Social meddlers have been labouring under the delusion that, since there are no natural laws of the social order, they might make the World over with artificial ones. Society, however, the product of centuries of gradual evolution, cannot be quickly refashioned by legislation. It is a superorganism, changing at a geological tempo. The great stream of time and Earthy things will sweep on just the same despite us. Every one of us is a child of his age and cannot get out of it. He is in the stream and is swept along with it. All his science and philosophy come to him out of it. Therefore, the tide will not be changed by us. It will swallow up both us and our experiments. That is why it is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable to sit down with a slate and pencil to plan out a new social World. Socialists are puny meddlers, social quacks, who would try to break into the age-old process of societal growth at an arbitrary point and remake it in accordance with their petty desires. They started from the premise that “everybody ought to be happy” and assumed that therefore it should be possible to make everyone happy. They never asked, “In what direction is society moving?” or “What are the mechanisms which motivate its progress?” Evolution would teach them that it is impossible to tear down overnight a social system whose roots are centuries deep in the social of history. History would teach them that revolutions never succeeded—witness the experience of France, where the Napoleonic period left essential interests much as they have been before 1789. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
There are two chief things with which government must deal. They are the property of men and the honour of women. These it must defend against crime. Polly Hannah Klass was a twelve-year-old American girl who was kidnapped at knifepoint during a slumber party at her mother’s home in Petaluma, California in 1993. She was strangled to death. Richard Allen Davis was convicted of her murder in 1996 and sentenced to death. As part of an Anti-Violence Strategy, politicians in California and other U.S.A. states supported the three strikes law, which requires a person who is convicted of an offense and who has one or two other previous serious convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison without parole. California’s Three Strikes act was signed into law on March 8, 1994. However, since 2014, under California law, purchasing or soliciting a child for sex is a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of up to a year in jail, or a minimum of two days in jail, and a $10,000 fine. This is a direction contradiction of the Three Strikes Act. Many people wonder how such legislation could even exist when worldwide, at any given time, there are approximately 30 million victims (about the population of Texas) being sold into the sex trade. Every system has its inevitable evils, but this is blatantly wrong. When they care nothing about the health and safety of your children, why keep electing sinful democrats? Human progress is moral progress, and moral progress is largely the accumulation of economic virtues. Let every man be sober, industrious, prudent, and wise, and bring up his children to be so likewise, so we can abolish crime and corruption in a few generations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If the good and evil values of this Earthly existence are in the end relative, partial, and transient, there yet remains a supreme value which is absolute, total, and eternal in its goodness. It belongs to the root of our being, the Overself in us that represents the World-Mind. The atheist who declares that the moral scene is entirely suggested to man by his environment has taken a partial truth, a partial untruth, and joined them together. However, if he had declared that the environment was a contributory factor to the result, he would have been quite correct. The moaning of a cat has doubtless a certain musical note in it. The Messiah by Handel has musical notes of another kind. Metaphysical scepticism would say that both values are relative and not absolute, hence both are as worthwhile or as worthless as we believe them to be. However, most of us would prefer Handel! Why? Because although as relative as the cat’s sounds, it is progressively superior. We may apply this to ethics. Excessive moral tolerance easily becomes moral lethargy. How can you rightly give the same rules on self-control to young men, in whom the lusts are hot, and to old men, who whom they are cold? To tie a code of moral values to a religious belief is safer in a simple community and riskier in a sophisticated one. When it is no longer an integrity, a virtue may be practised wrongly. New circumstances bring out new and different qualities, including latent and even unsupported ones. Or a crisis in events may explode and let them appear suddenly. Thus, the good may become the bad; the bad may become good. Arrogance in virtue is risky. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
By giving his allegiance to the political system, the religious system, and the commercial system in which he lives, man has unwittingly done two things; he has made a judgement on them, and he has taken a moral decision about them. However, whether this has penetrated his consciousness, he cannot absolve himself from these responsibilities. Sinfulness is relative. What is right for a man at a low stage may be wrong for him at a higher stage; and in the highest stage, he may act rightly yet in sin in thought. Although two different doctrines may each be relatively true, this is not the same as being on the same level of evaluation. To set up relativity as an absolute truth without qualifying it, is unfair. To say that all values are alike, all codes are the same, is to say something half-false. Paradox is an indispensable element of the Highest Formulations. If the old moralities fall away from man, it is only to be displaced by higher ones, certainly not to be bereft of any ethical code. The doctrine who uses right ideas to support or defend wrong actions can do so only because those ideas are general and abstract ones. They ignore circumstances, time, and place. Convert them into specific concrete, practical, and cases, and their misuse becomes difficult. Although he has now inwardly transcended conventional codes of good and evil, man will outwardly continue to respect them. This is not hypocrisy for he is not opposed to them. He perceives that the very relativity which deprives them of value for him, provides them with value for society. Obedience to the Overself will then become the only code of ethics that he can follow. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Dr. Freud’s independent man has emancipated himself from the dependence on mother. Marx’s independent man has emancipated himself from the dependence on nature. However, there is one important difference between the two concepts of independence. Dr. Freud’s independent man is basically a self-sufficient man. He needs others only to satisfy his instinctual desires. Since men and women need each other, this satisfaction is a mutual one. The relationship is not primarily but only secondarily a social one, like that of individual buyers and sellers on the market who are united by their mutual interest in exchange. For Marx, man is primarily a social being. If he is related to his fellow men and to nature, he needs his fellow man, not to satisfy his desires, but because only then is he complete as a man. The independent, free man in Marx’s sense is the active, related, productive man. Spinoza, who had considerable influence on Marx, as he had on Hegel and Goethe, held activity vs. Passivity to be central concepts for the understanding of man, He differentiated between active and passive emotions. The former (fortitude and generosity) iriginate in the individual, and they are accompanied by adequate ideas. The latter rule over man; he is the slave of passions, and they relate to inadequate, irrational ideas. This connection between knowledge and affect has been enriched by Goethe and Hegel in their emphasis on the nature of true knowledge. Knowledge is not obtained in the position of the split between subject and object, but in the position of relatedness. As Goethe put it: “Man knows himself only since he knows the World. He knows the World only within himself, and he is aware of himself only within the World. Each new object, truly recognized, opens a new organ within ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
In his Faust, Goethe gave the most outstanding expression to this concept of the “ever striving” man. Neither knowledge nor power nor sex can give an ultimately satisfactory answer to the question which man is asked by the fact of his very existence. Only the free and productive man, untied to his fellow man, can give the right answer to man’s existence, Marx’s concept of man was a dynamic one. Human passion is, he said, “the essential power of man striving energetically for its object.” Man’s own powers develop only in the process of relatedness to the World. “The eye has become a human eye when its object has become a human, social object, created by man and destined for him. The senses have therefore become directly theoreticians in practice. They relate themselves to the thing for the sake of the thing, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man and vice versa. Need and enjoyment have thus lost their egoistic character, and nature has lost its mere utility by the fact that its utilization has become human utilization. (In practice I can only relate myself in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man.)” Just as our senses develop and become human senses in the process of their productive relatedness to nature, our relatedness to man, says Marx, becomes human relatedness in the act of loving. “Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etcetera. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, id est, if you are not able, by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The fully developed, and this the healthy, man, is the productive man, the man who is genuinely interested in the World, responding to it; he is the rich man. In contrast to this fully developed man, Marx paints the picture of a man under the system of capitalism. “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.” In the present system man has much, but he is little. The fully developed man is the wealthy man who is much. “Communism,” for Marx, “is the positive abolition of private property, of human nature through and for man. It is, therefore, the return of man himself as a social, id est, really human being, a complete and conscious return which assimilates all the wealth of previous development. Communism as a fully developed naturalism is humanism and, as a fully developed humanism, is naturalism. It is the definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and natura, and between man and man. It is the true solution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be this solution.” By “private property” as used here and in other statements, Marx never refers to the personal property of things for use (such as a house table, et cetera). He refers to the property of the “propertied classes,” that is, of the capitalist who, because he owns the means of production, can hire the property-less individual to work for him, under conditions the latter is forced to accept. “Private property,” in Marx’s usage, then, always refers to private property within capitalist class society and thus is a social and historical category; the term does not refer to things for use, to “personal property.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The past has not been devoid of experimentation to permit freedom in education, and there has accumulated a considerable body of knowledge regarding education which has inward freedom as one of its primary goals. August Aichorn, many years ago, carried out a radical experiment in the reeducation of delinquents. He permitted them freedom, within the institutional setting, to conduct themselves as they desired in the group in which he was the leader. After a period of chaos which I am sure few of us could bear, these youths gradually chose a social and disciplined and cooperative life as something they preferred. They learned, though experience in an accepting relationship that they desired responsible freedom and self-imposed limits rather than the chaos of license and aggression. Another radical experiment was that conducted by A.S. Neill in his school, Summerhill. Starting one hundred years ago, school has become a current focus of great interest because A.S. Neill’s book Summerhill tells of the experience of his pupils and himself in this school. This is a book which is well worth thoughtful reading by every educator. Neill’s sincerity and genuineness, his faith in the potential of everyone, his firm respect for each child and for himself shines through its pages. As in the case of Aichorn, few of us would have the courage to trust the individual, and his natural desire to learn, as completely as does Neill. Yet has given u a challenging laboratory example of what it means to provide a setting in which children can learn to be free. Even the cautious report of the Ministery of Education makes is clear that the students develop a zest for living spontaneous courtesy, as well as initiative, responsibility, and integrity. They conclude, “a piece of fascinating and valuable educational research is going on here which it would do educationists good to see.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The core of the progressive education movement, now frequently derided, was another attempt to help individuals to learn to be free. That its fundamental philosophy frequently became debased into turning education into a sugar-coated pill should not obscure its true aims, nor its effective research when it was true to its own philosophical base. Still another type of experiment along this line is evident in the work being done in student-centered teaching. Here much of the work has been done in university classes and in intensive workshops for professional persons. The aim of the approach: to assist students to become individuals who can take self-initiated action and to be responsible for those actions; who are capable of intelligent choice and self-direction; who are critical learners, able to evaluate the contributions made by others; who have acquired knowledge relevant to the solutions of problems; who, even more importantly, are able to adapt flexibly and intelligently to new problem situations; who have internalized an adaptive mode of approach to problems, utilizing all pertinent experience freely and creatively; who are able to cooperate effectively with others in these various activities; who work, not for approval of others, but in terms of their own socialized purposes. If it is not possible for the generality of mankind to practise ethical indolence permanently and to avoid the moral struggles which the situations of life lead to intermittently, it is much less possible for the minority of mankind who have begun this quest to do so. Life becomes graver for them. If they do not obey the call of conscience the first time, it may become more painful to obey it the second time. If they persist in following an ignoble and contemptible course after they have already seen that it is dishonourable and deplorable the universal law becomes proportionately heavier with consequences. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
We have been having an ongoing look at Clare, and her dependence on people. Her case study has been enlightening. She had started taking notes on her own behaviour to see what triggered an upset. While reviewing these notes concerning an evening in which her mood had swung from elation to depression, she saw the possibility that fatigue may have been a factor. She wondered whether the latter might have resulted not only from the anxiety that had been aroused but also from a repressed anger for the frustration of her wishes. If that were so, her wishes could not be quite so harmless as she had assumed, for they must then contain some admixture of an insistence that they be complied with. She left this an open question. This piece of analysis had an immediately favourable influence upon the relationship with her man Peter, who was aloof and distant. Clare became more active in sharing his interests and in considering his wishes, and ceased being merely receptive. Also, the sudden eruptions of irritation stopped entirely. It is hard to say whether her demands upon him relented, though it would be reasonable to assume that they did to a moderate degree. This time Clare faced her finding so squarely that there is almost nothing to add. It is noteworthy, though, that the same material had presented itself six weeks before, when the daydream of the great man first emerged. At that time the need to hold on to the fiction of “love” was still so stringent that she could do no more than admit that her love was tinged with a need for protection. Even in that admission she could conceive of the need for protection only as a factor reinforcing her “love.” Nevertheless, that early insight constituted the first attack on her dependency. The discovery of the degree of fear in her love was the second step. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
A further step was the question she raised as to whether she overrated Peter, even though the question remained unanswered. And only after she had worked that far through the fog could she finally see that her love was by no means unadulterated. Only now could she stand the disillusionment of recognizing that she had mistaken for love her abundant expectations and demands. She had not yet taken the last step of realizing the dependency that resulted from her expectations. Otherwise, however, this fragment of analysis is a good example of what it means to follow up an insight. Clare saw that her expectations of others were largely engendered by her own inhibitions toward wishing or doing anything for herself. She saw that her sponging attitude impaired her capacity to give anything in return. And if her expectations were rejected or frustrated, she recognized her tendency to feel offended. Clare’s expectations were mainly in reference to intangible things. Despite apparent evidence to the contrary, she was not essentially a greedy person. The receiving of presents was only a symbol for less concrete but more important expectations. She demanded to be cared for in such a way that she should not have to make up her mind as to what is right or wrong, should not have to take the initiative, should not have to be responsible for herself, should not have to solve external difficulties. Some weeks passed in which her relationship with Peter was smoother. They had finally planned a trip together. Through his long indecision he had spoiled for her most of the joy of anticipation, though when everything was settled, she did look forward to the holiday. However, a few days before they were to leave, he told her that business was too precarious just then to allow him to go away for any length of time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Clare was first enraged and then desperate, and Peter scolded her for being unreasonable. She tended to accept the reproach and tried to convince herself that he was right. When she calmed down, Clare suggested that she go alone to a resort that was only a three-hour drive from the city; Pere could then join her whenever his time allowed. Peter did not openly refuse this arrangement, but after some hemming and hawing he said that if she were able to take things more reasonably, he would have been very glad to agree since she reacted so violently to every disappointment, and since he was not master of his time, he foresaw only frictions forthcoming and felt it better for her to make plans without him. This again threw her into despair. The evening ended with Peter consoling her and promising to go away with her for ten days at the end of vacation. Clare felt reassured. Inwardly agreeing with Peter, she decided to take things more easily and to become content with what he could give her. The next day, while trying to analyze her first reaction of rage, she had three associations. The first was a memory of being teased, when she was a child, for playing the martyr role. However, this memory, which had often recurred to her, appeared now in a new light. She had never examined whether the others were wrong in teasing her in this way. She had taken it merely as a fact. Now for the first time it dawned on her that they were not right, that she had been discriminated against, that by teasing her they had added insult to injury. Then another memory occurred to her from the time when she was five or six. She used to play with her brother and his playmates, and one day they told her that in a certain meadow, near where they played, robbers lived in a hidden cave. She believed it completely and always trembled when she went near that meadow. Then one day they had ridiculed her for having fallen for their story. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Finally, Clare thought of her dream of the foreign city, the part in which she had seen the freak show and the gambling stands. And now she realised that these symbols expressed more than a transient anger. She saw for the first time that there was something phony, something fraudulent in Peter. Not in the sense of any deliberate swindle. However, he could not help playing the role of one who was always right, always superior, always generous—and he had feet of clay. He was wrapped up in himself, and when he yielded to her wishes it was not because of love and generosity but because of his own weakness. Finally, in his dealing with her there was much subtle cruelty. Psychotherapy is a good idea for someone like Clare. In view of the general disdain for, if not outright counter prescription of, advice-giving as a part of formal psychotherapy, it is interesting to note that fewer than 15 percent of those who were helped definitely by psychiatrists attributed their relief to the receipt of advice; the comparable figures of helpful advice are 24 percent and 34 percent for the physicians and clergymen respectively. By contrast, 23 percent of persons helped by the clergymen credited the receipt of “comfort” and an “ability to endure”; of those who were helped by physicians and psychiatrists only 9 percent and 7 percent respectively claimed that this was the way in which therapy had helped them. The data from this survey does not permit a comparison of the relative efficiency of the clergyman as a psychotherapist with the psychiatrist or other experts. It may be that the clergymen “treat” a very different group of “patients,” and that the medical and psychological experts receive the more difficult cases. It is important to note, however, that they tend to seek to help all those who come to them with personal problems, making fewer referrals than to the physicians. Nevertheless, their effectiveness as evaluated in subjective appraisals of helpfulness by those who consult them is equal to that of the physicians, and both “nonexperts” are credited with giving more “help” than are the psychiatrists, psychologists, and marriage counselors. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
It seems obvious that the clergy constitute a great potential resource in helping to meet the psychotherapy needed of our society. It is not known to what extent this potential is being fully realized. In the past there have been pseudo-antagonisms (based upon presumed conflicts of values and philosophy) between religion and psychiatry. Some psychotherapists have feared that the clergy were doing harm through slowness to make referrals to experts. Concern for the possible usurpation of a role for which they were inadequately prepared has been based partly on a recognition that the older spiritual adviser had rarely received intensive instruction in scientific psychology or orientation to the nature of neurotic illness. In the face of some of these antipathies and with growing recognition for the extent to which the clergyman is turned to for help with emotional and mental problems, both the church and psychiatry are moving toward a reproachment. Seminaries are showing increasing attention to provision of some background in pastoral counseling as a necessary part of the training of future churchmen; in providing sophistication in the techniques of counseling there is also attention to the problem of recognition of psychiatric illness. Priests, rabbis, and ministers in increasing numbers are being encouraged to pursue graduate study in psychology. Through the cooperation of the Wheat Ridge Foundation of Lutheran Church and graduate department of psychology of the University of Minnesota a small and highly select group of ordained pastors are studying for the Ph.D. in clinical psychology. These men will later be key resource persons in providing mental health consultation to other pastors and to church programs of mental health education. Psychiatrists and psychologists are showing a growing willingness to participate in special seminars and short courses designed to provide clergymen with a basic understanding of psychiatric illness and treatment. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The increased education of clergy in the field of mental illness should have a beneficial effect. It should bring this important source of therapeutic conversation to increasingly direct and effective expression. It should mean that more and more clergy will come to do more and better personal counseling. It should have this effect but it may not! The effect of the increased “psychiatric sophisticated” of the clergy may be simply that they will reveal a new tendency toward making increasingly frequent referrals to the already overburdened “experts.” It is of the utmost importance that clergymen be sensitized not only to the presence of serious psychological disturbance, which may be occasionally masked by a plea for spiritual guidance, but that they be made equally aware of that they have within themselves the potential to render significant help and relief to many of the persons who seek their counsel with strictly secular problems. If the tuition of clergymen in the field of mental hygiene were to be so diagnosis-and pathology oriented that they were simply rendered over-ready to make referrals rather than to accept a basic, appropriate responsibility to render aid. It is obvious that religious leaders should be among the first to recognise a “philosophical neurosis” and should know that they may have a special expertise in the treatment of this form of pseudo-neurotic disturbance. They should prepare themselves to receive the referrals which, hopefully, psychiatrists and psychologists may be making in increasing numbers. Beyond this, the mental health movement must seek to give the clergy an increasing feeling for the strategic advantage of their special status as suppliers of therapeutic conversation, an increasing sense of the legitimacy of their functioning in this role, and an increasing awareness of their need to take responsibility for their distinctly psychotherapeutic skills over and above their qualities as spiritual leaders. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
There are a couple of “humane experiences” which are difficult to classify in terms of feelings, affects, and attitudes. However, it matters little how we classify them, since all these classifications themselves are based on traditional distinctions, the validity of which is questions. I am referring to the sense of identity and integrity. The problem of identity has been much in the foreground of psycholgoical discussion, especially stimulated by the excellent work of Erik Erikson. He has spoken of the “identity crisis,” and, undoubtedly, he has touched upon one of the major psychological problems of industrial society. However, he has not gone far or penetrated as deeply as is necessary for the full understand of the phenomena of identity and identity crisis. In the age of information, men are transformed into things, life is lived on social media, and things have no identity. Or do they? Is not every BMW car of a certain year and a certain model identical with every other BMW car of the same model and different from other models and vintages? Has not any dollar bill its identity like any other dollar bill because it has the same design, value, exchangeability, but different from any other dollar bill in terms of differences in the quality of the paper brought about by the length of use? Things can be the same or different. However, if we speak of identity, we speak of a quality which does not pertain to things, but only to man. What then is identity in a human sense? Among the many approaches to this question, I want to stress only the concept that identity is the experience which permits a person to say legitimately “I” — “I” as an organizing active center of the structure of all my actual or potential activities. This experience of “I” exists only in the state of spontaneous activity, but it does not exist in the state of passiveness and half-awakeness, a state in which people are sufficiently awake to go about their business but not awake enough to sense an “I” as the active center within themselves. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This concept of “I” is different from the concept of ego. (I do not use this term in the Freudian sense but in the popular sense of a person who, for example, has a “big ego.”) The experience of my “ego” is the experience of myself as a thing, of the body I have, the memory I have—the money, the house, the social position, the power, the children, the problems I have. I look at myself as a thing and my social role is another attribute of thingsness. Many people easily confuse the identity of ego with the identity of “I” or self. The difference is fundamental and unmistakable. The experience of ego, and of ego-identity, is based on the concept of having. I have “me” as I have all other things which this “me” owns. Identity of “I” or self refers to the category of being and not of having. I am “I” only to the extent to which I am alive, interested, related, active, and to which I have achieved an integration between my appearance—to others and/or to myself—and the core of my personality. The identity crisis of our time is based essentially on the increasing alienation and reification of man, and it can be solved only to the extent to which man comes to life again, becomes active again. There are no psychological shortcuts to the solution to the identity crisis except the fundamental transformation of alienated man into the living man. The increasing emphasis on ego versus self, on having versus being, finds a glaring expression in the development of our language. It has become customary for people to say, “I have insomnia,” instead of saying, “I cannot sleep”; or, “I have a problem,” instead of, “I feel sad, confused” or whatever it may be; or “I have a happy marriage” (sometimes successful marriage), instead of saying “My wife and I love each other.” All categories of the process of being are transformed into categories of having. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The ego, static and unmoved, relates to the World in terms of having objects, while the self is related to the World in the process of participation. Modern man has everything: a BMW, a house, a job, “kids,” a marriage, problems, troubles, satisfactions—and of all that is not enough, he had his psychoanalyst. He is nothing. A concept which presupposes that of identity is that of integrity. It can be dealt with briefly because integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible. The main temptations for violation of one’s identity are the opportunities for advancement in industrial society. Since the life within the society tends to make man experience himself as a thing anyway, a sense of identity is a rare phenomenon. However, the problem is complicated by the fact that aside from identity as a conscious phenomenon as described above, there is a kind of unconscious identity. Some people, while consciously they have turned into things, carry unconsciously a sense of their identity precisely because the social process has not succeeded in transforming them completely into things. These people, when yielding to the temptatiomn of violating their integrity, may have a sense of guilt which is unconscious and which gives them a feeling of uneasiness, although they are not aware of its cause. It is all too easy for orthodox psychoanalytic procedure to explain a sense of guilt as the result of one’s incestuous wishes or one’s “unconscious homosexuality.” The truth is that since a person is not entirely dead—in a psychological sense—he feels guilty for living without integrity. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
It takes a lot of integrity to be a firefighter. “I was a training officer for almost two years when the Sacramento Fire Department advertised for a drillmaster, and they hired me. They were looking for somebody from the outside because of the training fire which killed two firefighters and injured two others. That changed the department. It was a very powerful, emotional experience, because it is a small closely knit outfit. It was a smoke training exercise, there was no intention of having a fire there. They used a small shed that was going to be demolished for a smoke-in. A hopeless structure. For example, they had put up cardboard walls, and it had a low-density combustible fireboard ceiling. Anf there was probably a finer layer of carbon from pervious burns. This was the third exercise of the morning. There was a flashover. Since this was only a “smoke exercise,” they weren’t prepared for firefighting. This was a case of their intentions outrunning their idea of what the potential was in that situation. So they weren’t hooked up to a hydrant, and there was nobody by the pump panel. They were generating the smoke by burning tires, a series of fires in this long shed. They were advancing a booster line to simulate hose line advancement, but they weren’t in there to extinguish fires. I don’t know if it was an oxygen flashover, or, more likely, the presence of all that combustible material getting heated up and liberating its gases to the point where everything ignited simultaneously, the walls, the ceilings, everything. There were four people inside. Two died. Two made it out, the company officer and the officer who was putting on the drill. The company officer suffered extensive burns and spent considerable time in a burn ward. The officer putting on the drill wasn’t a regular training officer, he was just somebody who’s volunteered to conduct the drill. This was a real tragedy.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Please keep the Sacramento Fire Department in your prayers and make a donation to ensure that they have all the resources required. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The wise man harbours neither revenge nor envy; he speaks good of all men, and belittles none. He is moderate in his merriment, and rejoices not at the misfortune of others; he cleaves to the men of truth and faithfulness. See that you guard your soul’s holiness, and when you pray, consider before whom you stand. Visit the sick and suffering, and let your countenance be cheerful. Purge your soul from angry passion; that is the inheritance of fools. Love the society of learned men, and strive to know more and more of the ways and the works of your Creators. A city is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked, but it is exalted by the blessing of the upright. Sin is a reproach to any people, but righteousness exalts a nation. When the wicked rule, the people sigh, but when the righteous come to power, the people rejoice. Where there is no vision, the people perish, but happy is he that keeps the law. When the righteous exult, there is a great glory, but when the wicked rule, righteous men must be sought for. Let us now praise such righteous men, famous men, the fathers of our country. The Lord manifested in them great glory, even His mighty power from the beginning. These men did rule and were renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding; leaders of the people, men of learning, wise and eloquent men, rich in ability; men of vision and mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their heritage shall continually remain, and their names live on unto all generations. Men will declare their wisdom, and continually speak their praise. For the Lord never leaves His people without leaders and men of learning. That they may be instructed and ennobled, and their destiny exalted. America was founded on Biblical precepts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
There is a charming story concerning one of the first ghosts Mrs. Winchester saw. “He appeared first in the garden one afternoon. I saw him as I looked out of the morning-room window, a very ordinary-looking young man wearing a tweed jacket and flannels. I saw him as clearly as I am seeing you now…and yet I knew immediately that he was a ghost. I knew he was not alive in the sense that you and I are alive. No, I was not worried by him. There was nothing ominous or threatening about his appearance. I saw him several times in the garden, and then one day entering from the door-to-nowhere. This time he seemed to be ill.”
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris Research and Development 