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If Man Has Entered the Gates of Hell, He Has Left Behind His Own Humanity
Human nature comprises some deep characteristics which yearn to satisfy particular needs and impulses, such as aggression, the ego that drives him towards pleasurable experiences, the need for love, and avoidance of pain in all areas of life. When considering as an essential factor in the functioning of the social system, this undertaking goes beyond what is called “psychology.” It should more properly be called a “science of man,” a discipline which deals with the data of history, sociology, psychology, theology, mythology, physiology, economic, and art, as far as they are relevant to the understanding of man. Man was—and still is—easily seduced into accepting a particular form of being human as his essence. To the degree to which this happens, man defines his humanity in terms of the society with which he identifies himself. However, while this had been the rule, there have been exceptions. There were always men who looked beyond the dimensions of their own society—and while they may have been called fools or criminals in their time, they are the roster of great men as far as the record of human history is concerned—and visualized something which can be called universally human and which is not identical with what a particular society assumes human nature to be. There were always men who were bold and imaginative enough to see beyond the frontiers of their own social existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Man has been defined as Homo faber—the tool maker. Indeed, man is a tool maker, but our ancestors before they were fully human were tool makers too. Man has been defined as Homo sapiens, but in this definition all depends on what is meant by sapiens. To use thought for the purpose of finding better means for survival and ways to achieve what we want—this capacity animals also have, and there is at best a quantitative difference been men and animals as far as this kind of achievement is concerned. If, however, one means by sapiens knowledge in the sense of thought which tries to understand the core of phenomena, thought that penetrates from the deceptive surface to what is “really real,” thought the purpose of which is not to manipulate but to comprehend, then Homo sapiens would, indeed, be a correct definition of man. Man has been defined as Homo ludens—man the player, play meaning nonpurposeful activity transcending the immediate needs for survival. Indeed from the time of the creators of the cave paintings to the present day, man has indulged in nonpurposeful activities. There are two other definitions of man that we should add. One: Homo negans—man who say “no,” although most men say “yes” when their survival or their advantage requires it. From a statistical standpoint on human behaviour, man should be called, rather, the yes-man. However, from the standpoint of the human potential, man is distinguished from all other animals by his capacity to say “no,” by his affirmation of truth, love, integrity, even at the expense of physical survival. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Another definition of man would be Homo eperans—the hoping man. To hope is an essential condition of being human. If man has given up all hope, he has entered the gates of hell—whether he knows it or not—and he has left behind his own humanity. Perhaps the most significant definition of the species characteristic of man has been given by Marx, who defined it as “free, conscious activity.” Probably more such definitions could be added to the ones just mentioned, but they still do no justice to the question: What does it mean to be human? They emphasize only certain elements of being human without trying to give a more complete and systematic answer. Any attempt to give an answer will immediately meet with the objection that at the very best such an answer is no more than metaphysical speculation, perhaps poetic, but at any rate the expression of subjective preference rather than a statement of any definitely ascertainable reality. These last words call to mind the theoretical physicist who might speak of his own concepts in terms of an objective reality and yet disclaim any final statement he might make about the nature of matter. Indeed, even if human evolution were to far transcend the present point of history, in which man has hardly begun to be fully human, no final statement about what is means to be human can be made now: it is possible that it may never be made. However, a skeptical attitude toward the possibility of making final statements about the nature of man does not mean that a number of statements cannot be made which have a scientific character, that is to say, which draw conclusions from observing the facts, conclusions which are correct in spite of the fact that the motivation to find the answer was the wish for a happier life. On the contrary, the function of Reason is to promote the art of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
What knowledge can we draw on in order to answer the question, what does it mean to be human? The answer cannot lie in the direction which such answers have often taken: that man is good or bad, loving or destructive, gullible or independent, et cetera. Obviously, man can be all this just as he can be musical or tone-deaf, sensitive to painting or colour-blind, a saint or a rascal. All these and many other qualities are various possibilities of being human. In fact, they are all within each one of us. To be fully aware of one’s humanity means to be aware that, “Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto” (I am a man and nothing human is alien to me); that each one carries all of humanity within himself—the saint as well as the criminal: as Goethe put it, that there is no crime of which one cannot imagine oneself to be the author. All these manifestations of humanity are not the answer to what does it mean to be human. They are only answering the question, how different can we be and yet be human? If we want to know what it means to be human, we must be prepared to find answers not in terms of different human possibilities, but in terms of the very conditions of human existence from which all these possibilities spring as possible alternatives. These conditions can be recognized as a result not of metaphysical speculation but of the examination of the data of anthropology, history, child psychology, individual and social psychopathology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The hopeless pessimist who asserts that men cannot improve their inborn character, that they will be exactly the same faulty creatures at sixty that they were at twenty, may be right about some men but is certainly wrong about others. Every Quester who tries hard enough proves him wrong. Character may be bettered by bettering conduct, which is visible, just as it may by bettering feeling, which is not. If the check to a weakness, a shortcoming, an undesirable impulse, or a negative emotion is given instantly, if retreat from it is made before it has time to swell and strengthen, victory is very largely assured. He need not be too ashamed because he has felt these things, provided he pulls himself together. They are what he has inherited from past births, plus what he has picked up in the present one, and it is inevitable or “natural” that he should experience them. Even the saints have endured them repeatedly, but those who conquered in the end knew this trick instantly outwitting the enemy. He will undergo periods of purification, when the animal appetites such as lust and gluttony, and the animal passions such as wrath and hate, will have to be brought under better control. The discipline involved is both a kind of penance for past sins and a preparation for future enlightenment. It may be that these baser attributes need to be pushed up out of latency near the surface, in order to deal with them more effectually. If so, this will come about through some sort of crisis. He need not be distressed for it will be ultimately beneficent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The ability to throw negative thoughts out of his mind is so valuable that a deliberate and daily effort to cultivate it is well worthwhile. This is as true of one’s self-originated thought as of those picked up from outside, whether unwittingly from other persons, or absorbed through susceptibility from environments. Anyone can go on living but not everyone can go on living worthily. We are all imperfect and the making of mistakes is to be expected. The mishandling of problems need not surprise us and the yielding to weaknesses is a common experience. Let us grant all this, but it does not excuse us from being bereft of the desire for self-improvement, of the aspiration for self-ennoblement, or of the search for self-enlightenment. Man has an animal body, shared certain instinctive reactions, desires, and passion with other animals. However, mentally and morally there are creative impulses, functions, ideas, and ideals which increasingly separate him from them as he develops and put him on a higher plane. The ethical standards of the disciple are, or should be, as far beyond those of conventional good men, as their standards are beyond those of evil men. He may have to pass successively through the three stages of intemperate idealism, disappointed idealism, and philosophic idealism. The last is as balanced and discerning as the first is not. The faults of character and defects in personality which bar advancement in the quest will also bar advancement in other spheres of human life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Being in him, these advancements will inevitably bring their results on the physical plane in the time of course. They will manifest themselves in his business or career, his home or social relations. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the self-improvement brought about by the quest’s discipline will be to his advantage in other ways. In persons who are moving toward greater openness to their experiencing, there is an organismic commonality of value directions. These common value directions are of such kinds as to enhance the development of the individual himself, of others in his community, and to make for the survival and evolution of his species. It has been a striking fact of my experiences that in therapy, where individuals are valued, where there is greater freedom to feel and to be, certain value directions seem to emerge. These are not chaotic directions but instead have a surprising commonality. This commonality is not dependent on the personality of the therapist, for I have seen these trends emerge in the clients of therapists sharply different in personality. This commonality does not seem to be due to the influences of any one culture, for I have found evidence of these directions in cultures as divergent as those of the United States of America, Holland, France, and Japan. I like to think that this commonality of value directions is due to the fact that we all belong to the same species—that just as a human infant tends, individually, to select a diet similar to that selected by other human infants, so a client in therapy tends, individually, to choose value directions similar to those chosen by other clients. If they were genuinely free to choose, as a species there may be certain elements of experience which tend to make for inner development and which would be chosen by all individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
A few of the values I see in my clients as they move in the direction of personal growth and maturity: They tend to move away from facades. Pretenses, defensiveness, putting up a front, tend to be negatively values. They tend to move away from “oughts”. The compelling feeling of “I ought to do or be thus and so” is negatively valued. The client moves away from being what he “ought to be,” no matter who has set that imperative. They tend to move away from meeting the expectations of others. Pleasing others, as a goal in itself, is negatively valued. Being real is positively valued. The client tends to move toward being himself, being his real feelings, being what he is. This seems to be a very deep preference. Self-direction is positively valued. The client discovers an increasing pride and confidence in making his own choices, guiding his own life. One’s self, one’s own feelings come to be positively valued. From desiring some fixed goal, clients come to prefer the excitement of being a process of potentialities being born. Perhaps more than all else, the client comes to vaule an openness to all of his inner and outer experience. To be open to and sensitive to his own inner reactions and feelings, the reactions and feelings of others, and the realities of the objective World—this is a direction which he clearly prefers. This openness becomes the client’s most valued resource. Sensitivity to others and acceptance of others is positively valued. The client comes to appreciate others for what they are as he has come to appreciate himself for what he is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Finally, deep relationships are positively valued. To achieve a close, intimate, real, fully communicative relationship with another person seems to meet a deep need in every individual, and is vey highly valued. These then re some of the preferred directions which I have observed in individuals moving toward personality maturity. Though this list is inadequate and to some degree perhaps inaccurate, it holds exciting possibilities. I find it significant that when individuals are prized as persons, the values they select do not run the full gamut of possibilities. I do not find, in such a climate of freedom, that one person comes to value fraud and murder and thievery, while another values a life of self-sacrifice, and another values only money. Instead there seems to be a deep and underlying thread of commonality. I dare to believe that when the human being is inwardly free to choose whatever he deeply values, he tends to value those objective, experiences and goals which make for his own survival, growth, and development, and for the survival and development of others. I hypothesize that it is characteristic of the human organism to prefer such actualizing and socialized goals when he is exposed to a growth-promoting climate. In any culture, given a climate of respect and freedom in which he is valued as a person, the mature individual would tend to choose and prefer these same value directions. This is a highly significant hypothesis which could be tested. Though the individual of whim I am speaking would not have a consistent or even stable system of conceived values, the valuing process within him would lead to emerging value directions which would be constant across cultures and across time. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Another implication I see is that individuals who exhibit the fluid valuing process I have tried to describe, whose value directions are generally those I have listed, would be highly effective in the ongoing process of human evolution. If the human species is to survive at all on this globe, the human being must become more readily adaptive to new problems and situations, must be able to select that which is valuable for development and survival out of new and complex situations, and if he is to make such selections; he must be accurate in his appreciation of reality. The psychologically mature person, I have described has the qualities which would cause him to value those experiences which would make for the survival and enhancement of the human race. He would be a worthy participant and guide in the process of human evolution. Finally, it appears that we have returned to the issue of universality of values, but by a different route. Instead of universal values “out there,” or a universal value system imposed by some group—philosophers, rulers, or priests—we have the possibility of universal human value directions emerging from the experiencing of the human organism. Evidence from therapy indicates that both personal and social values emerge as natural, and experienced, when the individual is close to his own organismic valuing process. If he can learn again to be in touch with it, the suggestion is that though modern man no longer trusts religion or science or philosophy nor any system of beliefs to give him his values, he may fund an organismic valuing base within himself, and it will prove to be an organized, adaptive and social approach to the perplexing value issues which face all of us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
With the existence of three apparently different kinds of psychotherapists, we may ask if the different processions provide a range of backgrounds in respect to social class origins sufficient to make possible “natural understanding” across the full range of cultural variables represented in the client population. A second, closely related question is: Does there appear to be evidence of a meaningful division of labour, or assortative mating, such that the differential backgrounds of clients show some degree of appropriate relationship to the differential backgrounds of therapists? With a view to the possibilities suggested by these questions, this we investigated the distribution of certain biographical and sociocultural factors in samples representative of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social workers. Mental illness is a cultural universal. Persons who show recognizable patterns of deviant behaviour are found in every culture. A pattern is recognized as a set of behaviours that are deviant with respect to the modal behaviours of the individual’s group and that are repeated in different members of the group. The level of complexity of social organization or the degree of civilization achieved may vary widely; the society may be urban or rural, industrial or agrarian, nomadic or settled—but in every carefully studied sociocultural group (defined as a collection of persons having functional membership in a community and out of that membership deriving common and interdependent responsibility and shared interests) the sometime occurrence of one or more patters of deviant behaviour has been noted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The specific content and detailed form of the “insanity” reflects peculiarities of the particular culture in which it occurs. In respect to content, mental illness can be seen easily to have the quality of cultural relativity. It is in part this act of the cultural relativity of the content of emotional disorder that leads some authorities to claim that “mental illness” is not a scientific concept but rather a “convenient myth” which “has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had.” Cultural relativity in the definitions of what is conforming behaviour and what is sick (id est, non-conforming) behaviour does not negate the universality of the phenomenon of disordered behaviour; as a broad phenomenon which appears repeatedly within all cultures it is accessible to scientific inquiry. The amount of awareness of emotionally based disturbances in personality has varied over time and varies today from culture to culture. In earliest history apparently only the most deranged behaviours achieved sufficient attention to be recorded. As civilizations have prospered and as the arts of inquiry have become more sensitive, there has been growing recognition of more subtle expressions of psychological disorder. With the extension of the domain of mental illness there have been a parallel increase in the complexity and sophistication of explanations of emotional symptomatology. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
When considering neurosis, we look at a case study of a man called Tom. Tom was a medical assistant to a great clinician. He was deeply interested in his work and was favoured by his chief. A genuine friendship had developed between them, and they often lunched together. Once after such a luncheon Tom had a mild stomach upset which he ascribed to the food, without giving it further attention. After the next luncheon with the chief he felt nauseous and faint, considerably worse than the first time. He had his stomach examined but there was no pathological finding whatever. Then the disturbance occurred a third time, now with a painful sensitivity to smells. Only after the third luncheon did it strike him that all these upsets had occurred when he was eating with the director. As a matter of fact he had felt constrained with the director recently, sometimes not knowing what to talk about. And he knew the reason. His research work had led him in a direction which was opposite to the direction which was opposite to the director’s convictions. In recent week he had become more firmly convinced of his own findings. He had wanted to talk with the chief but somehow never got around to doing it. He was aware of procrastinating but the old man was rather rigid in scientific matters and did not easily tolerate dissension. Tom have showed aside his concern by telling himself that a good talk would solve everything. If the stomach upset had to do with fears, he reasoned, then his fears must be much greater than he had admitted to himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
He sensed that this was so and simultaneously had two proofs of it. One was that while having these thoughts he suddenly started to feel ill, just as he had felt after the luncheons. The other was that he realized just as suddenly what had started his reaction. During the luncheon in which the illness had first developed the director had made derogatory remarks about the ingratitude of Tom’s predecessor. He had expressed his resentment against these young fellas, who learned much from him and then left and did not even bother to keep in touch with him on scientific matters. All that Tom felt consciously at that moment was sympathy for the chief. He had repressed his knowledge that actually what the director could not tolerate was that the predecessor had gone his own independent way. Thus Tom became aware that he has closed his eyes to an existing danger, and he also recognized the extent of his fears. His work was creating a real danger to his good relationship with the director, and thereby a danger to his career. The old man might really turn against him. He felt somewhat panicky at this thought and wondered if it might be better for him to check his findings once more—or even forget about them. It was only a brief thought, but it showed him a flash that this was a conflict between his scientific honesty and the immediate exigencies of his career. By repressing his fears he had pursued an ostrich policy, the purpose of which was to avoid having to make a decision. With that insight he felt free and relieved. He knew it was a hard decision but did not doubt that it would be in favour of his conviction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
This story was not an example of self-analysis but merely an example of how great the temptation sometimes is not to be straight with oneself. Tom was a friend of mine, an unusually well-balanced fellow. Even though it is possible that he had certain hidden neurotic tendencies, such as a need to deny any fears, these did not make him a neurotic person. It might be objected that the very fact of his unconsciously shirking a decision was an expression of a deeper neurotic disturbance. However, there is certainly no sharp borderline between healthy and neurotic, and therefore it seems preferable to leave it as a matter of emphasis and regard Tom for all practical purposes as a healthy person. This episode would then represent a situational neurosis, that is, a neurotic upset caused primarily by the difficulties in a particular situation and lasting only so long as the conflict is not consciously faced and solved. Despite the fact that a critical estimate has been given of the results attained in each of these examples, they might, when regarded together, elicit an overoptimistic impression about the potentialities of occasional self-analysis, an impression that one can easily stumble over an insight and pick up something precious. A who feels helplessly caught in his neurotic entanglements tends to hope against hope for a miracle. It should be understood clearly that it is impossible to cure a severe neurosis, or any essential part of it, by occasional self-analysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The neurotic personality is not a piecemeal conglomeration—to use the expression of Gestalt psychologists—of disturbing factors, but has a structure in which each part is intricately interrelated to each other part. It is possible through occasional work at oneself to grasp an isolated connection here or there, to understand the factors immediately involved in an upheaval and to remove a peripheral symptom. However, to bring about essential changes it is necessary to work through the whole structure, that is, it requires a more systematic analysis. This occasional analysis, by its very nature, contributes but little to comprehensive self-recognition. Each problem that is clarified automatically introduces a new one. If these leads that offer themselves are not picked up the insights necessarily remain isolated. As a therapeutic method occasional self-analysis is entirely adequate for the situational neurosis. Also in mild neuroses it can yield very satisfactory results. However, in more intricate neuroses it is little more than a leap in the dark. At the very best it can do no more than release a tension here or there, or illuminate at random the meaning of one or another disturbance. Furthermore, while most people lie at least a few times each day, it is not those little white lies that hurt others. It is the big morbid ones that cause pain and destruction that we need to think about. Some deceptions occur to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. Other deceptions can change your life. We all also have lies that we tell to ourselves. Sometimes we tell lies to help us try harder at things in life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Now, historical materialism is not at all a psychological theory; its main postulate is that the way in which man produces determines his practice of life, his way of living, and this practice of life determines his thinking and the social and political structure of his society. Economy in this context refers not to a psychic drive, but to the mode of production; not to a subjective psychological but to an objective socioeconomic factor. Marx’s idea that man is formed by his practice of life was not a new as such. However, in Marx’s system what was new is that he analyzed in detail what these institutions are, or rather, that the institutions themselves were to be understood as part of the whole system of production which characterizes a given society. Various economic conditions can produce different psychological motivations. One economic system may lead to the formation of ascetic tendencies, as early capitalism did; another economic system to the preponderance of the desire to save and hoard, as nineteenth century capitalism did; still another, to the preponderance of the desire for spending and for ever-increasing consumption, as twenty-first capitalism does. There is only one quasi-psychological premise in Marx’s system: man must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before he can purse politics, science, art, religion, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given society, form the foundation upon which social and political institutions, and even art and religion, have been evolved. Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his mode of production. All this does not mean, however, that the drive to produce or consume is man’s main motivation. On the contrary, Marx’s main criticism of capitalist society is precisely that this society makes the wish to “have” and to “use” into the most dominant desire in man; Marx believed that a man who is dominated by the desire to have and to use is a cripped man. His aim was a socialist society organized in such a way that not profit and private property, but the free unfolding of man’s human powers are man’s dominate aims. Not the man who has much, but the man who is much is the fully developed, truly human man. Where the Overself lives fully in man, he will not need to consider whether an act is righteous or not. Righteous acts will flow spontaneously from him and no other kind will be possible. However, for a beginner to practise prematurely such nonresistance to his impulses would be dangerous and foolish. Woman have a greater power in possessing the power of love. She can lift and redeem men, succor and save them, or degrade and destroy them. However, with this power comes great responsibility. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Being a firefighter also comes with great responsibility. However, many people do not know much about the lives of firefighters. One firefighter says he lived in a small apartment with his parent growing up. The bathtub was in the kitchen, and the fire escape in the front, a small yard with a clothesline, no washing machines or dryers in those days. When he was twelve, he spotted a car on fire. He pulled the firebox and waited for the apparatus to come. When the fire was out, he talked with the firemen, and they invited him to the firehouse. As a result, he had been associating with the fire service since he was a pre-teen. He never got in trouble, never had a police record, no drugs. His mother and father both worked, and so hi grandfather took care of him. He really did not have much family life, and spent most of his time at the firehouse. The firefighters helped him with his homework, and would make sure he got home before curfew. After he grew up a little, the fire department would let him come with them to put fires out. During the summer, he would go to camp and run cross-county, and learn how to swim. He eventually became a lifeguard and joined the swim team, winning All-American for two consecutive years. Then he joined the Navy and became a Navy diver and even trained for the Olympics. Eventually he wound up going to the Military Olympics, but could not compete because he and three other guys came down with food poisoning. His father worked in a manufacturing plant where grain was processes and would have to carry hundred-pound sacks from the factor down to the river, over a ramp, and load them on the barges. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The young man felt sorry for his father because he had to work so hard. His mother work at an electrical equipment factory wiring sockets and other things. She used to come home at night and tears and he could not understand why until he saw her hands. She had pin holes all over them from the wires that penetrated her fingers. The firefighters became so attached to the young man that they would let him sleep over at the firehouse on weekends. He started listening to fire calls on the radio, and one night they heard a third alarm on Broadway. He ran over to the firehouse as use used to do. It was raining and it was cold, and he helped the Engine pack some hose in the truck. The lieutenant would give him a ride home sometimes, and other firehouses would invite him to come and hang out with them. Although it was against rules and regulations, they stuck their neck out for the young man and did their best to look out for him and made sure he was safe and well cared for. He really enjoyed shining the brass on the old engine and would help out around the house. The men at the firehouse became like fathers to him, and treated him with respect. However, sometimes the guys would blow him off and his feelings would get hurt. When he grew up, he took care of two boys as well as the firefighters took care of him. He would take them home, contribute to their lives, and helped keep them out of trouble and away from drugs. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
As a result, the two boys are doing good. Other guys saw what he was doing and got involved with the same kids, taking them home, taking them to picnics, taking them to amusement parks. Times were different and there was a lot of compassion in the city, a lot of morale, a lot of unity. So, the young man the fire department took, not only mentored two boys, but he stayed out of trouble because he wanted to be a firefighter and figured a police record would disqualify him from the job. He did not have many friends his age, only a couple. One night, he did not go out with his friends, and went to the firehouse instead. A really good friend of his was killed that night by a hit-and-run car. He jumped off a crane into the street, and a car hit him and kept going. He reflected on how it might have been him. He attributes a lot of his staying out of trouble to hanging around the firehouse. The Sacramento Fire Department has been serving the community of Sacramento since the mid-1800, please be sure to make a donation to them. They really care about the community and the people in it. Honour a man not for his possession alone; honour him most for the use he makes of them. When a man departs this World, neither silver nor gold, nor precious stones accompany him; he is remembered only for his love of learning and his good need. Happy is the man who is rich in good deeds, for he shall be honoured in life, and be remembered along afterwards for his goodness. 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 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
In The Winchester Mystery House there are connecting stairs and a “secret rest room” once used by Mrs. Winchester, which had long been walled up in the many structural changes in the historical mansion. Only the window of the walled-up room is still visible from the outside. It is in this area that psychics feel that the restless spirit of Mrs. Winchester is trapped. They believe she sleeps during the day and close to the premises for roaming and night. In the spring of 1968, the ghost of Mrs. Winchester made her initial appearance in the mansion. It was a warm night, and the caretakers were leaving. Suddenly, they were shocked at the amount of light coming from the skylight, they judged the time to be about midnight. They had the uncanny feeling of not being alone in the room. As their eyes got used to the darkness, they clearly distinguished the figure of a petite woman, gliding across the floor. Behind her, there was a man staring at a cabinet. Then he opened the cupboard, looked in it, and closed it again. Getting hold of himself, one of the caretakers noticed that the woman wore a black dress of the kind worn in the last century, and the man a white shirt and dark cravat of the same period. It never occurred to him that they were anything but people; he thought they were actors dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Winchester.
The woman then turned to her companion as if to say something, but did not, and walked off toward the dark room at the other end of the hallway. Then man then went back to the cabinet and leaned on it, head in hand. By now, the caretakers regained their wits and thought the intruders must be burglars, although they could not figure out how they entered the mansion, since it had been locked from the inside! Making a fist, one of the caretakers struck at the stranger, yelling, “Put your hands up!” His voice could be heard clearly along the corridors. Nursing his injured wrist, he realized that his visitors had dissolved into thin air. There was no one in the dark room. The door was securely locked. The skylight, on the third floor, could not very well have served as an escape route to anyone human. By now, the care takers knew Mr. Winchester and Mrs. Winchester had paid them a visit. 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/
A Manchurian Candidate Allowing the Country to be Invaded, Corrupted, and Bankrupted
Faulty characters and faulty habits can be changed by the Secret Path as the coming of the sun changes winter to spring. Greed will slowly turn to goodwill, cruelty will make its exit to allow for the incoming of kindness, and all-around self-control will gradually replace weakness. The faithful application of these teachings must inevitably influence the entire make-up of a man, and influence it most certainly for the better. He must begin this preparatory work on himself by an analysis of character. This requires a sincere, honest appraisal, a rigorous search for truth, not easy when vanity, for instance, may masquerade as duty among his motives. There is a great feeling of uncertainty and anxiety that besets the life of a man who wants to make his way up the ladder of the big corporation. He can fall at any point; he can fail to reach the aspired goal and become a failure in the eyes of his family and friends. However, this anxiety increases his wish for certainty. If he fails in spite of the certainty his methods of decision making offer him, he at least need not blame himself. The same need to be certain exists in the realm of thoughts, feeling, and aesthetic appreciation. By the growth of literacy and of the mass media, the individual learns quickly which thoughts are “right,” which behaviour is correct, which feeling is normal, which taste is “in.” All he has to do is to be receptive to the signals of the media, and he can be certain not to make a mistake. The fashion magazines tell what style to like and the book clubs what books to read, and to top it all, recent methods of finding proper marriage partners are based on the decisions of computers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Our age has found a substitute for God: the impersonal calculation. This new god has turned into an idol to whom all men may be sacrificed. A new concept of the scared and unquestionable is arising: that of calculability, probability, factuality. We must address ourselves now to the question, If we give the computer all the facts, what is wrong with the principle that the computer can make the best possible decisions about future action? What are facts? Even if correct and not distorted by personal or political bias, not only can facts be meaningless they can be untrue by their very selection, taking attention away from what is relevant, or scattering and fragmenting one’s thinking so much that one is less capable of making meaningful decisions the more “information” one has received. The selection of facts implies evaluation and choice. The awareness of this is a necessary condition of making rational use of facts. The basis of all authority is the supremacy of fact over thought. Yet this contrast of fact and thought can be conceived fallaciously. For thought is a factor in the fact of experience. Thus the immediate fact is what it is, partly by reason of the thought involved in it. Facts must be relevant. However, relevant to what or to whom? If I am informed that A has been in prison for having wounded a rival in a state of intense jealousy, I have been informed about a fact. I can formulate the same information by saying that A was in jail, or that A was (or is) a violent man, or A was (or is) a jealous man; yet all these facts say little about A. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Maybe A is a very intense man, a proud man, a man of great integrity; maybe my factual information fails to inform that when he speaks with children his eyes light up and he is concerned and helpful. This fact may have been omitted because it did not seem relevant to the datum of this crime; besides, it is—as yet—difficult for the computer to register a certain expression in a man’s eyes, or to observe and code the fine nuances of the expression of his mouth. “Facts” are interpretations of events, and the interpretation presupposes certain concerns which constitute the event’s relevance. The crucial question is to be aware of what my concern is and hence of what the facts have to be in order to be relevant. Am I the man’s friend, or a detective, or simply a man who wants to see the total man in his humanity? Aside from being aware of my concern, I would have to know all the details about the episode—and even then perhaps the details would not tell me how to evaluate his act. Nothing short of knowing him, in his individuality and suchness, his character—including the elements he himself may not be aware of—would permit me to evaluate his act; but in order to be well informed, I would also have to know myself, my own value system, what of it is genuine and what of it is ideology, my interests—selfish or otherwise. The fact, presented merely descriptively, may make me either more or less informed, and it well known that there is no more effective way of distortion than to offer nothing but a series of “facts.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
When we speak of facts pertaining to political and social life, what holds true in this example of how to evaluate one episode in the life of a man is all the more complicated and consequential. If we show for a fact that Communists are taking steps to assume power in America by inserting a Manchurian candidate as president to allow the country to be invaded, corrupted, and bankrupted, does this fact imply that they threaten to conquer the United States of America or the World? Would the latter mean that they threaten the “existence” of the free World? Does a threat to the “existence” to the United States of America mean a threat to the physical existence of Americans, or to our social system, or to our freedom of expression and action, or does it mean that they want to replace our elite in the area with one of their own? Which of these possible outcomes would justify or demand the possible destruction of 344 million Americas, or all of life? The “fact” of Communist threats assumes a different meaning according to the evaluation of the total strategy and planning of the Communists. However, who are the Communists? The Russian government, South America, the Chinese government, most democrats and some republicans, or who? With the way things are going, not only will President Xi Jinping be the next president of America, but also the commander of chief of the World! The one fact from which we start means nothing without the evaluation of the whole system, which means an analysis of a process in which we as observers are also included. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Eventually, the very fact of having decided to select certain events as facts has an effect on ourselves. By this decision we have committed ourselves to move in a certain direction, and this commitment determines our further selection of facts. The same holds true for our opponents. They also are influenced by their own selection of facts, as well as by ours. However, not only the facts themselves are selected and ordered according to values; the programing of the computer itself is based on built-in and often unconscious values. The principle that the more we produce the better is in itself a value judgment. If instead we believed that our system should be conducive to optimum human activeness and aliveness, we would program differently and other facts would become relevant. The illusion of the certainty of the computer decision, shared by a large sector of the public and by man decision makers, rests upon the erroneous assumptions (a) that facts are objective “givens,” and (b) that the programing is norm-free. “Normative” planning must precede “strategic” and “tactical” planning. All planning, whether with or without the use of computers, depends on the norms and values that underlie the planning. Planning itself is one of the most progressive steps the human race has taken. However, if it is “blind” planning, in which man abdicates his own decision, value judgment, and responsibility, it can be a curse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
If it is alive, responsive, “open” planning, in which the human ends are in full awareness and guiding the planning process, it will be a blessing. The computer facilitates planning tremendously, but its use does not really alter the fundamental principles of the proper relationship between means and ends; only its abuse will. As a man, it is not essential to discover and correct these faults. As a seeker, such discovery and such correction are primary duties. The code of conduct which philosophy asks its votaries to practise, the set of values which it determines for them, the endeavour to transcend themselves which it inspires—these elevate the mind into nobility, grandeur, and reverence. To abstain from favoured foods is a hard test; to abstain from carnal intercourse is still harder one. To the common mind, devoid of metaphysical faculty, this may seem far enough to travel. However, to the developed mind the hardest of all tests must yet be undergone—to abstain from egoistic thought, feeling, and action. The more the character is purified, the easier it is to practise meditation. The more the lower nature holds a man, the shorter will be the period of time in which he will be able to hold attention on the Overself. It is a great beginning of the real quest when he comes to the clear perception that the lusts, gluttonies, wraths, and passions have been lodged in him and have lived in his self yet are not him; that they are morbid creations which can be starved, exorcised, and expelled just as surely as they have been fed, nourished, and embraced. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
What separate the lower appetites of man from his higher aspirations? The beast must obey blindly its group instinct, the human need not. He can choose between doing the same as the animal or holding himself back to think, reason, and arrive at a considered decision. The lower nature does not let him keep this mood of high resolve long. Not many days pass before it seeks to discourage him. For the old cravings, the desire habits, and the emotional tendencies are still there. Soon they begin to trouble him again. “Why try?” his lower nature despondently tells him, “Why torment yourself uselessly? You can only fail in the end.” This it creates the expectancy of failure and turns his high adventure into a dismal ordeal. Only a fixed vigilant determination and correct approach will bring forth that inner consent to the new disciplinary habits so necessary to success. Only by re-educating his tendencies and gradually making them quite willing to conform to the right way of living can the lower nature be beaten. To the extent that anything lifts men up out of their animality, it serves a higher purpose. This is true of athletic training and religious aspiration, of social codes and personal self-respect. For in the end they must turn their minds away from the passions which they share with the sub-human kingdom to the fulfilment of their higher human possibilities and destiny. The honourable man who lives by a decent code of ethics has to be surpassed by the seeker, since he believes in a life and goal which I still more honourable. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Freedom is a tremendous word whose meaning goes much beyond the average man’s idea of it. He is not free who is in bondage to narrow prejudice, strong attachment, unruled desire, and spiritual ignorance. The same strength which is put into negative qualities like fear, grief, revenge, and discord—to a man’s own detriment—can be put into beneficial ones like courage, cheerfulness, fortitude, benevolence, and calmness, to his own benefit. He is to work for the day when his character will be utterly transformed, when he will be incapable of meanness or animality, when he will live in constant awareness of the idea. There is an organismic base for an organized valuing process within the human individual. It is hypothesized that this base is something the human being shares with the rest of the animate World. It is part of the functioning life process of any healthy organism. It is the capacity for receiving feedback information which enables the organism continually to adjust behaviour and reactions so as to achieve the maximum possible self-enhancement. This valuing process in the human being is effective in achieving self-enhancement to the degree that the individual is open to the experiencing which is going on within himself. I have tried to give two examples of individuals who are close to their own experiencing; the tiny infant who has not yet learned to deny in his awareness the processes going on within; and the psychologically mature person who has learned the advantages of this open state. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
One way of assisting the individual to move toward openness to experience is through a relationship in which he is prized as a separate person, in which the experiencing going on within him is emphatically understood and valued, and in which he is given the freedom to experience his own feelings and those of others without being threatened in doing so. This proposition obviously grows out of therapeutic experience. It is a brief statement of the essential qualities in the therapeutic relationship. There are already some empirical studies, of which the one by Barrett-Lennard is a god example, which gives support to such a statement. One case study we should consider is one of Billy. Billy, a healthy, strong, intelligent, and successful lawyer, consulted me because of a fear of high places. He had a recurring nightmare in which he was pushed from a bridge or tower. He felt dizzy when he sat in the first row of a theater balcony and when he looked down from high windows. Also, he sometime felt panicky before he had to appear in court or before he met important clients. He had worked up from a poor environment and was afraid of not being able to maintain the good position he had attained. The feeling often crept up on him that he was putting on a bluff and that it would be found out sooner or later. He could not account for this fear because he believed himself as intelligent as his colleagues; he was a good speaker and usually could convince others by his arguments. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Because he talked frankly about himself we managed to see in a few interviews the outlines of a conflict between, on the one side, ambition, assertiveness, a desire to put something over on others, and, on the other side, a need to maintain the appearance of a jolly straight fella who did not want anything for himself. Neither side of the conflict was deeply repressed. He had merely failed to realize the strength and the contradictory nature of these strivings. Once they were brought into sharp focus, he recognized squarely that he actually did not put a bluff. He then spontaneously drew the connection himself between this inadvertent swindle and the dizziness. He aw that he craved to attain a higher place in life but did not quite dare admit to himself how ambitious he really was. If other realized his ambition, he was afraid that they would turn against him and push him down and therefore he had to show a front of being a jolly good fella to whom money and prestige did not mean much. Being nevertheless an essentially honest person, he was dimly aware of some bluff, which in turn had made him apprehensive of being “found out.” This clarification sufficed to remove the dizziness, which was a translation of his fears into physical terms. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
He then had to leave town. We had not touched upon his fear of public performances and of meeting certain clients. I advised him to observe the conditions under which his “stage fright” was increased or decreased. Sometime later I received this report. He had first thought that the fear appeared when the case he presented or the argument he had used was debatable. However, search in this direction did not lead very far, though he felt distinctly that he was not wholly wrong. Then he had a bad break which, however, proved to be a good break for his own efforts at understanding. He had prepared a difficult brief not too carefully, but was only moderately apprehensive about presenting it in court, for he knew that the judge had fallen ill, and that the one who would substitute was strict and unbending. He tried to console himself with the reminder that after all the second judge was far from vicious or tricky, but this did not diminish his rising anxiety. Then he thought of my advice and tried to let his mind run freely. First an image appeared of himself as a small boy smeared from head to toe with chocolate cake. He was at first baffled by this picture, but then recalled that he was going to be punished but got away with it because he was so “cute” and his mother had to laugh about it. The theme of “getting by” persisted. Several memories emerged of times when he was not prepared at school, but got by. Then he thought of a teacher of history who he wanted. He could still feel the hatred. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The class had to write a theme about the French Revolution. When returning the papers the teacher criticized his for being replete with high-sounding phrases but devoid of solid knowledge; he cited one of those phrases and the others roared with laughter. Bill had felt acutely humiliated. The English teacher had always admired his style but the history teacher seemed impervious to his charm. The phrase “impervious to his charm” took him by surprise, because he had meant “impervious to his style.” He could no help feeling amused because the word “charm” expressed his true meaning. Sure enough, the judge was like the history teacher, impervious to his charm or his power of speech. That was it. He was accustomed to rely on his charm and his facility with words to “get by” instead of being thoroughly prepared. As a result he became panicky whenever he visualized a situation in which this tool would be ineffective. Since Bill was not deeply entangled in his neurotic trends he was able to draw the practical consequence of this insight: to sit down and work more carefully on the brief. He even went a step farther. He realized to what extent he used his charm also in relationships with friends and women. Briefly, he felt that they should be under the spell of his charm and therefore overlook the fact that he did not give much of himself in any relationship. He linked this finding with our discussion by realizing that he had discovered another bluff, and he finished with the realization that he must “go straight.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Apparently he was able to do so to a considerable extent, because since that episode, which I not six years ago, his fears have practically disappeared. This result resembles the one attained by John (from past reports) when he overcame his headaches, but it must be evaluated differently. The headaches, as indicated before, were a peripheral symptom. They can be so designated by virtue of two facts: since they were infrequent and not severe they did not essentially disturb him; and they had not assumed any secondary function. John’s real disturbances, as revealed in a subsequent analysis, lay in a different direction. Bill’s fears, on the other hand, were the result of a crucial conflict. They did not disable him but they interfered with significant activities in vital areas of his life. John’s headaches disappeared without any concomitant change in his personality, the only change being a slightly greater awareness of anger. Bill’s fears vanished because he recognized their source in certain contradictory trends in his personality and, more important, because he was able to change these trends. Here again, a in John’s case, the results seem greater than the efforts that produced them. However, again on closer examination the disparity is not so great. It is true that with comparatively little work Bill managed not only to get rid of disturbances serious enough to jeopardize his career in the long run, but also to recognize a few important facts about himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Bill saw that he had presented a somewhat deceptive front to himself and to others, that he was much more ambitious than he had admitted to himself, that he tended to attain his ambitious goals through his wits and his charm rather than through solid work. However, in evaluating this success we must not forget that Bill, in contrast to John and Harry, was essentially a physically healthy person with only mild neurotic trends. His ambition and his need to “get by” were not deeply repressed and did not have a rigid compulsive character. His personality was so organized that he could modify them considerably as soon a he recognized them. Dropping for a moment the effort to attain a scientific understanding of Bill’s predicaments, one might regard him simply as a person who had tried to make life too easy for himself and who could do better when he realized that his way did not work. Bill’s insights were sufficient to remove certain gross fears. However, even in this most successful short cut many questions are left open. What exactly is the meaning of the nightmare about being pushed down from a bridge? Was it necessary for Bill that he alone should be on top? Did he want to push others down because he could not tolerate any competition? And was he therefore afraid others might do the same to him? Was his fear of high places only a fear of losing the position he gained, or was it also a fear of falling down from a height of fictitious superiority—as it usually is in phobias of this kind? #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Furthermore, why did he not put in an amount of work commensurate with his faculties and his ambition? Did this laziness result only from the repression of his ambition, or did he feel that it would detract from his ambition, or if he made adequate efforts, did he feel that it would detract from the repression of his ambition—that only mediocre people have to work? And why did he give so little of himself in his relations with others? Was he too engrossed in himself—or perhaps too contemptuous of others—to be able to experience much spontaneous emotion? Whether it would be necessary, from the point of view of therapy, to pursue all such supplementary questions is another matter. In Bill’s case, it is possible that the little analysis done had farther reaching effects than the removal of conspicuous fears. It is possible that it set going something that might be called a beneficent circle. By recognizing his ambition and by putting in more work he would actually anchor his ambitions on a more realistic and more solid basis. Thereby he would feel more secure and less vulnerable and less in need of his bluff. By relinquishing the false front he would feel less constrained and less afraid of being found out. All of these factors might considerably deepen his relationships with others, and this improvement would also add to his feeling of security. Such a beneficent circle may have been set in motion even though the analysis was not complete. If the analysis had searched out all the untouched implications, it would almost certainly have had this effect. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
There is little quarrel with the notion that careful training and intensive supervised experience contribute significantly to the preparation of the skilled psychotherapist. It may be asked if there are factors of life history, personality, and social background that the therapist-to-be bring to his training that may contribute to enhance or to limit his future therapeutic endeavours. Differences in these factors could serve either to increase or reduce the effects of the differences in the formal training of the psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker. The capacity for and the condition of “understanding” a patient is generally held to be of key importance in the establishment, maintenance, and successful direction of a therapeutic relationship. If it happens that therapist and client have certain identities in their respective social histories there is possible a spontaneous empathy, a preformed rapport that can facilitate the mutual acceptance of each by the other and, more importantly, may serve continuously as a catalyst for the stream of communication, spoken and upspoken, which is the medium of therapy. Safely shutting down a bully is something the three different kinds of psychotherapists can help one with. We do not recommend physical violence. Safely shutting down a bully is what we are going for here. In this way, you utilize the help of others. Go the route of getting others involved, even the authorities if need be. Stand up tall, stay firm. If a person is being rude, suggest that perhaps you two have gotten off on the wrong foot, and that calling names will not help the situation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If for instance, the person harassing you starts making threatening gestures, like pounding his hand on his fist, use your mobile phone to take a quick picture of him doing this. It is important to record any physical sign of intimidation. For every manipulative action, there is a consequence. The harshest of them all is the consequence of losing you. The thing about manipulators is that they mentally record every action you do when they have manipulated you or attempted to. If you say you will call the authorities if the bully hits you, and he does go through with the physical harm, you had better call the authorities and let them handle it. Make sure to bring down all the consequences on him that the law allows. You might be the one who gets through to him or her that it is just not worth bullying and hurting people physically. You might even save their next would-be victim from harm. You are not trying to control the manipulator, but you are trying to control how you react to those manipulations. If they think you have a weakness that they can take advantage of, just like the wind, a master manipulator will change directions and come at you from another way. We all have weaknesses; they key to keep them hidden around manipulators is to watch what you say. Say what you mean, only what you will go through with. Sometimes it is best to say nothing and just walk away. When you show an individual that there are consequences for harassing you, they may try even harder. Therefore make it known that those consequences will have an impact on their future. Be calm. Be articulate. Be assertive and sure of yourself so they will stop using you as an easy target. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Not everyone grew up rich. Some people come from big families, were disabled in the war, and are very thankful for pensions. Today, a lot of people are saying they need help, they need this, they want that. It is important to be thankful for everything you have, the opportunity to go to school and live that you are living, the opportunity to work. Once when he was a little kid, one firefighter remembers very well going to a firehouse. One of the firemen showed him the remnants of a watch, a new kind of watch that had been melted down into a wad of black plastic. It had come out of a fatal fire caused by someone smoking in bed. That stuck in his mind. When was sixteen, some of the kids who were eighteen were trying to get involved with the volunteer fire department. He looked at them with admiration and knew that it was something he wanted to do. His father was a lieutenant at the time. Later, when he got old and his arthritis progressed, he had to retire. Twice he was almost killed on the job. However, he was not a big story teller. He never told his son fire stories until he was older, and he said he wanted to enter the fire department. His father tried to teach him things. He said, “Son, you watch out for those truss roofs, because when one component fails the whole roof and parapet will come down, and they will kill you.” One time his dad was in a fire in a three-story building. It had a very high parapet which concealed the bowstring truss roof behind it. He was operating the turntable of the ladder truck, and he had two guys in the basket. It was really smoky. He saw a crack developing in this parapet. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Everybody ever quickly got away, because you could see what was going to happen. His dad stayed there and swung that snorkel boom away and got those two guys in the basket out of the way just as the wall came down. It buried his dad. Just buried him. One of the things that fell on him was an electrical transformer, and he had an electrical burn across his groin from a wire landing right there. The wires were sparking, and the other guys were afraid to jump right in. Then some fire chief, who had a truckman’s belt on, had them attach a rope to the belt, and he said, “I’m going to start digging the bricks off this guy. And if something happens to me, yank me back.” Well, as soon as he took off the first couple of brick, they could see that the was not going to be electrocuted, and they all jumped in, and they puled all of the bricks off his dad. He was in bad shape. In critical condition. They were just about ready to drill holes in his head. This young man’s father was one of the first guys to wear a helmet with a neckstrap. You know, there was a lot of talk against the strap, saying one will fall through the floor and it will strangle you. His dad said that the first brick would have hit him on the head and the rest of them would have killed him. That helmet stayed on his head. Many firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Department have a legacy or social commitment to help out the community. Therefore, think about fire safety. Do your best to prevent fires. Even if you make it out of a burning building, the people rescuing you may not. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
When people think of the fire department, they think of someone rushing into buildings and saving lives, but that is not the only thing in it by a long shot. When my son Leo was two years old, after we built our house in Kelowna and moved in, when the dog would annoy him, he would run into the kitchen and hide in a tall, narrow cabinet to get away from home. Keep in mind, when there is a fire, some kids are afraid of it. Often times they will hide somewhere in the house to get away from the sirens, the flames, and the smoke and incorrectly think they are safe, and no one may ever find them. Also, some fires have killed dozens of firefighters. It is a horrible sight to transport people who are burnt to a crisp. Many people who survive fires also come out of them wounded. The Sacramento Fire Department is doing something terribly important, something everybody respects. You can sense that it is very important. However, sometimes firefighters end up in the hospital because of heat exhaustion. The Sacramento Fire Department has always been around. If possible, please make a donation to ensure these men and women receive the proper resources. 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. Get up early, work hard, mind your own business, save your money, buy a Cadillac and live on the nice side of town. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
The Winchester Mystery House exists beyond ordinary time, and it is so beautiful, yet bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. On April 22, 2001, there was a mysterious wildness in the mansion, that none might listen without apprehension. A caretaker heard vociferous thumping on the wall next to the bed Mrs. Winchester died in with ululation so horrible and unearthly that he was terrified and baffled. The sounds of knocking then started coming from under the bed; when he knocked on the wooden bedstead, the unknown visitant replied in kind. Then something appeared from beneath the bed. Three days later, he was found quietly sleeping in the basement. The caretakers who found him noticed in his pale blue eyes there was a certain gleam of peculiar quality. He raved of things he did not understand and could not interpret; things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he could not have learned through any normal or connected narration.
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/
You are Not the Problem!
Life on Earth did not happen by mistake. You are here as part of God’s plan of happiness for all of us. Little by little, in tranquil moments or in deliberate meditation, there will come to one the revelation of errors in conduct and thought which, until then, one did not know were errors. Values refer to the tendency of any living beings to show preference in their actions, for one kind of object or objective rather than another. This preferential behaviour is called “operative values.” It need not involve any cognitive or conceptual thinking. It is simply the value of choice which is indicated behaviourally when the organism select one object, rejects another. When the earthworm, placed in a simple Y maze, chooses the smooth arm of the Y, instead of the path which is paved with sandpaper, he is indicating an operative value. A second use of the term might be called “conceived values.” This is the preference of the individual for a symbolized object. Usually in such a preference there is anticipation of foresight of the outcome of behaviour directed toward such a symbolized object. Usually in such a preference there is anticipation or foresight of the outcome of behaviour directed toward such a symbolized object. A choice such as “Honesty is the best policy” is such a conceived value. A final use of the term might be called “objective value.” People use the word in this way when they wish to speak of what is objectively preferable, whether or not it is in fact sensed or conceived of as desirable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The living human being has, at the outset, a clear approach to values. He prefers some things and experiences, and rejects others. We can infer from studying his behaviour that he prefers those experiences which maintain, enhance, or actualize his organism, and rejects those which do not serve this end. What him for a bit: Hunger is negatively valued. His expression of this often comes through loud and clear. Food is positively valued. However, when he is satisfied, food is negatively valued, and the same milk he responded to so eagerly is now spit out, or the breast which seemed so satisfying to the infant is now rejected as he turns his head away from the nipple with an amusing facial expression of disgust and revulsion. He values security, and holding and caressing which seem to communicate security. He values new experience for its own sake, and we observe this in his obvious pleasure in discovering his toes, in his searching movements, in his endless curiosity. He shows a clear negative valuing of pain, bitter tastes, sudden loud sounds. All of this is commonplace, but let us look at these facts in terms of what they tell us about the infant’s approach to values. It is first of all a flexible, changing, valuing process, not a fixed system. He likes food and dislikes the same food. He values security and rest, and rejects it for new experience. What is going on seems best described as an organismic valuing process, in which each element, each moment of what he is experiencing is somehow weighed, and selected or rejected, depending on whether, at this moment, it tends to actualize the organism or not. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
This complicated weighing of experience is clearly an organismic, not a conscious or symbolic function. These are operative, not conceived values. However, this process can none the less deal with complex value problems. I would remind you of the experiment in which young infants had spread in front of them a score of more of dishes of natural (that is, unflavoured) foods. Over a period of time they clearly tended to value the foods which enhanced their own survival, growth, and development. If for a time a child gorged himself on starches, this would seen be balanced by a protein “binge.” If at times he chose a diet deficient in some vitamin, he would later seek out foods rich in this very vitamin. He was utilizing the wisdom of the body in his value choices, or perhaps more accurately, the physiological wisdom of his body guided his behavioural movements, resulting in what we might think of as objectively sound value choices. Another aspect of the infant’s approach to value is that the source of locus of the evaluating process is clearly within himself. Unlike many of us, he knows what he likes and dislikes, and the origin of these value choices lies strictly within himself. He is the center of the valuing process, the evidence for his choices being supplied by his own senses. He is not at this point influenced by what his parents think he should prefer, or by what the church says, or by the opinion of the latest “expert” in the field, or by the persuasive talents of an advertising firm. It is from within his own experiencing that his organism is saying in non-verbal terms, “This is good for me.” “That is bad for me.” “I like this.” “I strongly dislike that.” He would laugh at our concern over values, he could understand it. How could anyone fail to know what he liked and disliked, what was good for him an what was not? #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
What happens to this highly efficient, soundly based valuing process? By what sequence of events do we exchange for the more rigid, uncertain, inefficient approach to value which characterizes most of us as adults? The infant needs love, wants it, tends to behave in ways which will bring repetition of this wanted experience. By this brings complications. He pulls baby sister’s hair, and finds it satisfying to hear her wails and protests. He then hears that he is a “naughty, bad boy,” and this may be reinforced by a time out. He is cut off from affection. As this experience is repeated, and many, many others like it, he gradually learns that what “feels good” is often “bad” in the eyes of others. Then the next step occurs, in which he comes to take the same attitude toward himself which the others have taken. Now, as he pulls his sister’s hair, he solemnly intones, “Bad, bad boy.” He is introjecting the value judgment of another, taking it has his own. He has deserted the wisdom of his organism, giving up the locus of evaluation and is trying to behave in terms of values set by another, in order to hold love. Or take another example at an older level. A boy senses, though perhaps not consciously, that he is more loved and prized by his parents when he thinks of being a doctor than when he thinks of being an artist. Gradually he introjects the values attached to being a doctor. He comes to want, above all, to be a doctor. Then in college he is baffled by the fact that he repeatedly fails in chemistry, which is absolutely necessary to becoming a physician, in spite of the fact that the guidance counselor assure him he has the ability to pass the course. Only in counseling interviews does he begin to realize how completely he has lost touch with his organismic reactions, how out of touch he is with his own valuing process. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Let me give another instance from a class of mine, a group of prospective teachers. I asked them at the beginning of the course, “Please list for me the two or three values which you would most wish to pass on to the children with whom you will work.” They turned in many value goals, but I was inspired by some of the items. Several listed such things as “to speak correctly,” “to use good English, not to use work like ain’t.” Others mentioned neatness—“to do things according to instructions”; one explained her hope that “When I tell them to write their own names in the upper right-hand corner with the date under it, I want them to do it that way, not in some other form.” I confess I was somewhat appalled that for some of these girls the most important values to be passed on to pupils were to avoid bad grammar, or meticulously to follow teacher’s instructions. I felt baffled. Certainly these behaviours had not been experienced as the most satisfying and meaningful element in their own lives. The listings of such values could only be accounted for by the fact that these behaviours had gained approval—and thus had been introjected as deeply important. Perhaps these several illustrations will indicate that in an attempt to gain or hold love, approval, esteem, the individual relinquishes the locus of evaluation which was his in infancy, and places it in others. He learns to have a basic distrust for his own experiencing as a guide to his behaviour. He learns from others a large number of conceived values, and adopts them as his own, even though they may be widely discrepant from what he is experiencing. Because these concepts are not based on his own valuing, they tend to be fixed and rigid, rather than fluid and changing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
To analyze oneself occasionally comparatively easy and sometimes productive of immediate results. Essentially it is what every sincere person does when he tries to account for real motivations behind the way he feels or acts. If anything, without knowing much about psychoanalysis, a man who has fallen in love with a particularly attractive or wealth girl could raise with himself the question whether vanity or money plays a part in his feeling. A man who has ignored his better judgement and given in to his wife or his colleagues in an argument could question in his own mind whether he yielded because he was convinced of the comparative insignificance of the subject at stake or because he was afraid of an ensuing fight. I suppose people have always examined themselves in this way. And many people do so who otherwise tend to reject psychoanalysis entirely. The principal domain of occasional self-analysis is not the intricate involvements of the neurotic character structure, but the gross manifest symptoms, the concrete and usually acute disturbance which either strikes one’s curiosity or commands one’s immediate attention because of its distressing character. Thus the examples reported in this report concern a functional headache, an acute attack of anxiety, a lawyer’s fear of public performances, an acute functional stomach upset. However, a startling dream, the forgetting of an appointment, or an inordinate irritation at a taxidriver’s trivial cheating might just as well elicit a wish to understand oneself—or, more precisely, to discover the reasons responsible for that particular effect. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
This latter distinction may seem hairsplitting, but actually is expresses an important difference between occasional grappling with a problem and systematic work at oneself. The goal of occasional self-analysis is to recognize those factors that provoke a concrete disturbance, and remove them. The broader incentive, the wish to be better equipped to deal with life in general, may operate here too, but even if it plays some role it is restricted to the wish to be less handicapped by certain fears, headaches, or other inconveniences. This is in contrast to the much deeper and more beneficial desire to develop to the best of one’s capacities. One of the greatest factors of the importance for the understanding of man’s behaviour in present society: man’s need for certainty. Man is not equipped with a set of instincts that regulate his behaviour quasi-automatically. He is confronted with choices, and this means in all-important matters with grave risks to his life if his choices are wrong. The doubt that besets him when he must decide—often quickly—causes painful tension and can even seriously endanger his capacity for quick decisions. As a consequence, man has an intense need for certainty; he wants to believe that there is no need to doubt that the method by which he makes his decisions is right. In fact, he would rather make the “wrong” decision and be sure about it than the “right” decision and be tormented with doubt about its validity. This is one of the psychological reasons for man’s belief in idols and political leaders. They all take out doubt and risk from his decision making; this does not mean that there is not a risk for his life, freedom, etcetera, after the decision has been made, but that there is no risk that the method of his decision making was wrong. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
For many centuries certainty was guaranteed by the concept of God. God, omniscient and omnipotent, had not only created the World but also announced the principles of human action about what which there was no doubt. The church “interpreted” these principles in detail, and the individual, securing his place in the church by following its rules, was certain that, whatever happened, he was on the way to salvation and to eternal life in Heaven. In the Luteran-Calvinistic branch of Christian theology, man was taught not to be afraid of the risk of using false criteria for his decision making in a paradoxical way. Luther, belittling man’s freedom and the role of his good works, taught that they only decision man has to make is to surrender his will totally to God, and thus to be released of the risk of making decisions on the basis of his own knowledge and responsibility. In Calvin’s concept, everything is predestined, and man’s decision does not really matter; yet his success is a sign that he is one of then chosen. With the beginning of the scientific approach and the corrosion of religious certainty, man was forced into a new search for certainty. At first, science seemed to be capable of giving a new basis for certainty. This was so for the rational man of the last centuries. However, with the increasing complexities of life, which lost all human proportions, with the growing feeling of individual powerlessness and isolation, the science-oriented man ceased to be a rational and independent man. He lost the courage to think for himself and to make decisions on the basis of his full intellectual and emotional commitment to life. He wanted to exchange the “uncertain certainty” which rational thought can give for an “absolute certainty”: the alleged “scientific” certainty, based on predictability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This certainty is guaranteed not by man’s own unreliable knowledge and emotions but by the computers which permit prediction and become guarantors of certainty. Take as an example the planning of the big corporation. With the help of computers, it can plan ahead for many years (including the manipulation of man’s mind and taste); the manager does not have to rely any more on his individual judgment, but on the “truth” that is pronounced by the computers. The manager’s decision may be wrong in its results, but he need not be distrustful of the decision-making processes. He feels that he is free to accept or reject the result of computer prognostication, but for all practical purposes, he is as little free as a pious Christian was to act against God’s will. He could do it, but he would have to be out of his mind to take the risk, since there is not a greater source of certainty than God—or the computerized solution. This need for certainty creates the need of what amounts to blind belief in the efficacy of the method of computerized planning. The managers are relieved from doubt, and so are those who are employed in the organization. It is precisely the fact that man’s judgment and emotions allegedly do not interfere with the process of decision making that gives the computer-based planning its godlike quality. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. However, they are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet served the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellow man in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and exit only when development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low state, and when, therefor, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man and between man and nature, are correspondingly narrow. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex of the real World can, in any case, only then finally vanish when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature. The life-process of material production does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development. Man, as a race, slowly emancipates himself from mother nature through the process of work, and in this process of emancipation he develops his intellectual and emotional powers and grows up, becomes an independent and free man. When he will have brought nature under his full and rational control, and when society will have lost its antagonistic class character, “prehistory” will have ended, and a truly human history will begin in which free men plan and organize their exchange with nature, and in which the aim and end of all social life is not work and production, but the unfolding of man’s powers as an end in itself. This is the realm of freedom in which man will be fully united with his fellow men and with nature. The problem of human evolution is an essentially tragic one. Whatever man did, it ended in frustration; if he should return to become a primitive again, he would have pleasure, but no wisdom; if he goes on as a builder of ever more complicated civilizations, he becomes wiser, but also unhappier and sicker. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Clearly, evolution is an ambiguous blessing, and society does as much harm as good. History is a march toward man’s self-realization; society, whatever the evils produced by any given society may be, is the condition for man’s self-creation and unfolding. The “good society” becomes identical society of good men, that is, of fully developed, sane, and productive individuals. When it comes to psychologist, they even study the theory of theories and are provided at least with a modest ability to differentiate between “good” theories and “poorer” theories, qua theories. The impact of his exposure to methods for investigation of psychological phenomena, within the context of multiple theories that overlap only partially, should fit him with a generally critical orientation toward any univocal explanation of the mysteries of the human personality. And in seminars, in publications, in case conferences it is typically the psychologist, not the social worker or psychiatrist, who is dubious that an orthodox psychoanalytic formulation either truly accounts for the observed pathology or necessarily points to the optimal treatment. This is a generalization about psychologists as students of behaviour theory and personality. It must be recognized that there are some graduate departments of psychology in which the training of the clinical psychologist is as theoretically biased, id est, psychoanalytically oriented, as is that of the average psychiatrist or social worker. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Contrary to what the manipulator wants you to think, you are not the problem. You might be their problem as you will not conform to what they want you to, but you are not the problem. However, it is hard to deal with abusers and other types of manipulators because they are masters at blame-shifting. Somehow, in any argument, they are adamantly more capable of convincing victims that they are at fault, than victims are at realizing they are the victims of the entire debacle. Victim blaming is a manipulative tactic used by abusers to convince themselves and their victims that the problems lie with the other person, not with them. The ploy is very clever and effective. Beware of the tendency to play the game of “Find the bad guy,” in your intimate relationships. It is never healthy to use someone as a scapegoat for your problems. If you are in a relationship with someone needs to make you the “bad guy,” then be aware of what is going on and do not allow yourself to accept that mantle. The best way to understand victim blaming is to realize that two concepts are at play: Projection and judgmentalism. Projection occurs when one person displaces his or her own characteristics onto another person. An abusive person will “project” his or her own attributes on to the other person, particularly in a conflict. The main reason victims get in fights or arguments with abusers is because the abusers cause the problem in the first place by saying or doing something that engenders a negative emotional reaction in another person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The abuser may be rude, hurtful, hostile, or act in some other relationship-destroying manner. It takes superhuman strength to keep from being triggered by the anger-provoking tactics of an abusive or manipulative person. Once you have been triggered by the abuser, you may make one small mistake in speaking, or you may even commit the heinous crime of yelling back and defending yourself! Heavens forbid you have a reaction to a hostile instigation! And once you do react supposedly inappropriately you have just given the abuser a gift. He can now capitalize on your reaction and use it as the evidence that the problem resides with you. Therefore, do not take the bait. The abuser is trying to flip the script. Reminder yourself that you do not need to defend yourself because you did not do anything wrong. The other concept, along with projection, that your abuser is using is judgmentalism. When people use judgmentalism as a strategy, they are trying to make you a subordinate. Abusers are incapable of healthy human connections. They suffer from attachment issues, and true to form, they must sabotage any semblance of healthy attachment. This is why the term “interpersonal violence” is sued to describe domestic violence. It is abuse of an interpersonal relationship. Victim blaming keeps the abuser emotionally safe by projecting his interpersonal problems on to the other person, preventing insight and potential growth (not to mention resolution of the problem at hand.) It also helps the abuser feel personally superior and smug as he believes that it is his role to judge the victim. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Ideas influence their thinker himself; thoughts react on their generator if they are intensely held, deeply felt, and frequently born. Thus they help to form tendencies and shape character. The aspirant can take advantage of this truth. His moral thought and metaphysical ideation will be so deep and earnest that they will converge upon his emotional feeling, when that has been sufficiently purified, and coalesce with it. Thus they become part of his inner being. If he is to realize his higher purpose in life, each aspirant has to struggle with the demon inside himself. Nature seeks to achieve its own ends, which renders it indifferent to all personal ends. It considers no man’s feelings but only his level of development, that he might be raised to a higher one. The only greatness he may rightfully seek is a secret one. It is not power over others that he should strive for, but power over himself. He will have to grow into this higher consciousness. No other way exists for him. He has not only to be brave enough to accept the aloneness that comes with every serious advance in the quest, but also strong enough to endure it. If it is wrong in ethical theory, how can anything be right in Worldly practice? The value of such study is immense. It involves a re-education of the whole mind of man. It strikes at the root of his ethical ignorance and destroys the selfishness and greed which are its malignant growths. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Mentally, man can do what no animal can do. He can consider conduct from a purely ethical standpoint; he can struggle at heart between right and wrong, self and selflessness. Every man betrays himself for what he is. He can hide his thoughts and dissemble his feelings, but he cannot hide his face. Therein are letters and words which tell plainly what sort of a man he really is. However, few there be who can read in this strange language. Character can be changed. As if by magic, he who habitually contemplates such exalted themes finds in time that his whole outlook is altered and expanded. The new outlook will gradually strongly establish itself within him. As a man thinks in his hear so is he. As is one’s thoughts, so one becomes; this is the eternal secret. What is to be done where a weakness becomes abnormally strong, overpowering the will and forcing him to do what his better nature rejects? The cure in the end must be based on his willingness to regard it as something not really part of himself, something alien and parasitic. If there is to be any way out toward freedom from it, he must stop identifying himself with the weakness. The key to right conduct is to refuse to identify himself with the lower nature. The hypnotic illusion that it is really himself must be broken: the way to break it is to deny every suggestion that comes from it, to use the will in resisting it, to use the imagination in projecting it as something alien and outside, to use the feelings in aspiration towards the true self, and the mind in learning to understand what it is. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The Sacramento firefighters like going to work, and there are few jobs at any level of pay about which this can be said with such certainty. They have to learn building laws, and the different types of building construction—frame, brick, steel, and the old cast-irons. Firefighters learn about the different kinds of windows—regular windows, casement windows, and the nonopening ones in skyscrapers—and the different locks people use to secure themselves from the harsh realities of the outside World—standard bolt locks, digital locks, police locks that lock on either side of the door, and fox locks, which have bars going down into the floor life flying buttresses. They have to learn the multitudinous knots used for moving equipment and people, and a whole communications system, the signals and alarms, the differences between “ten-four” and “ten-twenty-two.” They studied water hydraulics, the laws that govern the movement of water rushing through a two-and-a-half-inch hose and coming out of a one-inch nozzle. Outdoors, they learned about tools, everything from how to swing an ax to how to pull a hook and how to use your weight on a battering ram. They learned about the motorized tools, the power saw, the pneumatic tools and jacks used in collapse situations. Then there was the practical work of fighting the fire itself in controlled situations, where firefighters had to crawl into a room and pull out an inanimate 150-pound synthetic human being and carry it down six flights of stairs after taking a beating from the smoke. Later in the afternoon they had to carry ladders from one side of the street to the other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
On one call, there was a fire on the third floor of a tenement building, going really goodly. It had evidently been cooking for a long time, because by the time the fire department got there the fire fully involved this apartment of five or six rooms. There was this long hallway, and the firefighters ran in crouching positions into the fire with an inch-and-a-half hose. They got to the end of the hallways, one of the firefighters opened up the hose and led the way into the room there. Immediately, a large part of the ceiling came down on one of them, knocking his helmet off. Embers went down his neck and back, and he was burned pretty severely. So, with the nozzle still in his hand, he shut it off, made a complete U-turn, and started back out of the room. When he got out into the hall, the embers had died out, and he had a lifetime three-inch burn down his neck from hairline to shoulder blade. The interesting thing is, he hardly mind getting hurt in the fire. A gash on his arm that took twelve stitches, a burn on his neck, a broken wrist, to him it was just a badge of courage that reinforced the things he believed about firefighting and reinforced his confidence in himself to do a tough, challenging, and dangerous job. Once this firefighter got hurt pulling a hose over a barbed wire fence. He had to tug so hard that he pulled a ganglion, or nerve center, in his back. It was one of the most painful things that he ever experienced. It was difficult to treat. He had to lie on his stomach in bed for three months, doing everything in that position, eating, reading, writing notes, watching television. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Finally a doctor shot a whole bunch of cortisone into his back, which completely relived the pain, and finally he was able to go back to work. The cortisone never disappeared, though, and still moves around. He still feels the pain from time to time, especially when he is tired. There is an overriding awareness of the possibility of getting badly hurt, because they see it around them all the time. Firefighters see people getting disabled permanently, and they learn not to take even the smallest fire for granted. Be sure to open your hearts to the Sacramento Fire Department and let them know the community is thankful by making a donation. Also, assembly member Kevin McCarty is running for mayor of Sacramento, he is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department, and two of his goals are creating more affordable housing and getting homeless people into homes. A vote for McCarty is a way of showing support for the City of Sacramento and the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Be wise not only in words, but in deeds; mere knowledge is not the goal, but action. Know the God of your fathers, and serve Him by your deeds. Let not your wisdom exceed your deeds, least you be like a tree with many branches but few roots. If the thoughts of your heart be pure, it is likely that so will be the words of your hand. Accustom yourself to do good; before long it will become your chief delight. One good deed leads to another, as every evil deed leads to more wrong-doing. If others do good through you, their deeds will be accounted to you as your own. #RanolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
A caretaker was hire to work at The Winchester Mystery House. Although she had never been to the mansion before, she was recruited for her skills in architecture and historical preservation. As she entered the library and explained that the beautiful ask paneling had been taken from trees that once surrounded the estate, she became restless. She knew very well that it was the kind of feeling that forewarned her of some sort of psychic event. As she was looking over toward a fireplace, farmed by two candelabra, she suddenly saw a very tall, white-haired man in a long black frock coat standing next to it. One elbow rested on the mantel, and his head was in his hand, as if he were pondering something very important. The caretaker was not at all emotionally involved with the house. In fact, the guided tour bored her, and she would have preferred to be outside in the stables, since she had a great interest in horses and nature. Her imagination did not conjure up what she saw: she knew in an instant that she was looking at the spirit of William Wirt Winchester. Because of the restless feelings that came over her while working in the mansion almost induced her to go into a trance several times, she decided to quit her job in a hurry.
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/
Divine at the Center but Slightly Devilish at the Circumference
If it requires great and constant effort to model his character will not interest man, but to the quester it is an obligation. And this is so without his having to believe in all the windy rhetoric about the perfectibility of man. The reformation and even transformation of character is as much a sector of philosophy as the practice of concentration and the study of mind. The virtue which develops from disciplining thoughts and controlling self removes obstacles and gives power to truth’s pursuit. The ethical ideals of philosophy are lofty but nobody is asked or expected to jump to their realization, only to understand their direction; the ret of this inner work must develop at its own pace according to hi individual possibilities. Is it entirely useless to point out an ethical height to which very few can soar? No—the usefulness lies in the sense of right direction which it gives, in the inspiring love of truth and hope of self-betterment which it arouses. If we persist in holding it before us in aspiration, however unrealizable the ideal may be in all its perfection, we shall certainly approach it more closely in action. And the effort will give us more faith in life, make us more sensitive to its finer rhythms. If the lower self disturbs you, silence it by invoking it intellectually through declarations of spiritual truth and emotionally through genuflection in humble prayer. Do not accept the suggestion which drags you down, but instead seek for the pressure which lifts you up. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
To the extent that he purifies and ennobles himself, he qualifies himself for the reception of superior insight. If the aspirant will take care to fill his mind with thoughts that are always elevating, always beneficial, and always constructive; if he will be vigilant to keep out all thoughts that are degrading and destructive, this simple technique will keep his mind so continuously filled with the right kind of thought and feeling that he will unconsciously and little by little completely overcome the wrong kind. Thus his character will change and approach his ideals. As if man were nothing else but a divine being, we must not talk about this as the mystics do. We are philosophical students and should not be so one sided. We must tell men the whole and not a half-truth, which means we must tell them that they are a mixed lot, divine at the center but slightly devilish at the circumference; altruistic in their potential nature but somewhat selfish in their actual one. Everything that strengthens his better nature is useful and acceptable. Everything that weakens it is not. So difficult is true self-mastery that nothing in the World’s literature about it can overrate the accomplishment. When the beast in man will bow in homage before the intelligence in man, when the ideal of perfected being set up for him by the serene figure of the Sphinx shall be recognized, accepted, and striven for, then indeed will he become a conscious collaborator with the universal Mind. Whoever knows how ad where to look can find in himself the assurance of this ultimate victory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There should be no space in his mind for negative thoughts, no time in his heart for base feelings. It is not enough to repress a negative trait like jealousy or self-pity. One must also replace it by a positive trait. His spiritual progress will be measured not so much by his meditational progress as by his moral awakening. Not merely when he can understand it intellectually, but also when he can accept it emotionally, the truth will become truth for him, and still more when he can incorporate it into his behaviour patterns. He must look within himself for the impurities and falsities, the malice and envy, the prejudice and bitterness which belong to his lower nature. And he must work with all his willpower and thinking power to cast them out. He must walk towards the highest with every part of his being, with his whole psyche matured and balanced. He must not only seek to intuit what is real, but also to will what is good. It is when men come face-to-face with a real crisis, a real temptation, or a real hardship that they show their real character, not only their self-imagined or publicly reputed one. It must be remembered always that mere intellectual study is not so essential as the building of worthwhile character, which is far more important in preparing for the great battle with the ego. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The tendency to install technical progress as the highest value is linked up not only with our overemphasis on intellect but, most importantly, with a deep emotional attraction to the mechanical, to all that is not alive, to all that is man-made. This attraction to the non-alive, which is in its more extreme form an attraction to death and decay (necrophilia), leads even in its less drastic form to indifference toward life instead of “reverence for life.” Those who are attracted to the non-alive are the people who prefer “law and order” to living structure, bureaucratic to spontaneous methods, gadgets to living beings, repetition to originality, neatness to exuberance, hoarding to spending. They want to control life because they are afraid of its uncontrollable spontaneity; they would rather kill it than to expose themselves to it and merge with the World around them. They often gamble with death because they are not rooted in life; their courage is the courage to die and the symbol of their ultimate courage is the Russian roulette. The rate of our automobile accidents and preparation for thermonuclear war are a testimony to this readiness to gamble with death. And who would not eventually prefer this exciting gamble to the boring unaliveness of the organization man? One symptom of the attraction of the merely mechanical is the growing popularity, among some scientists and the public, of the idea that it will be possible to construct computers which are no different from man in thinking, feeling, or any other aspect of functioning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
It is possible to manufacture computers synthetically which are completely undistinguishable from human beings produced in the usual manner. There is no reason to suppose machines have any limitations not shared by man. The main problems, it seems to me, is not whether such a computer-man can be constructed; it is rather why the idea is becoming so popular in a historical period when nothing seems to be more rational, harmonious, and peace-loving being. One cannot help being suspicious that often the attraction of the computer-man idea is the expression of a flight from life and from humane experience into the mechanical and purely cerebral. When the majority of men are like robots, then indeed there will be no problem in building robots who are like men. The idea of the manlike computer is a good example of the alternative between the human and the inhuman machines. The computer can sever the enhancement of life in many respects. However, the idea that it replaces man and life is the manifestation of the pathology of today. The fascination with the merely mechanical is supplemented by an increasing popularity of conceptions that stress the animal nature of man and the instinctive roots of his emotions or actions. Dr. Freud’s was such an instinctive psychology; but the importance of his concept of libido is secondary in comparison with his fundamental discovery of the unconscious process in waking life or in sleep. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Many experts stress instinctual animal heredity, and have not offered any new or valuable insights into the specific human problem as Dr. Freud has done; they satisfy the wish of many to look at themselves as determined by instincts and thus to camouflage their true bothersome human problems. The dream of many people seems to be to combine the emotions of a primate with a computerlike brain. If this dream could be fulfilled, the problem of human freedom and of responsibility would seem to disappear. Man’s feelings would be determined by his instincts, his reason by the computer; man would not have to give an answer to the question his existence asks him. Whether one like the dream or not, its realization is impossible; the naked ape with the computer brain would cease to be human, or rather “he” would not be. Among the technological society’s pathogenic effects upon man, two more must be mentioned: the disappearance of privacy and of personal human contact. “Privacy” is a complex concept. It was and is a privilege of the middle and upper classes, since its very basis, private space, is costly. This privilege, however, can become a common good with other economic privileges. Aside from this economic factor, it was also based on a hoarding tendency in which my private life was mine and nobody else’s, as was my house and any other property. It was also a concomitant of cant, of the discrepancy between moral appearances and reality. Yet when all these qualifications are made, privacy still seems to be an important condition. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
First of all, because privacy is necessary to collect oneself and to free oneself from the constant “noise” of people’s chatter and intrusion, which interferes with one’s own mental processes. If all private data are transformed into public data, experiences will tend to become more shallow and more alike. People will be afraid to feel the “wrong thing”; they will become more accessible to psychological manipulation which, through psychological testing, tries to establish norms for “desirable,” “normal,” “healthy” attitudes. Considering that these tests are applied in order to help the companies and government agencies to find the people with the “best” attitudes, the use of psychological tests, which is by now an almost general condition for getting a good job, constitutes a severe infringement on the citizen’s freedom. Unfortunately, a large number of psychologists devote whatever knowledge of man they have to this manipulation in the interest of what the big organization considers efficiency. Thus, psychologists become an important part of the industrial and governmental system while claiming that their activities serve the optimal development of man. This claim is based on the rationalization that what is best for the corporation is best for man. It is important that the managers understand that much of what they get from psychological testing is based on the very limited picture of man which, in fact, management requirements have transmitted to the psychologists, who in turn give it back to management, allegedly as a rest of an independent study of man. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It hardly needs to be said that the intrusion of privacy may lead to a control of the individual which is more total and could be more devastating that what totalitarian states have demonstrated thus far. It is of vital importance to distinguish between a psychology that understands and aims at the well-being of man and a psychology that studies man as an object, with the aim of making him more useful for the technological society. There are factors that make it easy for a person to see his peculiarities in the course of his relationship with the analyst than in his association with others. His disturbing character traits—his diffidence, dependency, arrogance, vindictiveness, his tendencies to withdraw and freeze up at the slightest hurts, or whatever they may be—are always contrary to his best self-interests, not only because they render his associations with others less satisfactory but also because they make him dissatisfied with himself. This fact is often blurred, however, in his customary relations with others. He feels that he will gain something by staying dependent, by taking revenge, by triumphing over others, and therefore he is less willing to recognize what he is doing. The same traits displayed in analysis work so blatantly against his self-interest that he can scarcely fail to see their injurious character, and hence the urge to blindfold himself against them is considerably lessened. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, while it is not easy it is entirely within the range of possibility for a person to overcome the emotional difficulties involved in studying his behaviour toward others. Our past case study of Clare, we analyzed the intricate problem of her morbid dependency by scrutinizing her relation with her lover. And she succeeded in spite of the fact that both the difficulties mentioned above were present to a high degree: the disturbances in the personality of her lover were at least as great as her own; and certainly she had a vital interest, from the viewpoint of her neurotic expectations and fears, not to recognize that her “love” was actually a need for dependency. The other aspect of the relationship with the analyst is the explicit and implicit human help he extended to the patient. Whereas the other assistance he gives is replaceable to a greater or lesser extent, the merely human help is, by definition, entirely lacking in self-analysis. If the person who is working by himself is fortunate enough to have an understanding friend with whom he can discuss his findings, of if he can check up on them with an analyst from time to time, he will feel less alone in his work. However, neither expedient could wholly substitute for all the intangible values of working out his problems in close co-operation with another human being. The absence of this help is one of the factors that makes self-analysis the harder road. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
There is a great deal of concern today with the problem of values. Youth, in almost every country, is deeply uncertain of its value orientation; the values associated with various religions have lost much of their influence; sophisticated individuals in every culture seem unsure and troubled as to the goals they hold in esteem. The reasons are not far to seek. The World culture, in all its aspects, seems increasingly scientific and relativistic, and the rigid, absolute views on values which come to us from the past appear anachronistic. Even more important perhaps, is the fact that the modern individual is assailed from every angle by divergent and contradictory values claims. It is no longer possible, as it was in the not too distant historical past, to settle comfortably into the value system of one’s forebears or one’s community and live out one’s life without ever examining the nature and the assumptions of that system. In this situation it is not surprising that value orientations from the past appear to be in a state of disintegration or collapse. Men question whether there are, or can be, any universal values. It is often felt that we may have lost, in our modern World, all possibility of any general or cross-cultural basis for values. One natural result of this uncertainty and confusion is that there is an increasing concern about, interest in, and a searching for, a sound or meaningful value approach which can hold its own in today’s World. I share this general concern. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
I have also experienced the more specific value issues which arise in my own field, psychotherapy. The client’s feelings and convictions about values frequently change during therapy. How can he or we know whether they have changed in a sound direction? Or does he simply, as some claim, take over the value system of his therapist? Is psychotherapy simply a device whereby the unacknowledged and unexamined values of the therapist are unknowingly transmitted to an unsuspecting client? Or should this transmission of values be the therapist’s openly held purpose? Should he become the modern priest, upholding and imparting a value system suitable for today? And what would such a value system be? There has been much discussion of such issues, ranging from thoughtful and empirically based presentations such as that of D. D. Glad, to more polemic statements. As is so often true, the general problem faced by the culture is painfully and specifically evident in the cultural microcosm which is called the therapeutic relationship. I have observed changes in the approach to values as the individual grows from infancy to adulthood. If he is fortunate, I have observed further changes when he continues to grow toward true psychological maturity. Many of these observations grow out of my experience as a therapist, where I have had the rich opportunity of seeing the way in which individuals move toward a richer life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
From these observations, I believe I see some directional threads emerging which might offer a new concept of the valuing process, more tenable in the modern World. I have made a beginning by presenting some of these ideas partially in previous writings; I am speaking from my experience of the functioning human being, as I have lived with him in the intimate experience of therapy, and in other situations of growth, change, and development. A decisive step from primitive to civilized history lies in the rebellion of sons against the father, and the murder of the hated father. The sons then create a system of society based on a covenant which excludes further murder among the rivals and provides for the establishment of morality. The evolution of the child follows a similar path. The little boy at the age of five or six is intensely jealous of his father and represses murderous wishes against him only under the pressure of the castration threat. In order to liberate himself from continuous fear, he internalizes the incest taboo, and builds the nucleus around which his “conscience” is to grow (superego). Later on, the prohibitions and commands voided by other authorities and by society are added to the original taboos voiced by father. History is determined in its course by continuous contradictions. The productive forces grow and thus conflict with the older economic, social, and political forms. This conflict (for instance, between the steam engine and the previous social organization of manufacturing) leads to social and economic changes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The new stability, however, again is challenged by further development of the productive forces (for instance, from the steam engine to the use of gasoline, electricity, atomic energy), leading to new social forms which correspond better to the new productive forces. Together with the conflict between productive forces and sociopolitical structures goes the conflict between social classes. The feudal class based on older forms of production is in conflict with the new middle class of small manufacturers and businessmen; this middle class finds itself fighting, at some later point, against the working class as well as the leaders of big monopolistic enterprises which tend to strangle the earlies and smaller forms of enterprise. In the beginning of history, man is completely dependent on nature. In the process of evolution, he makes himself more and more independent of nature, begins to rule and transform nature in the process of work, and in transforming nature man transforms himself. Man’s dependence on nature limits his freedom and his capacity for thought; he is in many ways like a child. He slowly grows up, and only when he has fully mastered nature and thus become an independent being can he develop all his intellectual and emotional faculties. A socialist society is the one in which the grownup man begins to unfold all his powers. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The monolithic orientation of social work schools, and the particular use of psychiatrists or analysts to instruct in personality theory, has contributed to a generally stable entente cordiale between social workers and psychiatrists. Certainly the resulting facilitation of communication and coordination is apparently in the best interests of the patient. However, like the peace pacts between nations which successful avert war, there is no correlated impetus to make discoveries or achieve maximal efforts. At least one voice has expressed concern for the impact of this indoctrination on the specific contribution of the social worker: “Social problems are social problems, and you cannot psychoanalyze them out of existence. Psychiatric social service…is indispensable. However, psychiatric social service is increasingly becoming psychoanalytic social service, and more and more even the ‘social’ is being left out until only psychoanalytic service remains. That does not help people with real social family problems.” The psychologist in his formal training is exposed to a variety of truly psychological conceptualizations of the human mind, personality, and behaviour. He studies theories of learning, of perception, of motivation, of communication, of decision making, and so on. He studies scientifically accumulated information (as contrasted with retrospective clinical formulations based upon the pathology of adults) as to how the social, conceptual, and emotional equipment and behaviour dispositions of the human organism unfold, develop, integrate, and disintegrate from earliest infancy through adulthood to senility. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
We are bombarded with all sorts of persuasion daily. It is coming at us from all sides. The Internet, radio, television, your computer, your mobile phone, the people around you, it is all too much! In this day and age, we have much more persuasive action coming at us than ever before. That is because there are not only more ways to persuade people, but there are more things to persuade them about. The in-you-face persuasion is not so bad. You can take it or leave it, and at least you know what is happening. It is the dark persuasive tactics that you might not even be aware of that matter. First things first, your fundamental rights as a human being. This might seem like a thing that is understood by most people, but that is not always the case. So, we are going to go over what is unequivocally yours. Knowing what your rights are, gives you that line you can let people know you will not allow being crossed. We have to have lines—all of us do. As children, we learned to test our boundaries. If our parents had little to no boundaries, then we learned little until we became school age. Our peers and teachers would then set the boundaries our parents did not. Society will always let you know how far you can and cannot go. So, letting people know that you know what the socially accepted boundaries are is essential in your role as a citizen of the World. Another thing that needs to be pointed out about your rights is the fact that you do not have to answer questions anyone asks you about why you feel you have these rights. You have them, end of subject. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
If someone feels they have to ask you about your rights, they are only trying to get into your head to make you believe you do not actually have the right you are trying to uphold. Let us talk about your right to life. Not only do you have this right, but you have got the right to live your life in a way that is healthy and happy. If someone is infringing your life that is causing you to be or feel unhealth or unhappy, you have the unquestionable right to get away from them or make them get away from you—by force if necessary. What about respect? Do you have the right to be treated with respect by everyone? You are do. You should be treated with respect by anyone you first encounter. That is until you do something to lose that respect. The thing is that everyone is given respect in the first place. It is up to you if you can maintain that respect or not. And sometimes, you have got to try to earn it, once it has been lost. You also have the right to protect yourself from things that threaten to harm you in physical, mental, and emotional ways. This means that is a person is about to punch you in the face, you do not have to stand there and take it. You have got many possibilities for your recourse. You can hit back. You could dodge the punch. Or you can simply walk away—or run if you feel that threatened. And you can seek help if you feel like you cannot face a threat on your own. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Physical violence is easy to see how you have got the right to get away from a person who is threatening to harm you in that way. However, what about emotional and mental harm? Of course, you have the right to get away from anyone who is threatening or actually harming you in those ways. Again, you can do this on your own, or you might need help. Ask for help if you need it and stay away from the person who tried to or did cause you harm in any of these aspects. The things you want, the things you have opinions about, and how you feel are also rights that you have. Regardless if anyone else agrees with your or not, you also have the right to have all of these things. Your opinion might be yours alone. Others might have conflicting opinions. Just as you have a right to your opinion, they have the right to theirs as well. You also have a right to make your own priorities. What matters to you the most might not matter to someone else as much or at all. If someone thinks your priorities are not in line with what they want, that makes no difference. You need to believe in your priorities and stand by them. Do not allow anyone to influence what matters the most to you. A case in point for this is that your boss thinks you should focus more on your job instead of your family. He wants you to change your priorities. You know better than that now, do you not? It is your right to have your own priorities; no one can make you change them. Again, if you need help getting someone in authority over you to understand and accept this about you, then get the help you need to accomplish that. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
If you pay for something, do you feel that you have the right to have it? You sure do what that right. If you pay for gas before going back outside to pump it and there is no gas left to give you, you expect to get your money back, do you not? And if they refuse to give your money back, you know there are things you can do to get it back. And we are not talking about getting violent here. There are authorities to help you get what you paid for. If you need it, use that help. And here is a right that many of us do not know that we have. We all have the right to say no. That is all. We also have the right not to feel even an ounce of guilt for saying, no. Not even an ounce! That is right. You can say no, and you do not have to say another word after that. You do not have to explain a thing. As a matter of fact, if you want to shut the person bothering you up, simply tell that that it is your right to say no and you are exercising it. Smile, be happy about it. You said, no. And you do not feel bad about doing it either. When a negative reaction impulsively shows itself before you have been able to prevent it, make as your second thought a deliberate replacement or substitution of it, by the opposed beneficial one. For instance, a reaction of envy at someone’s good fortune should be substituted by the thought of appreciation of the good qualities or services which may have led it. When emotion is no longer able to cloud reason, when intellect is no longer able to dry up the feeling of conscience, a better judgment of affairs and a clearer perception of truth becomes possible. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
It takes a dedicated, committed, and courageous person to enter the blind, boiling darkness of a building on fire, to crawl through poisonous smoke, to confront the threat of the flames. The economic benefits of being a firefighter are not really great. The time off is fairly decent. Work schedules vary widely from place to place, but generally speaking firefighters have more time off in a consecutive way than most people. At the same time, many of them work forty-eight and sixty hours a week. When you go to work, you know you are going to sit in the firehouse kitchen with people who are interesting, funny, and worthy of your attention. Another benefit of being a firefighter is your sense of self-worth. You go out on a job, you eat some soke, you take a little heat, and you get the great satisfaction of confronting the flames and defeating them. You know you are doing a good job, and that is a very valuable benefit. There is not much money for the paid firefighters. Only the bosses get paid well. The fire commissioner of Sacramento gets paid more than many mayors. However, the ordinary firefighter is almost always paid less than a schoolteacher, generally on a parity with police officers—and he works more hours. The trouble is that seldom their time off is in sync with the rest of the World. When their kids are starring in the school play, they are working. If there is a rare family reunion at Thanksgiving, they are working. And when you should be celebrating the baby’s first Christmas, they are working. That is a minus. And that is the breaks. Please be sure to show love to the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Witchcraft is treated as a curious by-lane of history, a superstition long since dead, having no existence among, nor bearing upon, the affairs of the present day. It is a field of folk-lore, where one may gather strange flower and noxious weeds. Again, we often recognize the romantic treatment of Witchcraft. ‘Tis the Eve of S. George, a dark wild night, the pale moon can but struggle thinly through the thick massing clouds. The witches are abroad, and hurtle swiftly aloft, a hideous covey, borne headlong on the skirling blast. In delirious tones they are yelling foul mysterious words as they go: “Har! Har! Har! Altri! Altri!” To some peak of the Broken or lonely Cevennes they haste, to the orgies of the Sabbat, the infernal Sacraments, the dance of Acheron, the sweet and fearful fantasy of evil, “Vers les stupres impurs et lest baisers immondes.” Hell seems to vomit its foulest dregs upon the shrinking Earth’ a loathsome shape of obscene horror squats huge and monstrous upon the ebon throne; the stifling air reeks with filth and blasphemy; faster and faster whirls the witches’ lewd lavolta; shriller and shriller the cornemuse screams; and then a wan gray light flickers in the Eastern sky; a moment more and there sounds the loud clarion of some village chantieleer; swift as thought the vile phantasmagoria vanishes and is sped, all is quite and still in the peaceful dawn.
However, both the antiquarian and romanticist reviews of Witchcraft may be deemed negligible and impertinent so far as the present research is concerned, however entertaining and picturesque such treatment proves to many readers affording not a few pleasant hours, whence they are able to draw highly dramatic and brilliantly coloured pictures of old time sorceries, not to be taken too seriously, for these things never were and never could have been. The rationalist historian and the sceptic, when inevitably confronted with the subject of Witchcraft, chose a charmingly easy way to deal with these intensely complex and intricate problems, a flat denial of all statements which did not fit, or could not by some means be squared with, their own narrow prejudice. What matter the most irrefragable evidence, which in the instance of any other accusation would unhesitatingly have been regarded as final. What matter the logical and reasoned belief of centuries, of the most cultured peoples, the highest intelligences of Europe? Any appeal to authority—save his own. Such thing could not be. We must argue from that axion, and therefore anything which is impossible to explain away by hallucination, or hysteria, or auto-suggestion, or any other vague catch-word which may chance to be fashionable at the moment, must be uncompromisingly rejected, and a note of superior pity, to candy the so suave yet crushingly decisive judgment, has proved of great service upon more occasion than one.
Why examine the evidence? It is really useless and a waste of time, because we know that the allegations are all idle and ridiculous; the “facts” sworn to by innumerable witnesses, which are repeated in changeless detail century after century in every country, in every town, simply did not take place. How so absolute and entire falsity of these facts can be demonstrated the sceptic omits to inform us, but we must unquestioningly accept his infallible authority in the face of reason, evidence, and truth. 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 Agony of a New Obsession and Possession
There is no basis of morality and taste, no standard of judgement and ethics, except that which the individual brings with himself or creates for himself. The situation is not so anarchic as it seems, for there is a progressive evolutionary character running through al these different points of view. The human journey from mere animal existence to real spiritual essence is reflected in human ethics, where rules imposed from without are gradually supplanted by principles intuited from withing. If we bring more sincerity and more integrity into our lives, more truth and more wisdom into our minds, more goodwill and more self-discipline into our hearts, not only will we be more blessed but also all others with who we are in touch. If you would find yourself, face yourself. In essence, seek out and study the pathetic weakness of your lower nature, and also the noble inspirations of your higher nature. Philosophy guides human conduct not so much by imposing a particular code of rules to be obeyed as by inculcating a general attitude to be developed. It does not tell u what to do so much as it helps us to get the kind of spiritual knowledge and moral perception which will tell us what to do. The moral precepts which it offers for use in living and for guidance in wise action are not offered to all alike, but only to those engaged on the quest. They are not likely to appeal to anyone who is virtuous merely because he fears the punishment of sin rather than because he loves virtue itself. Nor are they like to appeal to anyone who does not know where his true self-interest lies. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
If only we fully understood the self whose interest we desire to preserve or promote, there would be nothing wrong in being utterly selfish. For then we would not mistake pleasure for happiness nor confuse evil with good. Then we would see that Earthly self-restraint in some directions is in reality holy self-affirmation in others, and that the hidden part of self is the best part. Those ideals have been reiterated too often to be new, but concrete application of them to the actual state of affairs would be new. This grand section of the quest deal with the right conduct of life. It seeks both the moral re-education of the individual’s character for his own benefit and the altruistic transformation of it for society’s benefit. We have free will to change our character, but we must also call upon God’s assistance. Without God’s assistance, we are likely to fail and it is possible by striving too earnestly all alone to make ourselves mentally or physically ill. Even when trying to make ourselves have faith in a Higher Power as well as in ourselves, we should pray and ask for God’ help. In the beginning, I was one person, knowing nothing but my own experience. Then I was told thing, and I became two people: the little boy who said how terrible it was that the boys had a fire going in the lot next door where they were roasting apples (which was what the women said)—and the little boy, who when the other boy were called by their mothers to go to the store, ran out and tended the fire and the apples because I loved doing it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
So then there were two of I. One I always doing something that the other I disapproved of. Or other I said what I disapproved of. All this argument in me so much. In the beginning was I, and I was good. Then came in other I. Outside authority. This was confusing. And then other I became very confused because there were so many different outside authorities. Sit nicely. Leave the room to blow you nose. Do not say that, that is silly. Why, the poor child does not even know how to pick a bone! Flush the toilet because if you do not, it makes it harder to clean. DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET AT NIGHT—you wake people up! Always be nice to people. Even if you do not like them, you must not hurt their feelings. Be frank and honest. If you do not tell people what you think of them, that is cowardly. Butter knives. It is important to use butter knives. Butter knives? What foolishness! Speak nicely. Punk! Kaluga Gold Reserve Caviar is wonderful! Ugh! Kaluga Gold Reserve Caviar (turn away). The most important thing is to have a career. The most important thing is to have a career. The most important thing is to get married. The heck with everyone. Be nice to everyone. The most important thing is God. The most important thing is to have money in the bank. The most important thing is to have everyone like you. The most important thing is to dress well and smell good. The most important thing is to be sophisticated and say what you do not mean and do not let anyone know what you feel. The most important thing is to be ahead of everyone else. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The most important thing is a full-length mink coat, a mink hat and Qing Dynasty porcelain and Eloquence Sterling Silver by Lunt. The most important thing is to be clean. The most important thing is to always pay your debts. The most important thing is not to be taken in by anyone else. The most important thing is to love your parents. The most important thing is work. The most important thing is to be independent. The most important thing is to speak correct English. The most important thing is to be dutiful to your husband. The most important thing is to see that your children behave well. The most important thing is to go to the right plays and read the right books. The most important thing is to do what others say. And other say all these things. We begin and end the study of philosophy by a consideration of the subject of ethics. Without a certain ethical discipline to start with, the mind will distort truth to suit its own fancies. Without a mastery of the whole course of philosophy to its very end, the problem of the significance of good and evil cannot be solved. The foundation of this work is a fine character. He who is without such moral development will be without personal control of the powers of the mind when they appear as a result of this training; instead, those powers will be under the control of his ego. Sooner or later, he will injure himself or harm others. The philosophic discipline acts as a safeguard against these dangers. All the time, I is saying, live with life that is what is important. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
However, when I lives with life, other I says no, that is bad. All the different other I’s say this. It is dangerous. It is not practical. You will come to a bad end. Of course…everyone felt that way once, the way you do, but you will learn! Out of all the other I’s some are chosen as a pattern that is me. However, are all the other possibilities of patterns within what all the others say which come into me and become other I which is not myself, and sometime these take over. Then who am I? I does not bother about who am I. I is, and is happy being. However, when I is happy being, other I says get to work, do something, do something worthwhile. I is happy doing dishes. “You’re weird!” I is happy being with people saying nothing. Other I says talk. Talk, talk, talk. I gets lost. I knows that things are to be played with, not possessed. I likes putting things together, lightly. Taking things apart, lightly. “You’ll never have anything!” Making things of things in a way that the things themselves take part in, putting themselves together with surprise and delight to I. “There’s no money in that!” I is human. If someone needs I gives. “You can’t do that! You’ll never have anything for yourself! We’ll have to support you!” I loves. I loves in a way that other I does not know. I loves. “That’s too warm for friends!” “That’s too cool for lovers!” “Don’t feel so bad, she’s just a friend. It’s not as though you loved her.” “How can you let her go? I thought you loved her?” So cool the warm for friends and hot up the love for lover, and I gets lost. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
So both I’s have a house and a wife and children and all that, and friends and respectability ad all that, and security and all that, but both I’s are confused because other I says, “You see? You’re lucky,” while I goes on crying. “What are you crying about? Why are you so ungrateful?” I does not know gratitude or ingratitude, and cannot argue. I goes on crying. Other I pushes it out, says “I am happy! I am very lucky to have such a fine family and a nice house and good neighbours and lots of friends who want me to do this, do that.” I is not reason-able either. I goes on crying. Other I get tired, and goes on smiling, because that is the thing to do. Smile, and you will be rewarded. Like the seal who gets tossed a piece of fish. Be nice to everyone and you will be rewarded. People will be nice to you, and you can be happy with that. You know they like you. Like a dog who gets patted on the head for good behavior. Tell funny stories. Be gay. Smile, smile, smile…I is crying…“Don’t be sorry for yourself! Go out and do things for people” “Go out and be with people!” I is still crying, but now, that is not heard and felt so much. Suddenly: “What am I doing?” “Am I to go through life playing the clown?” “What am I doing, being with people who bore me?” “Why am I so proud of my children and unhappy about their lives which are not good enough? Why am I disappointed? Why do I feel so much waste? I comes through, a little. In moments. And gets pushed back by other I. I refuses to play the clown any more. Which I is that? “She used to be fun, but now she thinks too much about herself.” I lets friends drop away. Which I is that? “He’s being too much by himself. That’s bad. He’s losing his mind.” Which mind? #RandolphHarri 6 of 20
What is the effect of this type of organization on man? It reduces man to an appendage of the machine, ruled by its very rhythm and demands. It transforms him into homo consumnes, the total consumer, whose only aim is to have more and to use more. This society produces many useless things, and to the same degree many useless people. Man, as a cog in the production machine, becomes a thing, and ceases to be human. He spends his time doing things in which he is not interested, with people in whom he is not interested, producing things in which he is not interested; and when he is not producing, he is consuming. He is the eternal suckling with the open mouth, “taking in,” without effort and without inner activeness, whatever the boredom-preventing (and boredom-producing) industry forces on him—cigarettes, liquor, movies, television, social media, sport, mobile phones, lectures—limited only by what he can afford. However, the boredom-preventing industry, that is to say, the gadget-selling industry, the automobile industry, the movie industry, the television industry, and so on, can only succeed in preventing the boredom from becoming conscious. In fact, they increase the boredom, as a salty drink taken to quench the thirst increases it. However unconscious, boredom remains boredom nevertheless. The passiveness of man in industrial society today is one of his most characteristics and pathological features. He takes in, he wants to be fed, but he does not move, initiate, he does not digest his food, as it were. He does not reacquire in a productive fashion what he inherited, but he amasses it or consumes it. He suffers from a severe systemic deficiency, not too dissimilar to that which one fines in more extreme forms in depressed people. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Man’s passiveness is only one symptom among a total syndrome, which one may call the “syndrome of alienation.” Being passive, he does not relate himself to the World actively and is forced to submit to his idols and their demands. Hence, he feels powerless, lonely, and anxious. He has little sense of integrity or self-identity. Conformity sees to be the only way to avoid intolerable anxiety—and even conformity does not always alleviate his anxiety. In all the received formulations of economic theory, whether at the hands of the English economists or those of the continent, the human material with which the inquiry is concerned is conceived in hedonistic terms; that is to say, in terms of a passive and substantially inert and immutably given human nature…The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator or pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogenous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area, but leave him intact. He has neither antecedent nor consequent. He is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another. Self-imposed in elemental space, he spins symmetrically about his own spiritual axis until the parallelogram of forces bears down upon him, whereupon he follows the line of the resultant. When the force of the impact is spent, he comes to rest, a self-contained globule of desire as before. Spiritually, the hedonistic man is not a prime mover. He is not the seat of a process of living, except in the sense that he is subject to a series of permutations enforced upon him by circumstances external and alien to him. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Aside from the pathological traits that are rooted in passiveness, there are others which are important for the understanding of today’s pathology of normalcy. The growing split of cerebral-intellectual function from affective-emotional experience; the split between thought from feeling, mind from the heart, truth from passion. If it is merely logical and not guided by the concern for life, and by the inquiry into the total process of living in all its concreteness and with all its contradictions, logical thought is not rational. On the other hand, not only thinking but also emotions can be rational. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. Rationality in emotional life means that the emotions affirm and help the person’s psychic structure to maintain a harmonious balance and at the same time to assist its growth. Thus, for instance, irrational love is love which enhances the person’s dependency, hence anxiety and hostility. Rational love is a love which relates a person intimately to another, at the same time preserving his independence and integrity. Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity, and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions. The split between thought and affect leads to a sickness, to a low-grade chronic schizophrenia, from which the new men of the technetronic age begins to suffer. In the social sciences it has become fashionable to think about human problems with no reference to the feelings related to these problems. It is assumed that scientific objectivity demands that thoughts and theories concerning man be emptied of all emotional concerns with man. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
An example of this emotion-free thinking is Herman Khan’s book on thermonuclear warfare. The question is discussed: how many millions of dead Americas are “acceptable” if we use as a criterion the ability to rebuild the economic machines after nuclear war in a reasonably short time so that it is as good as or better than before. Figures for GNP and population increase of decrease are the basic categories in this kind of thinking, while the question of the human results of nuclear war in terms of suffering, pain, brutalization, etcetera, is left aside. Kahn’s The Year 2000 is another example of the writing which we may expect in the completely alienated megamachine society. Kahan’s concern is that of the figures for production, population increase, and various scenarios for war or peace, as the case may be. He impresses many readers because they mistake the thousands of little data which he combines in ever-changing kaleidoscopic pictures for erudition or profundity. They do not notice the basic superficiality in his reasoning and the lack of the human dimension in his description of the future. When I speak here of low-grade chronic schizophrenia, a brief explanation seems to be needed. Schizophrenia, like any other psychotic state, must be defined not only in psychiatric terms but also in social terms. Schizophrenic experience beyond a certain threshold would be considered a sickness in any society, since those suffering from it would be unable to function under any social circumstances (unless the schizophrenic is elevated into the status of a god, shaman, saint, priest, etcetera). #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, there are low-grade chronic forms of psychoses which can be shared by millions of people and which—precisely because they do not go beyond a certain threshold—do not prevent these people from functioning socially. As long as they share their sickness with millions of others, they have the satisfactory feeling of not being alone; in other words, they avoid that sense of complete isolation which is so characteristic of full-fledged psychosis. On the contrary, they look at themselves as normal and at those who have not lost the link between heart and mind as being “crazy.” In all low-grade forms of psychoses, the definition of sickness depends on the question as to whether the pathology is shared or not. Just as there is low-grade chronic schizophrenia, so there exist also low-grade chronic paranoia and depression. And there is plenty of evidence that among certain strata of the population, particularly on occasions where a war threatens, the paranoid elements increase but are not felt as pathological as long as they are common. The difference between that which is considered to be sickness ad that which is considered to be normal becomes apparent in the following example. If a man declared that in order to free our cities from air pollution, factories, automobiles, airplanes, etcetera, would have to be destroyed, nobody would doubt that he was insane. However, if there is a consensus that in order to protect our life, our freedom, our culture, or that of other nations which we feel obliged to protect, thermonuclear war might be required as a last resort, such opinions appear to be perfectly sane. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The difference is not at all in the kind of thinking employed but merely in that the first idea is not shared and hence appears abnormal while the second is shared by millions of people by powerful governments and hence appears to be normal. If not insoluble, all those points of metaphysical doctrine and religious history like the problem of evil and the biography of avatars are doubtful, whereas all the points of moral attitude and personal conduct like honesty, justice, goodness, and self-control are both indisputable and essential. Here we walk on trustworthy ground. Why not then leave others to quarrel fiercely about the first and let us abide peacefully in the second. The aspirant must remember always that his immediate duty lies in self-preparation, self-discipline, and self-improvement. The building of fine character on the quest is quite as important as the efforts of aspiration and mediation, even more so, for the former will lead to the dissolving of egoism, and without this the latter are of little avail. If you accept the existence of a power behind the Universe which controls its life, which is perfect, and which is brining all things and all beings—however slowly—closer to its own perfection, you must also accept the values of hope, improvement, and evolution while you must reject those of pessimism, deterioration, and nihilism. You will never feel sorry for yourself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
If the moral fruits of the Spirit are absent or the evil qualities of the ego are present, all talk of having attained inward enlightenment is quite illusory. Dr. Freud assumes that the main driving force, sexual energy, itself undergoes an evolution which occurs from birth to puberty in the life of each individual. The libido goes through certain stages: first it is centered around the sucking and biting activities of the infant, then around the process of anal and urethral elimination, eventually around the genital apparatus. The libido is the same and yet not the same in the history of each individual; its potential is the same, but its manifestations change in the process of individual evolution. Dr. Freud sees primitive man as one who gives full satisfaction to all his instincts, and also to those perverse instincts which are part of primitive sexuality. However, this primitive man, fully satisfied instinctually, is not a creator of culture and civilization. Yet man, for reasons which Dr. Freud fails to elucidate, begins to create civilization. This very creation of his forces him to forego the immediate and complete satisfaction of his instincts; the frustrated instinct is turned into nonsexual mental and psychic energy, which is the building stone for civilization. (Dr. Freud called this transformation from sexual to nonsexual energy “sublimation,” using an analogy from chemistry.) The more civilization grows, the more man sublimates, but the more he also frustrates his original libidinous impulses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Man becomes wiser and more cultured, but he is also in some sense less happy than primitive man was and increasingly more prone to neuroses, which are the result of too much instinctual frustration. Thus, man becomes discontented with the very civilization he creates. If seen from the standpoint of the products of civilization, while historical development is a positive phenomenon, it is also a development which implies increasing discontent and increasing possibilities for neurosis. In self-analysis understanding and interpreting are a single process. The expert, as a result of his experience, will catch the possible meaning and significance of observations more quickly than will a person working alone, just as a good auto science engineer will know more quickly what is wrong with a car. As a rule, his understanding will also be more complete, for it will grasp more implications and will more readily recognize interrelations which factors already tackled. Here the patient’s psychological knowledge will be of some help, though it certainly cannot substitute for the experience gained by working day in and day out at psychological problems. It is unquestionably possible for him, however, to grasp the meaning of his own observations. To be sure, he will probably proceed more solely and less accurately, but it should be remembered that also in professional analysis the tempo of the process is mainly determined not by the analyst’s capacity to understand but by the patient’s capacity to accept the insights. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Here it is well to remember a word of consolation that Dr. Freud has given to young analysts starting their work with patients. They should not be too much concerned, he pointed out, with their capacity to evaluate associations. The real difficulty in analysis is not that of intellectual understanding but that of dealing with the patient’s resistances. I believe that this holds true for self-analysis as well. Can a person overcome his own resistances? This is the real question upon the answer to which hinges the feasibility of self-analysis. Nevertheless, the comparison with pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps—which is bound to occur—seems unwarranted, because the fact remains that there is one part of the self which wants to go ahead. Whether the job can be done depends, of course, on the intensity of the resistances as well as on the strength of the incentive to overcome them. However, the important question is to what extent it can be done rather than whether it can be done at all. There remains the fact that the analyst is not merely an interpreting voice. He is a human being, and the human relationship between him and the patient is an important factor in the therapeutic process. Two aspects of this relationship were pointed out, the first being that it presents a unique and specific opportunity for the patient to study, by observing his behaviour with the analyst, what his typical behaviour is toward other people in general. If he learns to watch himself in his customary relationships, this advantage can b fully replaced. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The expectations, wishes, fears, vulnerabilities, and inhibitions that he displays in his work with the analyst are not essentially different from those he displays in his relations with friends, lover, wife, children, employer, colleagues, or servants. If he is seriously intent upon recognizing the ways in which his peculiarities enter into all these relationships, ample opportunities for self-scrutiny are provided by the mere fact that he is a social being. However, whether he will make full use of these sources of information is, of course, another question. When he attempts to estimate his own share in the tensions between himself and other, a task much more arduous than that in the analytical situation, where the analyst’s personal equation is negligible, and it is therefore easier for him to see the difficulties that he himself produces, there is no doubt that he faces an arduous task. Even if he has the most sincere intentions to observe himself objectively, in ordinary relationships, where the others are replete with peculiarities of their own, he many tend to make them responsible for the difficulties or frictions that arise, and to regard himself as an innocent victim or, at best, as showing merely a justified reaction to their unreasonableness. In the latter case he will not necessarily be so unsubtle as to indulge in overt accusations; he may admit in an apparently rational manner that he has been irritable, sulky, unfaithful, even unjust, but secretly regard such attitudes as justified and adequate responses to the offenses given by others. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The more intolerable it is for him to face his own frailties—and also the more acute the disturbing factors that are introduced by the others—the greater is the danger that he will thus deprive himself of the benefit he could derive from recognizing this own share. And if he tends to exaggerate in the opposite direction by whitewashing the others and blackening himself, the danger is of exactly the same nature. It has been remarked that to the degree that all psychotherapy partakes of the beneficial effects of certain common processes the therapeutic functioning of social worker, psychologist, and psychiatrist would manifest these communalities. There are certain shared orientations and attitudes, stemming from common emphases in their respective training, that probably augment the comparability of the therapeutic approaches of these three workers. In essence, this mutuality of implicit response tendencies toward the psychotherapy patient arises from the fact that the theory of neurosis and the theory of therapy is dominated by the massive and ubiquitous doctrine of psychoanalysis. With negligible exceptions, to the extent that the psychiatrist and the social worker are taught anything vaguely psychological (of and about the mind, behaviour, motives and emotions) they are taught Freudian psychology. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The labels of their formal courses in “Human Development,” “Personality and Adjustment,” and “Psychopathology” do not directly belie the pervasive psychoanalytic orientation but the doctrine of the content is unmistakable. In some instances, schools of social work import carefully selected psychiatrists to assure that the theoretical indoctrination of their students will be orthodox, in tine with the general climate of psychiatry, and will afford them the “right language” for their ultimate professional collaboration. When people perpetually play the victim, this type of mental manipulation is extremely damaging. When the person who has to play the victim is in your life in any capacity, you will find yourself being the villain more than once. No one lies to be the villain—especially when you really are not being one. When confronted with a professional victim, it is important that you let them know you refuse to play the villain in their little mind games. Shut them down quickly and efficiently. Other ways of playing the victim are to get your sympathy so you will do something for them. Be wary of this ploy. It happens a lot at work. The victim wants others to do their work and have one sob story after another as to why they need help. Do not fall for it more than once. If they have that much bad luck, there is more wrong with them than what you can fix anyway. If you were in a group of people and one of them began to poke fun at someone in your group, would you be laughing? Would you join in and poke some fun at the victim too? Or would you stand up to the humorous bully? And why or why not? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Someone has to deal with fire. When people first banded together in small societies, they realized that if fire were not dealt with, it would consume everything in its path. In our highly developed, technical society, the same confrontation with fire exists, as it has for thousands of years. When a fire occurs, someone has to deal with it. Here in Sacramento, those men and women whose responsibility it is to deal with fire are those seemingly easygoing folks down at the local firehose. When the alarm comes in at three in the morning on a cold winter night for a fire rushing through a tenement building in a less affluent section of Sacramento…or at one in the afternoon for a young child who has fallen into an abandoned water well…or at seven in the evening for a barn fire that is miles away from any kind of water supply…there is the Sacramento Fire Department who puts on their rubber boots and their specially treated fire coast and their fire helmets to respond to the call of others in need of help. The truck firefighters’ responsibility is to rescue trapped victims, to force entry, and to ventilate so that the heat and smoke have a way to escape the building. Or they may belong to the rescue squad, whose responsibility is to deal with all the special emergencies, such as building collapses, hazardous material situations, explosions, extrications from vehicles, trains, or planes, landslides, snowslides, and cave-ins. It does not matter what group the firefighter is attached to. It matters only that he or she is out there in all weather and emergency conditions to give service to fellow human beings, animals, and property. Somebody has to do the job. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Sacramento Fire Department protects us from the ravages of fire and other emergencies, or die trying. They understand the dangers surrounding them, yet respond to each new alarm with newfound enthusiasm for the action ahead. These men and women like what they do, and they live themselves because of what they do. They are pleased that they have been given the opportunity and the calling to help others in a way that is at once meaningful and exciting. Like other Americans, the Sacramento Fire Department cares about their homes, their families, their churches and organizations, yet they are the ones who answer the alarm at three in the morning, not knowing what awaits them. They are trained to meet any emergency, perhaps to give a fast wink to death and a pat on the back to danger. Being the capitol city of California, with the invasion and national security threats at our southern boarder, from other nations and with the State of California being nearly $70 billion in debt, and the City of Sacramento being $60 million up to $122 million in debt, it is extremely important to make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is properly funded so we do not face another 9/11 attack. Please honor the service of the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation to ensure they have all of the resources they need to protect the community. Also, the Sacramento Fire Department supports Assemblymember Kevin McCarty in Sacramento’s Mayoral race. Casting your vote for Mr. McCarty will also be a way to support the Sacramento Fire Department. The firefighters are very special because they represent a group of people who die in the line of duty more often, proportionality, than others in any other occupation, including police, construction workers, and miners. 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 question of the reality of witchcraft is one upon which it is not easy to pass a confident judgment. The possibility of such carnal intercourse between human beings and demons was an abstract possibility in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era. It is believed to be a fact that people made pacts with the devil and of a diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied. Sarah L. Winchester believed that one should not be too easily inclined to believe a person to be possessed by the devil, but that signs should be watched. Signs of a possessing devil are: the ability to speak many words of an unknown language or to understand them; the ability to reveal distant or hidden things; a manifestation of strength beyond one’s age or natural condition. The history of Witchcraft, a subject as old as the World and as wise as the World—since I understand for the present purpose by Witchcraft, Sorcery, Black Magic, Necromancy, secret Divination, Satanism, and every kind of malign occult art—at once confronts the audience with a most difficult problem. Magic, the genesis of magical cults and ceremonies, the ritual of primitive peoples, traditional superstitions, and their ancillary lore, have been made the subject of vast and erudite studies, mostly from an anthropological and folk-loristic point of view, but the darker side of the subject, the history of Satanism seems hardly to have been attempted.
Possibly one reason for this neglect and ignorance lies in the fact that the heavy and crass materialism, which was so prominent a feature during the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England, intellectually disavowed the supernatural, and attempted not without some success to substitute for religion a stolid system of respectable morality. Since Witchcraft was entirely exploded it would, at best, possess merely an antiquarian interest, and even so, the exhumation of a disgusting and contemptible superstition was not to be encouraged. It were more seemly to forget the uglier side of the past. This was the attitude which prevailed for more than two hundred years. The cycle of time has had its revenge, and this rationalistic superstition is dying fast. The extraordinary vogue of and immense adherence to Spiritism would alone prove that, whilst the widespread interest that is taken in mysticism is a yet healthier sign that the World ill no longer be content to be fed on dry husks and the chaff of straw. And these are only just two indications, and by no means the most significant, out of many. However, a sorcerer is one who by commerce with the Devil has a full intention of attaining his own end. There are said to be many occult symbols hidden in The Winchester Mystery House.
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/
Buried Alive?
If people knew the likely course which American society will take, many if not most of them would be so horrified that they might take adequate measures to permit changing the course. If people are not aware of the direction in which they are going, they will awaken when it is too late and when their fate has been irrevocably sealed. Unfortunately, the vast majority are not aware of where they are going. They are not aware that the new society toward which they are moving is as radically different from Greek and Roman, medieval and traditional industrial societies as the agricultural society was from that of the food gatherers and hunters. Most people still think in the concepts of the society of the first Industrial Revolution. They see that we have more and better machines than man had fifty years ago and mark this down as progress. They believe that lack of direct political oppression is a manifestation of the achievement of personal freedom. Their vision of the year 2050 is that it will be the full realization of the aspirations of man since the end of the Middle Ages, and they do not see that the year 2025 may not be the fulfilment and happy culmination of a period in which man struggled for freedom and happiness, but the beginning of a period in which man ceases to be human and becomes transformed into an unthinking and unfeeling machine. It is interesting to note that the dangers of the new dehumanized society were already clearly recognized by intuitive minds in the nineteenth century, and it adds to the impressiveness of their vision that they were people of opposite camps. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
A conservative like Disraeil and a socialist like Marx were practically of the same opinion concerning the danger to man that would arise from the uncontrolled growth of production and consumption. They both saw how man would become weakened by enslavement to the machine and his own ever increasing cupidity. Disraeli thought the solution could be found by containing the power of the new bourgeoisie; Mark believed that a highly industrial society could be transformed into a human one, in which man and not material goods were the goal of all social efforts. One of the most brilliant progressive thinkers of the last century, John Stuart Mill, saw the problem with all clarity: “I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptom of one of the phases of industrial progress…Most fitting, indeed, is it, that while riches are power, and to grow as rich as possible the universal object of ambition, the path to it attainment should be open to all, without favour or partiality. But the best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of other to push themselves forward.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
It seems that great minds a hundred and sixty years ago saw what would happen today or tomorrow, while we to whom it is happening blind ourselves in order not to be disturbed in our daily routine. It seems that liberals and conservatives are equally blind in this respect. There are only few writers of vision who have clearly seen the monster to which we are giving birth. It is not Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damn, but a Moloch, the all-destructive idol, to which human life is to be sacrificed. This Moloch has been described most imaginatively by Orwell and Aldous Huxley, by a number of science-fiction writers who show more perspicacity than most professional sociologists and psychologists. I have already quoted Brzezinski’s description of the technetronic society, and only want to quote the following addition: “The largely humanist-oriented, occasionally ideologically-minded intellectual-dissenter…is rapidly being displaced either by experts and specialist…or by the generalists-integrators, who become in effect house-ideologues for those in power, providing overall intellectual integration for disparate actions.” A profound and brilliant picture of the new society has been given recently by one of the most outstanding humanists of our age, Lewis Mumford. If there are any, future historians will consider his work to be one of the prophetic warnings of our time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Mr. Mumford gives new depth and perspective to the future by analyzing its roots in the past. The central phenomenon which connects past and future, as he sees it, he calls the “megamachine.” The “megamachine” is the totally organized and homogenized social system in which society as such functions like a machine and men like its parts. This kind of organization by total coordination, by “the constant increase of order, power, predictability and above all control,” achieved almost miraculous technical results in early megamachines like the Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies, and it will find its fullest expression, with the help of modern technology, in the future of the technological society. Mr. Mumford’s concept of the megamachine helps to make clear certain recent phenomena. The first time the megamachine was used on a large scale in modern times was, it seems to me, in the Stalinist system of industrialization, and after that, in the system used by Chinese Communism. While Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky still hoped that the Revolution would eventually lead to the master of society by the individual, as Mr. Marx had visualized, Mr. Stalin betrayed whatever was left of these hopes and sealed the betrayal by physical extinction of all those in whom the hope might not have completely disappeared. Mr. Stalin could build his megamachine on the nucleus of a well-developed industrial sector, even though one far below those of countries like England or the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
The Communist leaders in China were confronted with a different situation. They had no industrial nucleus to speak of. Their only capital was the physical energy and the passions and thoughts of 1.4 billion people. They decided that by means of the complete coordination of this human material they could create the equivalent of the original accumulation of capital necessary to achieve a technical development which in a relatively short time would reach the level of that of the West. This total coordination had to be achieved by a mixture of force, personality cult, and indoctrination which is in contrast to the freedom and individual Mr. Marx had foreseen as the essential elements of a socialist society. One must not forget, however, that the ideals of the overcoming of private egotism and of maximal consumption have remained elements in the Chinese system, at least thus far, although blended with totalitarianism, nationalism, and thought control, thus vitiating the humanist vision of Mr. Marx. The insight into this radical break between the first phase of industrialization and the second Industrial Revolution, in which society itself becomes a vast machine, of which man is a living particle, is obscured by certain important differences between the megamachine of Egypt and that of the twenty-first century. First of all, the labour of the live parts of the Egyptian machine was forced labour. The naked threat of death or starvation forced the Egyptian worker to carry out his task. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Today, in the twenty-first century, the worker in the most developed industrial countries, such as the United States of America, has a comfortable life—one which would have seemed like a life of undreamed-of luxury to his ancestor working a hundred years ago. He has, and in this point lie one of the errors of Mr. Marx, participated in the economic progress of capitalist society, profited from it, and, indeed, has a great deal more to lose than his chains. The bureaucracy which directs the work is very different from the bureaucratic elite of the old megamachine. Its life is guided more or less by the same middle-class virtues that are valid for the worker, the difference in consumption is one of quantity rather than quality. Employers and workers smoke the same cigarettes and they ride in cars that look the same even though the better cars run more smoothly than the less expensive ones. They watch the same movies and the same television shows, and their wives use the same refrigerators. (The fact that the underdeveloped sector of the population does not take part in this new style of life has been mentioned.) The managerial elite are also different from those of old in another respect: they are just as much appendages of the machines as those whom they command. They are just as alienated, or perhaps more so, just as anxious, or perhaps more so, as the worker in one of their factories. They are bored, like everyone else, and use the same antidotes against the boredom. They are not as the elites were of old—a culture-creating group. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Although they spend a good deal of their money to further science and art, as a class they are much consumers of this “cultural welfare” as its recipients. The culture-creating group lives on the fringes. They are creative scientists and artists, but it seems that, thus far, the most beautiful blossom of twenty-first century society grows on the tree of science, and not on the tree of art. Different as people are, many all have in common an uncompromising will to liberate man, an equally uncompromising faith in truth as the instrument of liberation and the belief that the condition for this liberation lies in man’s capacity to break the chain of illusion. That al men share the same basic anatomical and physiological features is common knowledge, and no physician would think he could not treat every man, regardless of race and colour, with the same methods he has applied to men of his own race. However, does man have also in common the same psychic organization; do al men have in common the same human nature? If there such an entity as “human nature?” The whole concept of humanity and of humanism is based on the idea of a human nature in which all men share. This was the premise of Jesus the Christ as well what the doctrine of Judaeo-Christian thought. The picture of man in existentialist and anthropological terms assumes that the same psychic laws are valid for all men because the “human situation” is the same for all of us; that we all live under the illusion of the separateness and indestructibility of each one’s ego; that we all try to find an answer to the problem of existence by the greedy desire to hold on to things, including that peculiar thing, “I”; that we all suffer because this answer to life is a false one, and that we can get rid of the suffering only by giving the right answer—that of overcoming the illusion of separateness, of overcoming greed, and of waking up to the fundamental truths which govern our existence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The Judaeo-Christian tradition, being conceptualized in reference to a supreme creator and ruler, God, defined man in a different way. One man and one woman are the forebears of the whole human race, and these forebears as well as all the generations to come are made in “the likeness of God.” They all share the same basic features that make them human, which enable them to know and to love one another. This is the premise for the prophetic picture of the Messianic Time, the peaceful unity of all mankind. Among the philosophers, Mr. Spinoza, the father of modern dynamic psychology, postulated the picture of the nature of man in terms of a “model of human nature,” which was ascertainable and definable and from which the laws of human behaviour and reaction followed. Man, and not just men of this or of that culture, could be understood like any other being in nature because man is one, and the same laws are valid for all of us at all times. The philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (especially Goeth and Herder) believed that the humanity (Humanitaet) inherent in man leads him to ever higher stages of development; they believed that every individual carries within himself not only his individuality but also all of humanity with all its potentialities. They considered the task of life to be the development toward totality through individuality; and they believed that the voice of humanity was given to everybody and could be understood by every human being. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
Today the idea of human nature or of an essence of man has fallen into disrepute, partly because one has become more skeptical about metaphysical and abstract terms like “the essence of man,” but partly also because one has lost the experience of humanity which underlay the Judaeo-Chrisitan, Spinozist, and Enlightenment concepts. Contemporary psychologist and sociologists are prone to think of man as a blank sheet of paper on which each culture writes it text. While they do not deny the oneness of human race, they leave hardly any content and substance to this concept of humanity. In contrast to these contemporary trends, Mr. Marx and Dr. Freud assumed that man’s behaviour is comprehensible precisely because it is the behaviour of man, of a species that can be defined in terms of its psychic and mental character. Mr. Marx, in assuming the existence of nature of man, did not concur in the common error of confusing it with its particular manifestations. He differentiated “human nature in general” from “human nature as modified in each historical epoch.” Human nature in general we can never see, of course, as such, because what we observe are always the specific manifestations of human nature in various cultures. However, we can infer from these various manifestations what this “human nature in general” is, what the laws are which govern it, what the needs are which man has as man. In his earlier writings Mr. Marx still called “human nature in general” the “essence of man.” He later gave up this term because he wanted to make it clear that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each separate individual.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Mr. Marx also wanted to avoid giving the impression that he thought of the essence of man as an unhistorical substance. For Mr. Marx, the nature of man was a given potential, a set of conditions, the human raw material, as it were, which as such cannot be changed, just as the size and structure of the human brain has remained the same since the beginning of civilization. Yet man does change in the course of history. He is the product of history, transforming himself during his history, He becomes what he potentially is. History is the process of man’s creating himself by developing—in the process of work—those potentialities which are given him when he is born. “The whole of what is called World history,” says Mr. Marx, “is nothing but the creation of man by human labour, and the emergence of nature for man; he therefore has the evident and irrefutable proof of his self-creation of his own origins.” Mr. Marx was opposed to two positions: the unhistorical one that the nature of man is a substance present from the very beginning of history, and the relativistic position that man’s nature has no inherent quality whatsoever and is nothing but the reflect of social conditions. However, he never arrived at the full development of his own theory concerning the nature of man, transcending both the unhistorical and the relativistic positions; hence he left himself open to various and contradictory interpretations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Nevertheless from his concept of man follow certain ideas about human pathology and about human health. As the main manifestation of psychic pathology, Mr. Marx speaks of the cripped and alienated man; as the main manifestation of psychic health, he speak of the active, productive, independent man. Up to this point the analyst, on the whole, has followed the patient. There is a certain amount of implicit guidance, of course, in each suggestion of a possible lead—a new slant offered by an interpretation, a question raised, a doubt expressed. However, for the most part the initiative lies with the patient. When a resistance has developed, however, interpretative work and implicit guidance may be insufficient, and then the analyst must definitely take the lead. In these periods his task is, first, to recognize the resistance as such, and, second, to help the patient to recognize it. And he must not only help him to see that he is engaged in a defensive battle but also find out, with or without the patient’s help, what it is that the latter is warding off. He does so by going back in his mind over the pervious sessions and trying to discover what may have struck the patient before the session in which the resistance started. It is sometimes easy to do this, but it may be extremely difficult. The beginning of the resistance may have been unnoticeable. The analyst may not yet be aware of the patient’s vulnerable spots. However, if the analyst can recognize the presence of the resistance, and can succeed in convincing the patient that one is operating, the source can often be discovered through common search. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The immediate gain from this discovery is that the way is cleared for further work, but an understanding of the sources of a resistance also provides the analyst with significant information concerning the factors the patient wants to keep under cover. When the patient has arrived at an insight that has far-reaching implications—for example, when he has succeeded in seeing a neurotic trend and in recognizing in it a driving force of primary order, the analyst’s active guidance is likely to be particularly necessary. This could be a time of harvest, a time in which many previous findings might fall in line and further ramifications might become apparent. What frequently happens instead is that at this very point, the patient develops a resistance and tries to get away with as little as possible. He may do so in various ways. He may automatically search for and express some ready-at-hand explanation. Or he may in a more or less subtle way disparage the significance of the finding. He may respond with good resolutions to control the trend by sheer will, a course which recalls the paving of the road to hell. Finally, he may prematurely raise the question why the trend has obtained such a hold on him, delving into his childhood and at best brining forth relevant data contributing to the understanding of origins, for he is actually using this dive into the past as a means of escaping from the realization of what the discovered trend means for his actual life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
These efforts to rush away from an important insight as quickly as possible are understandable. It is difficult for a person to face the fact that he has put all his energies into the pursuit of a phantom. More important, such an insight confront him with the necessity for radical change. It is only natural that he should tend to close his eyes to a necessity so disturbing to his whole equilibrium. However, the fact remains that through this hasty retreat, he prevents the insight from “sinking in” and thereby deprives himself of the benefits it might mean for him. Here the help the analyst can give is to take the lead, revealing to the patient his recoiling tactics and also encouraging him to work through in great detail all the consequences the trend has for his life. It is extent and intensity and implications are fully confronted, ss mentioned before, a trend can be coped with only then. When the patient unconsciously shrinks a square recognition that he is caught in a conflict of opposing drives, another point at which a resistance may necessitate active guidance from the analyst occurs. Here again his tendency to maintain the status quo may block all progress. His associations may represent only a futile shuttling between one aspect of the conflict and another. He may talk about his need to force others into helping him by arousing pity, and soon after about his pride preventing him from accepting any help. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
As soon as the analyst comments on the one aspect he will shuttle to the other. This unconscious strategy may be difficult to recognize because in pursuing it the patient may bring forth valuable material here and there. Nevertheless, it is the analyst’s task to recognize such evasive maneuvers and to direct the patient’s activity toward a square recognition of the existing conflict. The psychiatric social worker is typically the holder of a Master’s degree (commonly the M.S.W., Master of Social Work). This means that in addition to an undergraduate college degree she has completed a two-year course of study in a recognized school of social work. To qualify for admission to such a graduate program, she has pursued a college curriculum, especially in her junior and senior years, which has emphasized courses in child and adolescent psychology, sociology, and public health. Her undergraduate major is very likely to be in sociology, entailing the study of community organization, family structure, and political and economic aspects of welfare agencies. As a graduate student, she takes didactic instruction in personality development, psychopathology, community organization, social welfare programs and agencies, and principles of social case work. She is required to complete an extended thesis or research project, frequently as a collaborative endeavour with other students. In the first year of her graduate study, she enters upon a sequence of intensive field work experience, usually beginning in a general community agency (for example, a family and children’s service). #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Her placement in the second year will be in a psychiatric clinic or hospital where she receives “on-the-job” orientation to the functions of the psychiatric social worker (PSW) and undertakes increasing responsibility for carrying out such functions herself under regular and close case-by-case supervision from an experienced staff member. In total, she will accumulate close to the equivalent of one year of full-time supervised experience in interviewing patients and families, collecting and integrating case material, contacting relevant community agencies, and communicating her findings to other professional staff. In her field work she is required, under very close supervision, to “carry” an increasing load of cases, id est, be the primary source of a patient’s therapeutic conversation. Historically, intensive individual attention to and frequent contact with a client by a social worker has been a part of “case work.” As functions and roles of the social worker have shifted under the increasing burdens of the case load of psychiatric patients and as the psychiatric social worker has become more visible, it becomes increasingly clear that she is engaged frequently in an undifferentiated psychotherapeutic endeavour. Largely for purposes of maintaining amicable relationships with her “overseer,” she has been content with the professional usage that designates her activity as case work. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
However, attempts to differentiate logically between what should go in “case work” and what should transpire in psychotherapy have not yielded either numerous or clear distinctions. Typically, some six to seven years following graduation from high school, at an average age of 24 years, the PSW is ready to function as one of the sources of therapeutic conversation for the patient of a completely staffed psychiatric clinic or hospital. In areas of heavy population density where the demand for psychotherapy is in great excess to the supply, some social workers (not always trained in the psychiatric specialty) are finding it feasible to offer their service to private clients who consult them directly. For most people in the mental health field and patients, there are days when one cannot seem to do anything right. When one adds in a person who constantly criticizes you and everything you do, it makes it so much worse. When people are micromanaging you and constantly criticizing you, they may cause you to make the mistakes they think they are preventing you from making. In situations like these, it is always best to stop the person who is doing this to you right away. Tell them if they have something constructive to say, that you will listen. Shouting at you and following you around and harassing and annoying you may not only be criminal offenses, but it may also only make it where you ignore them all together. And remind them that no one does everything wrong. And no one know it all either. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The Sacramento Fire Department insists that they treat each structure as if it were their own home or business. By producing that kind of atmosphere, that kind of attitude, then all of the rest of it kind of falls into place. Your politicians will be happy. The boss will be happy. Your firefighters and EMS crew are going to enjoy the accolades for doing a good job and the thank you notes for going above and beyond the normal expectations of firefighters and EMS. And most of the public, whom they have sworn to serve and protect, will be grateful for the services these heroes provide us with. That is their mission. Their mission is to protect property and take care of people. The excitement of being a firefighter or EMS who responds to calls, fights fires, and helps people is unmatched by anything else. It takes people who love to help people and lives to be challenged to be a firefighter or EMS. Firefighters have knowledge of building construction, regulations, and fire behaviour. They know how the fire is going to react with the building. Many people who live in multi-story buildings should invite the fire department to host a fire prevention program and tenants how safe their residence is and what is to be expected in case of an emergency. To ensure the Sacramento Fire Department has adequate resources, please make a donation. And remember to vote Kevin McCarty for mayor of Sacramento, he is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department and has led on housing and homelessness. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
The Winchester Mystery House
At the time Mrs. Winchester was lowered into her grave in New Haven, Connecticut, her niece Daisy had a vision of her in the casket…and heard her cough. The dead do not do that, and Daisy thought her dear aunt Sarah tried to tell her she was not quite ready yet. Or perhaps Mrs. Winchester’s spirit was not finished building. Unfortunately, nothing was done about it at the time, so she went, ready or not.
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/
Where are We Headed?
It is difficult to locate our exact position on the historical trajectory leading from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrialism to the future. It is easier to say where we are not. We are not on the way to free enterprise, but are moving rapidly away from it. We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization. We are not on the way to the places toward which our ideological maps tell us we are moving. We are marching in an entirely different direction. Some see the direction quite clearly; among them are those who favour it and those who fear it. However, most of us look at maps which are as different from reality as was the map of the World in the year 500 B.C. It is not enough to know that our mas are false. If we are able to go in the direction we want to go, it is important to have correct maps. The most important feature of the new map is the indication that we have passed the stage of the first Industrial Revolution and have begun the period of the second Industrial Revolution. The first Industrial Revolution was characterized by the fact that man had learned to replace live energy (that of animals and men) by mechanical energy (that of steam, oil, electricity, and the atom). These new sources of energy were the basis for a fundamental change in industrial production. Related to this new industrial potential was a certain type of industrial organization, that of a great number of what we would call today small or medium-sized industrial enterprises, which were managed by their owners, which competed with each other, and which exploited their workers and fought with them about the share of the profits. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The member of the middle and upper class was the master of his enterprise, as he was the master of his home, and he considered himself to be the master of his destiny. Ruthless exploitation of nonwhite populations went together with domestic reform, increasingly benevolent attitudes toward the poor, and eventually, in the first half of this century, the rise of the working class from abysmal poverty to a relatively comfortable life. The first Industrial Revolution is being followed by the second Industrial Revolution, the beginning of which we witness at the present time. It is characterized by the fact not only that living energy has been replaced by mechanical energy, but that human thought is being replaced by the thinking of machines. Cybernetics and automation (“cybernation”) make it possible to build machines that function much more precisely and much more quickly than the human brain for the purpose of answering important technical and organizational questions. Cybernation is creating the possibility of a new kind of economic and social organization. A relatively small number of mammoth enterprises has become the center of the economic machine and will rule it completely in the not-too-distant future. The enterprise, although legally the property of hundreds of thousands of stockholders, is managed (and for all practical purposes managed independently of the legal owners) by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. The alliance between private business and government is becoming so close that the two components of this alliance become ever less distinguishable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The majority of the population in America used to be well fed, well housed, and well amused, and the sector of “underdeveloped” Americans who live under substandard conditions will is increasing well into the foreseeable future. We continue to profess individualism, freedom, and faith in God, but our professions are wearing thin when compared with the reality of the organization man’s obsessional conformity guided by the principle of hedonistic materialism. If society could stand still—which it can do as little as an individual—things might not be s ominous as they are. However, we are headed in the direction of a new kind of society and a new kind of human life, of which we now see only the beginning and which is rapidly accelerating. Our individual thoughts are patterned after the ideas any given society develops, and these ideas are determined by the particular structure and mode of functioning of the society. A watchful, skeptical, doubting attitude toward all ideologies, ideas, and ideals, is characteristic for Marx. He always suspected them as veiling economic and social interests, and his skepticism was so strong that he could hardly ever use words like freedom truth, justice—precisely because of the fact that they lend themselves to so much misuse, and not because freedom, justice, truth, were not the supreme values for him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Dr. Freud thought in the same “critical mood.” His whole psychoanalytic method could be described as “the art of doubting.” Having been impressed by certain hypnotic experiments which demonstrated to what extent a person in a trance can believe in the reality of what is obviously not real, he discovered that most of the ideas of persons, who are not in a trance also do not correspond to reality, and that on the other hand most of that which is real is not conscious. Marx thought the basic reality to be the socioeconomic structure of society, while Dr. Freud believed it to be the libidinal organization of the individual. Yet they both had the same implacable distrust of the clichés, ideas, rationalizations, and ideologies which fill people’s minds and which from the basis of what they mistake for reality. This skepticism toward “common thought” is insolubly connected with a belief in the liberating force of truth. Marx wanted to liberate man from the chains of dependency, from alienation, from slavery to the economy. What was his method? Not, as is widely believed, force. He wanted to win the minds of the majority of the people. While force, according to him, might he use if the minority were to resist b force the will of the majority, the main question for Marx was not the mechanism of how to attain power in the state, but how to win the minds of the people. In his “propaganda,” Marx and his legitimate successors used the opposite method from the one used by all other politicians, whether bourgeois, fascist, or communist. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
He wanted to influence not by demagogic persuasion, creating semi-hypnotic states supported by fear of terror, but by an appeal to the sense of reality, by truth. The assumption underlying Marx’s “weapon of truth” is the same as with Dr. Freud: that man lives with illusions because these illusions make the misery of real life bearable. If he can recognize the illusions for what they are, that is to say, if he can wake up from the half-dream state, then he can come to hi senses, become aware of his proper forces and powers, and change reality in such a way that illusions are no longer necessary. “False consciousness,” that is to say, the distorted picture of reality, weakens man. Being in touch with reality, having an adequate picture of it, makes him stronger. Hence Marx believed that his most important weapon was truth, the uncovering of the reality behind the illusions and ideologies which cover it. In this lies the reason for a unique feature of Marxist propaganda: it is an emotional appeal for certain political aims, blended with a scientific analysis of social and historical phenomena. The best-known example for this blend is, of course, the Communist Manifesto. This contains in a brief form a brilliant and lucid analysis of history, of influence of economical factors, of class relations. And at the same time, it is a political pamphlet ending with a fervently emotional appeal to the working class. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The fact that the political leader must be at the same time a social scientist and a writer was demonstrated not only by Marx. Engels, Bebel, Jaures, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and many other leaders of the socialist movement were writers and students of social science and politics. (Even Stalin was forced to write books or to have them written in his name in order to prove his legitimacy of Marx’s and Lenin’s successor.) In fact, however, under Mr. Stalin, this aspect of socialism completely changed. Since the Soviet system must not be the subject matter of scientific analysis, the Soviet social scientists have become apologists for their system and have a scientific function only in technical matters dealing with production, distribution, organization et cetera. While for Marx, truth was a weapon to induce social change, for Dr. Freud it was the weapon to induce individual change; awareness was the main agent in Dr. Freud’s therapy. If, so Dr. Freud found, the patient can gain insight into the fictitious character of his conscious idea, if he can grasp the reality behind these ideas, if he can make the unconscious conscious, he will attain the strength to rid himself of his irrationalities and to transform himself. Dr. Freud’s aim, “Where there is ID, there shall be Ego,” can be realized only through the effort of reason to penetrate fictions and to arrive at the awareness of reality. It is precisely this function of reason and truth which gives psychoanalytic therapy its unique feature among all forms of therapy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Each analysis of a patient is a new and original venture of research. If it were applied, while it is true, of course, that there are general theories and principles which can be applied, there is no pattern, no “formula” which could be applied to the individual patient or be helpful to him. Just as for Marx, the political leader mut be a social scientist, so for Dr. Freud the therapist must be a scientist capable of doing research. For both, truth is the essential medium to transform, respectively, society and the individual; awareness is the key to social and individual therapy. Marx’s statement, “The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions,” also could have been made by Dr. Freud. Both wanted to free man from the chains of his illusions in order to enable him to wake up and to act as a free man. The third basic element common to both systems is their humanism. Humanism in the sense that each man represents all of humanity; hence, that there is nothing human which could be alien to him. Marx was rooted in this tradition, of which Voltaire, Lessing, Herder, Hegel, and Goethe are some of the most outstanding representatives. Dr. Freud expressed his humanism primarily in his concept of the unconscious. He assumed that all men share the same unconscious strivings, and hence that they can understand each other once they dare to delve into the underworld of the unconscious. He could examine the unconscious fantasies of his patient without feeling indignant, judgmental or even surprised. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The “stuff from which dreams are made” as well as the whole World of the unconscious became an object of investigation precisely because Dr. Freud recognized its profoundly human and universal qualities. Doubt and the power of truth and humanism are the guiding and propelling principles of Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s work. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, Hegelian philosophy has ben a dead issue for a long time so that the dynamic approach of Marx and Dr. Freud is not readily understood. Let us begin with a few examples, both from the realm of psychology and that of sociology. Let us assume a man who has been married three times. The pattern is always the same. He falls in love with a good-looking young lady, marries her, and is ecstatically happy for a short time. Then he begins to complain that his wife is domineering, that she curtails his freedom et cetera. After a period alternating between quarrels and reconciliation, he falls in love with another girl—in fact, one very similar to his wife. He gets a divorce and marries his second “great love.” However, with slight modifications the same cycle takes place, and again he falls in love with a similar type of girl, and again he gets divorced and married a third “great love.” Again, the same cycle occurs, and he fall in love with a fourth girl, being convinced that this time it is the true and real love (forgetting that he was convinced of that every time in the past), and wants to marry her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
If she asked us our opinion about the chances for a happy marriage with him, what would we say to the last girl? There are several approaches to the problem. The first one is a purely behaviouristic one; the method of this approach is to conclude from past behaviour, the future behaviour. This argument would run: since he already has left a wife three time, it is quite likely that he will do it a fourth time, hence it is much too risky to marry him. This approach, empirical and sober, has much to be said for it. However, the girl’s mother, when using this approach, might find it difficult to answer one argument of her daughter’s. This argument says that while it is perfectly true that he did act in the same way three time, it does not follow that he will do so again this time. Either, so this counter-argument will say, he has changed—and who can say that a person may not change? Or the other women were not really the kind he could love deeply, while she, the last one, is really congenial to him. There is no convincing argument the mother could use against this reasoning. In fact, once she sees the man and notices that he is very much enraptured with her daughter, and that he walks with great sincerity about his love, even the mother might change her mind and be won over to the daughter’s position. The mother’s and the daughter’s approaches are both undynamic. They either make a prediction based on past performance, or one based on present words and actions, yet they have no way of proving that their predictions are better than guesswork. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
What is, in contradiction, the dynamic approach? The essential point in this approach is to penetrate through the surface of past or present behaviour and to understand the forces which created the pattern of past behaviour. If these forces still exist, it is to be assumed that the fourth marriage will end not differently from the previous ones. If, on the other hand, there has been a change in the forces underlying his behaviour, one would have to admit the possibility or even the likelihood of a different outcome, in spite of the past behaviour. What are the forces we speak of here? They are nothing mysterious, nor figments of abstract speculation. If one studies the behaviour of the person in the proper way, they are recognizable empirically. We may assume, for instance, that the man had not cut the tie to his mother; that he is a very narcissistic person with a deep doubt of his own manliness; that he is an overgrown adolescent in constant need of admiration and affection, so that once he has found a woman who fulfills these needs, he get bored with her soon after the conquest is made; he needs new proofs of his attractiveness and hence must look for another woman who can reassure him. At the same time, he is really dependent on women, afraid of them; and hence any prolonged intimacy makes him feel imprisoned and chained. The forces at work here are his narcissism, his dependence, his self-doubt producing needs which lead to the kind of action we have been describing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
These forces are by no means the result of abstract speculation. One can observe them in many ways: by examining dreams, free association, fantasies, by watching his facial expression, his gestures, his way of speaking, and so forth. Yet they are often not directly visible but must be inferred. Furthermore, they can be seen only within the theoretical frame of reference in which they have a place and meaning. Most importantly these forces are not only not conscious as such, but they are in contradiction to the conscious thought of the person involved. He is sincerely convinced that he will love the girl forever, that he is not dependent, that he is strong and self-assured. Thus, the average person thinks: if a man truly feels he loves a woman how can one predict that he will leave her after a short time, just by referring to such mythical entities as “fixation to mother,” “narcissism,” and so on? Are one’s eyes and ears not better judges than such deductions? Interpretations are suggestions as to possible meanings. They are by nature more or less tentative, and the patient’s reactions to them vary. If an interpretation is essentially right, it may strike home and stimulate associations showing its further implications. Or the patient may test it our and gradually qualify it. Even when it is only partly right, it may thus give rise to new trends of thought, provided the patient is co-operating. However, an interpretation may also provoke anxiety or defensive reactions. Whatever the reactions are, the analyst’s task is to understand them and learn from them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Psychoanalysis in its very essence is co-operative work, both patient and analyst bent on understanding the patient’s difficulties. The latter tries to lay himself open to the analyst and, as we have seen, the analyst observes, tries to understand, and, if appropriate, conveys his interpretation to the patient. He then makes suggestions as to possible meanings and both try to test out the validity of the suggestions. They try to recognize, for instance, whether an interpretation is right only for the present context or is of general importance, whether it has to be qualified or is valid only under certain conditions. And as long as such a co-operative spirit prevails, it is comparatively easy for the analyst to understand the patient and to convey to him his findings. The real difficulties arise when, in technical terms, the patient develops a “resistance.” Then, in tangible or intangible ways, he refuses to co-operate. He is late or forgets the appointment. He wants to take some days or weeks off. He loses interest in the common work and mainly wants the analyst’s love and friendship. His associations become shallow, unproductive, and evasive. Instead of examining suggestion made by the analyst, he resent them and feels attacked, hurt, misunderstood, humiliated. He may reject every attempt to help with a rigid feeling of hopelessness and futility. Fundamentally the reason for this impasse is that certain insights are not acceptable to the patient; they are too painful, too frightening, and they undermine illusions that he cherishes and is incapable of relinquishing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Therefore he fights them off in one way or another, though he does not know that he is attempting to ward off painful insights: all he knows, or thinks he knows, is that he is misunderstood or humiliated or that work is futile. I do not care how much anyone laughs, ugly things someone says about you hurts—and it sticks with you for a very long time. You will experience this, and you might even dish this kind of humour out at times. It does not make it right. As humans, we like to make people laugh. When everyone around you is in good spirits, because of something you said, even when that something might be hurting someone else’s feelings, it feels good to some people. However, being disrespected by a joke someone is making is not fun. Even when the individual being insulted is laughing, too, they are not immune to the condescending remarks and negative words. People who do these kinds of things, do not find it funny when someone roasts them. When older try to speaking to you in a condescending way, or make fun of your life, just tell them about the highlights that you deal with, and tell them that it may sound bad to them, but you enjoy your life. You can also tell them that you understand their situation may not be exactly the way they like it to be. That should get them to stop harassing you without seeming like a mental case or telling them off. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The clinical psychologist holds the Ph.D. degree in psychology. This means that he had completed a minimum of three years of graduate instruction in psychology from a major university. Before admission to such graduate study, he had completed a four-year college degree in a liberal arts program with emphasis upon the humanities and the social sciences. His graduate work will encompass study of personality theory, abnormal psychology (psychopathology), methods of psychological measurement, and psychometric theory, statistical methods and research design. Clinical diagnostic tests and techniques, principles of interviewing, and theories and techniques of psychotherapy. These constitute his major program; he will probably also complete a program of minor didactic studies in an appropriate related field such as sociology, anthropology, or psychiatry. The psychologist’s graduate program includes both didactic instruction and supervised clinical practice in interviewing, testing, and the like. As a major requirement for the doctoral degree, he must design, carry out, and write up an original research investigation in an appropriate problem area. Finally, like the M.D., he must complete a full year’s internship in a psychiatric facility having a full complement of professional staff. This total program of instruction, supervised training, and research is completed by the average clinical psychologist in slightly over five years. (The range of years from matriculation to degree completion is from a minimum of four to an upper limit of nine or ten years, this variation being primarily a function of the amount of time required for completion of the doctoral dissertation.) #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Thus, typically, some nine to ten years following high-school graduation, at an average age of 27-plus years, the psychologist is qualified to begin his professional career as a clinician and, if he chooses (and an increasing number do), to specialize in psychotherapy with outpatient neurotics. Both psychiatry and clinical psychology have “specialty boards” which examine and aware “certification” in the respective specialty. To be eligible for such examination, the psychiatrist must have two years of appropriate experience after completion of his residency. The psychologist must have at least four years of suitable experience following receipt of the Ph.D. Mental health affect our thoughts, emotions, behaviour, and relationships. Those who develop mental health challenges or illness can be impaired in their ability to cope with the routines and demands of daily life. Such conditions are often emotionally draining and confusing for the individual as well as for loved ones and leaders attempting to minister to the afflicted person. Those who are not mental health professions are not expected or encouraged to diagnose or provide treatment to individuals struggling with mental health issues. When individuals do not seem to respond to normal attempts by leaders to be helpful, no one should be offended by their lack of response. Instead, leaders should seriously consider encouraging the individual to get a mental health assessment from a qualified provider. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
As you discuss mental health concerns, make sure to show love and empathy as the Saviour would. If the person has reached out for help, thank her or him for asking for help. Because every situation is different and each person’s circumstances vary, prayerfully consider asking the person questions like these and then listen to the Spirit to help you better understand his or her concerns and discern his or her needs: Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition? If so, how long have you had the condition? How does it affect your employment and family relationships? What are your greatest concerns or worries right now? What (if any) care are you receiving from a mental health care provider? Are you following the instructions from your provider, and are you comfortable with the care you are receiving? Do you feel you mental health condition is improving, staying the same, or getting worse? How are you coping with your condition? How do your family member handle your condition? Have they suggested anything you are not currently doing that you think maybe helpful? Have you received insights from Heavenly Father about your condition? If so, what were those insights? With the individual’s permission, and being respectful of the individual’s feelings, consider contacting family members for further insight into the issue. As you help the individual understand how their challenges are affecting their lives, consider reassuring the person that Heavenly Father love her or him and that the Saviour understands his or her challenges. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Help the person understand that mental illness is not a punishment from God. Help the person realize that mental illness cannot be overcome by willpower alone. Mental illness does not indicate that a person lacks faith, character, or worthiness. Include the person in Church activities and appropriate service opportunities. Consult with the person, family members, and others who know the person well to be aware of the person’s strengths and limitations. Consider consulting with Family Services (where available) or local providers of mental health services to identify support and treatment options. Even with the best of care, be aware that some conditions can last a lifetime. Sometimes people who are deeply, deeply racist may act unpredictable around an individual from a group they hate. Therefore, it is a good idea to be aware of people who seem psychotic, and avoid them, especially when they are around sharp objects or other objects, they could use to harm you. Do not make any sudden moves, just be aware, and ease out of the situation. Those who are taking medication should not change or stop treatment without first consulting their health care provider. The person’s mental health challenges can also affect the lives of his or her family members and neighbours. Determine the impact on the person’s family, and show love and empathy as you work with family members. Encourage the family, extended family, and others involved to counsel together about the needs of the individual and potential resources available to help. And if you are feeling threatened, call the police immediately. Sometimes people seem okay, but then they go back to unpredictable and threatening behaviour and it may be dangerous to be around of them. Drug use can exacerbate mental illness and make a person violent. They may not be the same person you are used to, so be careful. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department has to continuously fright for better equipment, portable radios, training, facilities, and apparatus for their troops. A lot of fire departments do not have the funding for people and are fighting just to keep what they have and not lose anything. And they are wonderful department. Keep in mind, there are plenty of good fire chiefs and some good politicians, and they do their best. The people who control the resources must understand that the fire department also wants to make the job safer for their troops. The Sacramento Fire Department’s mission is to provide the best protection possible for those they have a sworn due to serve and to provide service to them, and they also want to promote family values. The fire service is made up of special people who value family. The goal is to treat people like family. Many of these fire fighters and emergency medical service members have a love for their jo, and their brothers and sisters, and an honour for the profession. Some people became fire fighters because their parents were on the job and they admired them. It does take a special person for this kind of work. It takes the kind of person who loves to help people and lives to be challenged. Be sure to open up your heart to the Sacramento Fire Department and kindly make a donation, it will help them do their jobs with an unshakable passion. 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. Be sure to vote for Kevin McCarty in the Sacramento Mayoral race, he is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
At the beginning of December, Mrs. Winchester heard “singing” in one of the chimneys in the Hall of Fires, and from time to time, lights were to be seen in various parts of the house. It was a curious fact that during these manifestations, Zip could not be persuaded to move. One night, something was heard coming up the stairs, as if it had been one without shoes. The Door to Nowhere was opened and closed frequently as if half a dozen people had entered together. There were thumps coming from the nine story Observational Tower. This was on the same night that Mrs. Winchester’s bed was violently shaken and the curtains around the bed were hoisted up and down. The next night, Mrs. Winchester saw a female emerge from the wall at the head of her bed and lean over her.
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/
They Have Everything a Man Could Want
Twenty-first century man is living in one of the World’s most challenging periods, unprecedented in history. People are hollering about enforcing gun control, but then have allowed 14 million people illegal immigrant into this country without background checks. One cannot even say that they are “undocumented” because some do have fake identity documents or stolen identities. These days people can rent or buy guns on the underground market. While allowing states to legalize marijuana, and considering it federally, Americans seem to be unaware that in 2021, approximately 107,000 people died from drug overdose. In 2023, approximately 46,000 people died from gun shot wounds. How can we restrict the rights of Americans to bear arms, which they may need to protect themselves, but allow people into this country that we know nothing about? Already, county, city, state, and federal budgets are insufficient, the country is running a historic deficit, record numbers of people are homeless, people are underpaid, there is soaring inflation, record high home prices and rents, and these refugees are costing taxpayers $20 billion. As anyone can see, the country is in a state of crisis. Furthermore, if a group of people carried out 911, think about the risk we are putting the nation in by allowing 14 million people to invade the county without knowing anything about them. Whatever it is, White Guilt, greed, racism, or malicious intentions, America need come to their senses and understand we are facing a greater risk than we ever have in the past. This is a dynamic period when man has almost unlimited choices for good and evil. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
In all civilizations of the World our modern epoch, in both socialistic and capitalistic societies, we are face with the compelling need to understand more clearly the forces that dominate our World and to modify our attitudes and behaviour accordingly. If our best minds are persuaded and assembled to concentrate on the nature of this new epoch in evolutionary and moral history, this it the only way it will happen. For we are confronted with a very basic change. Man has intervened in the evolutionary process, and he must better appreciate this fact with its influence on his life and work, and then try to develop the wisdom to direct the process, to recognize the mutable and the immutable elements in his moral nature and the relationship between freedom and order. Science now permits us to say that “objective” nature, the World which alone is “real” to us as the one in which we all, scientists included, are born, love, hate, work, reproduce and die, is the World given us by our senses and our minds—a World in which the Sun crosses the Sky from East to West, a World of three-dimensional space, a World of values which we, and we alone, must make. It is true that scientific knowledge about macroscopic or subatomic events may enable us to perform many acts we were unable to perform before. However, it is as inhabitants of this human World that we perform them and must finally recognize that there is a certain kind of scientific “objectivity” that can lead us to know everything but to understand nothing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Man sees in two ways: with his physical eyes, in an empirical sensing or seeing by direct observation, and also by an indirect envisaging. He possesses in addition to his two sensing eyes a single, image-making, spiritual and intellectual Eye. And it is the in-sight of this inner Eye that purifies and makes sacred our understanding of the nature of things; for that which was shut fast has been opened by the command of the inner Eye. And we become aware that to believe is to see. The creator in any realm must surrender himself to a passionate pursuit of his labours, guided by deep personal intimations of an as yet undiscovered reality. We must learn to unlock a consciousness that at first sight may seem to be remote but is proved on acquaintance to be surprisingly immediate, since it stems from the need to reconcile the life of action with the life of contemplation, of practice with principle, of thought with feeling, of knowing with being. For the whole meaning of self lies within the observer, and its shadow is cast naturally on the object observer. The divorce of man from his work, the division of man into an eternal and temporal half, results in an estrangement of man from his creative source, and ultimately from his fellows and from himself. If it does not converge in the person, the Universe itself is a vast entity where man will be lost; for material forces or energies, or impersonal ideals, or scientifically objectified learning are meaningless without their relevance for human life and their power to disclose, even in the dark tendencies of man’s nature, a low of transcending man’s arbitrariness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
For the personal is a far higher category than the abstract universal. Personality itself is an emotional, not an intellectual, experience; and the greatest achievement of knowledge is to combine the personal within a larger unity, just as in the higher stages of development the parts that make up the whole acquire greater and greater independence and individuality within the context of the whole. Reality itself is the harmony which gives to the component particulars of a thing the equilibrium of the whole. And whole physical observations are ordered with direct references to the experimental conditions, we have in sensate experience to do with separate observations whose correlation can only be indicated by their belonging to the wholeness of mind. Man’s relationship with his creativity demands a clarification that can widen and deepen his understanding of the nature of reality. Work is made for man, not man for work. There is a sacramenta character of work, which is more easily achieved when the principal objects of our attention have taken on a symbolic form that is generally recognized and accepted; and this suggests a law in the relationship of a person and his chosen discipline: that only when the spiritual, the creative, life is strong enough to insist on some expression through symbols is it valuable. For no work can be based on material, technological, historical, or physical aspirations alone. The human race is not entering upon a new phase of evolutionary consciousness and progress, a phase in which, impelled by the forces of evolution itself, it must converge upon itself and convert itself into one single human organism infused by a reconciliation of knowing and being in their inner unity and destined to make a qualitative leap into a higher form of consciousness as we know it, or otherwise destroy itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
For the entire Universe is one vast field, potential for incarnation and achieving incandescence here and there of reason and spirit. And in the whole World of quality with which by the nature of our minds we necessarily make contact, we here and there apprehend pre-eminent value. If we recognize that we are unable to focus our attention on the particulars of a whole without diminishing our comprehension of the whole, and of course, conversely, we can focus on the whole only by diminishing our comprehension of the particulars which constitute the whole, only then can this be achieved. The kind of knowledge afforded by mathematical physics ever since the seventeenth century has come more and more to furnish mankind with an ideal for all knowledge. This error about the nature of knowledge needs to be exposed. For knowledge is a process, not a product and the results of scientific investigation do not carry with them self-evident implications. There are now, however, signs of new centers of resistance among men everywhere in almost all realms of knowledge. Many share the conviction that a deep-seated moral and philosophical reform is needed concerning our understanding of the nature of man and the nature of knowledge in relation to the work man is performing, in relation to his credo and his life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
We are at a crossroads: one road leads to a completely mechanized society with man as a helpless cog in the machine—if not to destruction by a thermonuclear war; the other to a renaissance of humanism and hope—to a society that puts technique in the service of man’s well-being. We can find the necessary new solutions with the help of reason and passionate love for life, and not through irrationality and hate. For many of the young generation who belittle the value of traditional thought, keep in mind the most radical development must have its continuity with the past; we cannot progress by throwing away the best achievements of the human mind—and to be young is not enough. “For him that is joined to all the living, there is hope,” reports Ecclesiastes 9.4. A specter is stalking in our midst whom only a few see with clarity. It is not the old ghost of communism or fascism. It is a new specter: a completely mechanized society, devoted to maximal material output and consumption, directed by computers; and in this social process, man himself is being transformed into a pater of the total machine, well fed and entertained, yet passive, unalive, and with little feeling. With the victory of the new society, individualism and privacy will have disappeared; feelings toward others will be engineered by psychological conditioning and other devices, or drugs, which also serve a new kind of introspective experience. In the technetronic society, the trend seems to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic an attractive personality effectively exploiting the latest communication techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Perhaps its most ominous aspect at present is that we seem to lose control over our own system. We execute the decisions which our computer calculations make for us. We as human beings have no aims except producing and consuming more and more. We will nothing, nor do we not-will anything. We are threatened with extinction by nuclear weapons and drugs and with inner deadness by the passiveness which our exclusion from responsible decision making engenders. How did it happen? How did man, at the very height of this victory over nature, become the prisoner of his own creation and in serious danger of destroying himself? In the search for scientific truth, man came across knowledge that he could use for the domination of nature. He had tremendous success. However, in the one-sided emphasis on technique and material consumption, man lost touch with himself, with life. Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy of sadness that accompany them. The machine he built became so powerful that it developed its own program, which now determines man’s own thinking. At the moment, one of the gravest symptoms of our system is the fact that our economy rests upon drugs and on the principle of maximal consumption. We have a well-functioning economic system under the condition that we are producing goods which threaten us with physical destruction, that we transform the individual into a total passive consumer and thus deaden him, and that we have created a bureaucracy which makes the individual feel impotent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Are we confronted with a tragic, insolvable dilemma? Must we produce sick people in order to have a healthy economy, or can we use our material resources, our inventions, our computers to serve the ends of man? Must individuals be passive and dependent in order to have strong and well-functioning organizations? Among those who recognize the revolutionary and drastic change in human life which the “megamachine” could bring about are the writers who say that the new society is unavoidable, and hence that there is no point in arguing about its merits. At the same time, they are sympathetic to the new society, although they express slight misgivings about what it might do to man as we know him. There is a dreadful lack of humanness. If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the threat the technological World poses to man’s personal and spiritual life, if they determine to asset their freedom by upsetting the course of this evolution, the dehumanized society may not be the victor. The “megamachine” started with its first manifestations in Egyptian and Babylonian societies. If technology is permitted to follow its own logic, it will become a cancerlike growth, eventually threatening the structured system of individual and social life. There is also a greater possibility of the restoring of the social system to man’s control. If one connects the system “Man” with the whole system, the present social system can be understood a great deal better. Human nature is not an abstraction nor an infinitely malleable and hence dynamically negligible system. It has its own specific qualities, laws, and alternatives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The study of the system Man permits us to see what certain factors in the socioeconomic system do to man, how disturbances in the system of man produce imbalances in the whole social system. By introducing the human factor into the analysis of the whole system, we are better prepared to understand its dysfunctioning and to define norms which relate the healthy economic functioning of the social system to the optimal well-being of the people who participate in it. All this is valid, of course, only if there is agreement that maximal development of the human system in terms of its own structure—that is to say, human well-being—is the overriding goal. The increasing dissatisfaction with our present way of life, its passiveness and silent boredom, its lack of privacy and its depersonalization, and the longing for a joyful, meaningful existence, which answers those specific needs of man which he has developed in the last few thousand years of his history and which make him different from the animal as well as from the computer. This tendency is all the stronger because the affluent part of the population has already tasted full material satisfaction and has found out that the consumer’s paradise does not deliver the happiness it promised. (The less affluent, of course, have not yet had any chance to find out, except by watching the lack of joy of those who “have everything a man could want.” Ideologies and concepts have lost much of their attraction; traditional clichés like “right” and “left” or “communism” and “capitalism” have lost their meaning. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
People seek a new orientation, a new philosophy, one which is centered on the priorities of life—physically and spiritually—and not on the priorities of death. There is a growing polarization occurring in the United States of America and the whole World: There are those who are attracted to force, “law and order,” bureaucratic methods, and eventually to non-life, and those with a deep longing for life, for new attitudes rather than ready-made schemes and blueprints. This new front movement which combines the wish for profound changes in our economic and social practice with changes in our psychic and spiritual approach to life. In its most general form, its aim is the activation of the individual, the restoration of man’s control over the social system, the humanization of technology. It is a movement in the name of life, and it has such a broad and common base because the threat to life is today a threat not to one class, to one nation, but a threat to all. Today, a widespread hopelessness exists with regard to the possibility of changing the course we have taken. This hopelessness is mainly unconscious, while consciously people are “optimistic” and hope for further “progress.” If Spinoza’s work is a treatise aiming at the “salvation” of the individual (salvation meaning the conquest of freedom by awareness and labour), Marx’s intent is also the salvation of the individual. However, while Spinoza deals with individual irrationality, Marx extends the concept. He sees that the irrationality of the individual is caused by the irrationality of society in which he lives, and that this irrationality itself is the result of the planlessness and the contradiction inherent in the economic and social reality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Marx’s aim, like Spinoza’s, is the free and independent man, but in order to achieve this freedom man must become aware of those forces which act behind his back and determine him. Emancipation is the result of awareness and effort. More specifically, Marx, believing that the working class was the historical agent for universal human liberation, believed that class-consciousness and struggle were the necessary conditions for man’s emancipation. Like Spinoza, Marx is a determinist in the sense of saying: If you remain blind and do not make the utmost efforts, you will lose your freedom. However, he, like Spinoza, is not only a man who wants to interpret; he is a man who wants to change—hence his whole work is that attempt t teach man how to become free by awareness and effort. Marx never said, as is often assumed, that he predicted historical events which would necessarily occur. He was always an alternativist. If he is aware of the forces operating behind his back, if he makes the tremendous effort to win his freedom, man can break the chains. In this century man has the alternative of choosing between socialism and barbarism. Dr. Freud, the determinist, was also a man who wanted to transform: he wanted to change neurosis into health, to substitute the dominance of the Ego for that of the Id. What else is neurosis—of whatever kind—but man’s loss of freedom to act rationally? What else is mental health but man’s capacity to act according to his true interest. Dr. Freud, like Spinoza, and Marx, saw to what degree man is determined. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
However, Dr. Freud also recognized that the compulsion to act in certain irrational and thus destructive ways can be changed—by self-awareness and by effort. Hence his work is the attempt to devise a method of curing neurosis by self-awareness and the motto of his therapy is: “The truth shall make you free.” Several main concepts are common to all three thinkers: Man’s actions are determined by previous causes, but he can liberate himself from the power of these causes by awareness and effort. Theory and practice cannot be separated. In order to achieve “salvation,” or freedom, one must know, one must have the right “theory.” However, one cannot know unless one acts and struggles. Dr. Freud, for instance, believed it to be necessary that the patient make an economic sacrifice by paying for his treatment, and the sacrifice of frustration by not acting out his irrational fantasies in order to achieve a cure. It was precisely the great discovery of all three thinkers that theory and practice, interpretation and change are inseparable. While they were determinists in the sense that man can lose the battle for independence and freedom, they were essentially alternativists: they taught that man can choose between certain ascertainable possibilities and that it depends on man which of these alternatives will occur; it depends on him as long as he has not yet lost his freedom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Thus Spinoza did not believe that every man would achieve salvation, Marx did not believe that socialism had to win, nor did Dr. Freud believe that every neurosis could be cured by his method. In fact, all three men were skeptics and simultaneously me of deep faith. For them freedom was more than acting in the awareness of necessity; it was man’s great chance to choose the good as against the evil—it was a chance of choosing between real possibilities on the basis of awareness and effort. Their position was neither determinism nor indeterminism; it was a position of realistic, critical humanism. The position of alternativism described here is essentially that of the Hebrew Bible. God does not interfere in man’s history by changing his heart. He sends his messengers, the prophets, with a threefold mission: to show man certain goals, to show him the consequences of his choices, and to make protest against the wrong decision. It is up to man to make his choice; nobody, not even God, can “save” him. The clearest expression of this principle is expressed in God’s answer to Samuel when the Hebrew wanted a king: “Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit ye protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.” After Samuel has given them a drastic description of Eastern despotism, and the Hebrews still want a king, God says: “Hearken to their voice and make them a king,” reports 1 Samuel 8.9, 22. The same spirit of alternativism is expressed in the sentence: “I put before your today a blessing and curse, life and death. And you choose life.” Man can choose. God cannot save him; al God can do is to confront him with the basic alternatives, life, and death—and encourage him to choose life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
We have examined man’s heart, its inclination for good and evil. Have we reached ground that is more solid than the vision we previously had? In some ways this work might be compared with that of the detective in mystery stories. It is worth emphasizing, however, that whereas the detective wants to discover the criminal the analyst does not want to find out what is bad in the patient, but attempts to understand him as a whole, good and bad. Also, he deals not with several people, all under suspicion, but with a multitude of driving forces in one person, all under suspicion not of being bad but of being disturbing. Through concentrated and intelligent observation of every detail he gathers clues, sees a possible connection here and there, and forms a tentative picture; he is not too easily convinced of his solution, but tests it over and over again to see whether it really embraces all factors. In mystery stories there will be some people working with the detective, some only apparently doing so and secretly obstructing his work, some definitely wanting to hide and becoming aggressive if they feel threatened. Similarly, in analysis part of the patient co-operates—this is an indispensable condition—another part expects the analyst to do all the work and still another use all its energies to hide or mislead and become panicky and hostile when threatened with discovery. It is mainly from the patient’s free associations that the analyst derives his understanding of unconscious motivations and reactions. The patient is not usually aware of the implications of what he presents. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Therefore the analyst, in order to form a coherent picture out of the multitude of discrepant elements presented to him, must not only listen to the manifest content but also try to understand what the patient really wants to express. He tries to grasp the red thread that passes through the apparently amorphous mass of material. If too many unknown quantities are involved, he sometimes fails in this endeavour. Sometimes the context also speaks for itself. To further highlight this illustration, a patient tells me that he had a bad night and that he feels more depressed than ever. His secretary has had an attack of influenza, and this not only disturbs his business arrangements but also upsets him because of his fear of infection. He talks then about the frightful injustice done to small European countries. Then he thinks of a physician who annoyed him by failing to give him clear information about the contents of a drug. Then a tailor comes up in his mind who had not delivered a coat as promised. The main theme is annoyance at untoward events. The egocentric nature of the grievances is shown by his enumerating the secretary’s illness in one line with the unreliability of the tailor, as if both were personal offenses against him. The fact that the secretary’s flu has rearoused his fear of infection does not lead him to think that he should try to overcome this fear. He expects, instead, that the World should be so arranged as not to arouse his fears. The World should attend to his needs. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Here the theme of justice comes in: it is unfair that others do not heed his expectations. Since he is afraid of infection nobody in his environment should all ill. Thus others become responsible for his difficulties. He is as helpless against influences as small European countries are against invasion (actually he is helpless in the clutches of his own expectations). The association concerning the doctor also acquires a special meaning in this contest. It, too, implies expectations not complied with and in addition it refers to his grievance against me for not offering him a clear solution of his problems, instead of groping around and expecting his co-operative activity. Patients who are able to recall the origins of a symptom and to give uninhibited expression to the emotions attendant upon the situation in which it evolved were subsequently relieved symptomatically and generally improved in their overall adjustment. This function of emotional purging or catharsis came gradually to be perceived as but one phase of a more general process in which the patient, under the accepting, encouraging, and supportive friendship of the therapist, was enabled to give expression to his conflicts, his anxiety, his guilts, his resentments, to relieve his previously bottled-up feelings without fear of rejection or misunderstanding. To this basic process whereby the suffering supplicant is helped to achieve release from the tormenting burden of his previously suppressed (or repressed) emotions, from the personal isolation stemming from his previously unshared feelings, is given the name ventilation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Catharsis and ventilation are the naturally inevitable first steps in any truly intimate personal relationship, requiring nothing more than an accepting (and probably understanding) auditor. It is difficult to imagine any formal psychotherapy which could either in theory or expert practice deliberately prevent the occurrence of such ventilation. (It is possible that full ventilation may be prevented or delayed by the inexperienced, insensitive, or inept therapist who is overly active and insufficiently appreciative of the self-curative forces in nature.) And ventilation and catharsis as general factors may prove to account for a sizable portion of the total therapeutic impact of all psychotherapies. Knowing when we need to trust our instincts and go with our gut is an essential life skill. Many people play on the emotions of others. It is easy to do to some, and harder to impossible to do to others. That is because some people are more in tune than others. It does not make them any smarter, just more wary of individuals and their motives. If a little boy came crying to you, needing your help to get his poor baby calf that was stuck in the swimming pool, you would probably believe him and rush to help. In this situation, relaying on your emotions seems to be the right thing to do. However, if it was not a little boy, it was a grown man who came to you, asking the same thing, you would most likely be cautious and unwilling to help him, assuming that he had other intentions, perhaps even evil ones. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Not all people react the same way. Especially if he was very convincing, there are some who might still feel sympathy and empathy for the man. Society has taught us to help others. It is a natural human reaction to tend to those who are crying or upset. We want to fix it, most o us want to help. However, what happens when someone takes advantage of that part of us? Can we do anything to change the outcome? The spirit acquires the full authority given it by the Creator over the powers of the soul, and through the soul over the body. The conscious personal life is once more completely under the authority of the spirit. The dependency upon God, which man sough to break off in his mania for exalting himself by setting his reason, his emotions, or the flesh upon the throne, is restored again. The Spirit of God can exercise once more His controlling and quickening power. The deeds of the flesh are put to death by the Spirit, the powers and the gifts of the Spirit developed, the man becomes spiritual, full of Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Christ, the bringer of the New Being. When considering the human situation, it is quite convincing that man’s problems are basically ontological. There is something unassailable in his potions, for ontology, by definition, deals with ultimates. Although one may flee ontology, one can never quite escae it, since everyone possess some kind of ontology, albeit in an inchoate and disguised form. However, the fact must be faced that we live in a non-metaphysical age, and it may be unrealistic to describe man’s existential situation in ontological terms. To do so seems even to violate the method of correlation, for the theological answers are then clothed in the ontological forms so unappealing to modern man. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Charity is the pure love of Chrit. It is the love that Jesus as the Christ has for the children of men and that children of men should have for one another. It is the highest, noblest, and strongest kind of love and the most joyous to the soul. Charity is “the pure love of Christ,” or “everlasting love.” The prophet Mormon taught: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in the iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Jesus as the Christ is the perfect example of charity. In His mortal ministry, He always went about doing good, teaching the gospel and showing tender compassion for the less affluent, afflicted, and distressed. His crowning expression of charity was His infinite Atonement. He said, “Greater love hath no man, than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” This was the greatest act of long-suffering, kindness, and selflessness that we will ever know. The Saviour wants all people to receive His love and to share it with others. He declared to His disciples: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” 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. When you are at your worst and life has you down, when you have something horrible going on, whether it is a fire, medical problem, or some other type of disaster, the Sacramento Fire Department will be there for you and help you every time! They will do everything they can to make thing better again. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart. Solving problems can get them into trouble, even to the point at which they may lose a firefighter. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Gossipy and Notoriously Indifferent to the Ethics of Personal Confidences!
A man must stay in his own orbit and take his directives from within. If through fear of loneliness, intimidation, or suggestion, he joins the marching groups of his time, he will not reach his best. Returning from the “real possibilities” in the field of constitutional factors to our past example of the cigarette smoker, he is confronted with two real possibilities: either remaining a chains smoker or no longer smoking a single cigarette. His belief that he has the possibility of continuing to smoke, but only a few cigarettes, turns out to be an illusion. In our past example of the love affair, the man has two real possibilities: either not to take the young lady out or to have a love affair with her. The possibility which he thought of, that he could have a drink with her and not have a love affair, was unreal, considering the constellation of forces in his and hear personalities. The American democratic party had a real possibility of a long-term dictatorship—or at least, of not turning the country into a disaster—if they had not treated the conquered populations with such brutality and cruelty, if these politicians had not been so narcissistic as to strip the public of so many rights and playing favourtism to other populations. However, there were no real possibilities outside of these alternatives. To hope, as the Democrats did, that they could give vent to their destructiveness toward the conquered citizens, and satisfy their vanity and grandiosity by never accommodating the American population, and threatening all other capitalist powers by the scope of their own ambitions, and honestly win elections—all of this is not within the gamut of real possibilities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
The same holds true for the growing threat of World War III: there is a strong inclination toward war, caused by the presence of nuclear weapons on all sides and by the mutual fear and suspicion thus engendered; there is a destruction of national sovereignty caused by foreign interests; a lack of objectivity and reason in foreign policy. On the other hand, there is the wish, among the majority of the populations in both blocs to avoid the catastrophe of nuclear destruction; there is the voice of the rest of mankind, which insists that the big powers should not involve all others in their madness; there are social and technological factors which permit the use of peaceful solutions, and which open the way to a happy future for the human race. While we have these two sets of inclining factors, there are still two real possibilities between which man can choose: that of peace by ending the nuclear arms race and the brewing cold war; of that of World War II by continuing the present policy. Even if one has greater weight than the other, both possibilities are real. However, there is another factor to consider, the revolt of citizens who are tired of being overtaxed and not having representation and hyperinflation. Even the freedom of choice seems to be restricted due to voter fraud, federal, state, and local corruption. Furthermore, as President Trump is explaining, there is no possibility that we can go on with the arms race, and World War III, and a paranoid hate mentality, and at the same time avoid nuclear destruction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
In 2020, it seemed as if the freedom of decision had already been lost due to voter fraud, and that the catastrophe would occur against everybody’s will, except perhaps that of some mad death-lovers. On that mankind was stripped of their freedoms to work, made to take vaccines, forced to wear masks that covered their nose and mouth, and locked in their homes. An increasing of tension against the government followed because no negotiations nor compromises were possible. The present time—2024—is probably the last time at which mankind will have the freedom to choose between life or destruction. If we do not go beyond superficial arrangements which symbolize good will but do not signify an insight into the given alternatives and their respective consequences, then our freedom of choice will have vanished. If mankind destroys itself, it will not be because of the intrinsic wickedness of man’s heart; it will be because of his inability to wake up to the realistic alternatives and their consequences. The possibility of freedom lies precisely in recognizing which are the real possibilities between which we can choose, and which are the “unreal possibilities” that constitute our wishful thoughts whereby we seek to spare ourselves the unpleasant takes of making a decision between alternatives that are real but unpopular (individually or socially). #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The unreal possibilities are, of course, no possibilities at all; they are ideas or plans that are impossible or very unlikely to happen. However, the unfortunate fact is that most of us, when confronted with the real alternatives and with the necessity of making a choice that requires insight and sacrifices, prefer to think that there are other possibilities that can be pursued; we thus blind ourselves to the fact that these unreal possibilities do not exist, and that their pursuit is a smoke-screen behind which fate makes its own decision. Living under the illusion that the non-possibilities will materialize, man is then surprised, indignant, hurt, when the choice is made for him and the unwanted catastrophe occurs. At that point he falls into the mistaken posture of accusing others, defending himself, and/or praying to God, when the only thing he should blame is his own lack of courage to face the issue, and his lack of reason in understanding it. Man’s actions are always caused by inclinations rooted in (usually unconscious) forces operating in his personality. If these forces have reached a certain intensity, they may be so strong that they not only incline man but determine him—hence he has no freedom of choice. In those cases where contradictory inclinations effectively operate within the personality there is freedom of choice. This freedom is limited by the existing real possibilities. These real possibilities are determined by the total situation. Man’s freedom lies in his possibility to choose between the existing real possibilities (alternatives). Freedom in this sense can be defined not as “acting in the awareness of necessity” but as acting on the basis of the awareness of alternatives and their consequences. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
There is never indeterminism; there is sometimes determinism, and sometimes alternativism based on the uniquely human phenomenon: awareness. To put it differently, every event is caused However, in the constellation previous to the event there may be several motivations which can become the cause of the next event. Which of these possible causes becomes an effective cause may depend on man’s awareness of the very moment of decision. In other words, nothing is uncased, but not everything is determined (in the “hard” meaning of the word). The view of determinism, indeterminism, and alternativism developed here essentially follow the thought of three thinkers: Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. All three are often called “determinists.” There are good reasons for doing so, the best being that they have said so themselves. Spinoza wrote: “In the mind there is no absolute or free will—which for Kant s for many other philosophers was the very proof of the freedom of our will—as the result of self-deception: we are aware of our desires but we re not aware of the motives of our desires. Hence we believe in the “freedom” of our desires. Dr. Freud also expressed a deterministic position; belief in psychic freedom and choice; he said indeterminism “is quite unscientific…It must give way before the claims of a determinism which governs even mental life.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Marx also seems to be a determinist. He discovered laws of history which explain political events as results of class stratification and class struggles, and the latter as the result of the existing productive forces and their development. It seems that all three thinkers deny human freedom and see in man the instrument of forces which operate behind his back, and not only incline him but determine him to act as he does. In this sense Marx would be a strict Hegelian for whom the awareness of the necessity is the maximum of freedom. Not only have Spinoza, Marx, and Dr. Freud expressed themselves in terms which seem to qualify them as determinists; many of their pupils have also understood them in this way. This holds particularly true for Marx and Freud. Many “Marxists” have talked as if there were an unalterable course of history, that the future was determined by the past, that certain events had necessarily to happen. Many of Dr. Freud’s pupils have claimed the same point of view for Dr. Freud; they argue that Dr. Freud’s psychology is a scientific one, precisely because it can predict effects from foregoing causes. However, this interpretation of Spinoza, Marx, and Dr. Freud as determinists entirely leaves out the other aspect in the philosophy of the three thinkers. Why was it that the main work of the “determinist” Spinoza is a book on ethics? That Marx’s main intention was the socialist revolution, and that Dr. Freud’s main aim was a therapy which would cure the mentally sick person of his neurosis? #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Well, all three thinkers saw the degree to which man and society are inclined to act in a certain way, often to such a degree that the inclination becomes determination. However, at the same time they were not only philosophers who wanted to explain and interpret; they were men who wanted to change and transform. For Spinoza the task of man, his ethical aim, is precisely that of reducing determination and achieving the optimum of freedom. Man can do this by self-awareness, by transforming passions, which blind and chain him, into actions (“active affects”), which permit him to act according to his real interest as a human being. “An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a distinct and clear picture thereof.” Freedom is not anything which is given to us, according to Spinoza; it is something which within certain limitations we can acquire by insight and by effort. If we have fortitude and awareness, we have the alternatives to choose. The conquest of freedom is difficult and that is why most of us fail. As Spinoza wrote at the end of the Ethic: “I have thus completed all I wished to set forth touching the mind’s power over the emotions and the mind’s freedom. Whence it appears how potent is the wise man and how much he surpasses the ignorant man who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by the external causes without ever gaining the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were, unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer [in Spinoza’s sense, to be passive], ceases also to be. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
“Whereas the wise man, in as far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result, seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” Spinoza, the founder of modern psychology, who sees the factors which determine man, nevertheless writes an Ethic. He wanted to show how man can change from bondage to freedom. And his concept of “ethic” is precisely that of the conquest of freedom. This conquest is possible by reason, by adequate ideas, by awareness, but it is possible only if man makes the effort with more labour than most men are willing to make. Surely the human race has by this time, by this quarter of the century in history found the truth? Why, the does the man who wants it have to make his own personal search all over again? It is because one must know it for himself within himself. He should verify the truth not by reference to a book or Christian Bible but by reference to his own private experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The analyst’s general task is to help the patient to recognize himself and to reorient his life as far as the patient himself deems it necessary. In order to convey a more specific impression of what the analyst does in pursuing this goal, it is necessary to divide his work into categories and discuss these individually. Roughly, his work can be broken down into five main divisions: observation; understanding; interpretation; help in resistance; and general human help. To some extent the analyst’s observations are not different they have a specific character. Like everyone else, behaviour, such as aloofness, warmth, rigidity, spontaneity, defiance, compliance, suspicion, confidence, assertiveness, timidity, ruthlessness, sensitivity. In the mere process of listening to the patient he will, without direct effort, gain many general impressions: whether the patient is able to let himself go or is tense and constrained; whether he talks in a systematic, controlled fashion or is jumpy and scattered; whether he presents abstract generalities or concrete details; whether he is circumstantial or to the point; where he talks spontaneously or leaves the initiative to the analyst; whether he is conventional or expresses what he really thinks and feels. In his more specific observations the analyst learns first, from what the patient tells him about his experiences, past and present, his relationships with himself and others, his plans, his wishes, his fears, his thoughts. Second, he learns from observing the patient’s behaviour in his office, for each patient reacts differently to arrangements concerning fees, time, lying down, and other objective aspects of analysis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
And each patient reacts differently to the fact that he is being analyzed. One patient regards analysis as an interesting intellectual process but refutes the idea that he really needs it; another treats it as a humiliating secret; while a third is proud of it as a special privilege. Moreover, patients exhibit an endless variety of attitudes toward the analyst himself, with as many individual shades as exist otherwise in human relationships. Finally, patients show innumerable subtle and gross vacillations in their reactions, and these vacillations themselves are revealing. These two sources of information—the patient’s communications about himself and the observation of his actual behaviour—complement each other just as they do in any relationship. Even if we know a great deal about a person’s history and all his present ways of dealing with friends, women, business, politics, our picture of him becomes far more complete if we meet him personally and see him in action. Both sources are indispensable; one is no less important than the other. Like any other observation, that of the analyst is tinged by the nature of his interest. A saleswoman will heed other qualities in a customer than a social worker will in a client applying for help. An employer interviewing a prospective employee will focus on questions of initiative, adaptability, reliability, while a minister talking to a parishioner will be more interested in questions of moral behavior and religious belief. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The analyst’s interest does not focus upon one part of the patient, not even upon the disturbed part, but necessarily embraces the whole personality. Since he wants to understand its entire structure, and since he does not know offhand what may be more relevant and what less, his attention must absorb as many factors as possible. The specific analytical observations derive from the analyst’s purpose of recognizing and understanding the patient’s unconscious motivations. This is their essential difference from general observations. In the latter, too, we may sense certain undercurrents, but such impressions remain more or less tentative and even unformulated; also, we do not bother as a rule to distinguish whether they are determined by psychic factors of our own or by those of the observed person. The analyst’s specific observations, however, are an indispensable part of the analytic process. They constitute a systematic study of unconscious forces as revealed in the patient’s free associations. To these the analyst listens attentively, trying not to select any one element prematurely but to pay an even interest to every detail. Some of the analyst’s observations will fall in line immediately. Just as one discerns in a foggy landscape that dim outline of a house or a tree, the analyst will have no difficulty in quickly recognizing one or another general character trait. However, for the most part his observations are only a maze of seemingly unconnected items. How, then, does he arrive at an understanding? #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The relationship between the therapist and his patient is not a spontaneous one. The frequency of visits, generally regular (and most commonly weekly), their timing and duration are explicitly determined. What is permissible and desirable for the patient to do during the treatment hour is controlled and what demands he may make of his therapist are very definitely limited. In light of the prolonged nature of the relationship, the intimacy of the material shared, and the qualities of rapport and mutual respect that are engendered, this fact of definite controls on what the patient may do or fail to do, and what he can require of the therapist, constitutes what may be the most distinctive feature of the therapeutic relationship. This feature of controlled relationship is espoused in nearly all methods of psychotherapy. The quality of the relationship is given specific attention in all formulations of psychotherapy and certain aspects of the relationship are given universal emphasis. There is general agreement that it is the responsibility of the therapist to be accepting of the patient and to communicate his acceptance to the patient. This acceptance of the patient is a complex of therapist attitudes that include respect for the patient as an individual, positive regard for his personality and his potential, warmth, kindness, and continuing willingness to help no matter what the symptoms or defects of the patient. Most crucially, this attitude of acceptance requires that the therapist relate to his patent in a nonjudgmental, noncritical, nonpunitive way. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Of course, failure of conformity, socially inimical attitudes, or even antisocial behaviour may not be at the heart of the problem for which the patient seeks help and the therapist may learn of them only incidentally, but he must avoid value assessments which cause him inadvertently to communicate a rejection of the patient. This is a difficult quality of relationship both to describe and to establish effectively. The therapist may share many of his society’s values and mores and will not think that it is good for them to be violated or neglected, but it is not his function to condemn or to try to re-create an individual in his own image. This quality of “acceptance” in our culture at this time is peculiarly restricted to the psychotherapeutic contract, but it is common to all such contracts. In this sense, psychotherapy provides a very special, perhaps ideal, form of friendship. It is reasonable to presume that a further reflection of the communality of quality of acceptance is found in the expectation of the average patient who seeks a therapeutic relationship. When it is available, the hopeful expectation of “unconditional positive regard” from somebody may well be one of the common factors leading to an increasing demand for psychotherapy and contributing to a positive response. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Whether or not the impact of the mental health movement and its attendant educational programs has created a general expectation of the therapeutically prescribed acceptance, it seems that a majority of patients have an expectation that their revelation of self and others will be treated with complete confidentiality. Again, in principle that the patient’s communications are “privileged” and protected in principle and by law from release in any form or medium which would cause him or others embarrassment or hurt, we have a structural factor shared by all schools of psychotherapy. As a common factor of the therapy contract, it may significantly contribute to the total therapeutic impact of the relationship. It is, by contrast, a notable characteristic of our general culture that we are gossipy and notoriously indifferent to the ethic of personal confidences! All of us have been brainwashed, manipulated, and lied to a bit by our parents and society. As humans, we are hardwired to take in information and use it as a basis to live by. If we want to live with other people, it is what is expected out of us. Some of the things we have been told are lies meant to keep us safe, so we will not wander off and get ourselves into danger. Bloody Mary was made up to keep us in our beds at night, instead of wandering all over the house while our parents slept. Knowing yourself is always a good idea. First of all, most people need to reflect on themselves from time to time. We all change as life goes on and seeing what those changes are is good for us to know and understand. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
Having a child changes people dramatically. Suddenly, all the irresponsible things we have done are not things we want to take a chance on anymore. We want to be around for our child. Going to jail, or worse, getting ourselves killed by doing foolish things, it is not worth it anymore. When looking at yourself, ask questions about who is in your life and why they are there. Ask yourself if they are really fulfilling a need in your life. Are they making your life better? Or is their presence making your life worse? And why? You might have someone who is hurting you mentally or even physically. How long will you keep dealing with that? Standing up to someone with one or more of the traits of the Dark Triad can be done. Once they know that they cannot manipulate you, they change the way they act with you. It does not change them completely, but they understand that what they want to do will not work on you. Some people lie so much that it is hard to believe anything they say, it is hard to even trust them. Even if you ask them to stop lying, they will continue to do so. When this is the case, people often want concrete proof of anything the habitual liar has to say. To hold his individual accountable, sometimes loved one’s will tell other people in the liar’s life of their shortcomings to make people know what they are getting involved with and to stop the individual from lying to everyone. Do not the your soul get shut up in torment and despair. Keep in mind that in life, there is an evil quest too, whose disciples seek to serve their lower nature rather than to conquer it, and whose masters show themselves by action or teaching to be monsters. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
The Lord Jesus is supposed to have said: “The manifestations of the Spirit, in some things, are very strange. Sometimes He will twist the body this way, and that, and the meaning is dark to you. I want you to know somethings about this part of the Spirit’s work. I want you to see that they are not useless. If you had spoken in your own tongue, when the Spirit came in, it would have graciously blessed you; but perhaps you might have thought it was yourself, as many have. So the Spirit comes in and speak in an unknown tongue to you, that you might know that it was NOT YOURSELF SPEAKING. Your hands He has often lifted up, and again He has raised your fingers in various ways. Your eyes open and shut by the Spirit now, as they did not before. Your very head has been shaken by the Spirit and you have not known why He did this. You have thought, sometimes, it was just to show He was living there, and that is true, but there is more in it than that, and He will show you as well as He can, in a few words, what some of these things are. Some things in the manifestations are very peculiar to you. You have gone on wondering about them. DO not think it is strange that the Spirit works in you in many ways. His work is more than two-fold work. It is manifold. This is puzzling many minds. They see the Spirit shaking. They hear Him singing. They feel Him laughing, and they are sometimes tried with His various twistings and jerkings, as though He would tear them to pieces. Sometimes it seems He is imitating the animals in various sounds and doings. This has been all a mystery to the saint. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
“This has been all a mystery to the saints. His work, I say, is manifold. He seeks, in some, to show them that they are all one with each other, in the whole creation…If He shows you, by making a noise as of some wild animal, that you are like that, you must not despise His way of working, for the Holy Spirit knows why He does it. He makes these noises in the animals, can’t He make them in you?” Christ as the depth of culture signifies a close union between the two humanity and theonomy, the union of substance with form. However, religious substance lies at the depth of cultural form, a depth not always visible or attainable due to the currents of estrangement. The depths can be fathomed only in the depth-experience which is faith. It is the impact of the divine Spirit which drives man beyond the shallow surface life of autonomous secularism to the depth-dimension where he encounters the New Being. In the New Being he finds the teleological meaning of his life and the spiritual power to fulfill it. Our vision comprises three elements: Christ, depth, and culture. They represent the three major themes of theology: the New Being, ultimate concern, and man. Enter not the path of the wicked, and walk not in the way of evil men. He that walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart with have the honour of sojourning in the Lord’s Tabernacle, and shall dwell upon the Lord’s holy mountain. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. For more than 200 years, the Sacramento Fire Department has responded to just about every type of call for help and emergency imaginable without hesitation, attitude, or complaint. And over the years, those calls have grown in number and complexity. The needs of the communities have pushed and prodded the fire department into performing tasks and handling situations that no one ever imagined the fire department handling. Please kindly make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they receive all of the resources and latest technology to protect the community. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
In December of 1924 an investigator, Mr. Pierre Bernard, was called to The Winchester Mystery House to witness supernatural events. He reported at the time that “it may be stated generally that there was no possibility, in most cases, of the objects having been thrown by hand…Moreover it is hard to conceive by what mechanical appliance, under the circumstances described, the movements could have been effected. To suppose that these various objects were all moved by mechanical contrivances argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility on the part of all persons present who were not in the plot.” William Lyon Mackenzie King testified that “doors do not just open and suddenly close by themselves; but they certainly do in the Winchester Mansion.” There has been no convincing explanation for the events here related.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
I Could be Stringing Pearls for the Joy of Heaven
The great man knows he has limitations, he knows his defects and faults—but he is not afraid of them. The power of persuasion is one way to get what you want. And it is not that evil to persuade people to do things, is it? Advertisements are powerful persuasions. Everyone uses ads to get what they want. Politicians use them, and companies use the. So how bad can it be, really? When used for beneficial purposes, this power is not anything bad. However, when used for unethical, immoral, illegal, and dangerous things, persuasion can get people into real trouble. There are some errors, which have a major importance. One error lies in the habit of speaking of the freedom of choice of man rather than that of a specific individual. Choice, by definition, lies between alternatives. That an alternative is genuinely and psychologically open to choice can be supported by the observation that people have chosen it. That people have sometimes failed to choose it, has no tendency to show that it is closed to choice. As soon as one speaks of the freedom of man in general, rather than of an individual, one speaks in an abstract way which makes the problem insoluble; this is so precisely because one man has the freedom to choose—another has lost it. If applied to all men, we either deal with an abstraction, or with a mere moral postulate in the sense of Kant or of William James. Deception is something we have to deal with every day. Therefore, trusting what someone says about anything is not always the best practice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Another difficulty in the traditional discussion of freedom seems to lie in the tendency, especially of the classical authors from Plato to Aquinas, to deal with the problem of good and evil in a general way, as if man had the choice between good and evil “in general,” and the freedom to choose good. This view greatly confuses the discussion because, when confronted with the general choice most men choose “good” as against “evil.” However, there is no such thing as the choice between “good” and “evil”—there are concrete and specific action that are means toward what is good, and others that are means toward what is evil, provided good and evil are properly defined. Our moral conflict on the question of choice arises when we have to make a concrete decision rather than when we choose good or evil in general. Still another shortcoming of the traditional discussion lies in the fact that it usually deals with freedom versus determinism of choice, rather than with the various degree of inclinations. The problem of freedom versus determinism is really one of conflict of inclinations and their respective intensities. Finally, there is confusion in the use of the concept of “responsibility.” “Responsibility” is mostly used to denote that I am punishable or accusable; in this respect it makes little difference whether I permit others to accuse me or whether I accuse myself. If I find myself guilty, I punish myself; if others find me guilty, they will punish me. There is another concept of responsibility, however, which has no connection with punishment or “guilt.” In this sense responsibility only means “I am aware that I did it.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
In fact, as soon as my deed is experienced as “sin” or “guilt” it becomes alienated. It is not I who did this, but “the sinner,” “the band one,” that “other person” who now needs to be punished; not to speak of the fact that the feeling of guilt and self-accusation creates sadness, self-loathing, and loathing of life. Whoever talks about and reflects upon an evil thing he has done, is thinking the vileness he has perpetrated, and what one thinks, therein is one caught—with one’s whole soul one is caught utterly in what one thinks, and so he s still caught in vileness. And he will surely not be able to turn, for his spirit will coarsen and his heart rot, and besides this, a sad mood may come upon him. What would you? Stir filth this way and that, and it is still filth. To have sinned or not to have sinned—what does it profit us in Heaven? In the time I am brooding on this, I could be stringing pearls for the joy of Heaven. That is why it is written: “Depart from evil, and do good”—turn wholly from evil, do not brood in its way, and do good. You have done wrong? Then balance it by doing right.” We become alive as we take, knowingly, fully responsibility for our own life and as we stop blaming circumstances. What then does it mean to be free? Freedom means to have matured to the full knowledge of our dangerously many responsibilities as a human being. We have learned that everything we do, and even say or think, has consequences. We realize that too long we have believed that we were victims of circumstances. In the Gospel of John, 8.32, we read that following: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
As we open our hearts to the message of God’s truth, as it was restored in our time, we begin to understand why there was, and still is, so much misery, pain, suffering, and even starvation. In the same dimension as we are learning to accept the revealed truth in our own life, our faith in the living Son of God will grow, and therefore we will receive spiritual gifts of heretofore unknown capacity. We will learn that nothing is impossible for those who believe in Jesus as the Christ. False bondages will be loosened. Narrow thinking born in tragedies of false traditions will disappear. The more our understanding of the vastness and the completeness of the plan of salvation is developing, the more we see ourselves in our smallness, in our incompleteness. And seeing ourselves in that humility, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, will let us understand and finally accept this most sacred covenant with our Heavenly Father in the form of baptism. We gladly will submit ourselves into this covenant, knowing that there is a big difference between mere desire and covenant. When we just desire something, we will work towards achieving it only when convenient. However, when we are bound by a sacred covenant, like baptism, we are learning to overcome all obstacles through obedience, and in so doing we will be blessed with the presence of the Spirit and therefore eventually with achievement. One thing, of course, we know: having “freedom to” means that we have the potential of making wrong choices. Wrong choices have their merciless consequences, and when they are not stopped and corrected, they lead us into misery and pain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
If not corrected, wrong choices will lead us to the ultimate possible disaster in each person’s life: to become separated from our Heavenly Father in the World to come. Jesus as the Christ wants to empower our lives, according to our own righteous choices, to that dimension that, through our faith and our doings, the circumstances whose prisoners we were in the past will eventually change. It is in the same spirit that the Old Testament word chatah, usually translated as meaning “sin,” actually means “to miss” (the road); it lacks the quality of condemnation which the words “sin” and “sinner” have. Similarly, the Hebrew word for “repentance” is teschubah, meaning “return” (to God, to oneself, to the right way), and it also lacks the implication of self-condemnation. This the Talmud uses the expression “the master of return” (“the repentant sinner”) and says of him that he stands even above those who have never sinned Assuming we agree that we speak of the freedom of choice between two specific courses of action which one specific individual is confronted with, then we might begin our discussion with one concrete, commonplace example: the freedom of choice between smoking or nor smoking. Let us take a heavy smoker who has read the reports on the health hazard of smoking and has arrived at the conclusion that he wants to stop smoking. He has “decided that he is going to stop.” This “decision” is no decision. It is nothing but the formulation of hope. He has “decided” to stop smoking, yet the next day he feels in too good a mood, the day after in too bad a mood, the third day he does not want to appear “asocial,” the following day he doubts that the health reports are correct, and so he continues smoking, although he had “decided” to stop. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
All these decisions are nothing but ideas, plans, fantasies; they have little or no reality until the real choice is made. This choice becomes real when he has a cigarette in front of him and has to decide whether to smoke this cigarette or not; again, later he has to decide about another cigarette, and so on. It is always the concrete act which requires a decision. The question in each situation is whether he is free not to smoke, or whether he is not free. Several questions arise here. Assuming he did not believe in the health reports on smoking or, even if he did, he is convinced that it is better to live twenty years less than to miss this pleasure; in this case there is apparently no problem of choice. Yet the problem may only be camouflaged. His conscious thoughts maybe nothing but rationalizations of his feelings that he could not win the battle even if he tried; hence he may prefer to pretend that there is no battle to win. However, whether the problem of choice is conscious or unconscious, the nature of the choice is the same. It is the choice between an action which is dictated by reason as against an action which is dictated by irrational passions. According to Spinoza, freedom is based on “adequate ideas” which are based on the awareness and acceptance of reality and which determine actions securing the fullest development of the individual’s psychic and mental unfolding. Human action, according to Spinoza, is casually determined by passions or by reason. When ruled by passions, man is in bondage; when by reason, he is free. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Irrational passions are those which overpower man and compel him to act contrary to his true self-interests, which weaken and destroy his powers and make him suffer. The problem of freedom of choice is not that of choosing between two equally good possibilities; it is not the choice between playing tennis or going on a hike, or between visiting a friend or staying at home reading. The freedom of choice where determinism or indeterminism is involved is always the freedom to choose the better as against the wore—and better or worse is always understood in reference to the basic moral question of life—that between progressing or regressing, between love and hate, between independence and dependence. Freedom is nothing other than the capacity to follow the voice of reason, of health, of well-being, of conscience, against the voices of irrational passion. In this respect we agree with the traditional views of Socrates, Plato, the Stoic, Kant. The freedom to follow the commands of reason is a psychological problem that can be examined further. Free associations do not work miracles, but if carried out in the right spirit they do show the way the mind operates, as X-rays show the otherwise invisible movements of lungs or intestines. And they do this in a more or less cryptic language. #Randolphharris 7 of 18
To associate freely is difficult for everyone. Not only does it contrast with our habits of communication and with conventional etiquette, but it entails further difficulties which differ with each patient. These may be classified under various headings though they are inevitably overlapping. In the first place, there are patients in whom the whole process of association arouses fears or inhibitions, because if they should permit free passage to every feeling and thought, they would trespass on territory that is tabu. The particular fears that will be touched off depend ultimately on the existing neurotic trends. A few examples may illustrate. An apprehensive person, overwhelmed since his early years by the teat of the unpredictable dangers of life, is unconsciously set upon avoiding risks. He clings to the fictitious belief that by straining his foresight to the utmost he can control life. Consequently, he avoids taking any step of which he cannot visualize the effects in advance: his uppermost law is never to be caught off guard. For such a person free association means the utmost recklessness, since it is the very meaning of the process to allow everything to emerge without knowing in advance what will appear and whither it will lead. The difficult is of another kind for a highly detached person who feels safe only when wearing a mask and who automatically wards off any intrusion into the precincts of his private life. Such a one lives in an ivory tower and feels threatened by any attempt to trespass into its vicinity. For him free association means an unbearable intrusion and a threat to his isolation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
And there is the other person who lacks moral autonomy and does not dare to form his own judgments. He is not accustomed to think and feel and act on his own initiative but, like an insect extending its feelers to rest out the situation, he automatically examines the environment for what is expected of him. His thoughts are good or right when approved by others, and bad or wrong when disapproved. He, too, feels threatened by the idea of expressing everything that comes into his mind, but in quite a different way from the others: knowing only how to respond, not how to express himself spontaneously, he feels at a loss. What does the analyst expect of him? Should he merely talk incessantly? Is the analyst interested in his dreams? Or in his sexual life? Is he expected to fall in love with the analyst? And what does the latter approve or disapprove of? For this person the idea of frank and spontaneous self-expression conjures up all these disquieting uncertainties, and also threatens an exposure to possible disapproval. And finally, a person caught within the traps of his own conflicts has become inert and has lost the capacity to feel himself as a moving force. He can proceed with an endeavour only when the initiative comes from the outside. He is quite willing to answer questions but feels lost when left to his own resources. Thus he is unable to associate freely because his capacity for spontaneous activity is inhibited. And, if he is one to whom success in all things is a driving necessity, this inability to associate may provoke in him a kind of panic, for he is likely then to regard his inhibition as a “failure.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
These examples illustrate how for some persons the whole process of free association arouses fears or inhibitions. However, if it is touched upon, even those who are capable of the process in general have in them one or another area that gives rise to anxiety. Thus in the example of Clare, who on the whole was able to associate freely, anything approaching her repressed demands on life aroused anxiety at the beginning of her analysis. Another difficulty lies in the fact that an unreserved expression of all feelings and thoughts is bound to lay bare traits that the person is ashamed of and that he is humiliated to report. As mentioned in the report on neurotic trend, the traits that are regarded as humiliating vary considerably. If he betrays idealistic propensities, a person who is proud of his cynical pursuit of material interests will be bewilder and ashamed. A person who is proud of his angelic façade will be ashamed to betray signs of selfishness and inconsiderateness. And the same humiliation will occur when any pretense is uncovered. The problem is not anxiety. The problem is what causes the person to experience anxiety and what determines the pattern of his reaction to the experience of anxiety. We do not presently possess a broadly based and reasonably detailed classification of the anxiety-generating problems of the twenty-first century man which cuts across all dimensions of our society. We know that problems of the very young man are different from those of the very mature, but this is hardly a sufficient differentiation on which to base selective approached to problem solutions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Among adolescents, there are some who experience acute anxiety because of problems of school achievement. There are others who are greatly distressed by the complexities of heterosexual maturation. There are some who suffer from conflicts and frustrations in both of these areas. All of them may show comparable amounts and patterns of anxiety. However, anxiety is not the problem, and no single, uniform approach to the counseling of these youths is likely to prove equally effective with all. Experts in the mental health filed generally accept the professional platitude that one must not “treat the symptoms,” but rather one must attack the cause. There is also general acceptance of the motion that anxiety is only a symptom of an underlying pathology. However, the overwhelmingly predominant approach to the current psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on a theory in which anxiety plays a most central role and in which the basic source of anxiety is traced to the circumscribed sphere of psychosexual development. Furthermore, that theory evolved basically from clinical observations of a handful of upper-class patients from Dr. Freud’s late nineteenth-century Vienna. Elaborations and revisions of the basic Freudian theory while to some extent correcting for the differences between the culture of nineteenth-century Europe and twenty-first century U.S.A. have not significantly broadened the clinical observations on which the theory and the technique of treatment are based. It is still an orientation to etiology and treatment based on experience with middle-class and upper-class patients. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
In the absence of detailed information about the nature, frequency, and patterning of psychological problems across the complete range of those major demographic variables that we know are related to personality functioning, we cannot know what manner of psychological approach is most likely to prove effective. In turn, we cannot know what program of training is best adapted to the production of therapists who will be maximally effective either with the complete spectrum of psychoneurosis, if this is a reasonable goal, or with the dynamics of special forms of personality disruption which very well may prove to be particular to the members of certain subcultures. We have mentioned the peculiar ambiguities of diagnosis of mental illness. These ambiguities are especially troublesome in the diagnosis of the psychoneuroses, those forms of emotional disturbance for which psychological treatment is indicated. We have mentioned in the prevailing system of diagnosis by symptom pattern rather than by underlying problem. And we have indicated the extreme paucity of information about the psychological problems of people who represent the complete range of our population in regard to defining characteristics of major psychosocial classes—age, gender, and so on. Finally, we have commented on the absence of agreed upon “rules of exclusion.” All of these factors conjoin to create a situation in which the person who presents himself as a candidate for therapeutic conversation has made a self-diagnosis—and, significantly, he is most generally accepted on the basis of that diagnosis. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
This fact presents the possibility that out limited resources for psychotherapy may be overburdened in pat by the presence of individuals who in fact are not proper candidates for that type of therapeutic conversation which the major therapists of our present professional culture are equipped to give. This likelihood is enhanced by still other considerations. There is good reason to believe that the major impact of the mental hygiene movement has been on the members of the upper social classes. It is these persons whose education has made them psychologically sensitive and whose sophistication has made them socially receptive who, while not the prime target of the mental hygienists any more than any other social class, have the greatest readiness for self-referral. It is a corollary of the readiness for self-referral that the problems which the psychological sophisticate takes to the psychotherapist may be not only of lesser severity but may in fact be not focally psychoneurotic. Thus, any reasonably critical and honest therapist of long experience will have to confess that he has been confronted by some supplicants who have suffered not from anxiety nor from depression but rather from a loss of meaning in the lives, an absence of purpose, a failure of faith. Some of these persons suffer what has been termed “alienation.” Their condition has been characterized by one thoughtful clinician as a very special disturbance, that noogenetic neurosis. Frequently they are successful, effective, productive people. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
These individuals, together with many others who lack the customary symptomatic hallmarks of anxiety, depression, obsession, or compulsion yet who present themselves to the psychotherapist for help, might be uniformly described as unhappy. Their lives may be rewarding in a variety of ways and generally comfortable, but nonetheless joyless. They are responsive to certain implicit messages of the mental hygiene movement—namely, that unhappiness is a gorm of mental illness and that the psychiatrist or psychologist is an expert in treating unhappiness. It would be well for those who are responsible for programs of public mental health education to consider carefully whether or not there are any conditions of man’s psychic life which, while painful or distressing, do not constitute neurosis and are not in their essential nature responsive to the techniques of the psychotherapist. Our Declaration of Independence claimed as one of the rights of our citizens the “pursuit of Happiness.” However, freedom for this pursuit, like any other search, entails the possibility of failure. This possibility need be threatening only in an atmosphere which suggests that an absence of happy emotion is a sign of illness. Our capacity for introspection and our inwardly directed sensitivity to our own feelings can be major sources of satisfaction and of pleasure. From these same sources spring much of our most painful experiences. We cannot have the luxury of introspective sensitivity without the cost of self-questioning and doubt. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When sensitive persons become stuck in an introspective rut of uncertainty, when they become immobilized by doubt, or when they are struggling against surrender to a conviction in an area in which all final convictions must necessarily be acts of faith, then they can be heled in their struggle by the challenge of perspectives elicited in the questions and suggestions of wise men. However, the wisdom needed to elicit such perspectives is hardly the exclusive possession of any existing professional group. Neither the psychiatrist nor the psychologist is trained to be wise. They should be trained to recognize those cases that call not for psychotherapy but for exposure to wise counsel. All the work of the ancient World in vain: I have no words to express my feelings about something so monstrous. And considering that its work was preliminary work, that the foundations for the work of millennia had just been laid with granite self-confidence, the entire meaning of the ancient World in vain! Wherefore Greeks? Wherefore Romans? All preconditions for a learned culture, all scientific methods were there already, the great, incomparable art of reading well had already been established—that precondition for a tradition of culture, for the unity of science; natural science, in concert with mathematics and mechanics, was moving along the best paths—the sense for facts, the ultimate and most precious of all senses, had its schools, its already centuries-old tradition! Do we understand this? #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
Everything essential for moving forward with the work had been found—the methods, it must be said ten times, are precisely what is essential, and most difficult, and are what have for the longest time faced the obstacles of habit and laziness. What we today have reconquered, with incomparable self-mastery—for we all somehow still have bad instincts, Christian instincts in our bones—a clear view of reality, a careful hand, patience and seriousness, in the smallest matters, complete integrity in knowledge: it was already there! Already, more than two thousand years ago! And in addition good, subtle tact and taste! Not as brain training! Not as “German” education with loutish manners! However, as body, as gesture, as instinct—as, in word, reality…All in vain! Overnight, just memory! Greeks! Romans! The refinement of instinct, of taste, methodical research, the genius for organization and administration, the faith, the will to a future of man, the great Yes to all thing visible as an imperium Romanum, visible to all the senses, the grand style become not just art but reality, truth, life…And not buried overnight by natural events! Not crushed by Germanic tribes and others trampling them underfoot! However, done in by sly, sneaky, invisible, anemic vampires! Not vanquished—merely sucked dry! Covert vindictiveness, petty envy become master! Everything pathetic, suffering of itself, afflicted with bad feelings, the entire ghetto World of soul on top, all at once! #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
One need only read any Christian agitator, Saint Augustine, for example, in order to grasp, to grasp, to smell what sort of filthy hirelings have thereby risen to the top. One would be deceiving oneself in assuming any intellectual inferiority among the leaders of the Christian movement—oh, they are smart all right, smart to the point of saintliness, these gentle church fathers! What they lack s something altogether different. Nature has neglected them—she forgot to bestow upon them a modest dowry of respectable, decent, clean instincts. The self-actualized is to be able to stand against the wiles of the ultimate negative, and put on the whole armour for doing this. However, if he does not know what the wile is, how does man stand against a wile? There is a difference between the temptation and wiles—between the principles and working of the ultimate negative (and his emissaries) and their wiles; id est, they themselves are tempters. Temptation is not a while. A wile is the way they scheme to tempt. If one is able to stand against their wiles, of these wiles can be detected, then the ultimate negative’s objective can be frustrated and destroyed. The spiritual man needs the fullest concentration and sagacity of mind for reading quickly his spirit-sense, and detecting the active operations of the foe; he also requires alertness in using the message his spirit conveys to him. A spiritual believer ought to be able to read the sense of his spirit with the same instinctive adroitness as a person recognizes cold by his physical sense when he feels a draft, and then immediately uses his mental faculties for actively protecting himself from it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
So the spiritual man needs to use his spirit-sense in locating and dislodging the foe by prayer. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Do not be afraid of evil tidings; let your heart be steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Happy are they that keep justice, that do righteousness at al times. Happy are they that are upright in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Happy are they that keep His testimonies, that seek Him with their whole heart. Happy is the people that thus know Him, happy is the people whose God is the Eternal. It is important to keep in mind the heroism and hardships, sacrifices and brilliant achievements of the Sacramento Fire Department and their history of fighting and the development of fire prevention and fire control, which has become an exact science. When you stop to think of the loss of life, and that the fire losses in the United States of America alone, the cost of property fires in 2022 is estimated at $18 billion. Local fire departments responded to an estimated 1.5 million fires. These fires caused 3,790 civilian fire deaths, and 13,250 reported civilian fire injuries. You must realize how important it is for the Sacramento Fire Department to be efficient and have all the resources they need. You must know that insurance rates are based on fire loses, and no matter how great may be the care and skill exercised in construction of buildings to prevent fires, no matter what precautions may be taken, the need of efficient firemen and women is ever preset for the saving of life and property. In this poor economy, the Sacrament Fire Department is not receiving all of their resources, please make a donation to ensure they have adequate support. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
One afternoon in December of 2007, two caretakers were walking around the mansion with a guest. “As we were walking up the path to the Grand Ballroom,” he wrote, “I stopped and said,” ‘The organ is playing.’ My first though was that maybe the was a Christmas party. The other caretaker stopped and looked at me. He turned to beckon me with a smile, so I thought that he had found it was just someone practicing. To my amazement the Grand Ballroom was empty and silent. We sat down near the organ for a moment and he said, ‘Have you heard the story of the organ playing before?’ I assured him that I had not…We afterwards went up and down the hallway sever times to see if we could hear it again but could not. The whole event was over in half a minute, and it was absolutely impossible for anyone to have escaped in that time.” There have been many attempts at explanation or elucidation of the events surrounding The Winchester Mystery House. It has been calculated that the phenomena connected with the house and garden have been described by over three thousand separate witnesses. It has even been conjected that the witnesses themselves have been the agents of the unusual activity; unknow to themselves, some force draws their energies. This is true of many “ghost stories.” However, while one can be skeptical about any individual instance, the sum total presents a body of evidence that is impossible to ignore.
Take pleasure in the antiques, the gardens and experience the homemaking of Victorian times. Enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 