exhibitions of effusiveness on the part of its possessor; it is to be measured by the presence or absence in him of egolessness. Whoever talks of his love for mankind will reveal it better by positive deeds than by sentimental displays. When brought down to individuals, the fact is, however, that such love is hard to feel. Only the actualized Christian really possesses it. Our Heavenly Father’s love for each of His children is real. He is there for each one. The eternal principle of love is manifested by living the two great commandments: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. We are willing to help each other because we love one another, and our loved one’s needs become our needs, and ours become theirs. No matter what language a child of God speaks or what country he comes from, we love each other because we are brothers, children of the same Father. It is not enough to avoid being a stumbling block for others; it is not enough to notice the needy on the road and pass by. Even if it is the first and only time, we meet him or her in this life, let us take advantage of every opportunity to help our neighbour. By loving the Overself within you in worship you are loving it in all men, because it is present in them, too. Hence, you do not have to go out of your way to love any individual specially, separately, although you will naturally feel affection for some. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Adversity in our lives can cause doubt about the fulfillment of the promises that have been made to us. Please trust in our Father. He always keeps His promises, and we can learn what He wants to teach us. Traces of earlier customs survive in present-day cultures. According to the Doctrine of Survival, meaningless customs must be survivals. When and where they first arose, they had a practical or at least a ceremonial intention, but are now fallen into absurdity from having been carried on into a new state in society where the original sense has been discarded. If we can accept the conclusion that every established and settled institution is justifiable, in its setting, as an adaptation, it seems to me that we are thereby accepting the extension of the Darwinian theory to the field of science and society. Sociology is a psychology rather than a biological science. The consciousness of kind, which is the basis of all social organization, is a mental state and not a biological process. Although the fittest is not always the best, the characteristic of the social process makes them identical. Society, however, in selecting the best, gives weight to such qualities as sympathy and mutual aid. It usually eliminates the incompetent and the irresponsible. The improvement of society must be a slow evolutionary process waiting upon the gradual increment of personal characteristics “adapted” to the life conditions of modern industrial society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The individual is a product of his social life and society is an organization of such individuals. Man’s psychical outfit is not divisible into the social and the non-social; but that he is all social in a large sense, is all a part of the common human life. We may desire abolition of war, industrial justice, greater equality of opportunity for all. However, no amount of preaching good will or the golden rule or cultivation of sentiments of love and equity will accomplish the results. There must be change in objective arrangements and institutions. We must work on the environment, not merely on the hearts of men. The prevailing code of morals fails to pierce the veil of the impersonal corporate relations of modern society, and the blame for social ills must be fixed on the absentee malefactors. If we were to cut back unnecessary dehumanizing consumption today, it would mean less production, less employment, and less income and less profit generated in certain sectors of the economy. Clearly, if this were done willy-nilly, with no planning, etcetera, it would cause extreme hardship for the economy as a whole and for specific groups of people. What would be required is a planned process of spreading the increased leisure across all areas of work, retraining of people, and a redeployment of some material resources. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Time would be needed, and planning would of course have to be social rather than private, since no one industry could organize and implement a plan affecting wide sectors of the economy. Given proper planning, the reduction in total income and profit would not seem to be an insurmountable problem, since the need for income would have been reduced with the lowering consumption. As our productive potential has increased, we have been faced with the choice of much less work with a much higher production and consumption with a steady level of work. Somewhat begrudgingly we have chosen a mixture of the two. Production and consumption have been increased, and at the same time work hours have been reduced and child labour largely abolished. This choice was not dictated by technical necessity, but was the result of changing social attitudes and political struggle. Whatever the merits of theses suggestion are, they are of little importance in comparison with what economists can suggest in response to the question, Is a stationary technological society possible? The important point is that the specialists address themselves to this problem, and they will do so only if they see the relevance of the question. One should not forget that the main difficulty may be found not in the economic and technical aspects of the problem but in its political and psychological aspects. Habits and ways of thought do not bend easily, and since many powerful interest groups have a very real stake in maintaining and speeding up the consumption treadmill the struggle to change the pattern will be hard and long. As have been said many times, the all-important point at this time is that we make a beginning. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We are not alone in our fixation on material consumption—other Western nations, Russia, China, Japan, and East European nations also seem to be caught in the same destructive trap. Witness the Chinese claim that they will bury us in washing machines, cars, minerals, refrigerators, etcetera. The real challenge would be not to engage them in the wrong race, but to transcend this stage of social development and challenge them to build a truly human society—which will not be defined and measured by the number of Smart TVs or cars. If the consumers were to reduce their consumption to satisfy their real needs as living human beings, while this question of an eventually stationary production level is at the moment an essentially theoretical one, there is a very practical one which would arise. If this were to happen, if we redirected and transferred production from certain “unnecessary” private consumption to more humane forms of social consumption, the present rate of economic growth could be maintained. The needs here are clear and have been noted by many contemporary analysts and writers. A partial list of activities would include: a reconstruction of much of the nation’s living spaces (millions of new housing units), a vast expansion and improvement in public education and public health, development of urban and intercity systems of public transportation, tens of thousands of small and large recreation projects in American communities (parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, etcetera), a major beginning in the development of cultural life—brining drama, music, dance, painting, movie making, etcetera, into hundreds of thousands of communities and millions of lives which currently have no real sense of this dimension of human existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
All these efforts involve physical production and the development of vast human resources. Such projects have the immediate virtue of attacking the problems of the impoverished minority, at the same time engaging the imagination and energies of the non-poor. If not completely eliminate, they also soften the problems created by cutting back on consumption. If major programs of this kind were to be undertaken, national economic and social planning would, of course, be required since substantial shifts in the use of human and material resources would be involved. A prime result of such efforts would be to show that we were indeed moving toward a genuinely human community. If we guaranteed that in each aspect of such programs the people and communities involved would be responsible for project development and implementation, this would be another great step in the direction of creating an alive, involved society. At the national level, enabling legislation is necessary plus adequate financing, but given this all-important minimum, maximum public participation and project diversity should be the prime principle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
In such a shift from the private to the public sector of consumption, private spending would be restrained as more income was diverted to higher taxes, and there would be a measurable shift from deadening, dehumanizing private consumption to new forms of public consumption that would involve people in creative community activities. Needless to say, such a shift would require careful planning to avoid severe upsets in the economic system; in this respect, we face the same problem in the convention from armament to peace production. For man, inasmuch as he is man—that is to say, inasmuch as he transcends nature and is aware of himself and of death—the sense of complete aloneness and separateness is close to insanity. Man as man is afraid of insanity, just as man as terrestrial being is afraid of death. Man has to be related, he had to find union with others, in order to be sane. This need to be one with others is his strongest passion, stronger than pleasures of the flesh and often even stronger than his wish to live. It is this fear of isolation and ostracism, rather than the “castration fear,” that makes people repress the awareness of that which is taboo since such awareness would mean being different, separate, and hence, to be ostracized. Even if his own eyes could convince him that it is false, for this reason the individual must bling himself from seeing that which his group claims does not exist, or accept as truth that which the majority says is true. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The herd is so vitally important for the individual that their views, beliefs, feelings, constitute reality for him, more so than what his sense and his reason tell him. Just as in the hypnotic state of dissociation the hypnotist’s voice and words take the place of reality, so the social pattern constitutes reality for most people. What man considers true, real, sane, are the clichés accepted by his society, and much that does not fit in with these clichés is excluded from awareness, is unconscious. There is almost nothing a man will not believe—or repress when he is threatened with the explicit or implicit threat of ostracism. Retuning to the fear of losing one’s identity, for the majority of people, their identity is precisely rooted in their conformity with the social clichés. “They” are who they are supposed to be—hence the fear of ostracism implies the fear of the loss of identity, and the very combination of both fears has a most powerful effect. Let us imagine a person who has observed that in certain situations in which he would like to participate in discussions he is tongue tied because he is afraid of possible criticism. If he allows this observation to take root within himself he will begin to wonder about the fear involved, since it is out of proportion to any real danger. He will wonder why the fear is so great that it prevents him not only from expressing his thoughts but also from thinking clearly. He will wonder whether the fear is greater than his ambition, and whether it is greater than any consideration of expediency, which for the sake of his career, would make it desirable that he produce a good impression. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Having thus gained an interest in his problem, he will try to find whether similar difficulties operate in other areas of life, and, if so, what form they take, He will examine his relations with women. Is he too timid to approach them because they might find fault with him? What about his life that involves pleasures of the flesh? Was he once important for a while because he could not get over a failure? Is he reluctant to go to parties? What about shopping? Does he buy an expensive house because otherwise the real estate agent might think he is too economical? Does he tip too generously because the waiter might look down upon him? Furthermore, exactly how vulnerable is he in regard to criticism? What is sufficient to touch off an embarrassment or to make him feel hurt? Is he hurt only when his wife overtly criticizes his necktie or is he uneasy when she merely praises Justin for always matching his tie and his socks? Such considerations will give him an impression of the extent and intensity of his difficulty and of its various manifestations. He will then want to know how it affects his life. He knows already that it makes him inhibited in many areas. He cannot assert himself; he is too complaint with what other expect of him, and therefore he can never be himself but must automatically play a part. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Not being able to be himself makes him resentful against others, for they appear to dominate him, but it also lowers his own self-esteem. Finally, he looks out for the factors that are responsible for the difficulty. What made him so fearful of criticism? He may remember that his parents held him to very rigid standards, and may recall any number of incidents in which he was scolded or made to feel inadequate. However, he will also have to think of all the weak spots in his actual personality which, in their totality, render him dependent on others and therefore make him regard their opinion of him as of compelling importance. If he can find the answers to all such questions his recognition that he is afraid of criticism will no longer be an isolated insight, but he will see the relationship of this trait to the whole structure of his personality. It may well be asked whether I mean by this example that a person who has discovered a new factor should deliberately ransack his experiences and feelings in the various ways indicated. Certainly not, because which a procedure would involve the same danger of merely intellectual mastery that was discussed before. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
However, he should grant himself a period of contemplation. He should mediate on his finding in much the same manner as an archaeologist who has discovered a buried statues, badly mutilated, looks at his treasure from all angels until the original factor that a person recognizes is like a searchlight turned on certain domains of his life, lighting up spots which have hitherto been dark. If only he is vividly interested in recognizing himself, he is almost bound to see them. These are point at which the guidance of an expert would be particularly helpful. I hypothesize that growth and change are more likely to occur the more that a counselor is experiencing a warm, optimistic, acceptant attitude toward what is in the client. It means that he prizes his client, as a person, with somewhat the same quality of feeling that a parent feels for his child, prizing him as a person regardless of his particular behaviour at the moment. It means that he cares for his client in a non-possessive way, as a person with potentialities. It involves an open willingness for the client to be whatever feelings are real in him at the moment—hostility or tenderness, rebellion or submissiveness, assurance of self-depreciation. It means a kind of love for the client as he is, providing we understand the word love as equivalent to the theologian’s term agape, and not in its usual romantic and possessive meanings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This description is a feeling which is not paternalist, not sentimental, nor superficially social and agreeable. It respects the other person as a separate individual, and does not possess him. It is a kind of liking which has strength, and which is not demanding. We have termed it a beneficial regard. Consciousness is awareness, the state of or faculty of being mentally cognizant or aware of anything. This important state of being not only refers to the unique capacity to perceive, remember, think about, and imagine the World in its many realities and possibilities. It includes a special human capacity—to reflect upon the person’s immediate way of being aware. Thus, you can engage in remembering the past; of someone asks, “What are you doing right now?” you can reply, “I am trying to remember something.” You can tell the difference, through such reflection, between perceiving, remembering, and imagining. Indeed, loss of the capacity for such discriminating reflection, confusion of seeing with imagining, is one of the signs by which students of abnormal personality identify psychosis. The first property of human consciousness to which we call attention, then, is that it can be reflected on. Humans are capable of being self-conscious, as well as conscious of the World beyond themselves. This strange ability of the human to “clamber outside of self” and look back at self is a valuable tool of consciousness expansion. It enables the person to see self as others see the person. In gives one an added foothold on reality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
We do not have to be hindered by self-judgment. Compassion is an attribute of Christ. It is born of love for others and knows no boundaries. Even when we do what is right, the circumstances in our life can change from good to bad, from happiness to sadness. God answers our prayers according to His infinite mercy and love and in His own time. Our Saviour’s plea is to “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.16. We want to see Jesus for who He is and we want to feel His love. Worthiness is a process, and perfection and an eternal trek. We can be worthy to enjoy certain privileges without being perfect. There is a natural, probably a mortal, tendency to compare ourselves with others. Unfortunately, when we make these comparisons, we tend to compare our weakest attributes with someone else’s strongest. Obviously these kinds of comparisons are destructive and only reinforce the fear that somehow we do not measure up and therefore we must not be as worthy as the next person. We need to come to terms with our desire to reach perfection and our frustration when our accomplishments or behaviours are less than perfect. Salvation does not come all at one; we are commanded to be perfect even as our Father in Heaven it perfect. It will take us ages to accomplish this end, for there will be greater progress beyond the grave, and it will be there that the faithful will overcome all things, and receive all things, even the fulness of the Father’s glory. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
As California’s Capitol City fire department, it is the Sacramento Fire Department’s mission to provide unparalleled fire, rescues, and emergency medical services to their community. “Firefighters are individuals unto themselves, with a tremendous sense of humor. I think you need it in this type of job. I don’t think there is another occupation where a sense of humor is so important. The pranks that are played on one another, the fraternity house atmosphere at times, is necessary to cut both the tension of what it is you actually do when you go to work and the tedium in between. Sometimes you meet guys in the job who think they know everything, but the job doesn’t let them get away with it for every long. There was this kid, one of those people who don’t know anything but think they have it all together. He was a probie, a probationary fireman, and he looked like an altar boy just escaped from Mass of something. When you tell him something, he says, ‘I know that. I know that. I’ll tell you something. My friend X and I have been tight because we work together in the same station. I’ve never been to Vietnam or anything like that, but they say that when you are close to death and you’re with somebody, it makes you closer. Well, I know that since we found that baby in that collapsed building, X and Y and I are a lot closer than we were. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“I guess just knowing that you could die, just that fact does something to bring you together. We knew that is something happened we were all going together.” California’s Capital City fire department stives to maintain a focus on providing value to the residents, business owners, and visitors who live, work and play within in boundaries. The Sacramento Fire Department promotes safety and assists people in their time of crisis. They seek not only to make a good impression, but to provide the public piece of mind that their fire department is capable, ready, and willing to help them when they need it. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. As this is a community of family values, it is essential to raise your children to love America, be patriotic, love God and Jesus Christ, respect and obey law and order, and treat others with dignity and kindness. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, One Nation under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. God of the World, eternity’s sole Lord! King over kings, be now Thy name adored! Blessed are we to whom Thou dost accord this gladsome time Thy wonderous ways to scan! This is the day bless above all others, for the Rock of Ages rested thereon. Six days are days for toil and labour, but the seventh day is a day unto the Lord. Toil not! This day is not for labour! In six days was the World created. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Fear of Isolation and Ostracism
Many people wonder why it is so important to work hard. Well, accumulation is the reward of personal merit and millionaires are a product of natural selection; the business class is essentially predatory in outlook and habits. The personal attributes of the ideal pecuniary man are ordinarily reserved for moral delinquents. Where the function of the captain of industry is conventionally considered a productive one, the methods of a developed business society is an attenuated form of sabotage. Where pecuniary acquisition is regarded as the reward of social service, the productive function of industry is an expression of workmanship, and the partially fraudulent character of business is an expression of salesmanship and chicanery. Competition has sometimes been looked at chiefly as a rivalry in productive service, but this is only true of the past when there had been no divorce between business and industry. Competition had once centered about rivalry between producers for industrial efficiency; but when business became supreme over industry it had become chiefly a contest between seller and consumers with a large admixture of fraudulent exploitation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Institutions, individuals, and habits of thought are results of selective adaptation. The simple aggression characteristic of barbarian culture has given way to shrewd practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of accumulating wealth. There are the qualities which have become essential for selective admission into the leisure class. The tendency of pecuniary life is, in a general way, to conserve the barbarian temperament, but with the substitution of fraud and prudence, or administrative ability, in place of the predilection for physical damage that characterizes the early barbarian. The process of selection, under the conditions of modern society, has caused the aristocratic and bourgeois virtues—that is to say the destructive and pecuniary traits—to be found among the upper classes, and the industrial virtues, the peaceable traits, largely among the classes given to mechanical industry. The thing that distinguishes post-Darwinian science from pre-evolutionary science is not the insistence on facts, nor again the effort to formulate schemes of growth or development. It is a difference of spiritual point of view…a difference in the basis of valuation of the fact for the scientific purpose, or in the interest from which the facts are appreciated. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Evolutionary science is unwilling to depart from the test of causal relation or quantitative sequence. The modern scientist who asks the question “Why?” demands an answer in terms of cause and effect and refuses to go beyond it to any ultimate system, to any teleological conception of the cosmos. This is the crux of the distinction; for earlier natural scientists were not satisfied with this bare formula of mechanical sequence, but sought for some ultimate systematization the facts within a framework of natural law. They persistently clung to the notion of some spiritually legitimate end resident in and underlying the matters of fact which they observed. Their object was to formulate knowledge in terms of absolute truth; and this absolute truth is a spiritual fact. This pre-Darwinian viewpoint still dominates the conceptions of modern economics. The ultimate laws formulated by the classical economists are laws setting down the normal or natural in the light of their preconception regarding the ends to which, in the nature of things, all things, tend; and this preconception imputes to things a tendency to work out what the instructed common sense of the time accepts as the adequate or worthy end of human effort. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Yet evolutionary natural science deals only with cumulative causation, and not with the formulation of some normal case, which is constructed not out of any available facts but out of the investigator’s ideal of economic life. Traditional economics, following a preconceived notion of the normal, formulates an abstraction of the hedonistic man as a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness, passive under the buffetings of pain and pleasure stimuli. In the light of evolutionary science, on the contrary, man is seen to be a coherent structure of propensities and habits which seeks realization and expression in an unfolding activity. Instead of seeking for normal cases in the existence f an imaginary normal hedonistic man, a truly evolutionary economics must be the theory of a process of cultural growth as determined by the economic interest, a theory of cumulative sequence of economic institutions stated in terms of the process itself. Where other economist had found in Darwinian science merely a source of plausible analogies or a fresh rhetoric to substantiate traditional postulates and precepts, it is a loom upon which the whole fabric of economic thinking could be rewoven. The dominant school of economists had said that the existing is the normal and the normal is the right, and the roots of human ills lie in acts which interfere with natural unfolding of this normal process toward its inherent end in a beneficent order. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
By virtue of their hedonistic preconceptions, their habituation to the ways of a pecuniary culture, and their avowed animistic faith that nature is in the right, the classical economists knew that the consummation to which, in the nature of things, all things tend, is the frictionless and beneficent economic system. This competitive ideal, therefore, affords the normal, and conformity to its requirements affords the test of absolute economic truth. In so far as economists had tried to use Darwinism, it was only to fortify this theoretical structure. Henceforth, economics should abandon such preconceived notions and devote itself to a theory of the evolution of institutions as they actually are. It is interesting to note that earlier political economists writing in the nineteenth century saw clearly that the economic process of greater and greater production was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Once a decent standard of material life had been achieved, it was hoped and expected that productive energies would be redirected toward the truly human development of society. The goal of producing more material goods as the final and total end of life was foreign to them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essentially to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude, in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the World with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grown without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the Earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. And though it is true that a shortening of the hours of labour would in many cases lessen the national dividend and lower wages; it would probably be well that most people should work rather less; provided that the consequent loss of material income could be met exclusively by the abandonment by all classes of the least worthy methods of consumption; and they could learn to spend leisure well. The most revolutionary change in our times lies in the fact that all the peoples of the World have opened their eyes and are aware of their desire for a dignified material life, and that man has discovered the technical means for the fulfillment of this aspiration. In the Western World and in Russian it will take only a relatively short while until this stage is achieved, even though it will take much longer in the nonindustralized countries of Asian, Africa, and Latin America. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Does this mean that in the rich industrial countries there is almost no longer any need for repression? This is, indeed, a widespread illusion among most people; yet it is not a fact. These societies, too, exhibit many contradictions and irrationalities. Does it make sense to spend millions of dollars on storing agricultural surpluses while millions of people in the World are starving? Well, in some senses yes. Many of the people who are starving in these other countries are not allies of America. The World is already overpopulated and by feeding people who are starving, they will be encouraged to breed more. When people cannot afford to feed themselves, they generally abstain from having children, which would reduce the burden on the World. Does it make sense to spend half of the national budget on weapons which, if and when they are used, will destroy our civilization? Well, the only way to protect a nation is to be heavily armed. This will make developed nations and less developed nations strongly reconsider an attack. Does it make sense to teach children the Christian virtues of humility and unselfishness and, at the same time, to prepare them for a life in which the exact opposites of these virtues are necessary in order to be successful? #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
In spite of our sinful heats, competition can bring out the best in people. When we compete, we push each other to test our strengths and give our best. In corporate America, competition can result in innovation and excellence. When people and ideas compete over something, it results in greater good for mankind. We all want a product that is more efficient, a process that is simpler, a person who is more skilled, and a business that is more profitable. Healthy competition is God’s way of providing the best for society. Does it make sense that we fought the last two World Wars for “freedom and democracy,” ending them with the demilitarization of the “enemies of freedom,” and that only a few years later we are rearming again for “freedom and democracy,” except that the former enemies of freedom are not its defenders, and the former allies are the enemies? I hope that the Lord’s people may be at peace one with another during times of trouble, regardless of what loyalties they may have to different governments or parties. Death of our military members seems to represent the contradictions of the peace of the gospel and the tides of war. The nations of the Earth have been divided over the possibility of World War III. Feelings run strong. There have been demonstrations for and against. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
War, of course, is not new. The weapons change. The ability to defend and attack is constantly refined. However, there has been conflict throughout the ages over essentially the same issues. In the course of history, tyrants have arisen from time to time who have oppressed their own people and threatened the World. Such is adjudged to be the case presently, and consequently great and terrifying forces with sophisticated and fearsome armaments have engaged in battle. As citizens, we are all under the direction of our respective national leaders. They have access to greater political and military intelligence than do the people generally. Those in the armed services are under obligation to their respective governments to execute the will of the sovereign. When they joined the military service, they entered into a contract by which they are presently bound and to which they have dutifully responses. There are times and circumstances when nations are justified, in fact have an obligation, to fight for family, for liberty, and against tyranny, threat, and oppression. However, we are a people of peace. We are followers of our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the Prince of Peace. However, even He said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on Earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword,” reports Matt 10.34. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This places us in the position of those who long for peace, who teach peace, who work for peace, but who also are citizens of nations and are subject to the laws of our governments. Furthermore, we are a freedom-loving people, committed to the defense of liberty wherever it is in jeopardy. I believe that God will not hold men and women in uniform responsible as agents of their government in carrying forward that which they are legally obligated to do. If we try to impede or hedge up the way of those who are involved in a contest with forces of evil and repression, it may even be that He will hold us responsible. If they have a military alliance with us, does it make sense to be deeply indignant against systems which do not grant freedom of speech and of political activity, while we call the very same systems, and even more ruthless ones, “freedom loving?” There is much that we can and must do in these perilous times. We can give our opinions on the merits of the situation as we see it, but never let us become a party to words or works of evil concerning our brothers and sisters in various nations on one side or the other. Political differences never justify hatred or ill will. I hope that the Lord’s people may be at peace one with another during times of trouble, regardless of what loyalties they may have to different governments or parties. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Let us pray for those who are called upon to bear arms by their respective governments and plead for the protection of Heaven upon them that they may return to their loved ones in safety. Does it make sense that we live in the midst of plenty, yet have little joy? Joy comes from exercising faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, worthily receiving and faithfully honouring sacred ordinances and covenants, and striving to become deeply converted to the Saviour and His purposes. Becoming more like the Saviour and receiving His image in countenance our Quest. Does it make sense that we are all literate, have radio and television, yet are chronically bored? Accept the reality of some boring routines. Not all of life is deeply meaningful and exciting. Avoid creating drama, intensity, or conflict to deal with boredom. Instead, appreciate and enjoy the good around you, and look for ways to improve and serve. Does it make sense that…We could go on for many more pages, describing the irrationalities, fictions, and contradictions of our Western way of life. Yet all these irrationalities are taken for granted and are hardly noticed by anybody. This is by no means due to the lack of critical capacity; we see these same irrationalities and contradictions quite clearly in our opponents—we only refuse to apply rational and critical judgement to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The repression of the awareness of facts is, and must be, supplemented by the acceptance of many fictions. The gaps which exist because we refuse to see many things around us must be filled so that we may have a coherent picture. What are these ideologies which are fed into us? There are so many. We are Christians; we are individualists; our leaders are wise; we are good; our enemies (whoever these happen to be at the moment) are bad; our parents love us and we love them; our marriage system is successful; and so on, and so on. The Russian states have constructed another set of ideologies: That they are Marxists; that their system is socialism; that it expresses the will of the people; that their leaders are wise and work for humanity; that the profit interest in their society is a “socialist” profit interest and different from the “capitalist” profit interest; that their respect for property is that for “socialist” property and quite different from the respect for “capitalist” property; and so on, and so on. As if they were the result of men’s own thinking, all these ideologies are impressed on the people from childhood on by their parents, by the schools, churches, movies, television, newspapers, and they take hold of men’s minds. If this process takes place in societies opposed to our, we call it “brain washing,” and, in its less extreme forms, “indoctrination” or “propaganda”; in our, we call it “education” and “information.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Even though it is true that societies differ in the degree of awareness and brain washing, and even though Western World is somewhat better in this respect than Russia, the difference is not enough to alter the fundamental picture of a mixture between repression of facts and acceptance of fiction. Why do people repress the awareness of what they would otherwise be aware of? Undoubtedly the main reason is fear. However, fear of what? Is it fear of castration, as Dr. Freud assumed? There does not seem to be sufficient evidence to believe this. Is it fear of being killed, imprisoned, or fear of starvation? That might sound like a satisfactory answer, provided repression occurred only in systems of terror and oppression. However, since this is not so, we have to inquire further. Are there more subtle fears which a society such as our own, for instance, produces? Let us think of a young executive or engineer in a big corporation. If he has thoughts which are not “sound,” he might be inclined to repress them lest he might not get the kind of promotion others get. This is, in itself, would be to tragedy, were it not for the fact that he, his wife, and his friends will consider him a “failure” if he falls behind in the competitive race. Thus the fear of being a failure can become a sufficient cause for repression. However, there is still another and, as I believe, the most powerful motive for repression: the fear of isolation and ostracism. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Empathy is an essential condition in the human relationship. An empathic understanding of another’s private World, and the ability to communicate some of the significant fragments of that understanding is very important. To sense if a confidant’s inner World of private personal meanings as if it were you own, but without every losing the “as if” quality, this is empathy, and this seems essential to a growth-promoting relationship. To sense his confusion or his timidity or his anger or his feeling of being treated unfairly as if it were your own, yet without your own uncertainty or fear or anger or suspicion getting bound up in it, this is the optimal condition. When another person’s World is clear to you and you can move about in it freely, then you can both communicate his understanding of what is vaguely known to the client, and you can also voice meanings in the client’s experience of which the client is scarcely aware. It is this kind of highly sensitive empathy which seems important in making it possible for a person to get close to himself and to learn, to change and develop. I suspect that each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different, such as “I understand what is wrong with you,” or “I understand what makes you act this way.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
There are the types of understanding which usually offer and receive—an evaluative comprehension from outside. It is not surprising that we shy away from true understanding. If I am truly open to the way life is experienced by another person—if I can take his World into mine—then I run the risk of seeing life in his way, of being changed myself, and we all resist change. So we tend to view this other person’s World only in our terms, not in his. We analyze and evaluate it. We do not understand it. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. I am sure I am not alone in that feeling. I believe that when the counselor can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World of the client, as the client sees and feels it, without losing the separateness of his own identity in this empathic process, then change is likely to occur. Though the accuracy of such understanding is highly important, the communication of intent to understand is also helpful. If he perceives that I am trying to understand his meaning, even in dealing with the confused or inarticulate or bizarre individual, this is helpful. It communicates the value I place on him as an individual. It gets across the fact that I perceive his feelings and meanings as being worth understanding. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
None of us steadily achieves such a complete empathy as I have been trying to describe, any more than we achieve complete congruence, but there is no doubt that individuals can develop along this line. Suitable training experiences have been utilized in the training of counselors, and also in the “sensitivity training” of industrial management personnel. Such experiences enable the person to listen more sensitively, to receive more of the subtle meanings the other person is expressing in words, gesture, and posture, to resonate more deeply and freely within himself to the significance of those expressions. I hope the above account of an empathic attitude will make it abundantly clear that I am not advocating a wooden technique of pseudo-understanding in which the counselor “reflects back what the client has just said.” I have been more than a little horrified at the interpretation of my approach which has sometimes crept into the teaching and training of counselors. If a person has made a pertinent observation or gained an insight into himself, he should examine how the peculiarity uncovered manifests itself in various areas, what consequences it has and which factors in his personality account for it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Consciousness, the capacity to experience the World in its richness, is the evidence for life itself. You may say, “I am experiencing; therefore, I know I am alive!” Certainly a distinguishing characteristic of the healthy personality is openness to new experience. Indicative of the extent of the person’s consciousness is the ability to be responsive to new idea, new thoughts, new perceptions. However, does the person have to be selective about the particular experiences that are chosen and even about the ways new experiences are sought? If at all, chemical alterations in consciousness are at best a mixed blessing and need to be engaged in with great caution. New experiences that entail genuine effort and accomplishment differ from the chemically induced experience in important ways. Consciousness is a complex and important human characteristic, and the serious student should become familiar with a number of professional points of view concerning the expansion of consciousness in one’s own life. This is especially necessary in a time such as the present, when alternation or expansion of states of consciousness has become a popular and sometimes dangerous recreational activity. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
It is essential that the student keep his romantic inclinations under constant surveillance of reason, caution, and reflection upon consequences. He is well advised to avoid emotional entanglements; for in this region there is often, for those who have a special spiritual destiny, a thorn concealed beneath every rose. When two people, emotionally involved with each other, have a misunderstanding or difference of opinion regarding the Quest itself, it is best that they deliberately discontinue their relationship for a while. In this way, they avoid a revival of the discussion which can only lead to exacerbation and further confusion. Time will solve the problem. Probably there are faults on both sides, since we are all human, but we have to carry on with the Quest despite these faults. Being on the Quest need not prevent the continuance and even the development of a friendship with one of the opposite gender, provided that it be kept on a high plane above the physical. Universal laws may be involved and these have to be carefully negotiated. The relationships can be beautiful, platonic, and mutually helpful but a strong discipline of the ego is called for. Great men can liberate great feelings in others or lift them toward acceptance of true ideas. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to provide the City of Sacramento with superior customer service and integrated emergency response to any situation that threatens life, safety, and well-being of people and property. “Firefighters, as a group, are different from other people. I think the thing that brings us you together is not the lives you save, it’s the fatalities that you see together. Most firemen can handle an adult fatality. But the one that gets everybody is the death of a child. Most firemen are family men, and they relate. There have been times when I have come home emotionally drained and have actually just sat down and cried, because things were beyond my control. Firemen need that feeling of being in control of a situation. At a fire you’re doing something not everybody else is doing—you’re going in when everyone else is coming out—but you feel that you have a grip on the situation and you can handle it. It’s not bravery, it’s a matter of fortitude, a little intelligence, with guts mixed in. And then once in a while it gets you, because you can’t handle it. The only thing worse than a child fatality is a fatality involving a fireman. It’s because of the brotherhood that’s there. You can share good times with any group of people, but I think it’s the bad times that bring people together, because you can’t really share it with anybody else. It’s only the guys in the room and the feeling, ‘This is what it’s about, this is what we’re doing this for.’ #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“Some of the outsiders have the idea that what firemen do at a fire is throw things out the window. My fire department doesn’t do that. Our point of view is not to break anything in the interior unless it’s necessary in attacking the fire. Most all cities operate that way. These are people who are leaving their jobs and willing to put their lives on the line, for free, to help their neighbours out, or to fulfill something in their own lives, or whatever their reasons are. But they do it. Just as in any other job, there are various degrees of success. Not everybody is as good as everybody else in any field. That’s why there are superstars in baseball while there are guys in the minor leagues. Not everybody is going to be Hank Aaron. But they’re doing it, and doing it successfully throughout the country. For a country that’s as under the gun from fire as this country is, we have given it a good fight. I’ve been to fires all over Sacramento City, and the thing that amazes me is the blasé attitude of the populace. They will stop and look for a second and then just keep going. Here is somebody’s life tragedy being played out on the streets of Sacramento, and they’ll just stop for an instant and look. Or watch it on the television while they are cooking dinners. There is so much going on here that people are immune. They put walls around themselves. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“In small town America, everyone would be involved. There are some exceptional good Samaritans. When that helicopter went down in the East River, a jogger, who was a teacher, dove head first into cold water to help some people out. Nobody asked him to do it. He was in his mid-fifties. It was a pretty wild maneuver to jump in the water, because the water was moving. I’ve had close friends on teams I’ve been on and business companies I’ve worked for, and we were kind of like brothers. But it’s not like the brother feeling that you get with the firemen. Even if you don’t like the guy. I mean, I had an uncle I wasn’t too found of, but he was still related to me, and there was nothing I could do about it. It’s like that with the brotherhood of the fire department. They are your brothers. You might not like one of them on a given day, but he is your brother. It’s not the shared danger. There are lots of other jobs where you share danger, or sports like surfing, which I used to do a lot. It’s more the things you see, the shared grief, the loss of another fireman, the loss of a child at a fire, the unspeakable things. The things you can’t bring home and tell your family. You tell them about the rescues and the funny things, but you can’t go home and graphically explain. With other firemen, you don’t have to graphically explain, you just look. You just look into each other’s eyes after a fire, and you know that he is thinking what you are thinking. Because nobody else on the face of the Earth comes across what we come across on a regular basis. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“The fireman knows the awful dangers civilians manage to get themselves into, and that’s why he is willing to go to the point of killing himself to make a rescue, because he knows how bad it is. I’ve heard it said that firemen already know what hell is. That could very well be. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to die by means of fire. I myself really don’t think about it. You wouldn’t be able to do the job you have to do. You get the job done, and you think about it later. You sit around and have a cup of coffee, and you shake your head: ‘I can’t believe I just got myself through that.’ One of the great things about a rescue company is that they are handpicked men, and they get unusual incidents to go to. I have been to building collapses, train crashes, plane crashes. Light planes. I haven’t gone to a jetliner yet, thank God. I hope I never see one of those. I’ve been in many successful rescues. At least four people are walking around today because of me personally, which makes me feel great. I’ve been extremely lucky. I’m lucky to be part of Rescue (number is being kept confidential), the best fire company in the World. There are tremendous people working in the Sacramento Fire Department. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“I was lucky to win awards. I used the award money to take my family to Hawaii, which was a lifetime dream of mine, having been a surfer most of my life. I use the word luck, and I don’t know another word for it. To make a rescue, you have to be working that day, there had to be a fire your company goes to, there unfortunately has to be somebody trapped, and you have to be in the right position to go get them. Luck stops, though, when you fine those few minor obstacles you have to overcome before you can make the rescue. All the brothers have a common interest, a shared understanding, and that is that we’re out there protecting life and property.” The goal of the Sacramento Fire Department is to continually strive for excellence and seek to improve the Fire Department through innovation, education, teamwork and open communication, making Sacramento a safer place to live and be a source of pride for all. You can help out by donating. Also, remember to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order and treat all people with dignity. 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. May America be blessed with angels a cohort, of peace and of rest. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
The Winchester Mystery House
One day Mrs. Winchester’s niece Daisy accompanied her to the attic. While Mrs. Winchester was busy looking for dresses, Daisy wandered around the attic. Suddenly she came running out of the back room and beckoned her aunt to follow her. “There is a lady back there,” she explained. Immediately, Mrs. Winchester went back but she saw nothing this time. Whether this visit to the attic had stirred up some sort of psychic contact, or whether her years of living in the mansion now allowed her to see entities, Daisy had something more to say about Ghosts before long. Naturally, no one discussed such matters with her. Why frighten the young lady? “There is a man in the attic,” Daisy explained earnestly, “and his name is Gunther. He died. He was short in the head, and he’s buried in the back yard under the bushes.” Daisy led Mrs. Winchester to the dining room window and pointed at the bushes in the backyard. It’s under the bushes there,” Daisy repeated and stared out the window. Mrs. Winchester shuddered. It was a spot she had wondered about many times. No matter how she tried, no matter what she planted, nothing would grow on that spot!
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Any Occupied Environment is Filled with Struggling Beings
Man is a dual being—a living soul—composed of a body of a spirit and a physical body. His spirit existed as an individual personal entity in a premortal life long before the Earth was created. As a matter of fact, this Earth was expressly created as a place for the spirits of men to take on mortality. The clearest teaching on record as to the nature of the spirit of man was given 2254 years B.C., when Jesus as the Christ, in spirit body, appeared to the brother of Jared and said: “Behold, I am Jesus Christ…seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image. Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh,” reports Ether 3.14-16. Man’s physical body is patterned after his spiritual body. If he is to attain the freedom and assume the responsibility of true adulthood, a man may have to free himself from being unduly dependent or overly attached to another person. Values are imposed upon things by human feelings, human desires, and human purposes. The common criterion of value is whether a thing or an occurrence brings an agreeable feeling or satisfies a personal want. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
However, as wants and feelings are subject to change, so likewise first valuations are subject to revision with time. Indeed, it may happen, as indeed in the case of marriage it often does happen, that what was formerly valued as good is later branded as bad. That he should seek the delight of shared understanding and confirmed attitude with friend, family, or co-disciple is to be expected. Tears have power. Followers of Christ are bidden to weep whenever they recite the Christian Bible. In these changing times, we all have to reorient our external lives occasionally, so it is useless to try sentimentally to fix forever relationships that once were. Building upon the foundation of Jesus as the Christ is essential to our happiness. This relationship can continue beyond the grace and answer other questions of the soul, such as what is the purpose of life, how we overcome our weakness, and where do we go after we die? Alma taught the people of his day, “For behold, I say unto you there by many things to come; and behold, there is one thing which is of more importance than they all—for behold, the time is not far distant that the Redeemer liveth and cometh among His people,” reports Alma 7.7. This declaration is equally important to us today as we anticipate and prepare for Christ’s Second Coming! #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Therefore, behold that Jesus as the Christ is essential to our happiness. This is a sure foundation, “a foundation whereon if men build, they cannot fall.” Doing so prepares us for the challenges of life, come what they may. The environment has so strong an influence over men that their subjective qualities can be neglected. Nature is so stingy and its surplus so small that no radical change in social relations is possible. Nature seems ungenerously until it is shown that the economic environment changes with the changes in men. New classes of men look upon the World in different ways, and the environment they find depends upon their mental characteristics. The laws given by society are not simply the laws of nature; they are laws derived from the combination of natural forces of which society makes use. Modifications of the environment react on men by changing their habits of consumption. Every reduction of cost creates another order of consumption, a new standard of life, which by inducing a new race psychology tends to stimulate new motives in production, new devices, new reductions in cost. This is how a dynamic economy works: progress occurs as a steady upward spiral. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
The theory of goods in economics is in fact the study of the environments of organisms. The environment of each organism, being the sum of its economic conditions, changes as these conditions change. There is an indefinite number, a series, of environments. Any given environment, once occupied, is soon filled with struggling beings. A progressive evolution depends upon the power of moving from one environment to another and thus avoiding the stress of competition. A series of differing environments presents increasingly complex conditions, requiring a new mental evolution for each transition. A progressive nation passes through a complete series of different environments, even though its geographical location does not change. In a progressive evolution the higher type of animal adjusts to a new environment; among lower animals there is a static competition for the existing limited resources. Thus, the essence of progress is escape from competition. Sensory organisms gain clearer ideas of the environment; motor organisms act with vigour and promptness. In the biological stage of progress, beings are pushed into a local environment in which little thought is required to supply the necessaries of life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The development of motor powers determines who shall survive, and those with inferior motor powers are driven out. Some of these, however, are better fitted to occupy a more general environment in which highly developed sensory powers are of more use. The conquered find a new place to live and create a new society with new requisites for survival. In time the residents of this new society who have the better motor powers will again survive, and those with imperfect motor organization but improved sensory powers are driven once again into a more general environment where new social instincts are needed and a new order is formed. The characteristics of social progress, as distinguished from biological, depend upon this ability to break through from one environment to another. Man has achieved such control over his environment, such development of his sensory faculties, that he has passed out of a pain economy—the primitive economy portrayed in Ricardian economics—into a pleasure economy. The essence of a pleasure economy is not the total absence of pain but the disappearance of fear as a dominant motive. The race slowly loses the instincts of a pain economy and acquires those best suited to the new conditions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
In time the pleasure economy’s surplus population will be carried off by temptation, disease, and vice, and thus will be bred a race with instincts to resist extinction by such devices—a truly superior race of men in a social commonwealth. Peoples with varied diets and many wants has a decided advantage over those with simple diet and few wants. The latter class would require a large area of land to support a given number of persons and would thus be at a disadvantage in an economic contest for survival. Consumption itself becomes a lever in progressive evolution. When we modify classical economics, we become open to new perspectives on the possibilities of a life based upon abundance rather than want. The best religion is that which acts most powerfully as a spur to energy and directs that energy most productively. The religion which best fits men for the struggle to survive will be left in possession of the World, just as the “work-bench” philosophy of life is destined to prevail over the “pig-trough” philosophy. The struggle for existence is primarily a group struggle, but the struggle among individuals continues, and promotes the efficiency of the group in its larger conflict. The group that regulates individualist competition by rewarding those who strengthen it most and penalizing it through poverty and failure, those who strengthen it least, is the group that will survive. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The best method of getting productive work out of men is the selective method of competition, and rewards are best meted out to valuable citizens by means of private property. The laws of natural selection are merely God’s regular methods of expressing his choice and approval. The naturally selected are the chosen of God. To help in the essential business of survival the churches should preach obedience to the laws of God through pursuit of the productive life. An economist, even a traditional one, more likely than most people, should be able to view his analysis of the mechanisms of choices and see how limited, though essential, an instrument it is. As with so many proposals for new thinking, the concept of a guaranteed income should be welcome as a challenge to theory before it needs to become a program for action. The principle of the guaranteed annual income has to cope with the objection that man is lazy and would not want to work if the principle of work-or-starve were to be abolished. In fact, this assumption is wrong. As overwhelming evidence shows, man has an inherent tendency to be active, and laziness is a pathological symptom. If even for a short time, under a system of “forced labour” where little attention is paid to the attractiveness of work, man seeks to escape from it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
If the whole social system is changed in such a way that coercion and threat are removed from the work obligation, only a minority of sick people would prefer to do nothing. It is quite possible that a certain minority of people would prefer what would be the equivalent of the monastic life, devoting themselves completely to their inner development, to contemplation, or study. If the Middle Ages could afford to tolerate monastic life, certainly our affluent technological society is much more able to afford it. However, again, as soon as we introduced bureaucratic methods necessitating that somebody had to prove that he really made “good use” of his time, the whole principle would be spoiled. There is a specific variant of the principle of the guaranteed income which, although not likely to be accepted at present, constitutes an important principle. I am referring to the principle that the minimal requirements for a dignified life are not obtained on a cash basis, but as free commodities and services which do not require payment. We have accepted this principle for elementary schooling, nor does anyone have to pay for the air he breathes, but if democrats have their way, cows will have to pay taxes to live. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
One could begin to extend this principle of free commodities and services which do not require payment to all higher education, which could be completely free, with a stipend for every student, making it possible for him to enjoy free access to education. We could also extend the principle in another direction, namely, to have basic commodities free, beginning perhaps with free bread and free transportation. Eventually it could be extended to all commodities because they constitute the minimum material basis for a dignified life. Needless to add, this vision is utopian as far as its realization soon is concerned. However, it is rational, both economically and psychologically, for a much more advanced state of society. To recommend that many affluent Americans begin to disconnect themselves from the endless and increasingly mindless process of more and more consumption requires at least a brief comment on the strictly economic implications of such a suggestion. The question is simply, Is it technically and economically possible for the economy to remain strong and stable in the absence of higher and higher consumption levels? #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
At this point, American society is not affluent, at least 40 percent of the population, and a large sector of the remaining 60 percent is not overconsuming. Hence, the question at this moment is not that of restrictions of the growth of our production level, but of redirection of consumption. Nevertheless, the question must be raised—whether, once the legitimate consumption level for the whole population has been reached, whatever it may be (including production which helps the poor nations), and considering the increase in production which corresponds to population increase, there is any point at which production would become stationary; or must we, for economic reasons, pursue the aim of a never-ending increase in production, which also means increase in consumption? It is necessary that economist and planners begin to study the problem, even though at the moment it does not seem urgent from a practical standpoint. For as long as our planning is oriented toward the never-ending increase in production, our thinking and economic practices are influenced by this goal. This is already important in decisions about the rate of annual production growth. The aim of maximal economic growth rate is accepted like the doctrine and covenants, undoubtedly because of the urgency of the real needs, and also because of the quasi-religious principle of the limitless rise of production as the goal of life called “progress,” the industrial version of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
If they have reached it, while language and logic are parts of the social filter which makes it difficult or impossible for an experience to enter awareness, one of the most important parts of the social filter is the one that does not permit certain feelings to reach consciousness and tends to expel them from this realm. In a tribe of warriors, for instance, whose members live by killing and robbing the members of other tribes, there might be an individual who feels a revulsion against killing and robbing. Yet it is most unlikely that he will be aware of this feeling since it would be incompatible with that of the whole tribe; to be aware of this incompatible feeling would mean danger of being completely isolated and ostracized. Hence an individual with such an experience of revulsion would probably develop a psychosomatic symptom such as vomiting, instead of letting the feeling of revulsion penetrate to his awareness. Exactly the contrary would be found in the case of a member of a peaceful agricultural tribe who has the impulse to go out and kill and rob members of other groups. He also would probably not permit himself to become aware of his impulses, but instead would develop a symptom—maybe intense fright. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Still another example, one from our own civilization: there must be many shopkeepers in our big cities who have a customer who badly needs, let us say, a suit of clothes, but who does not have sufficient money to buy even the most inexpensive one. Among those shopkeepers (especially the well-to-do ones) there must be a few who would have the natural human impulse to give the suit to the customer for the price that he can pay. However, how many will permit themselves to be aware of such an impulse? I assume very few. The majority will repress it, and we might find among them quite a few who will have a dream during the following night which might express the repressed impulse in one form or another. Another example: the modern “organization man” might feel that his life makes little sense, that he is bored by what he is doing, that he has little freedom to do and think as he sees fit, that he is chasing after an illusion of happiness which never comes true. However, if he were aware of such feelings, he would be greatly hindered in this proper social functioning. Hence such awareness would constitute a real danger to society as it is organized; and as a result, the feeling is repressed. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Or, there must be many people who sense that it is irrational to buy a new car every two years and who might even have a feeling of sadness when they have to part from a car they have been using, one that has “grown on them.” Yet if many were aware of such feelings, there would be danger that they would act on them—and where would our economy be, which is based on relentless consumption? Then again, is it possible that most people should be so lacking in natural intelligence that they do not see with how much incompetence many of their leaders—whatever the method by which they came to the top—perform their functions? Yet, if such facts became conscious to more than a tiny minority, where would social cohesion and unified action be? Is reality in this respect any different from what happens in Andersen’s fairy tale of the emperor without clothes? Although the emperor is naked, only a little boy perceives this fact, while the rest of the people are convinced that the emperor is wearing beautiful clothes. The irrationalities of any given society results in the necessity for its members to repress the awareness of many of their own feelings and observations. This necessity is the greater in proportion to the extent to which a society is not representative of all its members. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Greek society did not pretend to fulfill the interest of all its people. The slaves, even according to Aristotle, were not full-fledged human beings; hence neither the citizens nor the slaves had to repress much in this respect. However, if they fail to do so, for the societies which pretend to care for the welfare of all, this problem does exist. Throughout human history, with the exception, perhaps, of some primitive societies, the table has always been set only for a few, and the vast majority received nothing but the remaining crumbs that trickled down. If the majority had been fully aware of the fact that they were being cheated, a resentment might have developed which would have endangered the existing order. Hence such thoughts had to be repressed and those in whom this process of repression did not take place adequately were in danger of their lives or freedom. In our recent years in our work with randomly selected hospitalized schizophrenic patients, I have received much clinical conformation for the hypothesis that the more genuine and congruent the therapist is in the relationship, the more probability there is that change in personality in the client will occur. The individual therapists in our research program who seem to be most successful in dealing with these unmotivated, poorly educated, resistant, chronically hospitalized individuals, are those who are first of all real, who react in a genuine, human way as persons, and who exhibit their genuineness in the relationship. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
However, is it always helpful to be genuine? What about negative feelings? What about the times when the counselor’s real feeling toward his clients is one of annoyance, or boredom, or dislike? My tentative answer is that even with such feelings as these, which we all have from time to time, it is preferable for the counselor to be real than to put up a façade of interest and concern and liking which he does not feel. However, this is not a simple thing to achieve such a reality. I am not saying that it is helpful to blurt out impulsively every passing feeling and accusation under the comfortable impression that one is being genuine. Being real involves the difficult task of being acquainted with the flow of experiencing going on within oneself, a floe marked especially by complexity and continuous change. So if I sense that I am feeling bored by my contacts with this student, and this feeling persists, I think I owe it to him and to our relationship to share this feeling with him. However, here again I will want to be constantly in touch with what is going on in me. If I am, I will recognize that it is my feeling of being bored which I am expressing, and not some supposed fact about him as a boring person. If I voice my own reaction, it has the potentiality of leading to a deeper relationship. However, this feeling exists in the context of a complex and changing flow, and this needs to be communicated too. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
I would like to share with him my distress at feeling bored, and the discomfort I feel in expressing this aspect of me. As I share these attitudes, I find that my feeling of boredom arises from my sense of remoteness from him, and that I would like to be more in touch with him. And even as I try to express these feelings, they change. I am certainly not bored as I try to communicate myself to him in this way, and I am far from bored as I wait with eagerness and perhaps a bit of apprehension for his response. I also feel a new sensitivity to him, now that I have shared this feeling which has been a barrier between us. So I am very much more able to hear the surprise or perhaps the hurt in his voice as he now finds himself speaking more genuinely because I have dared to be real with him. I have let myself be a person—real, imperfect—in my relationship with him. Realness in the counselor which is deep and true, not superficial creates a transparency which helps to create this element of personal congruence. If everything going on in me which is relevant to the relationship can be seen by my client, if he can see “clear through me,” and if I am willing for this realness to show through in the relationship, then I can be almost certain that this will be a meaningful encounter in which we both learn and develop. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
It is better to be genuinely what one is, than to pretend to be feeling these other qualities. It is thus by no means a matter of purely theoretical interest for a person to discover how a personality trait is embedded in his structure, with manifold roots and manifold effects; it si also of the greatest therapeutic importance. This requirement could be expressed in the familiar terms of dynamics: one must know the dynamics of a trait before one can change it. However, this word is like a coin that has become a bit shabby and thin through long usage. Besides, it usually suggests the idea of driving forces, and might be interpreted here to mean that one should merely seek such forces, whether in early childhood or in the present. In this case the notion of dynamics would be misleading, for the influence that a trait exerts on the entire personality is just as important as the factors that determine its existence. It is by no means only in psychological matters that this awareness of structural interrelations is essential. The considerations I have emphasized apply with equal weight to questions of organic illness, for example. No good physician will regard a heart disorder as an isolated phenomenon. He will consider also in what way the heart is influenced by other organs, such as the kidneys and the lungs. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
And he must know the heart condition in turn affects other systems in the body: how it affects, for instance, the circulation of the blood or the action of the liver. His knowledge of such influences will help him to understand the intensity of the disorder. If it is thus essential in analytic work not to become lost in scattered details, how can the desirable continuity be brought about? We have seen that the concept of the healthy personality is nowhere near as old and venerable as the concepts of the unhealthy personality, maladjustment, and neurosis. However, we have also seen that ideas about how to make one’s self a “better self” or “one’s best self” can be found in present-day writings and those from the past. The early Freudians suggest that you can find a way to better functioning by understanding your past, by thinking and interpreting your dreams. Some suggest getting in “better touch” with your body, with specific parts of your body. Full expression of self is indicated by both Dr. Freud and Lowen. Of course, such free expression should take place in the proper environment and circumstances—often a psychotherapist’s office, but also in one’s own home and in the company of understanding, helpful friends. The newness of the concept of healthy personality gently reminds us that we ought not to put aside any of the many routes to self-actualization or self-realization. These varying methods recognize the necessity, at times, for careful professional help, but they do not deny the value of self-help and help from those who truly love and care about you. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The Sacramento Fire Department exists to provide a safe environment for the community by minimizing the impact of fire and injury through public education, quality service, emergency preparedness and an overall culture of safety. Their number one goal is and will always be firefighter safety. Safety is both an individual and team responsibility. Supervisors and employees must take an active role in their personal safety and the safety of their crews. “Fires with multiple fatalities are hard to deal with. I was at my second station in the course of my probationary period, and there was a structure fire in Downtown Sacramento. Both floors of this large two-story residence were pretty well involved. There were reports of possible trapped victims, and it was early enough in the morning that there was a good possibility that there were people in there. That made me anxious over their fate. I was with the engine company, and we attacked the fire with a hose line. It was a real hot, down-and-dirty, nasty kind of fire. We took some pretty good fire going in. On the second floor, we discovered the first couple of fatalities, because we crawled right past them as we were knocking down the fire. They probably died of smoke inhalation, but they were considerably burned in the course of the fire. There were four fatalities in all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Rookie firefighters were always assigned to help with the body removal. They try to prepare you for this in the academy, but it’s something you can’t fully comprehend until you’ve been there. It was a pretty helpless feeling. We rookies were assigned to assist the coroner in putting the victims on the gurney and removing them from the fire scene out to the coroner’s van. I remember having a well of emotions inside me, almost to the point of tears. A lot of questions went through my mind: did we do everything we could have done, was there something we could have done sooner or differently that would have changed the outcome? After mulling over these questions for a period of time, I was pretty satisfied that we had done everything that we could, that this thing had just run its course, and there wasn’t much we could have done to change it.” The leadership of the Sacramento Fire Department are good stewards of taxpayer’s funds. They strive to be fiscally responsible with City funding and make prudent financial decisions. The Sacramento Fire Department is a well trained and educated workforce and those qualities are essential to an effective fire department. They provide their firefighters and professionals with knowledge support and opportunities to improve their physical health, wellness and fitness in order to enhance job performance and an overall healthy personal lifestyle. Great people can liberate great feelings in others or lift them toward acceptance of true ideas. You can help them in their mission of saving lives and the community by donating. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Few people know what love really means because with nearly all it is filtered through the screens of bodily and selfish considerations. In its pure native state it is the first attribute of the divine soul and consequently it is one of the most important qualities which the seeker has to cultivate. Remember parents, teach your children to love American, to be proud to be American and to be patriotic. I bear you my witness of the divinity of the Saviour of the World and of His redemptive love and power to heal, strengthen, and lift us when we are earnestly striving to come unto Him. Conversely, there is no way we can move with the crowd and also toward Jesus. The Saviour has defeated death, disease, and sin and has provided a way for our ultimate perfection if we will follow Him with all of our hearts. “We believe in being subjects to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates, in obeying, honouring, and sustaining the law,” reports the Articles of Faith. Respect is an expression of our sense of universal brotherhood or sisterhood—a testimony of our membership in the human family. It acknowledges our common humanity and shows our reverence for children of God. The gospel teaches us that we are to hold the same esteem for others that we would hold for ourselves. Acting disrespectfully suggests we do not esteem the other person as ourselves. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
For example, prejudice is a result of disrespect for our fellowman. We cannot participate in attitudes of prejudice without distancing ourselves from others. True respect, then, comes as we develop our ability to love our brothers and sisters as ourselves. Gossip, another everyday form of disrespect, is incompatible with love. If they were present, what we say about people in their absence should be what we would say to them, with love. Feeling empathy for others is a symptom of respectful behaviour, while feeling unsympathetic is a symptom of disrespectful acts. Vouchsafe unto us, O Lord, wisdom equal to our strength and courage equal to our responsibilities, to the end that our nation may lead the World in the advancement and fulfillment of human welfare. 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. May all nations become aware of their common unity and all the peoples of the World be united in the bonds of brotherhood before Thee, the Father of all. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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He Who Does Not Work Should Not Eat
We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, but it is deeply concerning when a man is afraid of the light. Man is a creature of desires, universally motivated by self-interest; the mechanism of competition, if free and fair, transmutes the self-seeking of the economic man into deeds that work for “the greatest good of the greatest number.” However, this machinery is delicate and must be permitted to operate under “normal” conditions and must not be overridden by government interference; to enjoy the fruits of an inherently beneficent natural economic law, men must permit it to operate unhampered; they must be industrious, frugal, temperate, and self-reliant; self-help, and not a weak recourse to state intervention, is the way of economic salvation. We must not, however, always have blind faith in the doctrines and simplicity of classical laissez faire economics, and its belief in the adequacy of self-interest as an explanation of human conduct. The historical method cannot lead to such doctrinaire extreme. This younger political economy no longer permits the science to be used as a tool in the hands of the greedy and the avaricious for keeping down and oppressing the labouring classes. It does not acknowledge laissez-faire as an excuse for doing nothing while people starve, nor allow the all-sufficiency of competition as a plea for grinding the poor. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Malthus assumed that man has a definite and unalterable set of attributes; but Darwinism holds that man is pliable and circumstances determine his characteristics. On true Darwinian premises one can assume no such thing as a permanent natural rate of increase; for the human rate of increase would be susceptible to change in accordance with man’s surroundings and circumstances. We regard the state as an agency whose positive assistance is one of the indispensable conditions of human progress. We believe that political economy as a science is still in an early stage of its development. While we appreciate the work of former economists, we look not so much to speculation as to the historical and statistical study of actual conditions of economic life for the satisfactory accomplishment of that development. The most fundamental things in our minds are on the one hand the idea of evolution, and on the other hand, the idea of relativity. A new World is coming into existence, and if this World is to be a better World we know that we must have a new economics to go along with it. If the consumer challenges the corporation to respond to his wishes, the management will begin to respond to this challenge. However, as it stands, many corporations are taking on the form of a dictator and demanding that the consumer be thankful for allowing them to purchase from their businesses and that the consumer accepts whatever the business gives them, even if it is substandard quality and service. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Accusations will not help to clarify or to improve the situation. Managers as well as consumers are part of the same alienated system; they are its prisoners rather than its creators. The managers tend to seduce the consumer into passiveness, but the consumer is attracted to his passive role; he makes it easy to be seduced. The resistance to basic change exists on both sides, but the wish for imaginative change, for liberation of energies, for new or creative solutions exists on both sides, too. A further measure would be legal restrictions on present methods of advertising. This point hardly needs an explanation. It refers to all semihypnotic and irrational advertising which has developed in the last three quarters of a century. It could be effected by a simple law, like the one requiring cigarette manufacturers to put a warning of danger to health on their product, or as fake and misleading advertising in interstate commerce and specifically false advertisements with respect to food, drugs, and cosmetics are forbidden by federal statutes. Whether such a law has a chance to be passed against the combined powers of the advertising industry, the newspapers, television, radio, and, most of all, that part of industry for which hypnotic advertising is an important aspect of its planning and production, depends on certain changes in our democratic process, and chance to be informed, to debate and to discuss this problem, and whether the power of citizens is superior to that of lobbies and those members of Congress who are influenced by lobbies. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
What about a redirection of production itself? Assuming that the best experts and an enlightened public opinion came to the conclusion that the production of certain commodities is preferable to that of others in the interest of the population as a whole, could the freedom of the enterprise to produce that which is most profitable or requires least vision, experimentation, and daring be restricted within the framework of our Constitution? Legally this would not cause any great problem. While in the twentieth century such change might required the nationalization of industry, today it can be achieved by laws which require no change in our Constitution. The production of “useful” things could be furthered and the production of useless and unhealthy things could be discouraged by tax laws which favour those industries that agree to fit their production into the pattern of a sane society rather than into a pattern of “profit regardless.” The government could influence adequate production by loans or, in certain instances, by government-owned enterprises which would pave the way for private initiative, once feasibility of profitable investment was proved. It is also important to increase investment in the public sector in relation to investment in the private sector. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
All investments in the public sector—like public transportation, housing, schools, parks, theaters, and so on—have a twofold merit: first, of fulfilling needs adapted to man’s aliveness and growth; second, of developing a sense of solidarity rather than one of personal greed and envy and hence competitiveness with others. Our society, like many of the past, has accepted the principle “he who does not work should not eat.” (American Communism has elevated this old principle into a “socialist” precept, phrasing it slightly different.) The problem is not whether a man fulfills his social responsibility by contributing to the common good. In fact, in those cultures which have explicitly or implicitly accepted this norm, the rich who did not have to work, were exempted from this principle, and the definition of a gentleman was a man who did not have to work to live in style. The problem is that any human being has an inalienable right to live regardless of whether he performs a social duty. Work and all other social obligations should be made sufficiently attractive to urge man to desire to accept his share of social responsibility, but he should not be forced to do so by the threat of starvation. If the latter principle is applied, society has no need to make work attractive and to fit its system to human needs. It is true that in many societies of the past the disproportion between the size of the population and the available techniques of production did not permit the freedom to dispense with the principle of what is, in fact, forced labour. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
In the affluent industrial society there is no such problem, and yet even the members of the middle and upper classes are forced to follow norms laid down by the industrial system for fear of losing their jobs. Our industrial system does not give them as much leeway as it could. If they lose a job because they lack “the right spirit”—which means they are too independent, voice unpopular opinions, marry the “wrong” women—they will have great difficulties in finding another job of equal rank, and getting a job of inferior rank implies that they and their families feel that their personality has been degraded; they lose the new “friends” whom they had gained in the process of rising; they fear the scorn of their wives and the loss of respect from the children. We must uphold the principle that a person has an inalienable right to live—a right to which no conditions are attached and which implies the right to be treated at least as well as the owner of a dog or a cat treats his pet, which does not have to “prove” anything in order to be fed. Provided this principle were accepted, if a man, woman, or adolescent could be sure that whatever he did his material existence would not be in jeopardy, the realm of human freedom would be immensely enhanced. Acceptance of this principle would also enable a person to change his occupation or profession by using one or more years in preparing himself for a new and, to him, more adequate activity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
It happens that most people decide about their career at an age when they do not have the experience and judgment to know what activity is the most congenial to them. Perhaps in their mid-thirties they wake up to the fact that it is too late to start that activity which they now know would have been the right choice. In addition, no woman would be forced to remain unhappily married because she did not have what it takes even to prepare herself for a job at which she could make a living. If he knew he would not starve during the time he looks for a job more to his liking, no employee would be forced to accept conditions which to him are degrading or distasteful. This problem is by no means solved by unemployment or welfare dole. As many have recognized, the bureaucratic methods employed here are humiliating to such a degree that many people are afraid of being forced into the dole-receiving sector of the population, and this fear is sufficient to deprive them of the freedom not to accept certain working conditions. How could this principle be realized? Several economists have suggested as a solution an “annual guaranteed income” (sometimes called a “negative income tax”). The guaranteed annual income for work in order not to arouse resentment and anger in those who work. If it is to guarantee a modest but still adequate material basis, the present wage level would have to rise considerably. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
It is feasible to determine a minimum standard of living which is as high as the present minimum standard for a modest and adequate material basis. Anyone who is attracted by a more comfortable life would be free to achieve a higher level of consumption. The guaranteed annual income could also serve, as some economists have observed, as an important regulating feature in our economy. What we need is some device that can be permanently instituted as a regular feature of the industrial economy by which demand can be made to keep pace with a constantly proliferating supply. The guarantee of a basic income to all members of the community irrespective of the earnings of employment, as Social Security payments are now guaranteed to all persons over the age of seventy-two years of age, would provide the flow of effective demand that the economy more and more desperately requires. However limited the impact of Darwinism on economic theory, one could doubtless compile a formidable list of obiter dicta in which competition was justified in Sumnerian fashion as a special case of the struggle for existence. The survival of the fittest was a precept of sheer brutality and nothing else. I must deem any man very shallow in his observation of the facts of life who fails to discern in competition the force to which it is mainly due that mankind has risen from stage in intellectual, moral, and physical power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
An aspect of the filter which makes awareness possible is the logic which directs the thinking of people in each culture. Just as most people assume that their language is “natural” and that other languages only use different words for the same things, they assume also that the rules which determine proper thinking are natural and universal ones’ that is what is illogical in one cultural system is illogical in any other because it conflicts with “natural” logic. A good example of this is the difference between Aristotelian and paradoxical logic. Aristotelian logic is based on the laws of identity which states that A is A, the law of contradiction (A is not non-A), and the law of the excluded middle (A cannot be A and non-A, neither A nor non-A). Aristotle stated: “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing in the same respect…This, then, is the most certain of all principles.” In opposition to Aristotelian logic is what one might call paradoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A do not exclude each other as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in Heraclitus’ philosophy, and then again under the name of dialectics in the thought of Hegel and Marx. The general principle of paradoxical logic has been clearly described in general terms by Lao-tse: “Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.” And by Chuang-tzu: “That which is one is one. That which is not-one, is also one.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Inasmuch as a person lives in a culture in which the correctness of Aristotelian logic is not doubted, it is exceedingly difficult if not impossible, for him to be aware of experiences which contradict Aristotelian logic, hence which from the standpoint of his culture are nonsensical. A good example is Dr. Freud’s concept of ambivalence, which says that one can experience love and hate for the same person at the same time. This experience, which from the standpoint of paradoxical logic is quite “logical,” does not make sense from the standpoint of Aristotelian logic. As a result, it is exceedingly difficult for most people to be aware of feelings of ambivalence. If they are aware of love, they cannot be aware of hate—since it would be utterly nonsensical to have two contradictory feelings at the same time. In therapy, the personal growth is facilitated when the counselor is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without “front” or façade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are flowing in him. We have used the term “congruence” to try to describe this condition. By this we mean that the feelings the counselor is experiencing are available to him, available to his awareness, that he is able to live these feelings, be them in the relationship, and able to communicate them if appropriate. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Congruence means that he comes into a direct personal encounter with his client, meeting him on a person-to-person basis. It means that he is being himself, not denying himself. No one fully achieves this condition, yet the more the therapist can listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings without fear, the higher the degree of his congruence. I think that we readily sense this quality in our everyday life. We could each of us name persons whom we know who always seem to be operating from behind a front, who are playing a role, who tend to say things they do not feel. They are exhibiting incongruence. We do not reveal ourselves too deeply to such people. On the other hand, each of us knows individuals whom we somehow trust, because we sense that they are being what they are, that we are dealing with the person himself, and not with a polite or professional façade. This is the quality of which we are speaking, and it is hypothesized that the more genuine and congruent the therapist is in the relationship, the more probability there is that change in personality in the client will occur. Therefore, never accept more than you believe. A person may feel obliged, for instance, to accept whatever “bad” things emerge concerning himself, and to suspect a “resistance” if he hesitates to do so. However, if he regards his interpretation as merely tentative, and does not try to convince himself that it is definite, he will be on much safer ground. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
The essence of analysis is truthfulness, and this should extend also to acceptance or nonacceptance of interpretations. The danger of making an interpretation that is misleading or at least unprofitable can never be excluded, but one should not be overawed by it. If one does not weaken, but carries on in the right spirit, a more profitable path will open sooner or later, or one will become aware of being in a blind alley and perhaps even learn from that experience. Clare, for instance, before embarking on her analysis of the dependency, had spent a couple of months digging after an alleged need to have her own way. From the data that emerged later we can understand how she was led in that direction. She told me, though, that during these attempts she had never had a feeling of conviction remotely like those she experienced later, during the period reported. Also, the ultimate reason why she had taken that earlier course was that Peter (her boyfriend) often reproached her for being dominating. This illustrates the importance of following one’s own interests; and the importance of not accepting anything without full conviction. However, while this early search of Clare’s meant a waste of time it petered out without harm and did not prevent her from doing highly constructive work afterward. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The constructive character of Clare’s work was due not only to the essential correctness of her interpretations but also to the fact that her analysis in this period showed a remarkable degree of continuity. Without intending to concentrate on one problem—for a long time she did not even know what it was—everything she embarked upon turned into a contribution to the problem of her dependency. This unanswering unconscious concentration upon a single problem, which made her approach it relentlessly from ever-new angels, is desirable but rarely attained to the same degree. We can account for it in Clare’s case, for at that period she was living under a formidable pressure—how formidable she fully recognized only later—and hence she unconsciously bent all her energies into solving the problems that contributed to it. Such a compelling situation cannot be created artificially. However, the more absorbing one’s interest in a problem, the more will a similar concentration be approximated. Clare’s self-analysis illustrates the recognition of a neurotic trend; understanding its implications; and discovering its interrelations with other neurotic trends. In Clare’s analysis, the steps overlapped to some extent: she recognized many of the implications before she finally detected the trend itself. Nor did she make any effort to cover definite steps in her analysis: she did not deliberately set out to discover a neurotic trend, and she did not deliberately examine the connections between her dependency and her compulsive modesty. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The recognition of the trend came of itself; and, similarly, the connecting links between the two trends almost automatically became more and more visible as the analytical work proceeded. Clare did not select the problems—at least not consciously—but the problems came to her, and in their unfolding they displayed an organic continuity. There was in Clare’s analysis a continuity of still another kind, even more important, and more possible to emulate: at no time was there any insight that remained isolated or disconnected. What we see develop is not an accumulation of insights that a person gains in an analysis is correct, he may still deprive himself of the greatest benefits of his work if the nights remain scattered. Thus Clare, after recognizing that she let herself be immersed in misery because she secretly believed she could thereby command help, might merely have traced the origin of this trait in childhood and regard it as a persistent infantile belief. That might have helped some, because nobody really wants to be miserable for no good reason; the next time she found herself succumbing to a spell of misery, she might have caught herself up short. However, at best this handling of her insight would have diminished in the course of time the gross attacks of exaggerated unhappiness. And these attacks were not the most important expression of the trait. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Or Clare might have gone no further than the next step, connecting her finding with her actual lack of self-assertion and recognizing that her belief in magic help substituted for an active dealing with life’s difficulties. This, although still inadequate, would have helped considerably more, because it would have opened a new incentive to do away with the whole attitude of helplessness lying behind the belief. However, if she had not linked up the magic-help belief with her dependency, and seen the one as an integral part of the other, she could not thoroughly have overcome the belief, because she would always have made the unconscious reservation that if she could only find the permanent “love,” help would always be forthcoming. It was only because she saw that connection, and because she recognized the fallacy in such an expectation and the excruciating price she had to pay for it, that the insight had the radically liberating effect it did. Wilhelm Reich, originally a psychoanalyst, became more and more convinced that healthy personality was impossible if a person defended himself or herself from the experience of vitality, pleasures of the flesh, and other emotional repression. Such repressions produce muscular tension. He gave the name muscular armor to those groups of muscles that a person keeps in chronic tension in order not to feel unwanted dimensions of experience. One indication that a person is not living a chronically “armored” life is the capacity to experience an enjoyable experience during pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Alexander Lowen adapted some of Reich’s ideas and techniques and founded a school of therapy that he calls bioenergetic analysis. He observes a person’s body, noting peculiarities of chronic tension and posture that are the outcome of the way the person lives. For example, a person with chronically hunched shoulders, who breathes shallowly, may reveal thereby a sense of personal helplessness in a hostile World. Lowen has his patients do certain stretching exercises to identify areas of tension; but he also encourages them to yell, and to beat a pillow or mattress with a tennis racquet, or fists and feet, to release tension. “Unarmoring” a person frees that person from repressions that protect one from pain but also destroy the capacity for pleasure. The man who reposes his emotional strength or mental peace on any single person is taking a chance whose outcome may disappoint him. The feelings of the transformed man no longer come out of the ego but out of the Overself’s life deep within the ego. A fuzzy sentimentality which passes for mystical feeling is only its counterfeit. If a man had trained himself to reject self-pity as an emotional egoism that is harmful, he is not likely to encourage its display in other men merely because they conventionally expect him to be sympathetic. Yet it must always be remembered that when pity, which begins in the emotions, is filtered through the reasons, it is not destroyed but balanced. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department must be as technically advanced as their communities so that when an emergency involving technology occurs, they are equipped and trained effectively to deal with the issue that results. Often lives depend on their readiness and skill levels as new hazards develop into emergency incidents. “I had been through EMT experience, and I had learned all the basic firefighting techniques from the local firehouse, where they let me take the pipe and open roofs. My brother was on the truck, and he’d take me on the roof with him. The knowledge I got there was unbelievable. And then, I had twelve relatives of one kind or another who are or have been firemen. When I went to training school, I probably knew as much as some of the instructors there. But you’re in there to learn, so you keep your mouth shut and do as you’re told. That’s just what I did, and I never had a problem. We were in training school five months, and the last month and a half we would go to school for a day and be assigned to a fire company for a day, wherever they needed us. I’m a very proud fireman. My wife thinks I’m crazy. I’ve got pictures all over my wall of my father, my brother, because I like to walk by them and think of me following in my father’s and brother’s footsteps. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“The first time I went to a fire in a special unit, I felt excited, yes, also proud I was here following my father. This is what I always wanted to be. A person could go to college for years and years and never gain the goal they want. And here I am, a couple of years out of high school. I got what I want.” The challenge for today’s leaders in the fire service is to create a vision for the future and make it happen. They have no way of knowing what the future will be like, however. You can do your part to help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Also, remember to raise your children to love America, be patriotic, love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order and show reverence their elders. It is a privilege to be an American citizen, and one of the many benefits of that privilege is the ability to earn an education. Stay in school and study hard. In tribute to the Founding Fathers of this blessed Republic, may we strive to keep these United States of America forever righteous and just. May ours be a land where none shall prey upon or exploit his fellowman, where bigotry and violence shall not be tolerated, where poverty shall be abolished, and all men live amicably as bothers. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House calls to mind cracking thunder above the secretive mansion, howls of strange animals in the night, and spiky iron gates. Inside this legendary fortress may lurk angels, ghosts, and demons. The Winchester Mystery House is celebrating 101 years of giving tours. As many of you know, when Mrs. Winchester died in 1922, it took six moving vans, six weeks to remove all her furniture. On the last day, when almost everything had already been removed, Daisy stood in the now almost empty mansion once more. There were still a few boxes left in the basement. Two of the movers went back into the basement to get them out, while Daisy waited for them upstairs. The bell in the belfry started to strike twelve midnight. They loaded the boxes into the van, carefully locked the front door of the house and then the garden gate. At this precise moment, all three clearly heard the front door open and close again, and loud steps reverberated inside the empty mansion. “There must be someone in there,” one of the movers said. Quickly he unlocked the gate and front door once more and re-entered the dark house. After a few moments, he returned, relocked the door and gate, and somewhat sheepishly, shook his head. “Nothing. It’s all empty.” Not at all, Daisy thought, as the car pulled out into the night, not at all. That was only the reception committee for the tours that were to begin in 1923.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Slave of Blind Forces
The idea that we belong to communities and that these communities provide benefits and responsibilities is one that has gained a growing appreciation in the last few decades. As a reaction to the urbanization faced by many people, globalization, cross-national forms of media and their impact on cultures, physical and social isolation from family and friends, and a growing fear of change and the unknown, images of community, belonging and support have become paramount. However, what is meant by community, how a community functions, and what are the benefits and costs of community membership has not necessarily been well explored. For many, the idea of community evokes images of the small town or close neighbourhood. People know each other, often have been resident for some generations, and provide various types of instrumental or emotional support to other members of the community. It is an idealization in place and time of other members of the community. It is an idealization in place and time of feeling a part of a place, with those around knowing us and caring about us. In many ways, it is a village in which relationships are governed by kinship and centered on the parish church. Integration and fulfillment of needs reflects the benefits that people derive from their membership of a community. Some of the needs can be fulfilled through community membership status achieved through group membership, demonstration of competence by members, and the shared values that are exhibited by the group. For them, strong communities can provide these opportunities for their members, thus reinforcing the value of membership of the community. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
There is also a shared emotional connection. This refers to the sharing of significant events and the amount of contact that members have with each other. Because the community has had significant events, whether the members have taken part in them, there is a bond that can be developed between the members. The number of events, the salience of these events, and the importance of them in conferring merit or status to the community and its members all influence the development of a shared emotional connection between community members. Whether the events are positive or negative, they still have significant impacts on the development of emotional connections between members. Intelligence has an effectiveness as an instrument in modifying the World. Thinking is not a series of transcendent states or acts interjected into a natural scene. Knowledge is a part of nature, and its end is not mere passive adjustment but the manipulation of the environment to provide consummatory satisfactions. An idea is a plan of action rooted in the natural impulses and responses of the organism. The “spectator theory of knowledge” is pre-Darwinian. The biological point of view commits us to the conviction that mind, whatever else it may be, is at least an organ of service for the control of the environment in relation to the ends of the life process. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The ultimate refuge of the standpatter in every field, education, religion, politics, industrial and domestic life, has been the notion of an alleged fixed structure of mind. If mind is conceived as an antecedent and ready-made thing, institutions and customs may be regarded as its offspring. Intelligence operates within a series of objectively “indeterminate” situations. It is from the indeterminateness of the situations, from the element of contingency in nature, that the discriminating intellect derives its special significance. The significance of morals and politics, of religion and science, have their source and meaning in the union in Nature of the settled and the unsettled, the stable and the hazardous. Without this union there can be no such things as “ends,” either in the form of human consummations or as purposes. There is only a block universe, either something ended and admitting of no change, or else a predestined march of events. There is no such thing as fulfillment where there is no risk of failure, and no defeat where there is no promise of possible achievement. Philosophers must shift their attention from the sterile aspects of epistemology and metaphysics to politics, education, and morals. Philosophy will become, among other things, a moral and political diagnosis and prognosis. When psychology is founded upon the primary fact of impulse, the positive motivation of the organism is just the fact needed to give firm support to the main contentions in life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The elimination of conflict from society is a hopeless and self-contradictory ideal, but it is possible to direct the struggle to eliminate waste. In the continual sacrifice of the individual to the conditions of progress, we see a hopeless confusion about the relation of ends and means. The individual forever sacrifices himself to the welfare of future generations, but since the individual of future generations do the same, the process never reaches any consummation in human satisfactions. Man always sacrifices toward an end which is by definition never attained. It is the reductio ad absurdum of the philosophy of progress. Direct participation in events is necessary to genuine understanding. No universal proposition can be laid down to determine the functions of a state. We must bring to order out of the moral confusion caused by the apparently conflicting aims of morality and science. What man thinks consciously is determined by forces which operate behind his back, that is, without man’s knowledge; man explains his actions to himself as being rational or moral and these rationalizations (false consciousness, ideology) satisfy him subjectively. However, being driven by forces unknown to him, man is not free. He can attain freedom (and health) only by becoming aware of these motivating forces, that is of reality, and thus he can become the master of his life (within the limitations of reality) rather than the slave of blind forces. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The ethical process, like the activity of the gardener, is one of constant struggle. We can never allow things simply to go on of themselves. If we do, the result is retrogression. However, what is the significance of this apparent opposition between the ethical process and the cosmic process, in the light of our idea of the evolutionary process as a whole? The conflict is not one in which man is pitted against his entire natural environment, but one in which man modifies one part of the environment with relation to another. He does not work with anything that is totally alien to his entire environment. The gardener may introduce foreign fruits or vegetables into a particular locale, and he may assist their growth by conditions of sunlight and moisture unusual on his plot of ground; but these conditions fall within the wont and use of nature as a whole. The survival of the fittest is different from the survival of the ethically best. Yet must not the conditions be interpreted as a whole complex, including the existing social structure with all the habits, demands, and ideals which are found in it? Under such an interpretation the fittest would in truth be the best. The unfit would be practically equivalent to the antisocial, but not to the physically weak or the economically dependent. The dependent classes in society may be quite “fit” when measured by the whole of the environment. The prolongation of the period of dependency in man has developed foresight and planning and the bonds of social unity; the care of the sick has taught us how to protect the healthy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
What was fit among carnivora is not fit among men. Man lives in such a changing and progressive environment that in his case it is flexibility, readiness to adjust to the conditions of the morrow as well as the present, that constitutes fitness. As the meaning of environment changes, the meaning of the struggle for existence changes also. The biological promptings of self-assertion have potentialities for good as well as evil. The essence of the human problem is controlled foresight—ability to maintain the institutions of the past while remaking them to suit new conditions; in short, to maintain a balance between habits and aims. The term “selection” can mean not only that one form of life, one organism, is selected at the expense of another, but also that various modes of action and reaction are selected by an organism or a society because of their superiority over other modes. Society has its own mechanisms, public opinion and education, to select the modes it finds most suitable. There is, then, no bifurcation between the ethical process and the cosmic process. The difficulty has been created by static interpretations of biological functions and their applications out of context to the unique and dynamic conditions of human environment. It is not necessary to go outside of Nature to find warrant for the ethical process; one need only recognize the natural situation in its totality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Man’s consciousness is determined by his being, his being by his practice of life, his practice of life by his mode of producing his livelihood, that is, by his mode of production and the social structure, mode of distribution and consumption resulting from it. Pragmatism, the cash-value of ideas, is not an abject apology for the acquisitive spirit of business culture. Society only influences his being by greater or lesser repression of his innate physiological and biological equipment. Dr. Freud believed that man can overcome repression without social changes. Marx on the other hand, was the first thinker who saw that the realization of the universal and fully awakened man can occur only together with social changes which lead to a new and truly human economic and social organization of mankind. For any experience to come into awareness, it must be comprehensible in accordance with the categories in which conscious thought is organized. I can become aware of any occurrence, inside or outside of myself, only when it can be linked with the system of categories in which I perceive. Some of the categories, such as time and space, may be universal, and may constitute categories of perception common to all men. Others, such as causality, may be a valid category for many, but not for all forms of conscious perception. Other categories are even less general and different from culture to culture. For instance, in a pre-industrial culture people may not perceive certain things in terms of their commercial value, while they do so in an industrial system. #RandolphhHarris 7 of 20
However this may be, experience can enter into awareness only under the condition that it can be perceived, related, and ordered in terms of a conceptional system. With the problem of childhood amnesia of childhood memories, and with the difference between the categories (“schematas”) employed by the child and those employed by the adult, the incompatibility of early childhood experience with the categories and organization of adult memory is largely due to the conventionalization of memory. Furthermore, the problem is not only that of memory, but also that of consciousness in general. This system is a result of social evolution. Every society, by its own practice of living and by the mode of relatedness, of feeling and perceiving, develops a system, or categories, which determines the forms of awareness. This system works, as it were, like a socially condition filter: experience cannot enter awareness unless it can penetrate this filter. The question, then, is to understand more concretely how this “social filter” operates, and how it happens that it permits certain experiences to be filtered through while others are stopped from entering awareness. First of all, we must consider that many experiences do not lend themselves easily to being perceived in awareness. Pain is perhaps the physical experience which best lends itself to being consciously perceived; desires for pleasures of the flesh, hunger, etcetera, also are easily perceived; quite obviously, all sensations which are relevant to individual, or group survival have easy access to awareness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, when it comes to a more subtle or complex experience, like “seeing a rosebud in the early morning, a drop of dew on it, while the air is still chilly, the sun coming up, a bird singing” –this is an experience which, in some cultures, easily lends itself to awareness (for instance, in Japan), while in modern Western culture this same experience will usually not come into awareness because it is not sufficiently “important” or “eventful” to be noticed. Whether or not subtle effective experiences can arrive at awareness depends on the degree to which such experiences are cultivated in each culture. There are many affective experiences for which a given language has no word, while another language may be rich in words which express these feelings. In a language in which different affective experiences are not expressed by different words, it is almost impossible for one’s experiences to come to clear awareness. It may be said that an experience rarely comes into awareness for which the language has no word. This fact is of social relevance about such experiences which do not fit into our intellectual rational scheme of things. In English, for instance, the word “awe” (like in Hebrew “nora”) means two different things. Awe is the feeling of intense fright as it is still indicated in “awful”: and awe also means something like intense admiration, as we still find it in awesome (and in awed by). #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
One general consideration may be introduced at this point concerning the concept of happiness. The term “happiness” has a long history, and this is not the place to go into the meaning of the concept from its derivation from Greek hedonism to its contemporary usage. It may suffice to say that what most people experience as happiness today is really a state of full satisfaction of their desires regardless of their quality; if it is conceived in this sense, it loses the important qualifications which Greek philosophy gave it, namely, that happiness is not a state of fulfillment of purely subjective needs but of those needs which have an objective validity in terms of the total existence of man and his potentialities. We would do better to think of joy and intense aliveness instead of happiness. The sensitive person, not only in an irrational society but also in the best of all societies, cannot help being deeply saddened by the inevitable tragedies of life. Both joy and sadness are unavoidable experiences for the sensitive and alive person. Happiness in its present meaning usually implies a superficial, contented states of satiation, rather than that condition accompanying the fullness of human experience; “happiness” may be said to be the alienated form of joy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
It is a crazy gift we have, this trickery. My inside knowing of it is remembered only as far back as my own third year when: My mother and father laugh at me because I am enchanted by a hole in the ground. The hole is being dug on the next street so I cannot go there alone. I wait with excitement for my father to take me. When he does, I look into that ever-deepening hole with the same fascination that I watch my mother peel potatoes, noticing the changing form, the changing colour, the changing texture, and the changing fragrance of both holes in the ground and potatoes. My father tells my mother, “A hole in the ground!” (the way that he says it, I know is not much.) “You’d think there was a magnet at the bottom. If I didn’t hold her hand, she’d tumble right in.” (I do not catch all those words at the time. There are too many that I do not know. I hear them later on, when my father tells someone, and I remember my pain, and what I did about it.) My mother and father laugh together and are tender with me and love me, but they do not understand. I feel alone, and my enchantment is bleeding around the edges. I am the angry which is hurt. Being at the moment true to me, I scowl at my parents. They jolly me then, because children must be kept happy. And then I am not true to me. I laugh, because in that grownup World of which I would like to be a part, that is the thing to do. (A few years later, when I am attracted by a hole in the ground, I drop a marble into it, so that if anyone comes along I can say that I am looking for my marble, not that I am enjoying the hole, which would be ridiculed.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
There are times when I scowl at my parents not because I am misunderstood, or not understood, but because I have discovered that that is a way to get their attention. And then, when they have brought me around from scowls to laughter they are very pleased with both themselves and me. And I am pleased with myself for having figured this out. That is a long way from being happy with a hole in the ground. Less than three years in this World, and I have got involved in cleverness. I did not develop that all by myself. Already my parents have been tricking me, and I have watched other trickery go on with aunts and uncles, grandpa…My parents and I love each other and enjoy each other. Most of the time we are sensitive to each other at some level. We do not know that increasingly we are being superficial, that there is a dimension missing, and that their lack of respect for me is developing into me a lack of respect for them. They respect me in the outside things, like letting me paint the railings on the porch and carry things that would break if I dropped them, but they do not respect my insides because they think I have not any. When I am playing on the floor, they talk together or with other people about things I am “too little to understand” and so it is all right to say to them. However, they do not know what my understanding is, and I have no way to tell them. So it goes round and round inside my head. Sometimes I understand some things, and I am hurt. Other times, I do not understand and I try to put things together, with not enough information in my head to arrive at making sense. So what I make of it is nonsense, but I do not know that. And sometimes what I make of it will not stay put. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
I think if it one way and I hurt, so I think of it another way so I will feel comfortable. However, it slips around, and I do not know which way it is. I am too young to know that the word for my trouble is confusion. To my parents, aunts and uncles, my life is good: I have loving parents, aunts and uncles, and “How blessed it is to be a child and have no worries.” To me, if often seems that I must have been born to the wrong parents, or that these are not my parents, because my real parents would know me. My sister, older than I, bewilders me, because sometimes she is a child with me, and then suddenly she switches and talks like a grownup. She tells me what to think and feel. What I thinking and feel she says is silly. A moment ago, she was agreeing with me. Sometimes I fight my sister about this. However, sometimes I say that I think and feel what she does, and then I feel BIG. However, then I get all mixed up and I am crying “Who am I?” And no one helps me with that because it is a silly question. I am me. Who else could I be? This seems so to me, too, so why is it that I do not know? There must be something so wrong with me that no one will tell me about it. I talk to my puppy and my dolls, and to the trees. They do not confuse me because they listen, and I can say anything I want and they do not talk back. They go on listening. And then I begin to hear myself and know it is me. No possessive relationship between two human beings can last forever. To ask such a thing is to ask for the impersonal universe to change its laws of growth for the sake of pleasing its ungrown progeny. God is entirely self-sufficient and if God’s children are to grow increasingly into his likeness, they can do so only by becoming less dependent on others, more sufficient unto themselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
A false, showy, and pretentious cheerfulness which ignores facts, represses truths, and hides evils is not really cheerful at all. It is well to remember not to let oneself become the victim of negative feelings or harsh thoughts. They do not mend matter but only make you suffer more, and also suffer needlessly. It is one of the side effects of philosophy that it purifies human affection, takes the littleness out of it, and lifts it to a higher and wider plane. This may bring some pain or it may bring a shared pleasure, depending on those involved in the experience. If ignorance, credulity, naivete, or imbalance are the accompaniment, it is excellent but not enough to be well-meaning, to have a pure intent, to be guided by feeling alone. For there are traps and quicksands, illusions, and deceits in life as on the quest. No human being has the right to claim another as his own. Each stands ultimately alone and essentially isolated. Each is born out of and must find his way back to spiritual solitude. For each must learn to be divinely self-reliant and self-sufficient. This is so because the soul is of the nature of God. How much misery has come into contemporary life through non-recognition of this fact! How much bitterness has come to the unwilling possessed ones or to the defeated would-be possessors! The way to get rid of an obstinate negative feeling is to supersede it by a new positive one of greater intensity. If success is to be attained, right thoughts about the wrong feeling will help to correct it, right imaginations about the new one will help to bring it in, but feeling itself must be invoked and fostered. In most human relations, egoism in one person is replied by egoism in the other. He has feelings but they are so poised that they never disturb, so balanced with reason that they never agitate, and so harmonized with intuition that they never excite him. If anyone is to carry out Christ’s bidding of reconciliation with enemies and forgiveness of those who have harmed him, he can do so only by giving up the ego. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Our dear friend Clare, her whole self-analysis illustrated the validity of one who was able to choose the factors which were involved in her problems which she could grasp at the time, and she refrained from embarking upon problems that were still deeply repressed. With apparent insouciance she never bothered to tackle any problem that did not elicit a response in her, though it might almost stare her in the face. Without knowing anything about the principle of guidance through interest she intuitively applied it throughout her work, and it served her well. One example may stand for many. In the series of associations ending with the first emergence of the daydream of the great man, Clare recognized merely the role that the need for protection played in her relationships. The suggestions concerning her other expectations of men she discarded entirely, though they were an obvious and prominent part of the daydream. This intuitive choice took her on the best course she could have followed. By no means did she merely move on familiar ground. The finding that a need for protection was an integral part of her “love” was a discovery of a factor hitherto unknown. Furthermore, as will be remembered, this discovery constituted the first inroad on her cherished illusion of “love,” a painful and incisive step. To have taken up at the same time the aggravating problem of her sponging attitude on men would certainly have been too hard, unless she had dealt with it in a superficial way. This brings up a last point: it is not possible to absorb more than one important insight at a time. An attempt to do so will be detrimental to both, or all, of them. If it is to “sink in” and take root, any relevant insight needs time and undivided concentration. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Most of the previous writers developed their theories out of an interest in the unhealthy personality. However, almost all of them found it necessary to make some postulations, some suggestions for the concept of the idealized personality. The oldest, most venerable school, that of Dr. Freud and psychoanalysis, fixed the pattern of such emphases. Dr. Freud contented himself by stating that health consisted in the ability to love and to do productive work. Healthy personality, in psychoanalytic terms, is an outcome of harmony among id, ego, and superego. According to the psychoanalysts, personality is divided into three substructures—the id, the ego, and the superego. Id is the term used to refer to instincts. Ego refers to the active, controlling, perceiving, learning functions of personality. Superego refers to the moral ideals and taboos a person acquires as he or she grows up. It is the task of the ego to scan external reality and inner experience and then choose action that will gratify needs without violating moral taboos—in other words, to mediate between id and superego. A healthier personality would be able to gratify needs and yet remain free of guilt or of social blame. Because one would be less prone to prevent some feelings from coming to the surface (such repression consumes energy), energy would be available for productive work. Because one would not be ashamed of feelings and emotions (because of a reasonable conscience), one could be freer in expressing oneself in loving relationships. Hence, the relationship between ability to love and work, and the concept of harmony among id, ego, and superego, can assume greater meaning. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The Sacramento Fire Department looks for the most qualified applicants that they can find, and many people cherish their jobs. “I went to college in bits and pieces. I took some fire science work at the community college. I went back to Santa Clara University for a term to get a degree in public administration. The trouble was, I was an officer of our union, a local of the International Association of Firefighters, while most of the professors were management oriented. We had serious ideological clashes about management relations, and finally I just didn’t go back to school. I’ve had some misgivings about that. The fire service did two things for me, really. I provided a service, and yet, for a young man who was looking for some excitement, it provided that, too. Our fire department has changed. When I joined in 1975, it was a very conservative kind of environment. The music in the firehouses was mostly country and western. Not too long ago, I remember getting back from an alarm at two in the morning, and the guys in the day room were watching MTV. I was thirty-three years old and the oldest guy on the crew. It just shows you how things have changed. When I first joined, there was this generational thing. The hair code was a major issue. A lot of social stuff spilled over into the fire service. A guy who came on probation with me had a mustache. The battalion chief told him, ‘You know, we’ve never had anyone with a mustache make it through probation.’ I’m not sure if this guy was naïve or was jacking the chief around, but his response was, ‘Oh, you mean I’ll be the first.’ #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“We had four weeks of basic training, eight to five, Monday through Friday. We were the first group to use the International Fire Service Training Association material. We were assigned homework each night, and the next morning there would be a quiz. If you failed any of the quizzes, you were out of the program. There were also classes on mechanical proficiency and on the use and maintenance of breathing apparatus. At that you could join the department and be a firefighter, period. Now the program goes for seven weeks and includes emergency medical training and learning how to drive the vehicles. They didn’t have a very good burn facility in our department for training purposes, so they had buildings scheduled for destruction, and they would burn them. They would actually give us a live fire and out us in a real fire station. As it turned out, buildings to burn were in short supply, so my class did not actually get a chance to be in a burning building. As a result, the first actual fire that I went to was a real fire. I was assigned to our downtown station. On my second or third shift, we had a fire in the middle of the night. It was a modular classroom set up behind a grade school. I was in the second-due engine. We used to do a lot more blitz attacks, where the first company would pull a line and go in without masks, and then the second company would lay a fire line from a hydrant and mask up. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“We were second in, and the lieutenant said to me, ‘Just get a mask on and hang on to my coat. Just follow me. Whatever you do, keep track of where the line is, because if you get lost and go sideways, the line is the only way you have to get back out.’ I remember crawling in there with the old mask that had a full face piece and an eyehole on either side. I couldn’t see a damn thing, the room was filled with smoke. I remember thinking, ‘These people are crazy.’ It was just nuts. And yet, I followed right in, took a turn on the nozzle, and got out. In those days, in the late fifties, we didn’t get much training, just two weeks at the training towers. It’s interesting that we had about 220 firefighters who did around two thousand alarms a year. This year we have 1,100 people in the fire department, and we are going on over a hundred thousand alarms. Big changes obviously. I was twenty years old, so I was a baby in the fire department, and in a very middle-class kind of way. I had worked in construction in the summers when I was going to college, I was a hod carrier when I came into the fire department. So I was used to construction guys, who were strong characters. They wanted you to be tired at the end of the day. I went to Santa Clara University for three semesters and graduated with a degree in fire protection technology, which is what they called it in those days. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“If you look at the Sacramento Fire Department today, we are probably just a typical fire department. Thirty years ago, it was inhabited by a lot of very good leaders. They had been in the Second World War, they had been through the tail end of the Depression, and they had tattoos. They were tough guys—good leaders, guys who had a strong set of values. If you got out of line, they kicked your expletive. They didn’t know about participatory management, they hadn’t been screwed up in graduate school. They were street guys, and these are the people I look back on, who raised me.” The Sacramento Fire Department is a very important organization. They help keep our community safe and save lives. You can save lives and property, too, by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Remember to have a safe and happy Independence Day. Be sure to raise your children to love America, love God and Jesus Christ, respect law and order and treat their elders with kindness and honour. It is a great privilege to be American and never forget that. Lord, God of our fathers, as we gather to pay homage to the founders and builders of this, our country, we ask Thy blessing. With courage and vision, they made of these Untied States of America a land of freedom and opportunity. For all that they have so firmly established, we render thanks unto Thee. “Our lines are fallen in pleasant places; yea, we have a goodly heritage.” I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
If you are up for a day away with the chance sighting of a ghost, The Winchester Mystery House is open July 4th, 2024 from 10am PST to 5pm PST.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
That is Just Slavery in Another Form
Sometimes it seems the times of some people are so fatally lacking in geniality, humour, picturesqueness, and poetry; and are so explicit, so mechanical, so flat in the panorama which it gives to life. Many are overcome by the awfully monotonous quality and there is no twilight region in their minds, and no capacity for dreaminess and passivity. All parts of it are filled with the same noonday glare, like a dry desert where every grain of sand shows singly, and there are no mysteries and shadows. It is harmful to be overcome by a dry school-master’s temperament, to display a preference for cheap makeshifts in argument, where one is lacking education even in mechanical principles, and in general the vagueness of all one’s fundamental ideas, their whole system is wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock boards. Human beings gain knowledge within their souls. “The true lover of learning then must from his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth,” says Plato. Nothing justifies the development of abstract principles but their utility in enlarging our concrete knowledge of nature. The ideas on which mathematical Mechanics and the Calculus are founded, the morphological ideas of Natural History, and the theories of Chemistry are such working ideas, finders, not merely summaries of truth. It is possible for “accidents” or novelties to arise which are not predictable from our knowledge of their antecedents—for example, the evolution of self-consciousness, or the application of the voice to social communication. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In particular instances, the facts are certain to show irregular departures from the law. A thoroughly consistent evolutionist must regard the laws of nature themselves as the results of evolution, and hence as limited rather than absolute. There exists an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature. Evolution is a change from a nohowish untalkaboutable all-alikeness by continuous stick-togetherations and somethingelseifications. When the whole training of life is to make us fighters for the higher, why should it be extraordinary or wrong to protest against a philosophy the acceptance of which is acceptance of the defeat of the higher? If it means anything at all, calling a thing bad means that the thing ought not to be, that something else ought to be in its stead. Determinism, in denying that anything else can be in its stead, virtually defines the universe as a place in which what ought to be is impossible—in other words, as an organism whose constitution is afflicted with an incurable taint, an irremediable flaw. Determinism is consistent only with the direst pessimism or a romantic mood of resignation. However, fi moral judgments are to be effective there must be some minimum of uncertainty in the universe; this does not necessitate a completely haphazard World, but only one in which there are occasional choices. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The necessity of retaining choices remains, even though one’s dream of universal fatalism be as optimistic in the ultimate advent of a peaceful millennium. Even if no preference can succeed unless it is in harmony with the ultimate triumph of peace, justice, and sympathy, we are still free to decide when to settle down on an equitable and peaceful basis. Until it is finally revealed with certainty what shall succeed, we are all free to try for our own preference. Intelligent mental reactions as those that minister to survival by arranging internal relations to suit the environment, but the critical factor in the cognitive situation, the desire for survival or welfare, is a subjective element which many ignore. The idea of correspondence between inner and outer relations, to be made meaningful as the criterion of mental acts, must be qualified by some subjective or teleologic reference. Furthermore, it is not simply a mirror floating with no foothold anywhere, and passively reflecting an order that he comes upon and finds simply existing. The knower is an actor, and coefficient of the truth on one side, whilst on the other he registers the truth which he helps to create. Mental interests, hypotheses, postulates, so far as they are bases for human action—action which largely transforms the World—help to make the truth which they declare. In other words, there belongs to mind, from its birth upward, a spontaneity, a vote. It is in the game, and not a mere looker-on; and its judgements of the should-be, its ideals, cannot be peeled off from the body of the cogitandum as if they were excrescences, or meant, at most, survival. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
It is habitual to speak as if the mere body that owns the brain has interests, to treat the body’s survival as an absolute end without reference to any commanding intelligence. The reactions of an organism cannot be considered useful or harmful; it can only be said of them that if they occur in certain ways survival will incidentally be their consequence: but the moment you bring a consciousness into the midst, survival ceases to be a mere hypothesis. No longer is it “if survival is to occur, then so and must brain and other organs work.” It has now become an imperative decree: “Survival shall occur, and therefore organs must so work!” Real ends appear for the first time upon the World’s stage…Every actually existing consciousness seems to itself at any rate to be a fighter for ends, of which many, but for its presence, would not be ends at all. Its powers of cognition are mainly subservient to these ends, discerning which facts further them and which do not. What causes communities to change from generation to generation? Changes are the result of innovations by unusual or outstanding individuals, playing the same role in social change as variations in Darwin’s theory of evolution; such persons are selected by society and elevated into positions of influence because of their adaptability to the social situation into which cause of their adaptability to the social situation into which they happen to be born. Social changes can also be attributed to geography, environment, external circumstances—in brief, to everything except human control. The existence of a universal web of causation is one in which the finite human intellect becomes hopelessly entangled. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The most that sociology can predict is that if a great man of such nature appears under certain circumstances, he will affect society in such and such a way; but that he does affect it should not be denied. The great man is himself part of the environment of everybody else. However, a metaphysical creed is a mood of contemplation, an emotional attitude rather than a system of thought; and in its neglect of spontaneous variations in human thinking and their effect upon society, it is an absolute anachronism reverting to a pre-Darwinian type of thought. Without spontaneity, without some possibility that the individual may in measure alter the course of history, there is no chance for betterment of any kind, and the whole romance of struggle with its attendant alternatives of triumph or failure is banished. There is a zone of insecurity in human affairs in which all the dramatic interest lies. The rest belongs to the dead machinery of the stage. That life should be deprived of its dramatic interest by a scheme of universal causality was an intolerable thought, the most pernicious and immoral of fatalism. When people wish to illustrate the problem of evil, they choose spectacularly brutal murders rather than wars or the homeless crisis in America. Through their hardness and inflexibility of tone, many politicians believe that they are superior to the constituents and entertainment supersedes basic human needs. The interests of the citizens are harshly overridden. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Society has undoubtedly got to pass toward some newer and better equilibrium, and the distribution of wealth has doubtless slowly got to change; such changes have always happened, and will happen to the end of time. However, if, after all that I have said, any of you expect that they will make any genuine vital difference, on a large scale, to the lives of our descendants, you will have missed the significance of my entire lecture. The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing—the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man’s or woman’s pains. And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place. I sometimes wonder what did my love of Latin in high school have to do with my life? The only connection that I can find is that I liked words, and the meanings of words, and the derivations of words. However, after a year I had got the hang of that and could look up the rest for myself when I needed it. How did my daughter become so interested in cowboys, when her life had been in Hawaii, New York City, England and the New England coast—before the days she was allowed to stream TV and when she had not seen many movies? I think the answer is that she loved horses. At three, when she said that she felt sick and I asked her what would make her well, she said, “A wide on de pony in de park!” When she was five, the school reported that she was doing well in piano and suggested that she have private lessons. I asked her if she would like this and she said, after only a moment’s pause, “Well, I would rather ride a horse.” She always wanted the horse she did not have, and that may have been her problem, that she solved by being with horses in books. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
When I went to live in Hawaii, for the first time I got interested in studying history. At that time, the written history was only about a hundred years old and all the sources were available to me. At the same time, I could question people for whom much of that past was a part of their own experience, and another lot of it had come to them through their immediate forebears. As I was living in the Islands, all this contributed to my understanding of what I was living in, and I liked this. I think another factor may have been that in the Islands I was exposed to a different way of thinking about life, and I got really interested in Island history in that sense. If “problems” entered into this, I think it may have been chiefly that when I was first in Hawaii, I did have problems, particularly during the first six months. Although I had driven in New York Labour Day traffic and all that, when I go to Hawaii, the traffic in Honolulu scared me so that I parked on Punchbowl and walked into town, until I could figure out how to drive in it. Time after time, as I went around in Honolulu doing errands, I watched the traffic to try to get the hang of it. At last, it became clear to me: instead of going by rules, the drivers went by noticing. They noticed other cars and they noticed pedestrians and moved in accord with them. Then I drove into town and drove as they did and enjoyed it. I had a problem with the slowness of everything in Hawaii: it was what I wanted for myself, but it was still a problem to me because I got irked by it and had to find my way out of that. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
I had to slow down myself: then I enjoyed the ease and the lack of friction in moving slowly. I had the problem of living where it seemed to me that everyone had dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. It was not race prejudice, just homesickness. When I returned to the white skins on the mainland eight years later, it seemed to me that everyone looked sick. I loved the mangoes, papayas, soursops, guavas, mountain apples, cherimoyas, pohas, and all the rest, but it seemed to me that if I could get to California (a place I had never really liked) and eat apricots, peaches, grapes, pears, apples for ten days, then it would be easier for me to go on living in the Islands. I had the problem of ants: I thought I must be a sloppy housekeeper because there were always ants in my house. Sometimes I dived in to help people—and got bumped. The people were somehow different from those I had lived with before. There were all these re-evaluations and adjustments going on, and this seems to open up my mind and lead to questions in other areas too. In trying to answer them, I run into problems, but it does not seem necessary for me to have the problem first. This suggests to me that in trying to provide our children with “security” by keeping them within a closed environment we may be stupidizing them. Then, when we make them specialize at an early age, we are stupidizing them still further. However, is it only the “problem,” anyway? It seems to me that I could have resolved my problem of being sick in another way, but when I found out how little medicine knows about the whole field of chronic illness, I was intrigued by the unknown territory that I lived in. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
It scared me at first, but then I began to get used to it, and I like moving in the unknown, even when it scares me and is painful. I do not like the scare and the pain, but I do like the exploring. With the doctor, I explored what is known by medicine about chronic illness, with particular reference to my own. Through his honesty, I learned how much is not known. All this churned around in my head until I had the feeling of a dead end, of being somehow on the wrong track. That was when I side-slipped into psychology. It happened. This could lead me back into medicine sometime. That happens too. This suggests that telling children what is not known may be as helpful as telling them what is. When I am told only what is known, it seems to be “all there”—nothing that I can contribute to it. I can only learn what others have found out. It is a closed World. When I know how small the known is in relation to the unknown, the whole World opens up before me. I am free to explore and make my own discoveries instead of being a passive recipient of what is known—to the point that I think that everything is known by someone else and that it is only through others that I can acquire knowledge. I have seen this happen recently with several people, individually, when they discovered how chaotic the field of psychotherapy is, how much is not known. One of them said, with such freedom, “Each man is on his own!” and the others expressed themselves in much the same way. They moved from the limitation of trying to find a specific answer already known to the freedom of making their own discoveries. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
More is known about how we get into the troubles that we do than is known about how to get out of them. With this knowledge of how things go wrong, these people are now trying to find out for themselves how to go about the undoing, both in the sense of curing and of prevention, by intelligent trial and error. If we all did this, it seems to me that we would get out of our difficulties a lot faster. Some people are very afraid of this, because people will make mistakes. That certainly will happen. However, these will not be such persistent mistakes as taught mistakes are, and I think it is the persistent mistakes that foul us up. It seems to me that much damage has been done by psychotherapists who believed that because they had been trained, they know the answers, and so went on and on with their mistakes. Being sure that the answers they had were right, they did not ask enough questions, and when things did not go well, the questions that arose were answered in terms of the answers they already had. That is a good way to get stuck. If all psychotherapists had done that, we would not have arrived at the new concepts that we have today. Holding to a belief seems to be a large part of our trouble. If I am sure that beating a child is good, or that permissiveness is good, poor results will only lead me to push harder with whatever it is that I believe. That seems to have happened with education. “It has not produced what we wanted, so let us have more of it” seems to sum up what I hear from all kinds of people all the time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
When a profession makes a mistake, a whole generation or more is damaged by it—like four-hour feedings and no rocking the baby. An individual’s mistake just does not reach that far. Another good thing about everyone trying to work out psychotherapy on his own (and including himself) is that all these people would not be Authorities. If I try out something in my relations with other people and it does not work well for them, they will be resistant to me in a way they would not be to an authority, who is believed to know what he is doing. It is my experience of most authorities that “working with them” means that I do as they say even if it gives me hell. That is just slavery in another form. “Working with authorities” make sense to me only when the professional and the amateur each say, “Of what you offer, I go along with this, but not with that,” or “Let us try this and see how it works out.” Then, there is continuing education on both sides, and each one at the same time is responsible for himself, through the choices he makes. That actually makes it much easier on the authorities, and it seems to me that any authority in his right mind would welcome this: he has contributed the best that he has to offer, but the choice is made by the other person. The authority, likewise, is responsible for his choices—for himself, not for anyone else. I know how this works out because I have tried it in medicine, education, and psychology. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
When I meet with authorities who permit this, I become more intelligent, and I enjoy democracy. When I, a parent-authority, permit this, I become more intelligent, and I enjoy democracy. When they are made clearly responsible for themselves, children, in my experience, become more accountable. When they see the responsibility as being up to someone else, they are less so. This happens to grownups, too. It seems to me that democracy has not failed: we just have not really tried it yet. As a boy in grade school said to his teacher, “Mr. P—how do you reconcile your teaching of democracy with the way that you conduct this class?” We need to be more congruent. No one can be devoid of feelings, and the philosopher will not be exempt from this rule. Cheerfulness is an excellent mental attribute and worth cultivating; but where it results from mental blindness it is not worth having, for then it may become a real danger. Feelings, emotions, and passions should not be allowed to submerge reason, unless the feeling is genuinely intuitive, the emotion truly impersonal, and the passion a desire for the highest Truth. Feeling can be trained to become finer, more delicate, responsive to higher urges and ideals. The baser feelings go away of their own accord as the higher ones are let in and encouraged. The man who is seeking regeneration of his character will not often have repose of his feelings, for he is called by himself to struggle with himself. It is in the very nature of emotion to vary like the wind. Consequently, he who would attain inner peace cannot base his attainment upon emotion alone. He must find something much more stable than that, much more constant than that. This is not to say that life of the spirit is without feeling, but it is a calm, unbroken feeling. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
One may legitimately take pride in the fact that he is called to the philosophic life, that he has accepted the philosophic ideal. For it is not the kind of pride which can vaunt itself over other men; its aims are to be fulfilled rather by humbling the ego and reducing its sway. The Roman Stoics, who sought to control their emotions and master their passions, placed character above knowledge. We pursue a similar albeit less rigorous discipline in controlling feelings by reason because we place knowledge above character. The latter is made a preliminary to attainment of the former. Goethe says: “I prefer the harmful truth to the helpful falsehood. Truth will heal the wound which she may have given.” And again, he says: “A harmful truth is helpful, because it can be harmful only for the moment, and will lead us to other truths which must become ever more and more helpful. On the other hand, a helpful lie is more harmful, because it can help only for the moment, and then lead to other lies which must become more and more harmful.” When he can brin himself to see clearly that no woman has anything to offer him which the Overself cannot offer more satisfyingly—be it ecstasy or beauty, intimacy or love, comfort or companionship—the glamour of pleasures of the flesh will pall. Roberto Assagioli, an Italian psychiatrist, developed a theory of healthy personality and a set of techniques for fostering this goal that he named psychosynthesis. He combined contributions from psychosomatic medicine, psychology of religion, study of higher modes of consciousness, parapsychology, Eastern philosophy, personality theory, anthropology, and finally, active techniques for fostering personality growth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
His theory of personality structure states that the human being comprises seven levels, or modes, of functioning: The lower unconscious, which includes drives and urges, repressed feelings, and the like (similar in meaning to the id, which harbours primitive pleasures of the flesh and aggressive demands, in Dr. Freud’s writings). The middle unconscious, which comprises the background of our ordinary waking consciousness and is like Dr. Freud’s preconscious, or to the “background” of awareness described by Gestalt psychologists. The superconscious, which Assagioli states is the source of “higher” feelings, such as altruistic love, and higher inspirations and intuitions, which give rise to truly creative works. The field of consciousness, which designates our ordinary awareness of perceptions, memories, feelings, and urges. The conscious self, or “I” designates a “point of pure self-awareness” independent of the content of one’s awareness. The self, or “I,” he claims, is an enduring center in our consciousness, like a light illuminating the objects that are seen. The higher self, of which we are generally unconscious, and which transcends the “I,” our conscious self. This higher self seems to stand for the possibility of more fully developed experiencing and acting. The collective unconscious, a term that Assagioli borrowed from Jung, refers to the beliefs, assumptions, traditions, myths, and symbols that form a source for and background to a persons ordinary consciousness, a source he or she shares with the other members of the society. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The task for human beings, says Assagioli, is to free themselves from enslavement by ignorance and unconsciousness, to attain a “harmonious inner integration, true self-realization, and right relationships with others.” The goal of such integration—true psychosynthesis—is achieved in four stages: through the knowledge of one’s personality. Control of the various elements of personality. This is achieved by a technique called disidentification. As Assagioli states, “We are dominated by everything with which our self becomes identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we dis-identify.” Realization of one’s true self, the discovery or creation of a unifying center. This stage entails the quest for the best, most fully functioning person that one can be through commitment to a worthwhile mission. Psychosynthesis, the formation or reconstruction of the personality around the new center. This phase calls for the commitment, study, struggle, and action to actualize the mission and, thereby, the image of the best possible self. How can man attain the goal of freeing himself from illusions? Marx thought his goal could be achieved by reform of consciousness. The reform of consciousness consists exclusively in the fact that one lets the World become aware of its consciousness, that one awakens the World from the dream it is dreaming about itself, that one interprets its own actions to the World…our motto must be: reform of consciousness, not through doctrines but by analyzing the mystical self-confused consciousness, whether it has a political or a religious content. One will see, then, that the World has possessed already for a long time the dream of something, of which it must only have consciousness to possess it in reality. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
One will see that we are not dealing with a big hiatus between past and present but with the realization (Vollziehung) of the thoughts of the past. Eventually one will see that mankind does not begin any new task but accomplishes its old task with consciousness…this is a confession, nothing else. To have its sins forgiven, mankind has only to explain them for what they are. A group of psychologists, sociologist, economists, and representatives of the consuming public could undertake a study of those needs which are “humane,” in a sense that they serve man’s growth and joy, and those synthetic needs suggested by industry and its propaganda in order to find an outlet for profitable investment. As in so many other problems, the question is not so much the difficulty in determining the difference between these two types of needs and certain intermediate types but rather the raising of an extremely important question which can be brought up only if the social scientists begin to be concerned with man, instead of the alleged smooth functioning of our society or their function as apologists. It is true that to be guided by one’s interest means to take the way of least resistance. The principle means essentially the pursuit of those subjects which at the time being are least repressed. And this is exactly the principle that the analyst applies when he chooses those factors for interpretation which he believes the patient can fully grasp at the time, and he will refrain from embarking upon problems that are still deeply repressed. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Life safety. The primary purpose of firefighters is to help ensure the safety of lives and that means saving people’s lives by preventing and extinguishing fires and it also means by offering medical care during emergencies. “There was no training in the fire department at that time. I learned to run a pumper by myself, by being an observer, and then, on off hours, I’d go over to the station and practice on my own. The first time I ever got into the truck, of course I got my butt chewed up by the old-timers, because that was their job. That was a prestige job in those days. My business was only a block from the fire station, so I was one of the first one there on calls, and when I felt confident with that damn pumper I’d jump in the seat and have it sitting outside when those guys showed up. Some of them didn’t like that. They wouldn’t tell you anything. Same way with the breathing apparatus. At the Fireman’s Association summer meeting, which we had every year in June, we used to have hose-laying contests—two hundred feet of two-and-a-halfs and a Siamese arrangement of two one-and-a-halfs, a hundred feet long. And they timed you from when they said “Go” until water came out of both inch-and-a-half nozzles. We practiced over here every night for six weeks, because there was a particular town in the country that kept walking away with the prize. We were bound and determined that we were going to beat those guys, and we have that thing down pat. Make and break, set that up, and really get her going. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“Then we went over the conference, ready for this contest, and they gave us an old, beat-up ex-forestry truck that our engineer had never seen before. And he messed up the connection to the hydrant, so we got a little screwed up there. Then we got going, and after it was over, there was a big battle over the timers. Anyhow, we ended up losing. And then the fight was on. With fists. My guys were mad, and those guys thought we tried to cheat them. And one thing led to another. I’m strictly a lover, not a fighter, so I had to laugh. When I’m in charge at a fire scene, the guys I send in to make a search are those ones that attend all the training sessions, because I know they’re not going to panic or anything like that. I never send in just one man, I’ll generally send two and a captain to be their eyes and ears and guide. We practice that way. I got an old building where we practice our firefighting tactics with live fire. We get a little bit more of it each time. It’ll probably take us three or four months before that thing finally goes to ground. Great training for these guys. The state has a training program, but in recent years it hasn’t been able to fund enough instructors. So they are trying to develop self-training programs, by training somebody from each fire department to become the instructor for that particular department. And this works out pretty good, because that’s exactly what I’m doing, following my own training plans. We do ours in the evenings, Monday through Friday, and the guys get their certificate, and so on. I enjoy doing it.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department is the all-hazards response team. It is important to keep them fully funded so they have the resources to save the community. You can help save lives and property by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, teach your children what a privilege it is to live in America and be America. Raise them to love America, love God and Jesus Christ and respect law and order and their elders. We can help raise the next generation of patriotic leaders. Let justice well up as the waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. 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. In future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a World founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the World; freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the World; freedom from want which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the World; freedom from fear, which means a Worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour—everywhere in the World. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn way anymore. However, they shall sit every man under His vine. And none shall make them afraid. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
The Winchester Mystery House
In the summer of 1899, Mrs. Winchester found herself alone on the stairs on one occasion, when she suddenly heard a voice speak to her. “It’s all right…she can come out now,” some woman said somewhere in back of her. There was no one visible who could have spoken these words and no one nearby. Besides, it was not a voice she recognized. It sounded strangely hollow and yet imperious at the same time. Someone was giving an order, but who, and to whom? Clearly, this someone still considered herself a member of this house. The servants from two were half frightened out of their wits at the idea of living in such a beautiful, but bizarre, pagan-looking place; especially when they got together in the servants’ hall in the evening, and compared notes on all the hobgoblin stories picked up in the course of the day. They were afraid to venture alone about the gloomy, black-looking chambers. One of Mrs. Winchester’s chambermaids declares she could never sleep alone in such a “gashly rummaging old building”; and the footman, who was a kind-hearted young fellow, did all in his power to cheer her up. Mrs. Winchester was struck with the lonely appearance of the house. Before going to bed, therefore, she examined well the fastness of the doors and windows; locked up the plate with her own hands, and carried the keys, together with a little box of money and jewels, to her own room; for she was a notable woman, and always saw to all things herself.
Having put the keys under her pillow, and dismissed her maid, she sat by her toilet arranging her elaborate hair; for being in spite of her grief for Mr. William Winchester and Annie Winchester, rather a buxom widow, she was somewhat particular about her person. She sat for a little while looking at her face in the glass, first on one side, then on the other, as ladies are apt to do when they would ascertain whether they have been in good looks. All of the sudden she thought she heard something move behind her. She looked hastily round, but there was nothing to be seen. Nothing but the grimly painted portraits of her poor dear man, and late newborn daughter hanging against the wall. She gave a heavy sigh to their memories, as she was accustomed to do whenever she spoke of them in company, and then went on adjusting her night-dress, and thinking of them. Her sigh was reechoed, or answered by a long-drawn breath. She looked round again, but no one was to be seen. She ascribed these sounds to the wind oozing through the windows of the mansion and proceeded leisurely to put her hair in papers, when all at once, she thought she perceived one of the eyes of the portrait move, as her eyes were fixed on its reflection in the glass. It struck a momentary chill to her heart; for she was a lone woman, and felt herself fearfully situated.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Curse of Bigness
Approximately sixty six percent of Americans report that high inflation has made their financial situation worse. Families with lower incomes are especially suffering. Another twenty percent of Americans have reported that the rising prices have made their financial health much worse. Housing costs in California have long been higher than the national average. In recent years, these costs have grown substantially—in some cases, growing at historically rapid rates. California’s home prices have far exceeded the rest of the country and the state is about thirty three percent more expensive than a mid-tier home in the rest of the country—a gap that has widened over the last decade. Monthly payments for a newly purchased mid-tier home—including mortgage, taxes, and homeowners’ insurance—have increased dramatically over the last couple of years. Payments for a mid-tier home were over $5,000 a month in March 2024—an eighty percent increase since January of 2020. Payments for a bottom-tier home versus renting are near levels that have not been seen since the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. This rapid increase in monthly costs for homebuyers was driven by higher home prices and increasing mortgage rates. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Costs of buying a home have grown by more than median income. Affordability depends on both the costs of the housing, as well as the income and/or wages of households. Annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home in March 2024 was about $235,000—over two times the median California household income in 2022 ($85,300). For a bottom-tier home, about $140,000 in annual income is required to qualify for a mortgage—more than 50 percent higher than median household income in 2022. Furthermore, rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of American with half of all renters paying more than thirty percent of their income on rent and utilities. In New York, rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is $4,300 a month; Santa Clara the number is $3,290 per month; and in Sacramento the average 1-bedroom apartment is $2,135 per month. If it were true that the terrible results of the degrading conditions forced upon the dwellers in the slums were transmitted to their children by heredity, and within few generations they become fixed character, the hope for a regenerated society would be much more difficult to realize. If that were the case, these unfortunate creatures would continue to act in the same way for several generations, no matter how their environment had been transformed by the corporate actions of society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The poverty line for a family of four is $62,300. Many of the people who make this amount of money are those with high school diplomas and graduate degrees as well as blue-collar and white-collar workers who live in both rural and urban American. Also, about 4o percent of Americans are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck, while nearly fifty percent of them said they do not have $500 saved for emergencies. Price increases are devasting for lower-income Americans because they tend to spend more their paychecks on necessities and have less money to save. The typical American household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 compared with three years ago. For those on Social Security retirement, cost of living adjustments are not helping them much. Our affair is not with the evolution of life and its adaptation to the natural environment, but with the evolution of man, and the adaptation of life to his purposes. And even the control of life around us matters less than that of our psychological evolution and of social progress. If no Utopia is in the making, at least, some believe there should be a shift away from the free competitive order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Capitalism is beginning to turn into the welfare capitalism; the frustrations of the middle class and the needs of the poor are accelerating the change. Men sense that a different order is slowly arising. Although they can seldom describe it, they have expressed it variously in their slogans and titles: they speak of the New Nationalism, the Square Deal, the New Nationalism, the Square Deal, the New Freedom, the New Competition, the New Democracy—and, in time, of the New Deal. Previous reform and protest movements have been disjointed and uncoordinated uprisings of workers and farmers; now the middle class is drawn into the fray. The middle-class citizen, as producer and consumer, is beginning to feel the growth of inflation and fears that he will be grounded between large combinations of capital, labour, and Artificial Intelligence. As the standard of living, the figure of the great capitalist entrepreneur, hitherto heroic, lost much of his glamour. He is condemned as an exploiter of labour and an extorter from the consumer, pilloried as an unfair competitor, and exposed as a corrupter of political life. In a society of great collective aggregates, the traditional emphasis upon the exploits of the individual lost much of its appeal. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The old problem of defending competition from critics on the left now pales as people are forced to face “the curse of bigness,” the more imminent threat to competition from the offspring of competition itself. Our industry is a fight of every man for himself. The prize we give the fittest is monopoly of the necessary life, and we leave these winners of the powers of life and death wield them over us by the same “self-interest” with which they took them from us. “There is no hope for any of us, but the weakest must go first,” is the golden rule of business. There is no other field of human associations in which any such rule of action is allowed. The man who should apply in his family or in his citizenship this “survival of the fittest” theory as it is practically professed and operated in business would be a monster, and would be speedily made extinct. It is laissez faire as policy that is most completely discredited. While the old, simple apotheosis of competition has faded, few have ceased altogether to believe in it. One of the primary aims, indeed, of the middle-class revolt is to restore so far as possible the pristine conditions of competitive business. However, even if the supposed benefits of competition were to be retained, some form of government regulation is needed to restrain monopoly. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
American industry is not free, as once it was free. The man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak. This the small entrepreneur and his sympathizers are trying to change the laws because the middle class is grasping for life and capital and many fear becoming homeless. The little individualist, recognizing his individual impotence, realizing that he does not possess within himself even the basis of a moral judgement against his big brother, begins to change his point of view. He no longer hopes to right all things by his individual efforts. He has turned to the law, to the government, to the state. The right of competition must be limited to preserve it. For instance, the American Automobile industry produces some of the best designed and best performing vehicles in the World, but when Japanese automobiles flooded the markets back in the 1970s and 80s, during the gas crisis, people got hooked on them and have yet to return to their roots. To encourage people to buy American cars, we need to put tariffs on Japanese cars to not kill the American automobile industry. For excesses of competition leads to monopoly, as excesses of liberty lead to absolutism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The issue therefore is: Regulated competition versus regulated monopoly. In the past, as serious attempts to alter the business structure through legislation increased, there came a flood of laws to relieve the working class. Intellectuals, humanitarians, and social workers threw themselves on the side of labour, and drew support from a middle class which had no desire to see industrial oppression bring collectivism from the left. In increasing numbers, state legislatures adopted laws increasing minimum wage, limiting worker’s compensation, and similar measures of reform. Sympathy for union activity grew stronger among intellectuals. If we are not careful, with the amount of inflation we are experiencing today, Americans could return to child labour, more people may engage in selling pleasures of the flesh and peddling contraband. We could see comfort stations popping up in suburban communities and becoming as popular as liquor stores in the cities. We already have drug shops peddling illegal drugs to anyone who walks through the doors. And 65,000 catalytic converters were stolen in 2022. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Women have been convinced that their place is no longer in the home. They are encouraged to hire nannies and order already prepared meals kits. They are sent the message that they are no longer homemakers and care givers to their families. If there is a “housing shortage” and people cannot afford the supply of housing, means that there is too much demand from overpopulation. The masses as well the classes must be judged impartially through the arbitrament of the universal struggle. The state is conceived by all reformers to be an indispensable instrument of the new reconstruction. We must have a fervent plea for the abandonment of the traditional American mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism in favour of a more positive attempt to realize the national promise. Americans must learn to think in terms of purpose rather than destiny, and, without fear of the centralizing powers of government, to realize their purpose through a national policy. We can no longer treat life as something that has trickled down to us. We must deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, alter its tools, formulate its method, educate and control it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In endless ways we put intention where custom has reigned. We break up routines, make decisions, choose our ends, select means. The managed society which we anticipate must become a reality. If our children are to survive, the state of intervention must come of age. Despite the interruption of the Obama administration, the trend toward social cohesion must keep growing so the sons of the generation can witness the creation of a state machinery as great as any that could have appeared in the Victorian individualist’s worst nightmares. Whatever the human potentialities of this apparatus, for good or evil, the ideals of a cohesive and centralized society will become increasingly triumphant over those of the heyday of the age of information. While individualism has by no means disappeared, it is increasingly on the defensive. The religious keynote, the economic keynote, the scientific keynote of the twenty first century must be the overwhelming realization that mankind has such a mental and spiritual powers and such control over nature that the doctrine of the struggle for existence is definitely outmoded and placed by the higher law of cooperation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
We live in a consumer drive economy, and the attempt to question the pattern of unlimited consumption meets with a difficulty. Compulsive consumption compensates for anxiety. The need for this type of consumption stems from the sense of inner emptiness, hopelessness, confusion, and tension. By “taking in” articles of consumption, the individual reassures himself that “he is,” as it were. If consumption were to be reduced, a good deal of anxiety would become manifest. Resistance against the possible arousal of anxiety would result in an unwillingness to reduce consumption. The most telling example of this mechanism is to be found in the public’s attitude toward cigarette consumption. In spite of the well-known dangers to health, the majority goes on consuming cigarettes. It is because they would rather take a chance of earlier death than forgo pleasure? An analysis of the attitude of smokers shows that this is largely a rationalization. Cigarette consumption allays hidden anxiety and tension, and people would rather risk their health than to be confronted with anxiety. Yet, once the quality of the process of living becomes more important than it is now, many people will stop smoking or overconsuming, not for the sake of their physical health but because only when they face their anxieties can they find ways to more productive living. (If they are compulsive, most urges for pleasures, including pleasures of the flesh, are not caused by the wish for pleasure but by the wish for avoidance of anxiety.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The problem of limits to consumption is so difficult to assess because, even in the affluent society of the United States of America, not all unquestionably legitimate needs are fulfilled. This holds true for at least 52 percent of the population. When the optimum consumption level has not been reached, how can we even think of reduced consumption? First, in the affluent sector, we have already reached the point of harmful consumption; second, the aim of ever-increasing consumption creates, even before the optimal consumption level is reached, an attitude of greed in which one wishes not only to have one’s legitimate needs fulfilled but dreams of a never-ending increase in desires and satisfactions. In other words, the idea of the limitless rise of production and consumption curve greatly contributes to the development of passivity and greed in the individual, even before peak consumption is reached. Despite these considerations, the transformation of our society into one which serves life must change the consumption and thereby change, indirectly, the production pattern of present industrial society. Such a change would obviously come not because of bureaucratic orders but of studies, information, discussion, and making on the part of the population, educated to become aware of the problem of the difference between life-furthering and life-hindering kinds of needs. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Awareness of illusions is the condition for freedom and human action. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless World, just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun, which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself. How can man attain the goal of freeing himself from illusions? The behaviourists try to explain human activity without recourse to terms referring to consciousness, such as reward or satisfaction. #Randolphharris 12 of 18
Instead, behaviourists invoke a circular argument, stating that behaviour is “shaped” (into skills, or patterned habits) by reinforcers. A reinforcer is any consequence to action which strengthens, that is, increases the probability of the recurrence of, a response. To an observer who is not a behaviorist, the “reinforcing stimulus” may look suspiciously like a reward or a pleasant experience; the behaviourist prefers to avoid such subjectivistic terms. Skinner and his followers have been consulted by officials concerned with the management of prisoners’ behaviour in prisons and the behaviour of patients in mental hospitals, and by administrators of school systems who wish to make teaching and learning more efficient. There is considerable controversy between humanistic and behaviouristic psychologists about the issue of behaviour control, and the student should become familiar with the points of debate. Healthy personality, according to a behaviouristic view, calls for competence and self-control—the ability to suppress action that no longer yields positive reinforcers, and to learn action that is successful in attaining the good things. Such rapid adaptability is mediated by the ability to discern the contingencies, or rules implicit in nature or in society, according to which needs are gratified and dangers averted. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
I have always been uneasy about the behaviouristic approach to human nature, because it appeals to the power motive in the behaviour scientist. Moreover, research in behaviourism is frequently funded by agencies interested in controlling the behaviour and experience of other persons for the institution rather than the person. If a definite distinction is thus established between freely associating and understanding, when does one stop associating and try to understand? Fortunately, there are no rules whatever. If thoughts flow freely there is no sense in arresting them artificially. Sooner or later, they will be stopped by something stronger than themselves. Perhaps the person arrives at a point where he feels curious about what it all may mean. Or he may suddenly strike an emotional chord that promises to shed light on something that is troubling him. Or he may simply run out of thoughts, which may be a sign of resistance but also may indicate that he has exhausted the subject for the time being. Or he may have only a limited time at his disposal and still want to try himself at interpreting his notes. As the understanding of associations, the range of themes and combinations of themes that they may present is so infinite that there cannot possibly be any fixed rules regarding the meaning of individual elements in individual contexts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When a person stops associating and begins to go over his notes to understand them, his method of work must change. Rather than being entirely passive and receptive to whatever emerges, he becomes active. Now his reason comes into play. He no longer excludes reason. Even now he does not use it exclusively. It is difficult to describe with any accuracy the attitude he should adopt when he tries to grasp the meaning of a series of associations. The process should certainly not degenerate into a mere intellectual exercise. If he wants, he will do better to play chess or predict the course of World politics or take to crossword puzzle. An effort to figure out completely rounded interpretations, not missing any possible connotation, may gratify his vanity by proving the superiority of his brains but will scarcely take him much closer to a real understanding of himself. Such an effort entails a certain danger, for it may hamper progress by engendering a smug know-it-all feeling while he has only catalogued items without being touched by anything. The other extreme, a merely emotional insight, is far more valuable. If it is not further elaborated this is not ideal either, because it allows many significant leads, not yet altogether lucid, to drop out of sight. However, as we have seen from Clare’s analysis, an insight of this kind may set something going. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Early in her work, Clare experienced an intense lost of feeling in connection with her dream of the foreign city; it was mentioned than that although it is impossible to prove whether this emotional experience had any effect upon the further analysis, through its disquieting nature it may well have loosened her rigid tabu against touching any of the complex ties that fastened her to Peter. Another instance occurred during Clare’s final battle with her dependency, when she felt her defiance against taking her life into her own hands; she had then no intellectual grasp of the meaning of this emotional insight, yet it helped her to get out of a state of lethargic helplessness. Instead of wanting to produce a scientific masterpiece, the person who is working alone should let his interpretation be directed by his interest. He should simply go after what arrests his attention, what arouses his curiosity, what strikes an emotional chord within him. If he is flexible enough to let himself be guided by his spontaneous interest, he can be reasonably certain that he will intuitively select those subjects which at the time are most accessible to his understanding, or which fall in line with the problem on which he is working on. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
When I first learned to read, I was absorbed in the joy of my learning. At the same time, it is true that until I could read for myself, I was dependent on my mother’s time: I had to wait for her to read to me. That could be called a problem. However, when I was eight and went to German school on Saturday mornings, I was lost in the enchantment of writing German script, the light lines up, the heavy lines down. It was utter fascination to find that a completely different set of sounds and “pictures” (letters)—like frau—meant in another part of the World what my mother was. To discover that kindergarten, to which I had gone, was a German word, not an English one, was like discovering that I had been in Germany instead of America. Then there were the words that were same as ours, and others that were nearly the same, which brought together what had seemed so far apart. I do not think I had a problem that led to my learning German. I did have some familiarity with it, to begin with. My German grandfather still spoke German when he had someone to speak it with. German was in this sense already a part of my life. However, what did my love of Latin in high school have to do with my life? The only connection that I can find is that I liked words, and the meaning of words, and the derivations of words. However, after a year I had got the hang of that and could look up the rest for myself when I needed. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
No one can be devoid of feeling, and the philosopher will not be exempt from this rule. However, whereas the ordinary man’s feelings are transient emotions, passions, stresses, or moods, the philosopher’s feelings nourish a sustained, elevate state. The mistake of taking personal feelings as fit judges of truth or reality is a grave barrier which often lies across the portal of philosophy. People put a grossly exaggerated value on them and are thus led astray from the true knowledge of a fact or a situation. Without changing a person’s feelings, no change for the better in his own life, in himself, and in his relationship with other persons can be stable. When his feelings are really a conscious or subconscious cover for other feelings, nothing will help, save the uncovering of what the ego has hidden. Generous feeling must be directed by sound judgment, fervent devotion must be led by wise discrimination. The longing for inward security and invulnerable peace is one which a man can certainly satisfy. However, he cannot satisfy it on his own terms. Life has always and inseparably dictated the price which must be paid for it. It is easy to talk vaguely of lofty ideas, hard to put them where they belong—in our personal relationships. The line of conduct which impulse suggests is often different from that which deliberate reflection or deeper intuition suggests. Only when a man so develops himself that the two lines harmoniously coincide will he know the peace of never being torn in two—either mentally or emotionally. Then only, when desire and duty agree perfectly with one another, will he be happy. For, when reason approves what feeling chooses, and the inner balance is perfect, the resulting decision is more likely to be a right one than not. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
In 1890, there was an abundance of evidence concerning unspeakable horror lurking in the blackness beyond. The butler was sleeping in the front left bedroom on the second floor, and he felt that something was in there; he could hear someone breathing. He got up and turned the light on, and at that every moment he saw something go up the wall and up the fireplace. He did not know what it was. He could hear the noise, and saw it go up the chimney and then take off. That scared him. He sat up the rest of the night. Other times he has heard something walking behind him. Four or five different servants had the same experience.
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 