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We See things with Different Eyes
My heart was full of music as I wandered the hours away by the bank of a brook, on my estate, watching the sun on the face of the chuckling water. A bird came to circle me, flew unafraid through the aura of gladness about me. The delicate tip of a wing brushed my wrist with the touch of the first secret kiss from my hands. The singing the filled me was part of the nature of laughing, the running of water, the sound of the wind in the reed by the edge of the stream. And as I spake, into my face there came light, as reflected from a silver flame; my long brown hair swelled ampler, in display full golden; in my eyes a brighter day dawned blue and full of love. This was a World without hatred. As it grew dark, I went home. Then retiring to my rooms, I sat down by the light of one lamp and devoured what I could of my century’s thinking, and at last I lay flat upon the bed, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the vigor of the return to the classical, by the passionate enthusiasm for the old Greek and Roman poets, and by the faith in sensuality which this age seemed to hold. I enjoyed the beauty of the old handwritten codexes. Of course, this is why, even after the printing press was still established, my libraries boasted of handwritten books. While waiting for the servants to return from their hunt, I went to the library to catching up on a little reading. However, when the party failed to return by midnight, I began to fear the worst. I stumbled out of my quarters; my mouth was very dry, and my heart was thumping painfully. I descended the stairs. And while sitting alone at a table, from the corner of my eye, I saw the curtain twitch at an upper window. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Suddenly, men where shouting, canvas flapping, wheels rumbling, and I could hear horses neighing and pawing frantically. Overjoyed to hear them, I leapt to my feet just as the doors opened and the party entered. And although there was no wind at that hour of the night, one did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless clam the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodiless line of linkage with subterrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots. Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness, I saw wriggling at that treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that came down on the apostles’ heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was a nameless intrusion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting bright and brighter, brining to my mind a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image my conscious mind could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky. The shivering men walked to the front door. However, to my consternation they made no sound and passed straight through the furniture and walls. That is when I noticed the growing luminosity of the trees. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now. The phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire mansion. It glowed on the broad-planked floor and the carpet, and shimmered over the sashes of the stained-glass windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-post, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and the furniture. Each minute saw it strengthened. I walked and stumbled as in a dream. All of Llanada Villa was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul light. Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before I could grasp or cry out. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I could not forget that sight, as I stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the other, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. However, my gaze was the next moment called swiftly to Earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, as so many others in the valley vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish, kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from Llanada Villa a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glace of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our Universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours, I flowed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which I dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted the fruit orchards in a mad cosmic frenzy. Later I was to learn that the hunting party had been ambushed and killed. Now on the 16th of January, the anniversary of the hunt, the ghostly party can be seen riding toward Llanada Villa. Apart from this, a housemaid’s ghost in a blue dress haunts the mansion, gliding silently along the corridors, while the spirit of Dieter Hulsmann, my butler haunts the Observational Tower where he starved to death, after learning of the death of the housemaid, whom he was fondly in love with. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
A group called the European Mission Society accused me of using the “arts of the Devil” and of being in league with “demonic forces” with which I supposedly intended “to perplex humanity.” With this added shock, I was crushed forever with a brooding fear I dared not even mention for many years to come. And from inside of the mansion, I had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. I believe there must be an older race than man, spawned from ancient seed in times before ours, perhaps on planets that have gone to dust, and so horrible to humans that when they are discovered the discoverers keep still about it—forget them again as quickly as they can. And they go back to time immemorial. I saw things—and knew things—horrible, wild things I cannot quite remember—visited unbelievable places, looked backward through my memory of creatures that have manifested in the walls of my home. Sometimes gloominess falls upon me like a material pall. What writhing souls, what terrors, what unrest, what madness roams these halls! If only I would have been spared! Something had cast an immediate spell of depression over me. The air of the room grew heavy and close. The open casement and the out-of-doors seemed to beckon me. I walked to the window, thrust the curtain aside, stood there. I am not addicted to nocturnal strolls or late meanderings before my bed; yet now, curiously enough I wanted to leave my home and walk the darkened fields. I paced the room nervously. The clock on the mantel pushed its ticks slowly through the quiet. It was a brilliant moonlight night. The great chimes of the Observational Tower were sounding midnight. Trying as I could to erase from my memory the queer experience which I just had, but I could see shadows of men lurking on the grounds. How long I sat there in the quiet, I do not know. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
And to my holy sacrifice invite, the power who reigns in deepest hell and night; I call Einodian Hecate, lovely dame, of Earthly, water, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander thru the shade. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, saucy and overbold? How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and I, the mistress of your charms, the close contriver of all harms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done hath been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now: get you gone, and at the pit of Acheron meet me i’ the morning: thither he will come to know his destiny: your vessels and your spells provide, your charms, and every thing beside. I am for th’ air; this night I’ll spend unto a dismal and a fatal end: great business must be wrought ere noon: upon the corner of the moon, there hangs a vaporous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground: and that, distill’d by magic sleights, shall raise such artificial sprites, as, by the strength of their illusion, shall draw him on to his confusion: he shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear his hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear; and you all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy. Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit see, sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again. And we fairies, that do run by the triple Hecate’s team from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Although The Winchester Mystery House is usually closed at 1.00am, police officers and passersby say that someone or something walks around in the mansion at night and often turns on all the lights. Numerous individuals have seen the image of a man hanging from a scaffold on the east side of the mansion. According to legend, 20 years before Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased the home, an outlaw was hanged on the land. The site where the hanging allegedly took place was built over. One of the tour guides was badly shaken by something he had seen on the upper floor, but he refused to discuss it. The ghost of the outlaw haunted the mansion with dreadful shrikes. As such, a priest was brought in to exorcise the ghost, which he did with the help of a large black bible which he left in the mansion. However, years later, after the ghost had been long forgotten, the bible was taken away for repair and immediately the shrieking resumed. The bible was hastily returned, and the fearful shrieking ceased. The outlaw’s ghost still haunts the mansion, his broken neck and limp arm by his side as he stalks the lonely depths of the second floor.
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It Has Been Almost 100 Years Since the American Crash of 1929
The reality is the TV news media in Sacramento does not care. They are evil. People have been injured and died as a result of their wanton disregard for human life and desire to make fake news. Children have to grow up without mothers and fathers. Families have been ripped apart, all so these gorillas can put on masks and makeup and tell lies, while making themselves feel important, when they are nothing more than low down, dirty criminals. The reporters are guilty of murder. History takes twists and turns and so, too, does the writing of history. After a process of about a thousand years, lasting from the beginning of the feudalization of the Roman Empire to the late Middles Ages, a period in which the European Continent was impregnated, through Christianity, with the ideas of African, Greek, Hebrew, and Arab thinking, Europe gave birth to a new culture. Western man discovered nature as an object of intellectual speculation and aesthetic enjoyment; he created a new science, which became—within a few centuries—the basis for a technique destined to transform nature and the practical life of man in a hitherto undreamed-of way; he discovered himself as an individual, endowed with almost unlimited energies and powers. This new period engendered also a new hope for the improvement, or even, the perfection of man. The hope for man’s perfection on this Earth and for his capacity to build a “good society” is one of the most characteristic and unique features of occidental thought. It is a hope that had been held by the Old Testament prophets as well as by Greek philosophers. It has then been overshadowed—although never lost—by the transhistorical ideals of salvation and by the emphasis on man’s substantial corruption in Christian thinking; it found new expression in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century utopias and in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophical and political ideas. Parallel to the blossoming of hope after the Renaissance and the Reformation went the explosive economic development of the West, the first industrial revolution. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
The organizational form it took was that of the system of capitalism, characterized by private property in the means of production, the existence of politically free wages earners, and the regulation of all economic activities by the principles of calculation and profit maximation. By 1913, industrial production increased seven times above its 1860 level, with almost all of it in Europe and North America. (Less than 10 percent of World production took place outside of these two areas.) Since the end of the First World War, mankind has entered into a new phase. The nature of the capitalistic mode of production has undergone profound changes. New Productive forces (such as the use of oil, electricity, and atomic energy) and technical discoveries have increased material productivity many times over what it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century. The new technical discoveries brought with them a new form of production. This was characterized by centralization of production in big plants, along with the dominant positions of the big corporations; managerial bureaucracies, which head these corporations but do not own them; and a mode of production in which hundreds of thousands of manual and clerical workers co-operate smoothly, supported by strong trade unions, which often share the bureaucratic character of big corporations. Centralization, bureaucratization, and manipulation are the characteristics features of the new mode of production. The earlier period of industrial development, with its need to build up a heavy industry at the expense of the satisfaction of the material needs of the workers resulted in extreme poverty for the millions of men, women, and children who worked in factories during the nineteenth century. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
As a reaction to their misery, but also as an expression of human dignity and faith, the socialist movement spread over all of Europe and threatened to overthrow the old order and to replace it with one that would work for the benefit of the broad masses of the population. The organization of labour combined with technical progress and the resulting increased productivity permitted the working class an ever-increasing share of the national product. The extreme dissatisfaction with the system that characterized the nineteenth century gave way to a spirit of co-operation within the capitalist system. A new partnership between industry and the workers, represented by trade unions and (with the exception of the United States of America) strong socialist parties took place. The trend toward violent revolutions ended in Europe after the First World War, except in the economically most backward counties among the large powers. While the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has been narrowing considerably within the Western industrial countries (and slowly in Soviet Russia), the gap between the “have countries” of Europe and North America and the “have-not countries” in Asia (with the exception of Japan), Africa, and Latin America is as wide as it ever was within one country, and is actually still widening. However, while at the beginning of the twentieth century the colonial peoples accepted their exploitation and poverty, the middle of the same century is witnessing the full-scale revolution of the poor countries. Precisely as the workers within capitalism in the nineteenth century refused to continue believing that their fate had been ordained by divine or social law, so now the poor nations refuse to accept their poverty. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Less Developed Countries (LCDs) demand not only political freedom, but a standard of living approaching that of the Western World and rapid industrialization as a means to that goal. Two thirds of the human race are unwilling to accept a situation in which their standard of living is only from 10 to less than 5 percent of that of people of the richest country—the United States of America—which with 4.3 percent of the World’s population, produces about 20 percent of the World’s goods which is 20 percent less than it was in 1960. The colonial revolution was sparked by many factors, among them the weakening of Europe, militarily and economically, after the two World Wars in the first half of the twentieth century; the nationalistic and revolutionary ideology transmitted from nineteenth-century Europe and America, and the new modes of production and social organization, which rise the possibility of “catching up with the West” beyond a slogan into a realm of reality. In the philosophical thinking of the modern era, we find also that the two aspects of freedom remain interwoven as they had already been in the theological doctrines of the Reformation. Thus for Mr. Kant and Mr. Hegal, autonomy and freedom of the individual are the central postulates of their systems, and yet they make the individual subordinate to the purpose of an all-powerful state. The philosophers of the period of the French Revolution, and in the nineteenth century Mr. Feuerbach, Mr. Marx, Mr. Stirner, and Mr. Nietzsche, have again in an uncompromising way expressed the idea that the individual should not be subject to any purposes external to his own growth or happiness. The reactionary philosophers of the same century, however, explicitly postulated the subordination of the individual under spiritual and secular authority. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth show the trend for human freedom in its positive sense at its peak. Not only did the middle class participate in it, but also the working class became an active free agent, fighting for it own economic aims and at the same time for the broader aims of humanity. With the monopolistic phase of capitalism as it developed increasingly in the last decades, the respective weight of both trends for human freedom seems to have changed. Those factors which tend to weaken the individual self have gained, while those strengthening the individual have relatively lost in weight. The individual’s feeling of powerlessness and aloneness has increased, his “freedom” all traditional bonds have become more pronounced, his possibilities for individual economic achievement have narrowed down. He feels threatened by gigantic forces and the situation resembles in many ways that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most important factor in this development is the increasing power of monopolistic capital. The concentration of capital (not wealth) in certain sectors of our economic system restricted the possibilities for the success of individual initiative, courage, and intelligence. In those sectors in which monopolistic capital has won it victories the economic independence of many has been destroyed. For those who struggle on, especially for a large part of the middle class, the fight assumes the character of a battle against such odds that the feeling of confidence in personal initiative and courage is replaced by a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
An enormous though secret power over the whole of society is exercised by a small group, on the decisions of which depends the fate of a large part of society. The inflation of Germany, 1923, or the American crash, 1929, increased the feeling of insecurity and shattered for many the hope of getting ahead by one’s own efforts and the traditional belief in the unlimited possibilities of success. Most people have lived through difficult economic times of some sort. And everyone has at some point learned about the most significant economic downturn in modern USA history—the Great Depression of the 1930s. In keeping with our unique business cycle theory, ITR Economics is forecasting that another Great Depression will start near the beginning of the next decade. The causes of the upcoming Great Depression will be similar to its predecessor in the way it will be unforeseen and unexpected for the vast majority of people; for that reason, the emotional strain on people and the similar pain for unprepared businesses could parallel that of the 1930s. Just as many of us will never forget the influence of COVID-19 on our lives, the Great Depression of the 2030s will impact the way we think, how we spend money, who and what we trust, and what we assign importance on in our lives. Of course, the upcoming Great Depression will have a profound effect on mental health. Therefore, it is important to have the right financial mindset. You know it is coming, so plan, expect it, and do not overextend your business or finances. Start paying things off. Focus on longevity. Maybe stop buying cars every two years and get the scheduled maintenance done so you can keep it for seven years to a decade. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The goal is to reduce expenditure. If you do not need to renovate your home, do not. If your home needs repairs, start getting them done now before it becomes a problem. Scrutinize your cost-structure heading into the depression. High fixed costs will be difficult to roll back. You can do simple things like cutback on how frequently the gardener comes out. Maybe every two weeks, instead of once a week. Regarding personal finances—and this might seem difficult: save as much money as you can between now and the next decade. Consider investing in gold and silver and getting a personal safe in your home (of course keep this private). The climb out of a depression is a time of tremendous opportunity. Look to invest or start your business after the Great Depression. You do not want to look back with regret at a missed opportunity. Oh, yeah, and when you go to replace that perfectly good mobile phone, consider, instead, investing in gold. Knowing the low point of this economic contraction will give you a competitive advantage. Preparing your business now to capitalize when that moment arrives could put you ahead of the competition coming out of the depression. While the upcoming Great Depression will be driven by very different circumstances, there are many things you can do for yourself and your business to establish advantageous positioning before, during and after the downturn. Do not allow tensions about the past to continue to bubble away. Many people will find themselves in need of spiritual consolation, sustenance, and blessing. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
Several will be wary of the machinations of evil, worried about demons, and seek protection from harm. It is possible that we will see war, epidemics and hunger. Some will view these as punishment for disobedience, sinfulness, and a lack of faith. Do not wait to fear divine judgment, dreading the possibility that God will bring about future wars to induce atonement. Repent now. Start saving money and paying down bills and make a pledge to return to church and live righteously. The believer must understand that the regaining the facile use of his faculties, and the maintenance of his mind in healthy condition after recovery from passive surrender to psychopathological offenders, will mean a steady fight with the ultimate negative—requiring the use of the weapons of warfare given in the Word of God. Weapons, for instance, such as the truth in the text “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,” for resisting brooding over the past, or torturing pictures of the future; “Resist the ultimate negative and it will flee from you,” when the pressure of the enemy is severe; and other “fighting” texts, which will prove truly to be the “sword of the Spirit” to thrust at the enemy in the “evil day” of his onslaught upon the escaping believer. THE STEADY ATTITUDE OR ACTION OF ONE’S WILL. In keeping the mind in normal working condition, free from the interference of the enemy, the believer should maintain the attitude of having his will steadily set: id est, “I will that my mind shall not be passive”; “I will to have full control of my faculties, and to use them”; “I will to recognize everything that comes from the enemy”—each of which declares the CHOICE of the man, rather than his determination to do these things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The powers of darkness are not affected by mere determination—id est, resolve—but they are rendered powerless by the act of the will definitely choosing, in the strength given by God, to stand against them. These steps to deliverance which has been given deal with THE PRACTICAL ASPECT OF THE BELIEVER’S ACTIONS. On the divine side, the victory has been won, and the ultimate negative and his psychopathological offenders have been conquered; but the actual liberation of the believer demands his active cooperation with the Holy Spirit, plus the steady exercise of his volition—choosing freedom instead of bondage. This will result in the normal use of every faculty of his being, set at liberty from the bondage of the enemy. “He that doeth the truth cometh to the light,” said the Lord (John 3.21). Evil spirits hate scrutiny, and so work under cover with deception and lies. The believer must come to the light of God for His light upon all spiritual experiences (as well as in all other departments of life) if he is to “cast off the works of darkness” (Romans 13.12) and put on the armour of God—the armor of light. In any scheme of Chrisitan theology, the church is an indispensable agent for the harmonizing of religion and culture. Society, the bearer of culture, encounters in the church the wellsprings of the Christian religion, the abiding presence and power of Christ. In Tillichian terminology, the church in its evangelizing role must “show to the people outside the Church that the symbols in which the life of the Church expresses itself are answers to the questions implied in their very existence as human beings.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
And, in its prophetic role, “the Church is the guardian who reveals dynamic structures in society and undercuts their demonic power by revealing them, even within the Church itself.” Therefore, one can say that the Church judges culture, including the Church’s own forms of life. For tis forms are created by culture, as its religious substance makes culture possible. The Church and culture are within, not alongside each other. The importance of the church is measure by the importance of the New Bing, for the Church is the historical embodiment of the New Being created by the Incarnation. Consequently, the such as the community of the New Being is the place where the new theonomy is actual. However, from there is pours into the whole of man’s cultural life and gives a Spiritual center to man’s spiritual life. Final revelation appeared in Jesus as the Christ, but it is the church which is supposed to receive it in a continuous process of reception, interpretation, and actualization. The history of the church is the locus of continuous dependent revelations. The Church is also the place where the reunion of man with man is an actual event, though the Church of God is permanently betrayed by the Christian churches. Yet, even if its organization seems always a betrayal of the New Being, the church is the Community of the New Being. The church has always been my home in spite of all criticisms, which I had to exercise at an early time upon Church doctrine and upon Church practice. It is the Spiritual Community established by the Spiritual Presence. Since the Spirit is the symbolic answer to an existential question, life ontologically is the actuality of being. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
Living is a process of continuous birth. The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born. Being born, however, does not only mean to be free from the womb, the lap, the hand, et cetera, but also to be free to be active and creative. Just as the infant must breathe once the umbilical cord is cut, so man must be active and creative at every moment of birth. To the extent that man is fully born, he finds a new kind of rootedness; that lies in his creative relatedness to the World, and in the ensuing experience of solidarity with all man and will all nature. From being passively rooted in nature and in the womb, man becomes one again—but this time actively and creatively with all life. Man needs to have a sense of identity. Man can be defined as the terrestrial being that can say “I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity. Other terrestrial beings, being with nature and not transcending it, have no awareness of themselves, and has no need for a sense of identity. Man, being turn away form nature, being endowed with reason and imagination, needs to form a concept of himself, needs to say and to feel “I am I.” Because he is not lived, but lives, because he has lost the original unity with nature, has to make decisions, is aware of himself and his neighbour as different persons, he must be able to sense himself as the subject of his actions. If he did not find some way of satisfying his sense of identity, as with the need for relatedness, rootedness, and transcendence, this need for a sense of identity is so vital and imperative that man could not remain sane. Man’s sense of identity develops in the process of emerging from the “primary bonds” which tie him to mother nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
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Spirit Beings Have the Power to Absorb Our Actions and Thoughts
Llanada Villa was wintry with steep hand craved shingled roofs and stained-glass windows. It was built of redwood, and had countless chimneys rising from its steep gables, and a sprawling conservatory on the west side. The sheer scale of place, stranded as its own park, suggested another World. When the stars were right, they could plunge from World to World through the sky. However, the black haunted woods were where no dweller ventured. There were insane shouts and harrowing screams, soul-chilling chant and dancing devil-flames. Reluctant to be left alone, servants refused point-blank to advance an inch toward the scene of unholy worship. There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, shadow with luminous eyes; and devils flew up out of caverns from the inner Earth to worship it at midnight. They said that it had been there before the Spanish Conquistadors, before the Indians, and before even the wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was a nightmare to see, and to see it was to die. Two bodies had once been found slaughtered, and were buried in one sepulchre, and the tree ever after brought forth blue berries, which served for memorials of our blood. Even though it made men dream, they knew to keep away. A faint glow of twilight was still in the windows overheard, but the darkness at the far end of the gallery was already impenetrable, and the dazzle of the candle confused my eyes. This particular night, I could feel the black arcades of horror emanating from within the walls of my home. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
The last of my strength deserted me, and I sank to the floor, just managing to set the candlestick upright beside me. Hot wax stung the back of my hand. You must get up, you must get up, a voice in my head was saying, but my limbs would not obey. I was crouching a few feet from the fireplace, almost in front of the sarcophagus, which lay just within the circle of light from the candle. If you cannot stand, you must crawl, said the voice. I was making another effort to rise when I thought I heard a sound from the fireplace. I clenched my teeth to stop them chattering. There it was again, a heavy, muffled, grating sound, like stone sliding upon stone. It seemed to be coming from beneath the floor in front of me. The grating ceased; for several seconds there was absolute silence, then a faint metallic creak. I held my breath; the candle flame steadied. The lid of William’s tomb was slowly rising. In life he was a beautiful youth and fond of manly sports. He would rise before the dawn to pursue the chase. I saw him when I first looked forth, fell in love with him, and was married to this charming man and he devotedly loved me. Nevertheless, my heart gave one appalling lurch and stopped beating altogether. The next second, as it seemed, I was on the far side of the connecting door, with a rattling in the lock as I fought to turn it. I could see the faint glimmer of my candle shining through the gap beneath the door. Then another, stronger light began to play about my feet; there was a creak, and thump, and the sound of footsteps approaching. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
I thought of running for the stairs, but I had no light, and the visitant would hunt me down. The door handle rattled; the door shook; the footsteps moved purposefully away. In a few moments, it would be on the landing. I had not time to run and lock all the doors at the far end of the library. I thought of the weapons arrayed along the gallery wall—too high for me to reach. If it seized me, most likely I would die horribly. The footsteps were still receding. I gripped the key with both nerveless hands and twisted. There was a rasp and a snick, but the footsteps did not pause. I withdrew the key and slipped back into the gallery, just as the light passed out through the double doors at the other end. The beam of a lantern played across the walk beyond; then the footsteps moved off along the landing, boards creaking at every tread. For a moment I thought I might be spared, but then I heard the squeak of hinges as my pursuer entered the library. I tried to slip the key into the keyhold, but my hand was shaking so violently that I dared not let the metal touch. My candle still burned where I had left it on the floor. Footsteps moved within the library—one, two, three, and then a pause. Light flickered beneath the door. The footsteps were moving again—I could not tell which way. I moved toward the candle, almost tripping over the hem of my dress. As I knelt to the flame, I realized I had no idea how fast the wick would burn. The floor seemed to be dropping away beneath my feet. If you faint, it will catch you, said the voice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises I heard as the footsteps continued to plough through the mansion toward me. Howls and squawking ecstasies tore through my home and reverberated through fireplaces like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. Suddenly came the spectacle itself. The mad cacophony of the orgy fortunately deadened. Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn was some eight feet in height. It was some ancient legendary horror. Like a bird beneath the hypnotic gaze of deadly serpent, I was paralyzed by terror. The gloom of the chamber deepened. The stifling air was laden with unformulable menace, but it was constrained by the spell of a black and lethal necromancy. There crept forth the choking mustiness of hidden vaults and embalmed centurial corruption, together with the ghostly spice of a strange perfume that seemed to emanate from the beast. Then I recalled the story of a most evil creature, who had been buried somewhere in this land hundreds of years ago. I did not nurse the illusion that I was dealing here with an accidental tragedy. The creature was once a small boy who was abducted and dying of exposure lost in the wind-scoured hills that rose behind my home. He had been stolen. Then he had been murdered. And no one had ever been called to account for these awful, planned, sequential crimes. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Anger stirred in the beast. And I knew I was sharing his indignant rage which he had so vibrantly felt. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
My teeth were tapping together like typewriter keys. There was something else, some faint warning that reached me. Not actually heard so much as sensed. As if someone’s breath were coming down the shaft from just over my head, slightly as if by a sounding board. I acted on it instantly, more from instinct than actual realization of danger. The beast looked at me, contorted into a maniacal grimace of impending destruction, as I reached for my ivory handled pistol, both of its arms were high over his head wielding something. It looked like a sword, but there was no time to find out. For what seemed like five minutes, the din and chaos were beyond descriptions. Shots were fired. It came hissing down in a big arc against the floor. The sword, of course, followed it a second later. The very weight of the creature’s body caused it to crash through the floor. Numb and half frozen, gusts of uncontrollable shivering swept over me every once in a while. I turned my head and looked toward that sinister beast and there was nothing left but an opening in the floor. Within the walls of this dark house, there was a secret which even torture could not extract. For shapes came out of the dark to pay the inhabitants a visit. I was overwhelmed by the supernatural situation amid whose dubious horror and ineluctable sorceries had somehow become involved. Malefic sorcery, deadly peril of both soul and body. I fled blindly into the darkness until I collided painfully with a wall. #RandolphHarri 5 of 8
There was a secret which even torture could not extract in Llanada Villa. I was not absolutely alone, for shapes came out of the dark to visit. Although they no longer lived, those killed by the Winchester Rifle no longer lived, they would never really die. They all lay in my home preserved by spells and this ancient curse. They could live in the darkened hallways, shadows, and corners whilst millions of years rolled by. I could hear them whisper in the shadowy wings of the mansion; I caught the sibilation of ominous voices, like those of familiars that respond to the summoning of wizards; and I seemed to hear, even in the vaults and towers and remote chambers, the tread of feet that were hurrying on malign and secret errands. However, the oblivion was around me like the meshes of a sable net; and it closed in relentlessly upon my troubled mind, and drowned the alarms and of my agitated senses. A sad and sunless daylight filtered through the windows. The mansion was very still; and it seemed that the animating spirit of evil was now quiescent; the shadowy wings of the horror and malignity, the feet that had sped on baleful errands, the summoning sorcerers, the responding familiars, were all lulled in a temporary slumber. I opened the door, and tiptoed along the deserted hall. Amid the gloomy walls that surround me, the somber ancient halls, the high towers and the heavy bastions, there is but one thing that veritably exists; and all the rest is a fabric of illusion. I passed the doors of many secret rooms. There was one room in particular, a bare room, entirely built of stone, and illumined only by narrow slits high up in the wall. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The place was very dim, but in the middle of the floor was a tomb of marble, where William lay. And there he was. He appeared to be slumbering peacefully as an infant. Darkness returned with an earsplitting crash. The floor lurched and rebounded; for a moment there was silence, and then a long, low rumble, gathering power as it approached until it broke over me with a thunderous roar. Choking dust filled my lungs, and I was flung from my feet and rolled over and over like a rag doll in a storm. There was a vile, rasping taste in my mouth and throat, and a heavy weight pressing down on the side of my head; I tried to push it away, and realized it was the floor. The area on which I was lying were covered in sharp, gritty fragments. A faint, misty glow appeared in the darkness away to my right. I began to crawl toward it, not knowing what else to go, brushing aside slivers of what felt like glass, until I saw that it was the light from the candle I had left burning in the library. The fear had left me; perhaps I had simply exhausted my capacity to feel anything at all. I rose shakily to my feet, made my way along the landing to the library, fetched the candle and returned to the gallery—what remained of it. At the far end, where the tomb and the chimney and the armour had been, was a great gaping hole in the wall. Half the floor was gone; and the boards ended in a jagged mess of splinters not ten feet from where I had been lying. Dust was floating up from a lack pit beyond. A beast was down there. The thought struck me like icy water, dashing away the numbness. Suddenly I was trembling so that I could scarcely stand, as trickling noises echoed in the darkness. Then came out of the floor the black spirits of Earth, mouldy and shadowy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I conjure thee, Bechard, and constrain thee, in like manner, by the Most Holy Names of God, ELOY, ADONAY, ELOY, AGLA, SAMALABACTAY, which are written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; by all the sacrament, by all the names written in this spell; and by him who drove three from the height of Heaven. I conjure and command thee by the virtue of the Most Holy Eucharist, which hath redeemed men from their sins; I conjure three to come without any delay, to do and perform all my biddings, without any prejudice to my body or soul, without harming this spell, or doing injury to those that accompany me. I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of all other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if indeed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I now plant the seed of my desire within the black Earth, through the mouth of Arezura where the powers of sorcery and counter creation dwell. Through this gateway of darkness, I now shine the light and power of my will upon this World for the benefit of me and mine! #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
In the early summer of 2007, a couple were traveling to Santa Clara, California on a business trip. Shortly after 10 am, the decided to stop and eat at The Winchester Café. They remembered that the food was prepared in an excellent down-home country style, and that the waiter, waitress, the cook, and the other customers were so friendly in a sincere manner, and they promised that they would come back. And a sixteen years later, they tried to do exactly that on a return drive. However, The Winchester Café, which is located inside The Winchester Mystery House was nowhere to be seen. They even looped back a couple of times, thinking they may have somehow drive on by. They even got into an argument, each of them insisting that they remembered exactly where it was. They just could not find it, and since the hour was getting very late, they drove on. When they got home, they went to the website of The Winchester Mystery House and found a note saying that the mansion was closed and had gone dark for the day. They really wanted to eat at the café because the cooking was so wonderful. However, what if The Winchester Mystery House appeared and disappeared simply appeared and disappeared every so often? Or maybe the couple was lost in time and space for decades? We will never know. But at least we know the food and the company would have been good.
Cloaking is the power to hide the presence of oneself, other beings, or locations by making them imperceptible to the eye. It is effective at preventing others from discovering one’s location. Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York have discovered a way to hide large objects from sight using inexpensive and readily available lenses. Cloaking is the process that allows an object to become hidden from view, while everything around it appears undisturbed. When an object is placed behind the layered lenses it seems to disappear. “From what we know this is the first cloaking device that provides three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking,” said graduate student Joseph Choi, who helped develop the technology. In their tests, the researchers have cloaked a hand, a face, and a ruler, making each object appear “invisible” while the image behind the hidden object remains in view. The implications of this discovery are endless. Cloaking can also be achieved through the use of certain spells and potions. Additionally, beings with the power of invisibility are able to naturally cloak themselves by becoming unseeable. The Winchester Mystery House is truly mysterious.
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/
If He is Not Capable of Creating, if He Cannot Love, this is the Evenin’ of Destruction
To keep America alive and thriving, Americans need to come together as one people—All American. Regardless of what happened in the past, people need to drop all animosity towards government, citizens, their family, and neighbours and do the right thing and obey the law and respect that Constitution of the United States of America. An American is someone who subscribes to the principles set out in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America is, on this account, a creedal nation, perhaps the first in history, with Americans defined by an adherence to certain beliefs about equality, liberty, individual rights, and limited government. This idea of America as a creedal nation goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville, who found the peculiarity of our national experience—at least in relation to Europe—to be the absence of a feudal past, that is, the lack of a tradition of hierarchy, hereditary aristocracy, and serfdom (which, of course, is not quite true). What impressed him most about the American experience was what he called “the generative fact” of equality which all else derived. We would call this Mr. Tocqueville’s Thesis. It forms the traditional core of American patriotism. The American creed is understood as a product not of geography, tradition, or inheritance, but of reason. Its principles are the property of all who want to participate in the blessings of liberty. It requires only a willingness to express support for our established laws and religion and an expression of support for our founding creed and live by it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
At a recent Fourth of July picnic at the home of a colleague, the hostess asked the group if we all felt patriotic. Many people will say that they do not because they reflect on all of the hardships they have endured due to their race, gender, creed, disability, religion, material status, or sexuality. However, that is the goal of the ultimate negative. To get you to hate your home land so they can take it over and destroy it. Some of us have grown up in houses that have flown the flag, some of us have generations of ancestors who have fought in wars. When I was a kid, my dad used to read me the Declaration of Independence before lighting fireworks. As I got older, I even grew to like apple pie, and tried to engage in sports talk with other guys. If you look at the state of the World, you will realize how beautiful America is and how good we have it. It is also very important to remain patriotic and to help every American advance because Less Developed Countries (LCDs) are not competing for the title of America’s Next Top Model (Global Superpower). Therefore, we have to make sure our students are the best educated in the World, that American cars are appealing to Americans and other nations, and that we buy American poultry, produce and diary. We do not need to pack our cities full of buildings and homes. While buildings and homes are important, we need to keep land open for farms, parks, forest, and wildlife. Patriotism acknowledges America’s sins and flaws, it celebrates America’s history, her contributions to humanity, the eternal optimism and energy of her people. Above all it celebrates the documents in which successive generations of Americans have placed their faith. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Men and women and children and animals who have given their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something, it I the love of something. The most impressive patriots that I have met are men and women and children and animals who wearing their country’s uniform, are clearly inspired by love of country and love of its ideals. It may even be that love of your own country and countrymen is a prerequisite to genuine affection for people in other lands. American patriotism has everything to do with the evolution of the Constitution of the United States of America and the ideals that inspired the founders. Patriotism also has a great deal to do with faith in human possibility, and a belief in a better future that has inspired successive wave of colonists and immigrants. Patriotism is a feeling of love and respect for your country. The United States of America is well-suited and well-situated to take advantage of the Olympian possibilities for the manufacturing of patriotism. Since the year 2000, Americans have gained considerable freedom in their personal lives. Choices that used to be condemned, such as remaining single or childless, have become acceptable options. Family and gender roles re much more flexible and being free to develop oneself has become a goal for both women and men. I think many people have an incorrect idea that they will be allowed the same freedoms they have in America if we are invaded and conquered by another nation. They do not realize other nations have far less freedom. For instance, in certain parts of China, it is considered inappropriate for men to wear short pants. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
The American situation—leads us to establishing values which have objective validity; this validity exists only with regard to the existence of man; outside of him there are no values. What is the nature of man, what are the special conditions of human existence, and what are the needs which are rooted in these conditions? Man is torn away from the primary union with nature, which characterized terrestrial existence. Having at the same time reason and imagination, he is aware of his aloneness and separateness, of his powerlessness and ignorance, of the accidentalness of his birth and his death. If we could not find new ties with his fellow man which replace the old ones, regulated by instincts, he could not face this state of being for a second. Even if all his physiological needs were satisfied, he would experience his state of aloneness and individuation as a prison from which he had to break out in order to retain his sanity. In fact, even if he is not behind barred windows, the insane person is the one who has completely failed to establish any kind of union and is imprisoned. The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on which the fulfilment of man’s sanity depends. This need is behind all phenomena which constitutes the whole gamut of intimate human relations, of all passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word. There are several ways in which this union can be sought and achieved. Man can attempt to become one with the World by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
In this way he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted. Another possibility of overcoming separateness lies in the opposite direction: man can try to unite himself with the World by having power over it, by making others a part of himself, and thus transcending his individual existence by domination. The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship. The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction. They have a self-propelling dynamism, and because no amount f submission or domination (or possession or fame) is enough to give a sense of identity and union, more and more of it is sought. The ultimate result of these passions is defeat. It cannot be otherwise; although these passions aim at the establishment of a sense of union, they destroy the sense of integrity. The person driven by any one of these passions actually becomes dependent on others; instead of developing his own individual being, he is dependent on those whom he submits to or whom he dominates. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
There is only one passion which satisfies man’s need to unite himself with the World and to acquire at the same time a sense of integrity and individuality, and this is love. Love is union with somebody, or something outside oneself under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self. It is an experience of sharing, of communion, which permits the full unfolding of one’s own inner activity. The experience of love does away with the necessity of illusions. There is no need to inflate the image of the other person, or of myself, since the reality of active sharing and love permits me to transcend my individualized existence and at the same time to experience myself as the bearer of the active powers which constitute the act of loving. What matters is the particular quality of living, not the object. Love is in the experience of human solidarity with our fellow creatures, it is in the erotic love of man and woman, in the love of the mother for her child, and also in the love for oneself as a human being; it is in the mystical experience of union. In the fact of loving, I am one with All, and yet I am myself, a unique, separate, limited, mortal human being. Indeed, out of the very polarity between separateness and union, love is born and reborn. Another aspect of the human situation, closely connected with the need for relatedness, is man’s situation as a creature and his need to transcend this very state of the passive creature. Man is thrown into this World without his consent or will. In this respect he is not different from any other terrestrial being, from the plants, or from inorganic matter. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
However, being endowed with reason and imagination, man cannot be content with the passive role of the creature, with the role of dice cast out of a cup. He is driven by the urge to transcend the role of the creature, the accidentalness and passivity of his existence, by becoming a “creator.” Man can create life. This is the miraculous quality which he indeed shares with all living beings, but with the difference that he alone is aware of being created and of being a creator. Man can create life, or rather, woman can create life, by giving birth to a child and by caring for the child until it is sufficiently grown to take care of its own needs. Man—man and woman—can create by planting seeds, by producing material objects, by creating art, by creating ideas, by loving one another. In the act of creation man transcends himself as a creature, raises himself beyond the passivity and accidentalness of his existence into the realm of purposefulness and freedom. In man’s need for transcendence lies one of the roots for love, as well as for art, religion and material production. To create presupposes activity and care. It presupposes love for that which one creates. If he is not capable of creating, if he cannot love, how, then does man solve the problem of transcending himself? If I cannot create live, I can destroy it. To destroy life makes me also transcend it. Indeed, that man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the fact of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. However, in man’s destruction of life, other creatures suffer. For example, Vaquita, the World’s rarest marine mammal, is on the edge of extinction. The plight of cetaceans—whales, dolphins, and porpoises—as a whole is exemplified by the rapid decline of the vaquita in Mexico, with about 10 individual remaining. This little porpoise was not discovered until 1958 and a little over half a century later, we are on the brink of losing them forever. Vaquita are often caught and drowned in gillnets used by illegal fishing operation in marine protected areas within Mexico’s Gulf of California. The population has dropped drastically in the last few years. If we are not careful, man will rob this Earth of all its natural resources and animal life. Free human birth control distribution in America LDCs may help save the planet. Thus, the ultimate choice for man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate. The enormous power of the will for destruction which we see in the history of man and which we have witnessed so frightfully in our own time is rooted in the nature of man, just as the drive to create is rooted in it. To say that man is capable of developing his primary potentiality for love and reason does not imply the naïve belief in man’s goodness. Destructiveness is a secondary potentiality, rooted in the very existence of man, and having the same intensity and power as any passion can have. However—and this is the essential point of the argument—it is the alternative to creativeness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Creation and destruction, love and the, are not two instincts which exist independently. They are both answers to the same need for transcendence, and the will to destroy must rise when the will to create cannot be satisfied. However, the satisfaction of the need to create lead to happiness, destructiveness to suffering—most of all, for the destroyer himself. Selfishness is not identical with self-love but with its very opposite. Selfishness is one kind of greediness. Like all greediness, it contains an instability, as a consequence of which there is never any real satisfaction. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without every reaching satisfaction. Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough, of missing something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more. If we observe still closer, especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself. The puzzle in this seeming contradiction is easy to solve. Selfishness is rooted in this very lack of fondness for oneself. The person who is not fond of himself, who does not approve of himself, is in constant anxiety concerning his own self. He has not the inner security which can exist only on the basis of genuine fondness and affirmation. He must be concerned about himself, greedy to get everything for himself, since basically he lacks security and satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The same hold true with the so-called narcissistic person, who is not so much concerned with getting things for himself as with admiring himself. While on the surface it seems that these persons are very much in love with themselves, they actually are not fond of themselves, and their narcissism—like selfishness—is an overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love. Dr. Freud has pointed out that the narcissistic person has withdrawn his love from others and turned it toward his own person. Although the first part of this statement is true, the second is a fallacy. He loves neither others nor himself. As we focus on this psychological analysis of selfishness, we find ourselves confronted with the contradiction that modern man believes himself to be motivated by self-interest and yet that actually his life is devoted to aims which are not his own; in the same way that Mr. Calvin felt that the only purpose of man’s existence was to be not himself but God’s glory. We tried to show that selfishness is rooted in the lack of affirmation and love for the real self, that is, for the whole concrete human being with all his potentialities. The “self” in the interest of which modern man acts is the social self, a self which is essentially constituted by the role the individual is supposed to play and which in reality is merely the subjective disguise for the objective social function of man in society. Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self. While modern man seems to be characterized by utmost assertion of the self, actually his self has been weakened and reduced to a segment of the total self—intellect and will power-to the exclusion of all other parts of the total personality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The art of setting the level of aspiration for a group so that it will evoke optimum effort never ceases to be an expression of leadership. Goals which appear to have been imposed upon a group from above of from outside have a stifling effect even when they are set very low, whereas goals which emerge from a group’s attempt to better its own record can stimulate prodigious effort. Thus goals are always most strategically calculated when they can be related to a recent cycle of similar experience, less perspicuously when they are proposed for the first time. When the report has been finally assembled and approved, it is ready to be passed on to the executive or the policy-making body which commissioned its preparation. A question may remain whether and when it should be made available to the public concerned, and in what form. In general, of course, the best result is achieved by full and immediate publication. On the other hand, special circumstances may demand different timing, and publication in both popular and technical versions. The scale of distribution of the report depends on the degree to which it is to be part an educational campaign, or simply precipitated into public discussion on a take it or leave it basis. Generally speaking, the latter may appear preferable in most cases, leaving advocacy of its recommendations to such voluntary groups as by this stage of the planning process come into existence. Opportunity for the lay members of the public to see and question the experts in person is the most effective means to diminish any gulf of status or suspicion between them, and to encourage the public’s participation in the solution of its problems. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
From the first murmurings of awareness of the existence of a problem, there will normally have been a steady gain in definiteness of its conception among the public affected. If people always knew what they wanted, professional planners would then be in the happy position of being able to speak authoritatively about the best means. However, ends are not given, nor are ends and means so nicely distinguishable. Knowledge of limitations and possibilities affect the formulation of ends, and experts may be as influential as leaders in helping to form public opinion. Nevertheless, while it is up to the experts to propose, it is up to the public to dispose, since no expert is qualified to know better than people themselves what they want. And they themselves do not know what they want until they have considered the matter. The concept of “decision load” is crucial to any understanding of democracy. All societies require a certain quantity and quality of political decisions in order to function. Indeed each society has its own unique decision structure. The more numerous, varied, frequent and complex the decisions required to run it, the heavier its political decision load. And the way this load is shared fundamentally influences the level of democracy in society. In preindustrial societies, where the division of labour was rudimentary and change was slow, the number of political or administrative decisions actually required to keep things running was minimal. The decision load was small. A tiny, semi-educated, unspecialized feudal or monarchical elite could more or less run things without help from below, carrying the entire decision load by itself. #RandolphHarris 12 or 25
Traders are a continuum, uniformly distributed along a circle of circumference. In the first period is the one where honesty or cheating are the crucial issue; the appropriate rewards or punishment come in the second period, which may as usual stand for the educed form of a longer future. The payoffs are expressed in present values so no further discounting is necessary. In each period, traders are randomly matched in pairs. Every economic problem is an economic opportunity. Someone who can solve the problem, turning the potential gains into actual ones, may be able to charge a fee for this service. In our context, if the government does not provide contract enforcement using its general revenues, then a private person may be able to do so for a profit. Theoretical and empirical literatures alike identify two difficult problems that confront large populations trying to resolve prisoners’ dilemmas: collecting and conveying information about previous cheating; and erecting a credible structure of punishment to deter cheating in current periods. The principle that “economic problems are also economic opportunities” applies to both of these. Anyone can, at a cost, collect information about individual traders’ histories of cheating, and sell this information to other prospective traders in the future. Trade associations often collect and provide such information to members. Three different forms of such associations can be distinguished. The first kind, exemplified by relatively small groups of specialized commodity traders are mainly concerned with trades among pairs of its own members, and provide information about members’ past actions in their trades with other members. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The second and the third kinds are concerned with interactions between a member on one side and a non-member (general public) on the other side. Of these, the second kind collect information about cheating by one of the general public and provide it to their members; credit-approval services maintained by Visa and Mastercard are an instance of this. The third kind, usually known as Better Business Bureaus, keep track of their members’ behaviour and make this information available to the public. This enables their members credibly to create and maintain reputation. The diamond traders’ club, which governs transactions between its members and other dealers who may or may not be members, seems to be a mixture of these types. In some situations, third parties charge a fee to provide information to one side of a transaction about the history of the other side; agencies that rate the creditworthiness of people or firms, or services that monitor the quality of goods and services provided by firms, are well-known examples. Such a for-profit intermediary must solve two other problems: he must discourage free riding, by making the information unavailable or useless to non-payers; and he must credibly promise not to misuse the information, for example for extortion or double crossing. However, this is simplified by the fact that the intermediary’s relationships with all customers are bilateral and non-anonymous: while two traders may meet each other only infrequently, each of them can meet the intermediary every period. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The difficult problem of resolving prisoners’ dilemmas in random pairwise matching from a large population is converted into the somewhat easier problem of resolving prisoners’ dilemma of direct bilateral reciprocity between each member of the population and the intermediary. This is conceptually similar to solving the problem of double coincidence of wants by introducing money. The issuer of money gets seignorage; the information intermediary charges a fee for his services. A suitably qualified intermediary can also provide an enforcement service, that is, inflict punishments on behalf of customers. We have a well-known study of private judges enforcing “the law merchant” (LM) in medieval France, who performed both functions. First, such a judge or intermediary kept records on the behaviour of traders in the markets over which he offered his services. Second, he adjudicated disputes brought before him by one of the traders. In each period, each player is matched with a partner whom he is unlikely to have met before and is unlikely to meet again. Each player in such a pair can, by paying a feed, query the LM about his current partner’s history of behaviour in previous matches. Each such pair then plays a one-time prisoner’s dilemma game. If either of the players in this game cheats, the other can, by paying another fee, complain to the LM, but only if the victim had queried the LM about the partner’s history. If such a compliant is lodged, the LM investigates at a cost and, if appropriate, awards the plaintiff a judgement (monetary restitution) against the defendant. A losing defendant decides whether to pay the judgment. An unpaid judgment becomes another act of cheating, and is recorded as such by the LM. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Under appropriate conditions on the various parameters, and for a suitably calculated structure of fees, this system has an equilibrium outcome where everyone (including the LM) behaves honestly. The intuition is that the LM’s record-keeping solves the information problem that would exist in a large population of traders with infrequent bilateral matches, and then punishment strategies of repeated games can work. Thus the LM serves as a complement to, not a substitute for, the usual reputation mechanism. The LM institution also contributed to the formulation of a uniform set of standards for commercial transactions across large areas of Europe, and therefore played a part in the evolution of modern commercial laws. We have a memorable example of private intermediation which involves the Sicilian Mafia. When the butcher comes to me to buy an animal, he knows that I want to cheat him [by giving him a low-quality animal]. However, I know that he wants to cheat me [by revoking his payment]. This we need Peppe [tht is, a third party] to make us agree. And we both pay Peppe a percentage of the deal. Peppe was mainly selling information for this service, he received a 2 percent commission. When in addition he acted as a guarantor of quality and payment, the percentage increased. Peppe provides his services to the people on both sides of the transaction. They use his services voluntarily. The services are of two kinds, ex ante information about each other party’s history of behaviour, and ex post punishments meted out in response to any cheating. The fees for the latter (enforcement) services are higher than those for the former (information) service. The parties to any transaction may not have any direct bilateral reciprocal interaction with each other, but each of them has such interaction with Peppe. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Organized crime performs functions of economic governance in other countries, and has done so throughout history. It usually operates at time or in niches where the state is absent. The origins of the Mafia’s enforcement role can be traced back to nineteenth century Sicily after the abolition of feudalism. Publicly provided security was inefficient and banditry widespread; landowners began to hire guards of former feudal lords and some of the tougher bandits to protect their property. In Japan in August-September 1945, when the government had collapsed after defeat in World War II but the occupying USA forces had not yet restored order, the Yakuza played a major role in getting markets restarted. Similar activities are found in Russia and other transition economies. As housing prices continue to increase, and in markets like San Jose, California where a one bedroom, one bathroom starts off at around $3,000.00 a month, many people are feeling insecure. Some people have been playing games for so long and bought homes when they were affordable so they can feel like feudal lords and abuse people that they have lost all touch with reality and the reality of how expensive live is in 2024. They are still running around like sixteen-year-old boys trying to have the coolest car, while others are literally slaving to try to become established in a corrupt city such as Sacramento, California. The state of affairs in Sacramento is just pathetic and for some reason the government seems unwilling or incapable to take action, leading some to question, “What is this?” because it does not even seem like this is reality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The government has become like the Wizard of Ozz, a nameless, faceless, entity that can take swift and severe actions to ruin lives, but lack the power to do anything good and correct its mistakes. If you want to survive, you basically have to find the resources yourself and even if you are injured, work yourself to death to stay sane and try to find a way out of the situation. It is illegal for the government to terrorize and hold people hostage, but that is basically what is happening, while others enjoy all the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And in addition to being held hostage, they make sure to isolated and alienate an individual. So that no one can help and uplift one, and put one around a bunch of dysfunctional people who need financial, mental, and physical help that they refuse to seek. There is such a collective consciousness that people do not seek to change their situation for the better, it is always “we” need to get together and go somewhere and do something is fun. However, as some of these people are part of a couple, why do they not go out on a date or go see a movie or go to a nightclub. It is almost like Sacramento is a haven for low-income criminals and white-collar criminals who help them. You see a lot of people sitting around, smoking and drinking and spitting on the ground, and wonder, why do they not go to one of, many of these, beautiful parks. Instead, they invite all their grandchildren to play in parking lots and run behind cars with high insurance so they can “get paid,” not seeming to care that someone could end up dead. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Also, instead of getting jobs, they target certain people and try to have an accident because, much like PG&E, even if it is not your fault, the word is insurance companies will make you pay. They do not even care about your health or injuring you to the point that you can no longer with, and will not even pay you. However, they also forget that you may have a pregnant passenger and/or a baby in the car with you. Sacramento has become so deplorable and corrupt. It is like a blackhole, seemingly impossible to escape from alive. No matter how many rituals you do, prayers you say, government agencies you ask for health, they simply stop responding. It is a pretty city, but if the state and local government decides to trap and target you, your life and the life of anyone around you does not seem to matter. You are nothing more than a placeholder, they want to use to help some criminal come up off of. There are many caring and supportive people and the community, and a lot of happy people who are able to work and have fun on their free time, but I am not sure Sacramento is a safe community. It can be like the Twilight Zone for those who are selected as targets. And then you look at the State Capitol of California, which is in Sacramento, and it looks like half the building was blown up (it is under renovation), but it just makes a person ponder stability of the city. What is it? It is a really weird place. It is a lot like a ghost town. It will make you question reality. I just have to say it, every since I came back from China in 2006, I felt it as soon as I got off the plane, but something did not seem right about this town. It did not feel like the same city I left, and what happened afterwards is even more bizarre. I will just be real. Sometimes I wonder if I am dead and is this just a government computer simulated reality. Everything feels and looks real, but something is wrong. Like, for instance, look at how President Biden acts, he is confused, falls around, misspeaks, and it barely stirs a ripple. No one says a word about it in public. And then the mainstream media is probably less reliable than The National Enquirer. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
I honestly, even though I pretend to, do not believe anything anyone tells me anymore because so many people are constantly telling lies. I am serious, it is like this city has been overran by demons. And a lot of families do not act right anymore, a lot of daughters and mothers have confrontations and conflicts, and even people who go to church are corrupt. Someone told me the World is coming to an end, and that could explain it because a lot of this is talked about in the Christian Bible and Book of Mormon. However, if that is true, I encourage everyone to live right and ask God for forgiveness. And if you feel how hot in gets in Sacramento, could you imagine what burning in hell for an eternity would be life? God forgives everyone, but do not want until it is too late to repent. Also, make sure to enjoy life. Do not spend time around people you do not like. Find people and activities that you can enjoy. If your neighbours are annoying, go out of your way to ignore and avoid them, so they will understand what time it is. Also, with some many people carrying guns, and mental illness being a crisis in America, why are people shocked when something goes wrong and innocent people are killed because of some bully who thought being bad was the coolest thing since Jordan Basketball sneakers? And also, have you serious considered how dangerous gun control is? There more than 20,000 gangs consisting of approximately 1 million members in the United States of America; gangs are present in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all U.S.A. territories. CEOs think about things like this, but what is a gang decided to come to your house and target you? You know, ten fifteen men and women show up because they have a problem with you and want to cause you harm. You may need an AK-47. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Or what is you live in a Victorian Farmhouse in Iowa on 400 acres and a gang decided to attack you? Sometimes calling the police is not always an option, nor is it your best option. The police, many of them are on the job to protect people and will go out of their way to make sure you are safe, but there is a lot of crime going on in America, and your calls to 911 could be getting relayed to Hood Day Sacramento, for example, and an officer or someone impersonating an officer may be taking your calls. It has happened to me several times. It will be a life-or-death situation and I have been sent a text message, allegedly from the police department, saying that “We will not be responding.” I have also reported trespassers on my neighbour’s property and been told, “The owner needs to take responsibility.” How can we have a safe community when the police allow some people and properties to be targeted and refuses to help certain citizens? It just does not make sense. People have been stalked, kidnapped, raped several times, beat, attacked, robbed, had their homes and cars broken into and thousands of dollars done because someone thinks terrorism is fun and cool. The boarders to the country are wide open, allowing anyone to just walk in with any amounts of drugs, guns, criminal intent. And CBS13, KCRA News, FOX40, Good Day Sacramento, and ABC10 may be the biggest criminal organization in Sacramento. Turn the news off, stop watching them so they have to shutdown. In the words of Beyonce, “America—America has a problem.” Anyway, protection should be regarded as the Mafia main business; if it engages in some activities that may need its own protection services, this is just “downstream vertical integration.” Perhaps one can regard the Mafia as an organization that specializes in providing protection, while individual mafiosi may be entrepreneurs engaged in the activities that need the protection. The Mafia may also engage in extortion, or creating the need for protection of property by itself creating a threat to the property; these are strategies that need to be examined as part of the equilibrium of the game. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Peppe in his information role resembles a credit-rating agency or even a restaurant guide, except that he acts for both sides of the deal. In the guarantor or enforcer role, he resembles the official legal system, but has different information acquisition methods and different methods of punishment, and is motivated by private profit rather than by social welfare. Peppe’s commission for enforcement is higher than that for information. You may think this a trivial question, and think of obvious answers: enforcement activity is riskier to provide; that state’s criminal law (if it is functioning) may intervene; the miscreant whom Peppe is trying to punish may prove tougher than Peppe; and so on. All these arguments say that the cost of providing enforcement is higher than that of providing governance by information alone; they are supply-side reasons. Peppe usually acts as a monopolist in enforcement over an allocated territory, defined by geography or the type of activity being protected (although conflicts over monopoly rights or over territories may break out among Mafiosi or their families). A monopolist changes a prince above cost, based on the customer’s willingness to pay. Therefore we must look for demand-side reasons, namely explain why Peppe’s customers are willing to pay more for the enforcement service than for the information service. To resist the enemy on the ground of the blood of Christ means wielding the weapon of the finished work of Christ, by faith: believing that Jesus’ death for in frees the trusting believe from the guilt of sin; that Jesus’ death to sin on the cross, and the believer’s death with Him, frees the Christian from the power of sin; and that Jesus’s death-victory on Calvary frees the believer also from the power of the ultimate negative. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
A condensed form of the principles and conditions for deliverance from the deception of psychopathological offenders in any degree may be given as follows: Recognition of the possibility of deception. Admission of actual deception. An attitude of neutrality toward all past spiritual experiences until truth concerning them is ascertained. Refusal of all ground of psychopathological offenders. The taking of the position of death to sin (Rom. 6.11). The detection and refusal of all that belongs to deception. The understanding of the criterion of the true, normal conditions so as to gauge signs of deliverance. Active usage of the faculties so that they reach the normal condition. Recognize persistently the true cause of bondage; id est, the work of a psychopathological offender or offenders. Choose to have absolutely nothing to do with the powers of psychopathological offenders. Frequently declare this. Do not talk or worry about their manifestations. Recognize, refuse, and then ignore them. Refuse and reject all their lies and excuses, as they are recognized. Notice the thoughts, and the way in which they come, and when—and immediately declare the attitudes of Romans 6.11 against all the interferences of the enemy. Hinderances to deliverances from deception may again be given here briefly, as: Not knowing it is possible to be deceived. Thinking God will not allow a believer to be deceived. Saying, “I am safe under the blood,” without intelligent knowledge of the conditions. Saying, “I have no sin.” Saying “I am doing all that God wants, so all must be right”—without seeking to understand what the will of the Lord is (Eph. 5.10-17). Some hints on overcoming passivity of mind are as follows: Act as far as you can, doing what you can. Take the initiative, instead of passively depending on others. Decide for yourself in everything you can. Do not lean on others. Live in the moment; watch and pray step by step. Use your mind, and think—think over all you do, and say, and are. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Fundamental to Tillichian Christology is the notion of estrangement, for it is from our estranged human situation that the New Being rescues us. The force of the method of correlation is nowhere more powerfully evident in the portrayal of man’s estrangement and the power of the New Being which overcomes it. The original sin is the state of estrangement and Creation, and the Fall coincides. Which seems to indicate that finitude is inherently evil, and sin ontologically necessary. Perhaps God understands this and that is what the Fall is all about. Man’s nature is evil and rebellious and he needs God to cultivate and teach him good. Without God, man will become corrupt and evil. God is your Heavenly Father and if you do not follow His rules, you will be a bad child. His ways are greater than yours. Much like if children did not obey their parents, even though no human is perfect and some parents are bad, when you are a minor, they typically want you to behave so the law does not punish them. If you did not listen to your parents, chances are that you would be a bad kid and end up dead or in jail. TV news reports in Sacramento, California USA say they “Do not have time to reach the (Chrisitan) Bible.” Obviously, if people are too busy to listen to their Heavenly Father, they are actively engaged and evil and you should not be learning from them. The Fall is the state of existence in which the potentialities of finite essences are actualized, but the nonbeing of the essence takes its toll also, and the creature does not perfectly live up to its essence. It is always in some degree estranged from it and, consequently, from the ground of being. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
However, inevitability is not the same as necessity. Now, I ask you to consider, do people repeat themselves or does history? It depends on what you believe. However, many of these people may not have been reconstituted and may be new souls. Therefore, if history repeats itself, then be careful because humans could literally end up being slaves again and forced in the fields and whipped. The only way we can stop history from repeating itself is by adhering to the Gospel of God. If people continue to stray from the Lord, all that will exist is evil. Love will be replaced by material possessions and evil. Finitude is good, with God, but not perfect, and when it seeks to perfect itself by actualizing its potencies, it falls, because, after all, it is finite. That Christ is the answer to existential anguish, is a fundamental insight which Catholics have tended to neglect in a smug unconcern for those who have brought this anguish to the fore of modern thought. We should be grateful that we can learn something about Christ, that at least some aspects of Christology can be emphasized with the help of modern thinkers. Estrange, puzzled, frightened is the man of today. Theonomy means union with God, the ground of being. Finite beings can achieve it only by actualizing their essences in such a way that they are transparent to their ground. However, the universal fact of existence is estrangement, separation of beings from God, from themselves, and from one another. A new power, a New Being is needed to overcome estrangement, and in Jesus the Christ it has appeared. To whatever extent religion animates culture, this theonomous union is realized by the power of the New Being which grasps us in the ecstasy of faith. However, one of the potentialities of man is his drive toward community. We must now examine the church, the community of those who receive Jesus the Christ as the New Being. 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 show love to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are understaffed and underfunded. Feel free to donate to their cause. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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The Mind-Shattering Horrors of Llanada Villa
The most merciful thing in the World, I think, is the ability of the human mind to partake in all the beautiful of the material World. We live in an infinity of reality that only the beholder can discern. If we choose to go far, we must learn to apricate our circumstances and work towards an enjoyable life. My home is a vast labyrinth, each mile straining in its own direction, and somedays piecing together the dissociated mysteries will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful curse therein, which shall either make one go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly catacombs into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Within these walls, there are strange survivals of apparitions that will freeze the blood. However, it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of the madness that has been bestowed upon my bloodline. The grass and trees have assumed the fresh enamel of mediaeval May, and the turf is figured with little blossoms of azure and white and yellow, like an ornate broidery, and there is a pebbly stream that murmurs beside the way, and the voices of undines are parleying deliciously beneath its waters. The sun-lulled air is laden with wafture of youth and romance; and the longing that wells from the heart of Llanada Villa seems to mingle mystically with the balsams of the fruit orchards. Llanada Villa is like a high castle which holds dominion over a surrounding forest. However, once through the threshold, dreaded glimpses of truth, flash out from a hideous past. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Somewhere within my haunted mansion is a hidden room notorious for sorcery. Servants speak of phantoms, grisly tales; and there are stories of loup-garous and goblins, of fays and devils and vampires that have infested these very walls. However, to these tales, I give little heed, considering it improbable that such creatures would fare abroad in open daylight. Until one day, I was nearing the appointed parlor, which a turn of the path would soon reveal; and my pulses quickened and became tremulous. My thoughts were interrupted by a shrill scream that rose to an unendurable pitch of fear and horror, issuing from the corridors of stillness of the nearby rooms. Startled, I peered at the thick doors; and as the scream fell back to silence, I heard the sound of dull and hurrying footfalls, and a scuffling as of several bodies. Again the scream arose. It was plainly the voice of a woman in some distressful peril. In a small open space beyond the parlor, I saw a woman who was struggling with three ruffians of exceptionally brutal and evil aspect. Even in the haste and vehemence of the moment, I realized that I had never before seen such men or a woman. They could not have been my servant. The woman was clad in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes; in her face was the pallor of dead things, together with a faery beauty; and her lips were dyed as with the scarlet of newly flowing blood. The men were dark as Moors, and their eyes were red slits of flame beneath oblique brows with animal-like bristles. There was something very peculiar in the shape of their feet. All of them seemingly had cloven hooves, but somehow I could not recall what sort of clothing they had worn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The woman turned a beseeching gaze upon me as I peered through the door. The men, however, did not seem to heed my presence. Lifting my pistol, I fire with tremendous power at the head of the nearest one—a shot that should have leveled the fellow to Earth. However, the bullet fell to the ground as if forced by unresisting air, and I staggered and almost fell headlong in trying to recover my equilibrium. Dazed and uncomprehending, I saw the knot of struggling figures had vanished utterly. At least, the three men had vanished but from the middle of the parlor, the death-white features of the woman smiled upon me for a moment with faint, inscrutable guile ere. I understood now; and I shivered as I crossed myself. I had been deluded by phantoms or demons, doubtless for no good purpose; I had been the gull of a questionable enchantment. Plainly there was something after all in the legends I had heard, in the ill-renown of The Curse of the Winchester Rifle. I retraced my way down the hall I had been following. However, when I thought to reach again the spot from which I had heard that shrill unearthly scream, I saw that there was no longer path leading to that parlor; nor indeed was this a section of the mansion I recognized. The marble steps, coffered ceilings, the elevator paneled in mahogany like a plutocrat’s library, which carried me to the fourth floor vanished. In lieu of this elegant new addition to Llanada Villa there lay before me a tarn of hallways that were dark and dull as clotting blood, and the trail therein like the hair of suicides, and the skeletons of rotting corpses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Now, beyond all question, I knew that I was the victim of an evil enchantment. In answering that beguileful cry for succor, I had exposed myself to the spell, had been lured within the circle of its power. I could not know the force of wizardly or demonry had willed to draw me thus; but I knew that my situation was fraught with supernatural menace. As I passed this scene of utter desolation and lifelessness, it seemed a place where cadavers might keep their tryst with demons. Nothing stirred, not even a hammer; and there was no whisper of a servant, no song of birds. I proceeded further and further into my mansion with a cautious eye, as the further I got, the more the scene changed. There were moving lights in the halls that vanished; there were drowned faces in the walls. The parquet floor was an obstacle course of French dollhouses and miniature Japanese castles. The draperies were green silk damask and blue velvet, the furniture Lousi XV gilded oak, the paintings signed by Renior, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet. My many-turreted castle was ancienter than the World, it was older than light; it was coeval with fear and darkness; and horror dwelt upon it and crept unseen but palpable along its bastions. The 600-room mansion was a fairy-tale castle come to life, with secret entrances, mysterious sources of music, and treasure collected from all the World. My home was not so unusual during the day. On the top half, every inch was decorated with Parisian Beaux Arts ostentation, a profusion of lions, cherubs, and goddesses. Oh, but the architects were not done. Soaring above the mansion was an ornate domed tower reaching nine stories, so pleased with itself that it continued to an open cupola. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Although construction was continuous, there was often no sign of life about the castle; and no banners flew above its turrets or its donjon. However, spirits spoke loudly to warn me that there was a fountainhead of sorcery involved in the construction of my home. A growing panic would whisper in my brain, I seemed to hear the rustle of malignant plumes, the mutter of demonian threats and plottings. Amid my dismay and bewilderment, I thought of Annie and William and imagined that as long as I continued construction, that one day I would find them waiting for me in a parlor, library, kitchen, or hallway. Through my mansion throw which I lived was a maze of bafflement and eeriness. Sometimes I could swear I felt implacable arms that stoke to retard me; I could swear that I felt them twine about me with the strength and suppleness of living things. I fought them, insanely, desperately, and seemed to hear a crackling of infernal laughter in the walls as I fought. After years, with a leaden sinking of my heart, as into some ultimate slough of despair and terror, I resigned myself and made no further effort to escape. My very will was benumbed, was crushed down as by the incumbence of a superior volition that would no longer permit my puny recalcitrance. I was unable to resist when a strong hateful compulsion drew my footsteps along the margent of the halls down a new, never before seen room. Doors would open by themselves as if to receive an unexpected guest. But other than me, there was no sign of carpenter, architect, maid, butler, no farmer; and the walls of this great mansion were silent as those of a sepulcher. However, there were these apparent hieroglyphics and a figure of evidently pictorial intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background. At the opposite end of the parlor was a door which stood mysteriously open, revealing a dark hall. As I approached the doorway, I saw that a man was standing on the threshold; though a moment previous I could have sworn that it was untenanted by any visible form. I knew that any weapon was futile against this supernatural foe. The man was inordinately tall and cadaverous, and was dressed in black garments of a superannuate mode. His lips were strangely red amid his bluish beard and the mortuary whiteness of his face. They were like the lips of the woman who, with her assailants, had disappeared in a manner so dubious when I approached them. His eyes were pale and luminous as marsh-lights; and I shuddered at his gaze and at the cold, ironic smile of his scarlet lips that seemed to reserve a World of secrets all too dreadful and hideous to be disclosed. “I am Gilles Garnier,” the man announced. His tones were both unctuous and hollow, and served to increase the repugnance I felt. And when his lips parted, I had a glimpse of teeth that were unnaturally small and were pointed like the fangs of some fierce animal. Mr. Garnier was haunting my mind like the funereal accents of a knell; though I could not recall at that moment the macabre and spectral ides which the name tended to evoke. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
He turned abruptly, motioning me to follow him. I refused. There were sudden and furtive darkness had closed in upon Llanada Villa without moon or star. My mansion became airless and stifling like the gloom of a sepulcher that had been sealed for ages; and I was aware of the veritable oppression, a corporeal and psychic difficulty in breathing, as I moved from room to room. I flung open a heavy door of dark somber wood. Beyond, in what was the eating-room of this section of the mansions, several ghosts were seated about a long table by the light of cressets no less dreary and dismal than those in the hall. In the strange, uncertain glow, their faces were touched with a gloomy dubiety, with a lurid distortion; and it seemed to me that shadows hardly distinguishable from the figures were gathered around the board. I thought I should go mad with fear. Then sensation of being watched grew upon me until I sprang up and turned with my back to fire. Even then it was impossible for me to see much. I stood glancing from door to door, straining to listen over the thudding of my heart. My twin shadows swayed across the doorway of the study opposite, seeming to move independently. I thought of snuffing the candles; but then I would not be able to see the doors to the landing at all. I had learned that you could count second by your heartbeat. Mine was racing far faster than the measured ticking of a clock, but I began to count, anyway. Only I could keep it up; I would reach twenty or thirty, and be distracted by some phantom sound or movement, and start again. Thus I endured an indefinite interval, while the windows darkened further and further. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I conjure thee, O Guland, in the name of Satan, in the name of Beelzebuth, in the name of Astaroth, and in the name of all other Spirits, to make haste and appear before me. Come, then in the name of Satan and in the names of all other demons. Come to me, I command thee, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Come without inflicting any harm upon me, without injury to my body or soul, without maltreating my books, or anything which I use. I command thee to appear without delay, or, that failing, to send me forthwith another Spirit having the same power as thou hast, who shall accomplish my commands and be submitted to my will, wanting which, he whom thou shalt send me, if indeed thou comest not thyself, shall in no wise depart, nor until he hath in all things fulfilled my desire. I offer my blood unto the Divs and Druj, whom are the essence of counter creation. I offer my life force unto the powers of eternal darkness within. May they devour and destroy the imposed shackles of divine light and stasis that I may become unlimitedly powerful. I salute and conjure you, O beautiful Moon, O beautiful Star, O bright light which I hold in my hand! By the air which I breathe, by the breath which is within me, by the Earth which I touch, I conjure you, and by all the names of the spirits who are princes residing in you; by the ineffable Name On, which hath created all; by thee, O Resplendent Angel Gabriel, together with the Prince Mercury, Michiael, and Melchidae! I conjure you again by all the divine Names of God, that you send down to obsess, torment, and harass the body, spirit, soul and five senses nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
For many years there has been talk of slamming doors, muffled voices and ghost walking the corridors of The Winchester Mystery House, which is over 140-years-old. Recall, the mansion started off as an eighteen-room farmhouse, which Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester purchased. A number of persons hired as night watchmen have quit after only one night on duty, complaining of door opening and closing and invisible footsteps following them on their rounds. In July 2008 a staff member working late thought he heard the sounds of a reception in progress on the first floor, but when he reached the foot of the stairs, he found the rotunda empty, and all noises suddenly ceased. The same tour guide recalled the library room on the third floor as being particularly creepy. Late one night as he approached the library door, he remembered a cold, dank air falling on his head and neck, and he decided his work could wait until the next day. Although the mansion has gone through a considerable number of watchmen who declined the privilege of working in the building after one night on the job, one stuck with the task for more than 13 years. He simply shrugged off the angry slamming of doors that sounded behind him and the thumping noises that followed him on his rounds. However, he admitted that he did not like to work in The Winchester Mystery House after dark. He always made it a point to be out of the building by quitting time, because when darkness fell, he could sense the whole atmosphere changing.
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Provide them with a Decent Childhood Only to Rob them of their Adult Life
The United States of America is an individualist country. American think of life as an effort to realize their own goals and vales out in the World. This is part of The American Dream. However Worldwide, it turns out, individualism is quite unusual. That temperament was the chief reason why first Ancient Egypt, Europe, then Britian, and then America came to lead the World. (And as we see, World power does shift, so unless American can become a creditor nation and stay on the cutting edge of innovation, we could lose our status as World Superpower.) Today, our chief challenges come from groups within our society, and nations abroad, who are not individualist, who think of life in more cautious and collective terms. To continue to lead, America must come to terms with that World yet remain an individualist nation. The structure of modern society affects man in two ways simultaneously: he becomes more independent, self-reliant, and critical, and becomes more isolated, alone, and afraid. The understanding of the whole problem of freedom depends on the very ability to see both sides of the process and not lose track of the one side while following the other. This is difficult because conventionally we think in nondialectical terms and are prone to doubt whether two contradictory trends can result simultaneously from one cause. Furthermore, the negative side of freedom, the burden which it puts upon man, is difficult to realize, especially for those whose heart is with the cause of freedom. Because in the flight for freedom in modern history the attention was focused upon combating old forms of authority and restraint, it was natural that one should feel that the more these traditional restraints were eliminated, the more freedom one had gained. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Poverty in the United States of America is a major issue. Many people think that discrimination and racism is cool and witty. However, how can a sizeable minority of Americans remain jobless and deeply impoverished in the World’s richest state and richest county—even when jobs are available? The more people we have gainfully employed means the more tax revenue we will have and the less dependence individuals will have on the government, which will lessen the burden on taxpayers. While I was doing research, I looked at rent in the United States of America, and the most affordable rent $850 a month, in a city with the median home prices being $250,000.00. In most cities, nationwide, however, the lowest rent for a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment was $1,800.00 a month, and this excludes major cities like Manhattan, San Jose, New York, San Francsico. So in order to comfortable afford a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment in most cities, which tend to be semi-rural cities in America, a person need to earn between $43,200 to $64,800 a year. This means that people on fixed incomes are priced out of the rental market, and that is why there is such a huge homeless problem in America. Not only that, but studies indicate that over the last twenty years, Social Security checks are 78 percent lower than they should be and have not kept up with inflation at all. Another problem America is having is troubled assimilation of many minorities. Since the 1960, on average, these marginalized groups have had much more difficulty getting ahead and avoiding social problems than dominant groups. It is not only because of discrimination from the dominant group and law enforcement, but also from their own ethnic groups. It makes some minorities feel superior to see their own family members, perhaps even their kids struggling to become established. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This is part of the slave/master mindset. People like to see others with less and it makes the feel good to see someone else struggling and having a hard time, while they are living a comfortable life. The great fact about today’s World is cultural difference. Americans have long thought that they are no different from other people, only freer and more fortunate. They pride themselves on living independent lives in which they work out their personal destiny. They wish that everyone had these opportunities. However, individualist style of life is far less universal than most people think, and today have come into question both at home and abroad. To recognize and address that huge reality is the leading challenge of our time. All of America’s toughest test today involve groups or nations that, on average, are not individualist, but more cautious and collective-minded. At home, individualism is fading among low-income Americans, who are less able than they once were to take responsibility for themselves. We fail sufficiently to recognize that although man has rid himself from old enemies of freedom, new enemies of a different nature have arisen; enemies which are not essentially external restraints, but internal factors blocking the full realization of the freedom of personality. We believe, for instance, that freedom of worship constitutes one of the final victories for freedom. We do not sufficiently recognize that while it is a victory against those powers of Church and State which did not allow man to worship according to his own conscience, the modern individual has lost to a great extent the inner capacity to have faith in anything which is not probable by the methods of the natural sciences. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Or, to choose another example, we feel that freedom of speech is the last step in the march of victory of freedom. We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what “he” thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally—that is, for himself—which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and “common sense,” which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defense of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Any critical evaluation of the effect which the industrial system had on this kind of inner freedom must start with the full understanding of the enormous progress which capitalism has meant for the development of human personality. As a matter of fact, any critical appraisal of modern society which neglects this side of the picture must prove to be rooted in an irrational romanticism and is suspect of criticizing capitalism, not for the sake of progress, but for the sake of the destruction of the most important achievements of man in modern history. What Protestantism had started to do in freeing man spiritually, capitalism continued to do mentally, socially, and politically. Economic freedom was the basis of this development, the middle class was it champion. The individual was no longer bound by a fixed social system, based on tradition and with a comparatively small margin for personal advancement beyond the traditional limit. He was allowed and expected to succeed in personal economic gains as far as his diligence, intelligence, courage, thrift, or luck would lead him. His was the chance of success, his was the risk to lose and to be one of those killed or wounded in the fierce economic battle in which each one fought against everybody ese. Under the feudal system the limits of his life expansion had been laid out before he was born; but under the capitalistic system the individual, particularly the member of the middle class, had a chance—in spite of many limitations—to succeed on the basis of his own merits and actions. He saw a goal before his eyes toward which he could strive and which he often had a good chance to attain. He learned to rely on himself, to make responsible decisions, to give up both soothing and terrifying superstitions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Man became increasingly free from the bondage of nature; he mastered natural forces to a degree unheard and undreamed of in previous history. Men became equal; differences of caste and religion, which once had been natural boundaries blocking the unification of the human race, disappeared, and men learned to recognize each other as human beings. The World became increasingly free from mystifying elements; man began to see himself objectively and with fewer and fewer illusions. Politically freedom grew too. On the strength of its economic position the rising middle class could conquer political power and the newly won political power created increased possibilities for economic progress. The great revolutions in England and France and the fight for American independence are the milestones marking this development. The peak in the evolution of freedom in the political sphere was the modern democratic state based on the principle of equality of all men and the equal right of everybody to share in the government by representatives of his own choosing. Each one was supposed to be able to act according to his own interest and at the same time with a view to the common welfare of the nation. Capitalism not only freed man from traditional bonds, but it also contributed tremendously to the increasing positive freedom, to the growth of an active, critical, responsible self. However, while this was one effect capitalism had on the process of growing freedom, at the same time it made the individual more alone and isolated and imbued him with a feeling of insignificance and powerlessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Culture connotes what people think life is about, what we strive to do or be. Differences in culture are too important to ignore, but neither are they racial in any physical sense. Rather, the arise from differences in attitudes and ways of life. As it happens, most of those who believe that one can coherently talk about freedom of action without touching upon the issue of free will are compatibilists, who reject the idea of free will in any strong, non-determinist sense and who embrace instead a certain conception of free choice which they deem to be perfectly compatible with the determinism of natural causality. The central assumption of common human thought and speech seems to be that freedom is the principal characteristic that distinguishes man from all that is non-human. Moderns associate individual freedom with the absence of constraints, including the constraints of law, to pursue one’s own interests—especially those of a commercial kind. Constant contrasts this with the ancient Greco-Roman understanding of liberty in terms of being a freeman as opposed to a slave of being entitled, indeed obliged, to take an active role in government. Relation-based governance and rule-based governance represent a theoretical dichotomy. In reality, most governance systems contain elements of those two extreme forms. Even in the United States of America today, which is as close to having a rule-based governance as any country at any time, we see continued use of relation-based governance at many points. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In fact external legal enforcement of a contract when a breach occurs is often the last resort rather than the first. Its more important role is as a backstop or a threat point tht underlies the renegotiation of the deal between the parties. And international trade and capital flows require interaction of different governance systems—a rule-based and a relation-based system, or two relation-based systems with different preexisting relationship. What can we expect to see at such interfaces? Most important are the frictions and instabilities that arise when people or firms or banks coming from different expectations about behavior, transact with each other. The clash of expectations can lead to speculative booms and busts; in the financial bubbles through history, economies in the process of liberalization appear to be especially susceptible to outbreaks of speculation. Next come asymmetries, some of which favor the relation-based system. People used to dealing in such a system will find it easier to initiate some transaction in a rule-based system than vice versa. This may be one reason—in addition to any formal trade barriers—why Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have been more successful in exporting to the United States of America and the United Kingdom than vice versa. Anyone can come and tap into USA distribution channels, get trade credit, or engage in advertising and other promotional activities. In relation-based economies these activities are mostly carried out by firms that have long-standing relationships with others in the country, and who will not easily deal with outsiders for fear of spoiling these relationships #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To penetrate these markets, an outsider must work patiently to build up his own relationships, or invest in building up his own network of distribution, et cetera, before he can expect success. Outsiders who come from other relation-based systems do not have ready access to existing networks of relations either, but they better understand the importance of such relation-building investments. Therefore they are likely to have more success; for example, European exporters to East Asia have generally enjoyed modest success, better than the Americans. This also helps explain why the USA government and lobbyists for exporting industries in the United States of America are so keen to get the East Asian countries to adopt a more open system or rules. The asymmetry may be even more pronounced for capital flows. Savers from a relation-based system can buy assets in a rule-based system with more confidence than vice versa. This had implications for capital flows in both directions. An investor from a rule-based system can invest in a rule-based system who lends to someone in a relation-based system without developing the necessary relationship in advance is asking to be robbed. A saver from a relation-based system can invest in a rule-based system without such fear. Paradoxically, this may undermine the rule-based system by giving its participants a good outside opportunity. Another asymmetry favors the rule-based system. Compare two systems that initially operate separately from each other. If a new technology of a given technical superiority becomes available, a relation-based system will be slower to adopt it than a rule-based system. This reason is as follows. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
An incumbent, given his sunk stake in the old technology, has less to gain from switching to the new. However, if competitor can enter easily, then they are going to destroy the value of the incumbent’s stake anyway, so he might as well do it himself and at least exploit some first-mover advantage to get the quasi-rent on the new technology. However, as was argued above, a relation-based system is likely to have smaller scale and larger sunk investments in relationships; therefore it is likely to have higher natural entry barriers than a rule-based system. Therefore the incumbents in a relation-based system are less threatened by competitors’ entry, and more likely to indulge in their desire to delay switching. Now bringing together in trade two such systems, one rule based and the other relation based. The former, being used to the mode of slow adoption of new technologies, will be at an impediment unless it can reform quickly. Incumbents in the relation-based system will of course realize this, and will exert political influence to delay or limit the opening up, or at least to secure protection for themselves. Tomorrow’s political system must be the principle of “semidirect democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semidirect democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement among the voters back home, whom does a representative really “represent”? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. British M.P.s are notoriously weak vis-à-vis the Whitehall bureaucracy because they lack adequate staff support, thus shifting more power away from Parliament to the unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment and other necessary agencies and appendages. However, this had merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims or rival minorities could be reconciled. Their representatives could make trade-offs for them. With today’s blunt-edged Second Wave political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets he or she nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overloaded the American Congress or the German Bundestag or the Norwegian Storting becomes, the worse this situation grows. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system become non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo representative institutions mean, over the long term, the many decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they make are increasingly remote from our unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. The Second Wave revolutionaries who invented today’s basic institutions were well aware of the possibilities of direct as against representative democracy. American revolutionists knew all about New England town halls and small-scale organic consensus formation. However, the shortcomings and limitations of direct democracy were also well-known and, at that time, more persuasive. There are some objections to such an innovation. First, direct democracy allowed for no check or delay on temporary and emotional public reactions. And second, the communications of that day could not handle the mechanics. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
These are legitimate problems. How would a frustrated and inflamed America public in the mid-1960, for example, have voted on whether or not to drop a nuclear bomb on Hanoi? Or a West German public, furious at the Baader-Meinhof terrorists, on a proposal to set up camps for “sympathizers”? What if Canadians had held a plebiscite over Quebec the week after Rene Levesque took power? Elected representatives are presumed to be less emotional and more deliberative than the public. The problem of overly motional public response, however, can be overcome in various ways, such as requiring a cooling-off period or second vote before implementation of major decisions taken via referendum or other forms of direct democracy. The other objection can also be met. For the old communication limitations no longer stand in the way of expanded direct democracy. Today’s spectacular advances in communications technology open for the first time in a mind-boggling array of possibilities for direct citizen participation in political decision-making. Year ago we had the pleasure of keynoting an historic event—the World’s first “electronic town hall”—over the Qube cable TV system in Columbus, Ohio. Using this interactive communications system, residents of a small Columbus suburb actually took part via electronics in a political meeting of their local planning commission. By pushing a button in their living rooms, they were able to vote instantly on proposals relating to such practical issues as local zoning, housing codes, and proposed highway construction. They were able not only to vote yes or no, but to participate in the discussion and speak up on the air. They were even able by push button to tell the chairperson when to move on to the next point on the agenda. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
This was only a first, most primitive indication of tomorrow’s potential for direct democracy. Using today’s far more advanced computers, satellites, telephones, cable, polling techniques and other tools, not to mention the Internet and other communications networks, an educated citizenry can for the first time in history begin making many of its own political decisions. This is not an either/or issue. It is not a question of “electronic town halls” in the crude form referred to by Ross Perot. Far more sensitive and sophisticated democratic processes are possible, And it is certainly not a question of direct democracy versus indirect, representation by self versus representation by others. Many imaginative arrangements can be invented to combine direct and indirect democracy. Right now members of Congress and most other parliaments or legislatures set up their own committees. There is no ways for citizens to force lawmakers to create a committee to deal with some neglected or highly controversial issues. However, why could not voters be empowered indirectly through petition to compel a legislative body to set up committees on topics the public—not the lawmakers—deems important? #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
We hammer away at such “blue-sky” proposals not because we unhesitatingly favor them but merely to underscore the more general point: there are powerful ways to open and democratize a system that is now near breakdown and in which few, if any, feel adequately represented. However, we must begin thinking outside the worn grooves of the past three hundred years. We can no longer solve our problems with the ideologies, the models, or the leftover structures of the Second Wave past. Fraught with uncertain implications, such novel proposals warrant careful local experimentation before we apply them on a broad scale. But however we may feel about this or that suggestion, the old objections to direct democracy are growing weaker at precisely the time that the objections to representative democracy are growing stronger. Dangerous or even bizarre as it may seem to some, semidirect democracy is a moderate principle that can help us design workable new institutions for the future. When the offender of the ultimate negative see their hold coming to an end, they never let go until the cause is fully removed. If the thing they have attacked about still exists in any degree, they continue their attack. When the self-actualized is “fighting through,” the enemy has various tactics to hinder one’s deliverance. One may dangle a thing before the mind which is not the true cause of the deception, so as to get the self-actualized occupied with it, while one is gaining all the time—pouring in accusations upon one’s victim until one is bewildered and confused: charges, accusations, blame, guilt—direct from the enemy, or indirectly through others. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Accusing offender can say you are wrong, and right when you are right—but it is essential that the self-actualized does not accept blame until one is absolutely sure that it is deserved, and then not from the ultimate negative’s lying offenders; they have not been appointed by the ultimate cause to do the convicting work of honor and justice. When once the truth has dawned upon the victim of the powers of the ultimate negative, and they no longer hope to gain by deception, their one primary attack all through—from the moment of undeceiving to final deliverance—is the perpetual charge “You are wrong,” so as to keep the man in ceaseless condemnation. The poor persecuted believe then is likely to go to ultimate concern and try to get victory over “conduct disorder,” but in vain. The more one prays, the more one appears to sink into a hopeless bog. One seems to oneself to be one mass of “conduct disorder,” without hope of freedom. However, it is victory over the power of the ultimate negative—not conduct disorder—that one needs, and one will quickly prove this when one recognizes the true cause of one’s trouble and lay hold of the Calvary victory over the ultimate negative. If we recall, God is the ground and the power of being. The more fully a creature actualizes it essence, the more closely it is united to the divine ground and the more profoundly it participates in the power of being. However, the very process profoundly it participates in the power of being. However, the very process of actualization inevitably results in estrangement from essential being, for potentialities are not realized and essence is distorted in existence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The most electrifying and the most paradoxical event that could possibly occur would be the perfect realized in a personal life, despite the conditions of existence, then the universe itself would, in a sense, be fulfilled. This actualization of essential humanity is the New Being, for in contrast to it everything else is old, unfinished, distorted, and without promise. In Jesus of Nazareth the New Being is manifest, thus consulting him the Christ. The astounding paradox of Christology is the appearance of essential manhood under the conditions of existence, but without being eroded by them. How are God and man united in Jesus the Christ? It is essential man who represents not only man to man but God to man; for essential man, by his very nature, represents God. He represents the original image of God embodied in man, but he does so under the conditions of estrangement between God and man. This belongs to the dialectics of the infinite and the finite. The paradox of the Christian message is that in one personal life essential manhood has appeared under the conditions of existence without being conquered by them. One could also speak of essential God-manhood in order to indicate the divine presence in essential manhood; but this is redundant, and the clarity of thought is served best in speaking simply of essential man. Man is united in God simply because he is man, that is, the freedom-bearing image of God. Jesus as the Christ is united to God by something more than His perfect manhood. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Centuries of theologians have missed the point of the paradox of their faith. At least they must know where the central mystery lies. Christianity is distinctive for its theory of education. The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible deems desirable and necessary the factual information and the cultivation of skills of the body and mind, and the scholarly exploration of the multi-roomed mansion of Worldly wisdom. All these are deemed desirable and necessary only insofar as they expand the soul, stimulate the more sensitivity of man, and are channeled in the direction of the promotion of human welfare. Thus Jeremiah declares, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exercises mercy, justice and righteousness on Earth; for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.” Universal literacy is not moral intelligence. The three R’s do not spell righteousness. Popular education in our day teaches young people how to make a living, but it largely ignores the necessity of teaching them how to live, and what to live for. Mormonism and Christianity can, in our time, make significant contributions through its unrivaled traditions of the pre-eminence of The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible, the character-building, soul-cultivating emphasis in learning, calling on man to develop ethical alertness, to master himself rather than to rule over others. Our religion goes beyond the formulation of universal postulates and idealistic ends. It translates the poetry of moral aspiration into the prose of every day life. It is religion of behavior as well as of beliefs. It brings down the holy tablets from the heights of Sinai to the valley of decision and the plain of realization. It translates the Word of God into life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Often voluntary community action is stultified because initiative in planning has been sequestered within a small, self-appointed elite. These considerations emphasize the social context within which recommending bodies should be constructed. Such considerations are often neglected in favor of the personal qualities of potential members—interest, ability, free time, resources, prestige. These often matter, but they are also frequently sterile in terms of results. It takes much more than a coterie of enthusiast or a list of prominent names adorning a letterhead to assure that a study committee will act and cause others to act. As a sign of some degree of impartiality, the members of such a commission or board are customarily unpaid, though they may get their expenses or pay from the groups they represent. Thus they can rarely be expected to expend more than limited amounts of time in the business of the committee. Unless the whole operation is too small and rudimentary, this is the point at which a staff of full-time, paid professional experts may have to be engaged. The professional staff usually consists of a number of specially qualified experts drawn from several fields or professions, their work being assigned and brought into a coherent pattern by a “generalist” with some facility in transcending special vocabularies and in promoting co-operation. He is often known as executive secretary or staff director. On the other hand, the staff may consist of a single person who is at best an able amateur. Ad hoc commercial consultants are often useful in supplementing or providing an independent check of permanent staffs. Where expertness is required, the gains through specialization are obvious. Specialization may occur not only among various professions—as engineers, accountants, doctors, and attorneys—but with regard to various functions, such as researchers, idea-men, publicists, and patent drudges. The man of a creative turn may wilt before the task of tracing property titles, as the meticulous investigator may balk at championing a new idea. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The creation of high standards of ethical and technical performance falls to a considerable degree to the professional societies to which the specialists belong; creation of co-operation and morale within the staff falls especially upon the generalist in charge. The specialists can normally be selected by various fairly objective measures of competence, while the role of the generalist has to be filled primarily through trial and error. Instead of trying to bring the greatest total amount of good, perhaps the thing to do would be to work toward the greatest average amount of happiness. It would seem preferable to have far fewer people having far better lives. (For whom, though, would it not be better?) However, the principle that we should maximize the average level of happiness also has unpalatable implications. (It might even raise questions about whether we should eliminate those with unhappy lives, or even those happy people whose happiness was below average. However, let us set aside considerations of homicide. Remember that episode of Charmed?) To maximize the average amount of happiness, we might elect to utilize our environment at an unsustainable rate while lowering our numbers by natural attrition and low birth rates. Thereby, if we practiced sustainable life-styles, we might have very enjoyable lives. In the end, we might elect not to reproduce at all, allowing the human race to extinct (presumably the last happy few would be tended by robots). It makes sense that to save the planet, the human race would stop producing and go extinct. What are these things you seek, since you leave the entire World to find them? God said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth,” Genesis 1.28. He did not say ravage and destroy the Earth. Obviously the planet is overpopulated and that is why things are so expensive and so many people are having difficulty surviving. So, instead of just feeding other nations, and giving them money, we need to teach them birth control methods. Afterall, is it not rich people who say they want their children to work hard and learn the value of the dollar? So then, why do we give taxpayer money away, essentially enslaving the taxpayer and making life harder on them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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What the F–Business Must be Conducted with Glass Pockets!
Although you make think “What the F!” has a negative connotation, it is not a curse word. It means “What the Ferry!” It is what Ferry calls his live resonation radio show. Ferry Coresten is one of the most talented disc jockeys in the World. Mr. Coresten is Dutch disc jockey, record producer and remixer. Defining, understanding, and discovering the conditions that lead to peace is an intellectual challenge with a long and rich traditional with the social sciences. Nevertheless, it remains central today, not simply for academics but to the broader populations as well. The notion that peace is at hand as soon as there is no ongoing, large-scale organized violence is not only the most common idea today but also a way of viewing peace that goes back at least to antiquity. We sometimes achieve peace through military preparations and deterrence, or the military defeat of adversaries. The quantitative research on conflict, violence, and peace is an already large subject area within the social sciences, and it is undergoing yet another growth spurt in the aftermath of 9/11, with increasing discussion of terrorism, restriction of civil liberties, torture, invasion, insurgency, counterinsurgency, revolution, counterrevolution, mass protest, and protest policing. Many people think we already live in a police state, but they have not seen anything yet. In 2007, alarm companies did not want to install security cameras on homes because they warned home owners that footage could be obtained by anyone and put on the Internet without their consent, but now people are going as far as having cameras places in their home that security companies monitor. Before long, the streets and highways in the United States of American will be full of license plate readers, which automatically issues tickets for speeding, which will make the road less safe as less officers will be out to stop illegal vehicles and vehicle violating law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
We will also have police drones patrolling neighbourhoods, roads, and highways recording information and acting as law enforcement agents, so there will be virtually no privacy and anything that is done can be pulled up and reviewed for later enforcement of the law. Therefore, it is critical to study peace as something more than merely the absence of overt violence. Peace is defined only as the absence of some violent actions. This form of peace, as “no violence,” can range from brutal dictatorships to democracies that fully respect human rights, from states that remain at peace only for brief periods of time between recurring bought of violence to societies that have not experienced overt hostilities for hundreds of years, and from states that consistently remain prepared for “hot” conflict to those that do not consider preparing for it. If peace is an inherent dichotomy, then war and genocide are the opposite. Personal relationship, closeness and warmth, Christian community—these are just what I have experienced in East Germany when I have visited. Over the years the society has always come through with insightful and perceptive judgments. The new paradigm of just peacemaking is grounded in the historical experience of people who have lived in the face of oppression, violation of their basic rights, and the nuclear threat, and who, together with political scientist, Christian ethicists, and activists, fashioned realistic steps of peacemaking that enabled them to begin living in the time after the Cold War even before the Wall came down. Though oppressed and constricted, they began to live our future. Because the paradigm is grounded in realistic but persistent hope-creating experience, attention must be paid to critical perspectives external to Christian faith; and since the heart of the story is consent to all God’s creating and the practice of forgiveness and love, an ethic is to be tested by its ability to be inclusive rather than to repress important standards of human life, or other members of the human community. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
We have all known we needed to develop new methods for achieving change without violence. Now we have seen nonviolent revolutions in Iran (where the revolution was nonviolent but not the subsequent regime) in Philippines, in Argentina, throughout Eastern Europe, and in the peoples’ defeat of the coup in the Soviet Union, and there is hope for them in South Africa and perhaps Palestine (where parts of the movement are nonviolent, and other parts are not). Human rights movements must refrain from violence. They must take the beneficial action of clearly articulating the human rights that need to be established. The breakdown of the medieval system of feudal society had one main significance for all classes of society: the individual was left alone and isolated. He was free. This freedom had a twofold result. Man was deprived of the security he had enjoyed, of the unquestionable feeling of belonging, and he was torn loose from the World which had satisfied his quest for security both economically and spiritually. He felt alone and anxious. However, he was also free to act and to think independently, to become his own master and do with his life as he could—not as he was told to do. However, according to the real life situation of the members of different social classes, these two kind of freedom were of unequal weight. Only the most successful class of society profited from rising capitalism to an extent which gave them real wealth and power. They could expand, conquer, rule and amass fortunes as a result of their own activity and rational calculations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This new aristocracy of money, combined with that of birth, was in a position where they could enjoy the fruits of the new freedom and acquire a new feeling of mastery and individual initiative. On the other hand, they had to dominate the masses and to fight against each other, and thus their position, too, was not free from a fundamental insecurity and anxiety. But, on the whole, the positive meaning of freedom was dominant for the new capitalist. It was expressed in the culture which grew on the social of the new aristocracy, the culture of the Renaissance. In its art and in its philosophy it expressed the new spirit of human dignity, will, and mastery, although often enough despair and skepticism also. The same emphasis on the strength of individual activity and will is to be found in the theological teachings of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages. The Schoolmen of that period did not rebel against authority, they accepted its guidance; but they stressed the positive meaning of freedom, man’s share in the determination of his fate, his strength, his dignity, and the freedom of his will. On the other hand, the lower classes, the poor population of the cities, and especially the peasants, were impelled by a new quest for freedom and an ardent hope to end the growing economic and personal oppression. They had little to lose and much to gain. They were not interested in dogmatic subtleties, but rather in the fundamental principles of the Christian Bible: brotherliness and justice. Their hopes took active form in a number of political revolts and in religious movements which were characterized by the uncompromising spirit typical of the very beginning of Christianity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Rising capitalism, although it made also for their increased independence and initiative, was greatly a threat. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the individual of the middle class could not yet grain much power and security from the new freedom. Freedom brought isolation and personal insignificance more than strength and confidence. Besides that, he was filled with burning resentment against the luxury and power of the wealthy classes, including the hierarchy of the Roman Church. Protestantism gave expression to the feelings of insignificance and resentment; it destroyed the confidence of man in God’s unconditional love; it taught man to despise and distrust himself and others; it made him a tool instead of an end; it capitulated before secular power and relinquished the principle that secular power is not justified because of its mere existence if it contradicts moral principles; ad in doing all this it relinquished elements that had been the foundations of Judaeo-Christian tradition. Its doctrines presented a picture of the individual, God, and the World, in which these feelings were justified by the belief that the insignificance and powerlessness which an individual felt came from the qualities of man as such and that he ought to feel as he felt. Thereby the new religious doctrines not only gave expression to what the average member of the middle class felt, but, by rationalizing and systematizing this attitude, they also increased and strengthened it. However, they did more than that; they also showed the individual a way to cope with his anxiety. They taught him that by fully accepting his powerlessness and the evilness of his nature, by considering his whole life an atonement for his sins, by the utmost self-humiliation, and also by unceasing effort, he could overcome his doubt and his anxiety; that by complete submission he could be loved by God and could at least hope to belong to those whom God has decided to save. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of the frightened, uprooted, and isolated individual who had to orient and to relate himself to a new World. The new character structure, resulting from economic and social changes and intensified by religious doctrines, became in its turn an important factor in shaping the further social and economic development. Those very qualities which were rooted in this character structure—compulsion to work, passion for thrift, the readiness to make one’s life a tool for the purposes of an extra personal power, asceticism, and a compulsive sense of duty—were character trait which became productive forces in capitalistic society and without which modern economic and social development are unthinkable; they were the specific forms into which human energy was shaped and in which it became one of the productive forces within the social process. To act in accord with the newly formed character traits was advantageous from the standpoint of economic necessities; it was also satisfying psychologically, since such action answered the needs and anxieties of this new kind of personality. To put the same principle in more general terms: the social process, by determining the mode of life of the individual, that is, his relation to others and to work, molds his character structure; new ideologies—religious, philosophical, or political—result from and appeal to this changed character structure and thus intensify, satisfy, and stabilize it; the newly formed character traits in their turn become important factors in further economic development and influence the social process; while originally they have developed as a reaction to the threat of new economic forces, they slowly become productive force, furthering and intensifying the new economic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The system of rules and their enforcement itself must first establish a reputation for integrity and efficacy. This takes a long time and strict supervision even given much good will. In many countries, the great difficulties experienced by the governments of most transition economies in their attempts at such reputation-building require attempts of the top levels of the government at making and enforcing reliable governance systems. However, they can be ruined by some middle-level officials who attempt to make quick profit from their newfound power. There are evident problems of this in most transition economies. Also, in the phase when the system of rules in imperfect but improving, it can offer better outside payoffs to the participants in the prevailing relation-based system. By thus increasing their incentives to cheat their current partners, it can worsen the outcomes of the relation-based system. The policies required to initiate a transition from low-income equilibrium to a state of rapid growth may be qualitatively different from those required to reignite growth for a middle-income country. At low levels of income, with reasonable institutions and reasonable policies, it may be easy to achieve high growth up to semi-industrialization. However, the institutional requirements of reigniting growth in a middle-income country can be significantly more demanding. Growth starting from a low level can be achieved using relation-based governance in small communities of traders with good relationships and information networks, so long as the state does not actually inhibit such developments with its policies. However, to go beyond the middle-income level requires greater integration into a large economy, where relation-based governance is inadequate. The necessary shift toward rule-based governance is more demanding because it must overcome the additional problems of collective action, vested interest and so on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
How might such investment in the framework of rules get made? In 1898, when Elbert Gary and J. Pierpont Morgan started Federal Steel, they took the then unusual step of issuing quarterly reports because both men believed that corporations issuing publicly traded securities had to account for their financial performance. At first there was no public process such as external audits to guarantee the truthfulness of these accounts; presumably Mr. Morgan’s own reputation and integrity, acquired in the prevailing relation-based system of finance, gave them credibility. However, the public gradually found that inadequate, perhaps because others entering the arena of raising finance from the general public did not have the same reputation. A few years later, then president Theodore Roosevelt said that he would not “accept the publication of what some particular company chooses to publish as a favor, instead of demanding what we think ought to be published from all companies as a right” (Strouse 2000, p. 439). And still later, Mr. Morgan said that “business in the twentieth century would have to be conducted with glass pockets” (Strouse 2000, p. 600). This episode serves to emphasize the endogeneity of verifiability, and the value of making more information publicly verifiable. Forces operate on the other side to undermine a relation-based system when it comes into contact with other rule-based systems. If capital-owners in the relation-based system become able to invest abroad under a rule-based system and earn the going return there, that will raise the outside opportunities of the participants in each ongoing repeated game of relation-based finance, and thereby unravel its tacit cooperation equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Similarly, as improvements in transportation technology or lowering of trade barrier with other countries, or liberalization of regulation within or across countries, bring a relation-based production system into contact with other economies and other markets, its firms will discover better opportunities outside their previous relationships; this can undermine the previous repeated game equilibrium. If or when a relation-based economy needs to import capital, whether financial or direct investment, it will find it difficult to do so. Unless foreigners are misinformed or gradually develop relationships with host-country businesses, they will be reluctant to lend. Conversely, firms in a relation-based system may be reluctant to borrow from lenders who are not part of their relation network, for fear that the strangers may withdraw their capital suddenly. So, if it needs foreign capital, a relation-based economy may fail to grow unless it changes over successfully to a rule-based system where anyone can invest with the confidence that the only uncertainties will be those arising from natural economic shocks, not those of borrowers’ strategic default or fraud or lenders’ capital flight. Of course the difficulties of brining together two such different systems of financial transactions are not insurmountable. Intermediaries can develop relations on both sides, and profit by providing these services for a fee. The Rothschilds did this in Europe with great success for over a century, literally be having relations on both or all sides. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States of America was a major capital importer. This was facilitated by the Morgans—Junius S. operating in London and J. Pierpont in New York—who established a relation-based chain of trust between borrowers in the United States of America and lenders in the United Kingdom and Europe. In modern times, Hong Kong served a similar role, dealing with lenders—Western ones on a basis of rules and overseas Chinese ones on the basis of relations—and with borrowers—investing firms in mainland China on a basis of relations. In countries shaken by the Third Wave, the truly poor no longer necessarily have numbers on their side. In a good many countries they—like everyone ese—have become a minority. Not only is majority rule therefore no longer adequate as a legitimating principle, it is no longer necessarily humanizing or democratic in societies moving into the Third Wave. Second Wave ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. Rather than seeing in this enriched diversity an opportunity for human development, they attack it as “fragmentation” and “Balkanization” and attribute it to the aroused “selfishness” of minorities. This trivial explanation substitutes effect for cause. For the rising activism of minorities is not the result of a sudden onset of selfishness; it is, among other things, a reflection of the needs of a new system of production which requires for its very existence a far more varied, colourful, open and diverse society than any we have ever known. We can either resist the thrust toward diversity, in a futile last-ditch effort to save our Second Wave political institutions, or we can acknowledge diversity and change those institutions accordingly. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The former strategy can only be implemented by totalitarian means and must result in economic and cultural stagnation; the latter leads toward social evolution and a minority-based twenty-first-century democracy. To reconstitute democracy in Third Wave terms, we need to jettison the frightening but false assumption that increased diversity automatically brings increased tension and conflict in society. Indeed, the exact reverse can be true. Conflict in society is not only necessary, it is, within limits, desirable. If one hundred men all desperately want the same brass ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand, if each of the hundred has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade, cooperate and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social arrangements, diversity can make for a secure and stable civilization. It is the lack of appropriate political institutions today that unnecessarily sharpens conflict between minorities to the knife-edge violence. It is the lack of such institutions that makes the majority harder and harder to find. The answer to these problems is not to stifle dissent or to charge minorities with selfishness (as though the elites and their experts are not similarly self-interested). The answer lies in imaginative new arrangements for accommodating the legitimating diversity—new institutions that are sensitive to the rapidly shifting needs of changing and multiplying minorities. Someday future historians may look back on voting and the search for majorities as an archaic ritual engaged in by communicational primitives. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Today however, in a dangerous World, we cannot afford to delegate total power to anyone, we cannot surrender even the weak popular influence that exists under majoritarian systems, and we cannot allow tiny minorities to make vast decisions that tyrannize all other minorities. This is why we must drastically revise the crude Second Wave methods by which we pursue the elusive majority. We need new approaches designed for a democracy of minorities—methods whose purpose is to reveal differences rather than to paper them over with forced or fake majorities based on exclusionary voting, sophistic framing of the issues or rigged electoral procedures. We need, in short, to modernize the entire system so as to strengthen the role of diverse minorities, yet permit them to form majorities. In Second Wave societies, voting to determine the popular will provide an important source of intermittent feedback for the ruling elites. When conditions for one reason or another became intolerable for the majority, and fifty-one percent of the voters registered their pain, the elites could, at a minimum, shift parities, alter policies, or make some other accommodations. Even in yesterday’s mass society, however, the fifty-one percent principle was a decidedly blunt, purely quantitative instrument. Voting to determine the majority tells us nothing about the quality of people’s views. It can tell us how many people at a given moment want X, but not how badly they want it. Above all, it tells us nothing about what they would be willing to trade off for X—crucial information in a society made up of many minorities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
When a minority feels so threatened or attaches such life-and-death significance to a single issue that its views should perhaps receive more than ordinary weight, nor does it signal us then. In a mass society these well-known weaknesses of majority rule were tolerated because, among other things, most minorities lacked strategic power to disrupt the system. In today’s finely wired society, in which all of us are members of minority groups, that is no longer true. For a de-massified Third Wave society, the feedback systems of the industrial past may be considered too crude. Thus we will have no use voting and the polls in a radically new way. Also, because the de-massification and redistribution of media outlets, we are no longer creating stars as famous Worldwide as Aaliyah, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, Tyson Beckford, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Lopez, or Lucy Lui. Fortunately, Third Wave technologies provide pathways toward Third Wave democracy. They reopen, in a startling new context, fundamental issues that our founders considered two hundred years ago. These technologies make possible new, hitherto impractical forms of democracy. Although the transition from the problem phase to the proposal phase of planning is usually gradual, the formulation of proposals is qualitatively distinct from the definition of public and problem. Proposals are creative responses; they call for imagination, invention, even genius. The making of proposals has to be properly timed, not coming too early in the planning process. For any given problem there may be a number of solutions, and thus new potentialities of divergence are introduced into the public’s discussion. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If those who make proposals are anxious that they be accepted or at least taken seriously and attended to, they should ideally wait until a public has become quite clear and coherent s to the nature of its problem and its desire to act. This is especially true when a proposal is likely to threaten this or that section of the public’s interest; a premature proposal is more easily exiled from discussion by an alter minority, or even without opposition may lose force, when its relevance is not yet apparent. Perhaps the proposal phase could be said to begin where “to act or not to act” ceases to be the question and consideration turns to serious alternatives. It ends when the proposal or proposals go before a policy-making body for decision. If the outcome is to be a full-fledged proposal of the planning type, during the interim a considerable number of developments ideally must occur. During this phase, proposals may be legion, running from the most casual sort of suggestion to massive reports prepared by many experts and taking years of work. If it is to deserve serious considerations, despite such variation in their elaborateness, the proposal must contain some basic elements. There must be a statement of an effective and feasible way of solving the problem as it has been defined. An estimate of the resources, human and material, required for carrying out the proposal. A schedule of the rate at which these recourses will be applied. A statement of certain quantitative goals for achievement within the schedule set. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Any proposal containing these elements is a planning proposal, and is often called a plan, sometimes with the name of its author prefixed, exempli gratia, the Marshall Plan (although technically it does not become a plan until it has been subject to a policy commitment, and then of course it becomes a program). The injection of proposals into the public’s discussion of the problem is frequently, at first, on what might be called an amateur basis. While each serious proposal may contain the four essential elements, their development is neither elaborate nor exact. The multiplicity of proposals and their rudimentary nature, given a strong feeling of concern, then quite readily lead to a conscious demand for more careful study of the situation and comparative examination of the proposals. Then, and not before then in most cases, is the appropriate time for commencing the formal organization of the public. At this point, another custom is often to constitute some expert committee, commission, or board and to charge it with making a study and some definite recommendations for action. The composition of the more successful committees tends to be drawn, with certain exceptions, from all the significant elements in the public to which the situation is a problem. To give them their charge may call for further definition of the appropriate scope of the planning area. This calls for judgment and may itself be a matter of disagreement. If action is truly desired, the planning area ought to be confined to those to whom the situation is definitely a problem in which they are actively involved, and it ought not to include everyone who might potentially experience some consequence from the action taken. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
After admitting the possibility of deception in supernatural things, and a doubt has come into mind whether certain “experiences,” either personal or otherwise, were of God after all, the next stages are: The discovery of the deception. Light and truth alone can make free, and when once a doubt comes in and the man opens his mind to the truth that he is as liable to be deceived as anyone else, then to the mind and attitude light is given (John 3.21). Sometimes the specific deception is seen at once, but more often the discovery is gradual, and patience is needed while the light slowly dawns. Certain fact in connection with various experiences of the past, which the believer has failed to note, may now emerge into the light, and the half-truths which the Adversary had used to deceive are clearly seen: the twisting of words, the wrenching of sentences out of their context in the Scriptures—all come into a view as the light is given. Then comes: the acknowledgement of the deception. This is now imperative. The truth must not only be faced but owned up to, so that things are called by their right names, and the father of lies defeated by the weapon of truth. The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible keeps one from sin, and draws one near to virtue. You shall teach diligently the word of God to your children. The moral World is maintained by the instruction of our young; their education shall not be interrupted even to rebuild the Temple. When parents encourage their children to study The Book of Mormon and the Christian Holy Bible, their influence lives beyond the grave. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
One who has studied in one’s youth may be compared to writing set down on new parchment; but one who begins to study when one is old, is like writing set down on re-used parchment. If one studies The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible in one’s youth, its words are woven into the texture of one’s life. Train a child in the way one should go, and when one is older, one will not depart from it. As long as the voices of children resound with the study of The Book of Mormon and the Holy Chistian Bible, no enemy can triumph over America. The Book of Mormon and the Holy Christian Bible are each a Tree of Life; happy are they who understand its teachings, and fulfill God’s commandments. The significance of the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ can be summed up in one word: salvation. One can be saved from many things, but salvation is salvation from the ultimate negativity. Salvation is healing for healing means reuniting that which is estranged, giving a center to what is split, overcoming the split between God and man, man and his Worl, man and himself. It is the revelation of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ which brings salvation. Consequently, where there is revelation, there is salvation, for the revelation of the ground of being transforms and heals. Revelation and salvation are identified. The revelational history of mankind—preparatory revelation before the appearance of the New Being, and receiving revelation afterwards—testifies that men have shared in the healing power of the New Bring, or else they would have succumbed to the destructive tendencies of existential estrangement and have ceased to exist. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Traditional theology has presented the rigid alternatives of total condemnation and total salvation. However, we reject them both, for, although the healing power of the New Being is never absent, even those who experience it are healed but fragmentarily. The divine act overcomes estrangement by removing guilt, and man reacts by accepting reconciliation. The effects of atonement are threefold, and together they constitute the meaning of salvation: Regeneration, Justification, and Sanctification, or, in Tillichian terminology, participation, acceptance, and transformation. Regeneration stresses the objective power of the New Being to grasp estranged mankind and draw it into itself. Man participates in the new reality revealed in Christ only by being seized by it. Thus, Regeneration is the new state of things, the new eon, which the Christ brought; the individual enters it, and in so doing he himself participates in it and is reborn through participation. Since Regeneration is participation in the objective power of the New Being, it precedes Justification, for faith as the state of being grasped by the divine presence is not a human act, but the work of the Spirit. Justification is acceptance. It is the act of God by which He accepts sinful man in spite of his guilt. It is also the act of man by which man accepts God’s saving mercy. Indeed, there is nothing in man which enables God to accept him. However, man must accept just this. He must accept that he is accepted; he must accept acceptance. This in spite of his anxiety, man accepts God’s justifying act. In spite of is the paradox of simual peccator, simul Justus. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
As a divine act, Regeneration and Justification are one, for Regeneration is the actual reunion of the estranged, and Justification is its paradoxical character. Sanctification is distinct from both of them in the sense that a process is distinguished from the event in which it is initiated. Sanctification is the process in which the New Being transforms both individuals and communities. Sanctification, as transformation, takes place both within religion and outside it in the secular realm. Up to now emphasis has been laid upon the individual man as the one who is saved. However, our vision is broader than that. At the crucifixion of Jesus the sun was darkened, the temple veil split, rocks cracked, and the dead rose. Nature was in an uproar, and the event at Golgotha is one which concerns the Universe, including all nature and history. The Christ cannot be restricted to one area; Christology must be cosmic. Salvation extends to the whole World, and World means nature as well as man. It is through man, the microcosm, that the saving power of the New Being reaches out to the Universe. The tragedy of nature is bound to the tragedy of man, as the salvation of nature and nature is in man. Consequently, the impact of the Spiritual Presence upon beings inferior to man is indirect and, in a quantitative sense, severely limited. However, in a qualitative sense it is enormous. Salvation is found within the Kingdom of God which embraces the Universe. It is the place where there is complete transparency of everything for the divine to shine through it. In His fulfilled kingdom, God is everything for everything. Salvation, the healing of the disrupted, is brought about by love, for love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. The New Being is the love of Jesus who is the Christ, reuniting estranged mankind with its ground. The Spiritual Presence manifests itself as love. After distinguishing divine love from human love, we come to an understanding that man’s love for God is the drive toward the reunion of the separated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, since salvation is an act of God, God’s love must first extend to man and grasp him. The distinction between faith and love disappears, for being grasped by God in faith and adhering to Him in love is one and the same state of creaturely life. We belong to the Old Creation, and the demand made upon us by Christianity is that we also participate in the New Creation. What is this New Being? The only thing that counts, regardless of faith, is the union with Him in whom the New Reality is present. No religion matters—only a new state of things. The New Creation—this is our ultimate concern; this should be our infinite passion—the infinite passion of every human being. This matters; this alone matters ultimately. In comparison with it everything else, even religion or non-religion, even Christianity or non-Christianity, matters very little—and ultimately nothing. And now again we ask: What is this New Being? It is a renewal of the Old which has been corrupted, distorted, split, and almost destroyed. Therefore, we can speak of the New in terms of a re-newal: The threefold “re,” namely, re-conciliation, re-union, re-surrection. The word “resurrection” has for many people the connotation of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images. However, resurrection means the victory of the New state of things, the New Being born out of death of the Old. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow…Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things had appeared, it still appears; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you. And like God saves all, the Fire Department will rescue you no matter how rich or poor you are, no matter or age, or what you look like or where you live! Be sure to thank your local heroes, and feel free to make donations to them, they are understaffed and underfunded. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Llanada Villa—A Haunted History
Llanada Villa is a symbol of Victorian wealth and style. I built it using architects from the spiritual World. It is among one of the most haunted sites in the World. The more solid a home is, the more attractive it is to ghostly energy. It is not until I enter the house, however, that the melancholy really hits me. There are shadows everywhere, and even when it is empty, I am never alone. The stairs creak as I climb them. The house groans, as if it is alive. Even during the summer, when it is dark, nearly full night, I awaken in a chill room to the knowledge of a presence. Over by the window, there is a figure. I hold my breath, paralyzed by fear; I cannot move, cannot cry out. The dim apparition turns to me, my heart hammers—and suddenly it vanishes. As the room warms again, some deep and unexplained anxiety possessed me. It takes a few moments to realize the lingering scent in the air is William’s cologne. Then, trailing thinly through the dying crunch of the carriage wheels, I hear the curious little wail of the child’s crying, with the effect, wholly unaccountable, that it may be Annie. Every nerve in my body shot its bolt electrically, bringing me to my feet with a tingling of unequivocal alarm. Absolutely, the water ran into my eyes. I recalled their distress and deaths this morning, and it had gone into me like a knife. All through the day, indeed, had run this nightmare quality of terror and vision. However, as it came as anticlimax somehow—a sudden revelation of the mystery and excitement pulsed beneath the quiet of the stifling summer day. I fear for them. For I loved Willam best and would never marry again, and I mourned the sweet, short, tragic life of my infant daughter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I was high-strung, ultra-sensitive, and it seemed to me that no one understood me, least of all my honest, tender-heated servants. The haze of the August lay over that big garden like a blanket; the wonderful flowers, which were my delight, hung motionless; the lawns, so soft and thick, cushioned all other sounds; only limes and huge clumps of guelder roses hummed with humming birds. Through this muted atmosphere of heat and haze the sounds of the child’s crying floated faintly to my ears—from a distance. Indeed, I heard this phantom child. The sound coming from the Forbidden Wing. A faintness then came over me at once, a faintness as of death, when I heard here there, where I was too terrified to go. In a hearty voice I called out to her, “Annie, my dear, I love you and miss you, please come back to me.” I only wished some spell could compel her to materialize and ran into the open arms of her fond mother. I stepped back swiftly from the hallway. The crying disappeared, and I heard no more. I felt comfort, somewhat, because I believe she had been reunited with her father in the afterlife. I looked out upon the magnificent rose garden, with its rich luxuriance, and glanced over at the thick wood of evergreen trees and, glimmering beyond, the orchard meadow, where the lambs played. I felt Llanada Villa’s spell and it haunted me. I heard it crying in an Earthly voice, and I gave it food in the form of constant expansion and ornate features. And in return, a leap extraordinarily feelings and a hint of dark, undiscovered truth became present in the atmosphere. I lay there on my bed in horror with words I could not say, but I think some power of darkness trooped across the room. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
The way my mansion sprang to life proves, I think, that it was alive. The blood rushed from my heart as I listened. I remember that my knees shook. With a sense of nightmare certainly that left me too weak to resist its suggestion, indeed, to argue or reason it away, this certainty came with its full, blast of conviction; and the only way I can put it into words, since nightmare horror really is not properly tellable at all, seems this: that there was something missing in the Forbidden Wing of my home; something lacking that it ever searched for; something once found and taken, that would turn it rich and living as the rest. Its vibrating emotion of fearful anticipation had developed, as this house was weeping along in the Forbidden Wing. If souls could be made visible, I would stake my life upon the fact that Llanada Villa was looking to devour one or many. It was a supreme, conscious artist in the science of taking the fruits of others’. It vampired, knowingly, everyone with whom came in contact with the Forbidden Wing; leaving them exhausted, tired, listless, or soulless. In that section of the home, you could feel its presence draining you; it possessed your mind, took your strength, your words, your very breath and used them for its own benefit and aggrandizement. You felt that Llanada Villa was dangerous owing to the facile way it absorbed into itself all loose vitality that anyone had. The windows were its eyes and the groans and cries its voice and its presence had the power to devitalize you. Life, it seemed, not highly organized to resist, must shrink from Llanada Villa’s too near approach and hide away for fear of being appropriated, for fear, that is, of—death. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
People are so wrapped up in their obsession about the treasures Llanada Villa possesses, that they are totally unaware of its stalking shadow, prowling through the East Wing. Haunting the parlors, hallways, and chambers. No one knows when it will come upon them with some silent, compelling trick of drawing out all your reserves—then swiftly pocketing them. At first you would be conscious of taunt resistance; this would slowly shade off into weariness; the will would become flaccid; then you either ran away or yielded—agree to all it said with a sense of weakness pressing ever closer upon the edges of collapse. It is a matter of life or death. Thirteen times that Forbidden Wing has descended to slash the throats and bodies of servants, staff or guests. August the 13th, 1886 was the date of the first butchery. They found him lying there with thirteen stab wounds. A ghastly murder. On August 31st, 1886, another victim. The press became interested. The Valley’s inhabitants were more deeply interested still. Who was this unknown killer who prowled in the midst of Llanada Villa and struck at will in the deserted hallways of the Forbidden Wing? And what was more important—when would he strike again? No one saw him or heard him. The atrocious nature of the slaying was the subject for shocking speculation. However, guards working on expansion of Llanada Villa in the dawn would stumble across the hacked and horrid thing that was its handiwork. He never gave out. Some instinct taught him how to protect himself from that. To humans beings, I mean, Llanada Villa never gave out. So this is how I saw him—a great human sponge, crammed and soaked with the life, or proceeds of life, absorbed from others—stolen. As people roamed the labyrinth, Llanada Villa carried out these accumulations of the life of others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
This evening, my eye wandered through my home, amid rich opulence of the ornate features. I watched the white mist and blue lights appear. I had never felt a night so stifling, motionless. It lay there waiting. The house was waiting—waiting for another soul. A sudden kind of darkness came, taking the summer brilliance out of everything, and that was caused by troops of small black shadows racing about us—to attack. Everything was awful—shirting the edge of things unspeakable, and so charged with danger that I could not keep my voice from trembling when I spoke. A chambermaid was cleaning, I warned her to stay out of the Forbidden Wing. I watched her hard, bleak face; I noticed how thin she was, and the curious, oily brightness of her steady eyes. They did not glitter, but they drew you with a sort of soft, creamy shine like Eastern eyes. And everything she said or did announce what I dare to call the suction of her presence. Her nature achieved this result automatically. Before five minutes had passed, however, I was aware of one thing only. Her mind focused exclusively upon the forbidden wing, and so vividly that I marveled. The Forbidden Wing started vibrating with the acquire vitality of others, as she was lured out of my presence, and went into that Wing of yawning emptiness, waiting and eager to be filled. Llanada Villa scented his prey. This active center was so dangerous that I had it sealed off, but when the chambermaid did not make it to work the next day, we all knew what happened. Yes, they followed the blood trail. They found her, in the Forbidden Library. She lay there very quietly, limbs neatly arranged. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Months passed. A year. The immediate interest died, but not the memory. They said Llanada Villa was haunted, which it was, but it was also an entity of its own. A carpenter died in the Forbidden Wing under mysterious circumstances; I had foreseen his death in a vision. You can see how easily a woman with a weak heart could be frightened literally to death. I had to stage a séance. Afterall, perhaps I would witness something remarkable. After the party arrived, sometime during the night, a stranger confronted me with a pistol, took my diamonds, forced himself into the Forbidden Wing. But then came the final irony: lightening struck the wing of the mansion. They fate he succumb to, I would not wish on my worst enemy. I do not believe he was instantly reduced to ashes, as the coroner concluded; men have been struck in the open, after all, and survived. Most likely the heat of the lightning set fire to his clothing, and the body burned slowly away, as with spontaneous combustion, so vividly described by Dickens, except that in case the combustion occurred within a confined space, and so was more complete. And there, ladies and gentlemen, you have it. We shall never know what became of my diamonds; I suspect that they are lying in some undiscovered hollow in the Forbidden Wing. As I rose unsteadily to my feet, and the room seemed to sway around me, we moved slowly down the long expanse of the gallery and out into the deeper chill of the mansion, where the servant immediately began to apologise for the evening’s ordeal. Someone had made up the fire in my room, and as soon as I bolted the door, I lit the two dusty candles on the mantelpiece, and lay down fully clothed, with the lantern on a chair beside me. As the warmth crept back into my veins, the mysterious sounds echoed from the Forbidden Wing and I fell into a deep sleep. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
There are so many ghosts at the historic Winchester Mystery House in Santa Clara, California that the entities often get together to hold dances in the Grand Ballroom. A tour guide who worked at the mansion for two years, claimed to have watched a group of 10 to 12 ghosts dressed in the style of 1890, having a dance in the unfinished Ballroom (part of the house which requires a special tour to see). It was only after she watched them for a while that the tour guide realized that there was something very strange about the costumed dancers. No one paid the slightest attention to her. Everyone appeared to ignore her when she spoke. Then she noticed that there was something very eerie about their eyes, kind of dark and hollow. The ghostly figures did not seem to mind the intrusion of her physical presence. The tour guide wondered if she were observing the recreation of some past scene that had once occurred in the mansion. She remembered that they swung their partners round and round and seemed to be having a great time.
The Diasy Bedroom, the room Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester was trapped in during the 1906 earthquake received the most nominations for “most haunted” in the mansion. The conservators first became aware that strange things happened in The Daisy Bedroom when workers came in to restore it in 1985. Later, as they walked by the room with a psychically talented researcher, the man stopped suddenly and said, “There’s something going on in that room! I feel it strongly.” They immediately halted restoration plans. Three months later, during a tour, a woman found her young so carrying on an animated conversation with someone in the room. “Don’t you see her, Mommy?” the boy askes incredulously. “Don’t you see the lady by the window?” There used to be a diary filled with guest experiences with ghost through the years at The Winchester Mystery House.
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/
If you forget to purchase something during your visit, you can order any gift item by calling 408-247-2000 and charging them to your credit card. You can also place an order through the mail. Be sure to include a daytime telephone number with area code. Write to: Winchester Mystery House.
Money Can Buy Happiness for Some
Some people are still nice and happy. Happiness is a mental or emotional state of wellbeing characterized by optimistic or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Media and advertising are selling happiness as a utopian experience. And more and more people interpret it as bliss. The popular misconception is that happiness is looking gorgeous, laughing all day long, coming by the way driving fancy cars, et cetera. However, bliss is a rare out-of-body moment and not a routine. Consider it as a beautiful vacation, but no matter how amazing the holiday is, one must return home because home is a constant anchor in our lives. We learn how to navigate through every other complex emotion by our state of being. If we re not in the best of space, we will end up making decisions that will further prolong a state of being to an unexpected duration. Most people gauge their happiness with the barometer of their feeling. If it is sadness, they feel they would make efforts to feel better. Feelings are tools to carve a state of mind. There are many actions that fluctuate the state of being we are in, particularly that of happiness. Drawing a sense of comparison with others, overthinking about the past, allowing situations to get the better of oneself are some of the factors that tend to make us happy. Happiness, as a state of mind, is cultivated over time. It is something that can be practiced with time and strengthened like a muscle; the effort is not to find it so much but rather to maintain a state of mind. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When we tend to outsource our happiness or hyperlink it to circumstances externally, we heavily rely upon the success of those scenarios to achieve happiness as a goal. It is only then happiness gets mistaken to be a by-product of situations rather than an ingredient in the action to be executed. We anticipate its arrival and chase it with all our might. Happiness is not determined by what is happening around you but rather by what is happening inside of you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within. Happiness means different things to various people, but we think it is a state of wellbeing and contentment. Happy people, too, can be sad or disappointed, but they do not let it hamper their long-term mood. Happy individuals are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages, and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health, and even a long life. Happy and unhappy people generally have the same number of adverse events in their lives. It is their interpretation or approach toward tragic events where the major difference lies. Optimistic people try to negotiate an action plan to equilibrize negative situations in their lives, whereas, on the other hand, pessimists are more likely to complain about circumstances and then step into the quicksand of negativity or cynicism, perhaps even depression. In many ways, our hope is our knowledge. A doctor with a highly coveted medical degree, not believing that he will be able to treat his patients, will end up not using his knowledge to his advantage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Similarly, if he is not definite about being able to sell the products or fearing it will not rain, a farmer will not sow seeds at the beginning of his agricultural season. Optimism and pessimism are evaluative styles of reacting to life events that determine a positive vs. negative mood and all-embracing or all-excluding behaviour. Individuals with optimistic explanations of life try to look for the good in the bad; they generally feel happier and more equipped to handle challenges and do not self-label themselves as failures as the advent of every setback. Optimists tend to analyse how much of the situational they could control and how much was beyond their grip. Optimism is a form of positive thinking, allowing our interactions to have a positive spin resulting in better health, longer lives, long-lasting relationships, and healthier babies. There is no single great strategy to come with adversities. Most happy people adapt to how they respond to a situation and are ore agile in circumstances that may otherwise lead to emotional gymnastics. There is a lot to be learned from how well we cope with adversities. Human beings can cope pretty well with really bad things. We are finding that people who deal best with adversity are people who have flexible responses. They have multiple coping strategies, which is part of what we think of as mental health. Happy people also accept that adversity allows them to strengthen their coping skills. Without any challenges, one will hardly be able to evaluate one’s response. Therefore, happy people learn from each setback and bounce more resolutely. Over time, they are able to read situations and behave appropriately. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Money along cannot compensate for happiness. It allows one to live comfortably or feel secure. However, it is that all one needs to rise on the happiness metrics? Perhaps not. Out of 4,000 millionaires interviewed said that if you want you and your heirs to be happier, you should give your money away and let them make it on their own. (However, you will notice none of them do this and they continue to squeeze every penny they can get out of consumers.) Money helps procure resources to meet our basic needs, but more money does not always guarantee more happiness. Making money oneself instead of inheriting it resulted in people with peers with equal wealth feeling a bit happier. The pursuit of wealth demands multitasking on other fronts of an individual’s life. It means balancing working overtime with spending time with family, traveling for business trips to hanging out with friends, juggling weekend work mode with pursuing personal hobbies, cutting down on vacations, or lazing around with a high-pressure need to meet deadlines. Apart from the bank account, a person may have a limited circle to share that money with. However, a person not managing their financial foothold well will also crumble under the pressure of paying bills, living hand to mouth, and eventually feeling miserable. The honest answer to the question of whether money can or cannot buy happiness is that every individual is different. Each person makes decisions prioritizing what they need most. As long as our sense of value of life, people around us, and the World overall is not dictated by the currency in our wallet, we shall be able to create a fulfilling life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
No matter what your personality type is, you can embody happiness. Extrovert find happiness through their external Worlds and feel energized through the social circles they are part of. Introverts, on the other hand, find contentment in their inner Worlds. Going for a walk, sitting by themselves, painting, or reading a book might comfort them in a similar fashion as it does an extrovert in public interaction. Despite the numerous comparisons between whether one is better than the other, what a lot of studies vouch for is that the key factor in happiness amidst both personality types is to accept oneself, create a quality tribe that you can trust and not marinate one’s mind in other people’s way of living. It might work for them, but because there is no formula for happiness, you are free to discover your own route to it. If there are people who are happy permanently, it is debatable. Yet, there definitely exist people who are genuinely satisfied with their lives. There are people who feel good about life more often than others. This regular happiness mode labels them as happy people. There are people who acknowledge the happy people around them and celebrate them for their characteristics. These characteristics, when analysed, show the common thread of similar values, mechanisms, and behaviour traits running across all the people. Happy people exist because they choose to. While there are a million things that spark joy if we allow ourselves the time just to pause and look around, below, we have jotted down a few that we keep going back to, id est, our happiness trail and where to find them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The expert who is skilled in getting attention, provoking discussion, and dramatizing problems plays an indispensable role in the planning process in an agency, family, or group, and deserves perhaps more honour than one gets, since too often one is treated as one who troubles the sleep of others. Poets and prophets may be indispensable as movers of opinion and intolerable as team mates. The unquestioning assurance with which we habitually assume that everyone knows what is meant by social problem attests that we are dealing here with one of the valid preconceptions of our culture. Yet our and other cultures show that what is problematical to some people is not so to others. In our culture, circumstances such as the condition of the weather and the coming of death are regarded as natural and inevitable concomitants of human existence. They cannot be changed or improved, they are not subject to progress, nothing can be done about them except to submit and adjust to them; they are not problems. The problematical situation is one where it appears that something can be done, something which is defined by the comparison of a better future and a worse present. Thus the concept of problems is closely linked historically and culturally with the idea of progress and the increase of man’s power over nature. To the extent tht the laboratories of General Electric raise hopes of regulating rainfall, the weather will become a problem. Thus, in the most advanced cultures almost any state of affairs can potentially be treated as a problem. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In considering matter like ill health, it may at first appear that for a state of affairs to be defined as problematic, it must inflict discomfort upon someone. Certainly it is true that many actions carried on by planning bodies are of this order; they are aimed at correcting some deficiency or restoring some status quo ante. It is also true, on the other hand, if they can be said to originate in any form of distress at all, that many actions of planning bodies originate only in that “divine discontent” created by an awareness of a discrepancy between what is an what might be. For propaganda purposes, it may be an advantage to publish each problem as an evil to be disposed of, rather than a good to be attained. However, it must be noted how in the planning process it is often the unfolding of new possibilities that crates the problem, not the intensification of some threat of pain. Failure to recognize the prospect of continuous, dynamic change leads not to planning but to fire-fighting, not to cumulative advance in power and technique but to stagnant routine. The definition of problems in terms of the progressive setting of new and positive goals is thus one of the major distinctions between the planning and the therapeutic approach to the conduct of family agencies. Also, the therapy, as well as the charity approach, is likely to assume the existence of a natural order. According to this view, problems arise when something goes wrong with the natural order. Some external disturbance is said to interfere with normal functioning, and the problem is assumed solved when the natural order is restored. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The planning approach, in contrast, denies the assumption of some pre-existent natural order, and construes the social order as the product or construction of purposeful human activity. There is no valid question of whether to plan or not to plan, but only of which plans are good and which plans are bad. The structure of all human organizations—from the smallest to the largest—is taken as the embodiment of certain rules of the game which have been invented or accepted by their participants. Problems from this point of view require some reconstitution of the group to accomplish some change of purpose. From the therapeutic point of view, it is common to speak of “society as the patient.” However, from the planning point of view, all parties affected by the problem are equally patients and therapists, who are engaged not in restoring their constitution but a sacred attitude toward the structure of the social order, the planning approach takes a very secular attitude. Personality likewise becomes problematic when it is viewed as a construction from the elements of experience. The basic assumption of all research on the development of personality is that ultimately something can be done about it, something distinguishable in terms of better and worse. How much can be done, of course, is not ascertainable a prior but only by exploration and experiment. As the reflection of the social order in which it occurs, personality can be no more a “natural order” than the rules of the game which constitute the social order. The identity of Americans is a social problem in 2023. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
We have so far spoken mainly of the anxiety and of the feeling of powerlessness pervading the personality of the member of the middle class. We must now discuss another trait which we have only touched upon very briefly: his hostility and resentment. That the middle class developed intense hostility is not surprising. Anybody who is thwarted in emotional and sensual expression and who is also threatened in his very existence will normally react with hostility; as we have seen, the middle class as a whole and especially those of its members who were not yet enjoying the advantages of rising capitalism were thwarted and seriously threatened. Another factor was to increase their hostility: the luxury and power which the small group of capitalists, including the higher dignitaries of the Church, could afford to display. An intense enby against them was the natural result. However, when hostility and envy developed, the members of the middle class could not find the direct expression which was made possible for the lower classes. These hated the rich who exploited them, they wanted to overthrow their power, and could thus afford to feel and to express their hatred. The upper class also could afford to express aggressiveness directly in the wish for power. The members of the middle class were essentially conservative; they wanted to stabilize society and not uproot it; each of them hoped to become more prosperous and to participate in the general development. Hostility, therefore, was not to be expressed overtly, nor could it even be felt consciously; it had to be repressed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Repression of hostility, however, only removes it from conscious awareness, it does not abolish it. Moreover, the pent-up hostility, not finding any direct expression, increases to a point where it pervades the whole personality, one’s relationship to others and to oneself—but in rationalized and disguised forms. Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin portray this all-pervading hostility. Not only in the sense that these two men, personally, belonging to the ranks of the greatest haters among the leading figures of history, certainly among religious leaders; but, which is more important, in the sense that their doctrines were coloured by this hostility and could only appeal to a group itself driven by an intense, repressed hostility. The most striking expression of this hostility is found in their concept of God, especially in Mr. Calvin’s doctrine. Although we are all familiar with this concept, we often do not fully realize what it means to conceive of God as being as arbitrary and merciless as Mr. Calvin’s God, who destined part of mankind to eternal damnation without any justification or reason except that this act was an expression of God’s power. Mr. Calving himself was, of course, concerned with the obvious objections which could be made against this conception of God; but the more or less subtle construction he made to uphold the picture of a just and loving God do not sound in the least convincing. This picture of a despotic God, who wants unrestricted power over men and their submission and humiliation, was the projection of the middle class’s own hostility and envy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Hostility or resentment also found expression in the character of relationships to others. The main form which it assumed was moral indignation, which has invariably been characteristic for the lower middle class from Mr. Luther’s time to Mr. Hitler’s. While this class was actually envious of those who had wealth and power and could enjoy life, in terms of moral indignation and in the conviction that these superior people would be punished by eternal suffering. However, the hostile tension against others found expression in still other ways. Mr. Calvin’s regime in Geneva was characterized by suspicion and hostility on the part of everybody against everybody else, and certainly little of the spirit of love and brotherliness could be discovered in his despotic regime. Mr. Calvin distrusted wealth and at the same time had little pity for poverty. In the later development of Calvinism warnings against friendliness towards the stranger, a cruel attitude towards the poor, and a general atmosphere of suspiciousness often appeared. Aside from the projection of hostility and jealousy onto God and their indirect expression in the form of moral indignation, one other way in which hostility found expression was in turning it against oneself. We have seen how ardently both Mr. Luther and Mr. Calvin emphasized the wickedness of man and taught self-humiliation and self-abasement as the basis of all virtue. What they consciously had in mind was certainly nothing but an extreme degree of humility. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
However, to anybody familiar with the psychological mechanisms of self-accusation and self-humiliation there can be no doubt that this kind of “humility” is rooted in a violent hated which, for some reason or other, is blocked from being directed toward the World outside and operates against one’s own self. In order to understand this phenomenon fully, it is necessary to realize that the attitudes toward others and toward oneself, far from being contradictory, in principle run parallel. However, while hostility against others is often conscious and can be expressed overtly, hostility against oneself is usually (except in pathological cases) unconscious, and finds expression in indirect and rationalized forms. One is a person’s active emphasis on his own wickedness and insignificance, of which we have just spoken; another appears under the guise of conscience or duty. Just as there exists humility which has nothing to do with self-hatred, so there exist genuine demands of conscience and a sense of duty which are not rooted in hostility. This genuine conscience forms a part of integrated personality and the following of its demands is an affirmation of the whole self. However, the sense of “duty” as we find it pervading the life of modern man from the period of Reformation up to present in religious or secular rationalization, is intensely coloured by hostility against the self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“Conscience” is a slave driver, put into man by himself. It drives him to act according to wishes and aims which he believes to be his own, while they are actually the internalization of external social demands. It drives him with harshness and cruelty, forbidding him pleasure and happiness, making his whole life the atonement for some mysterious sin. It is also the basis of the “inner Worldly asceticism” which is so characteristic in early Calvinism and later Puritanism. The hostility in which this modern kind of humility and sense of duty is rooted explains also one otherwise rather baffling contradiction: that such humility goes together with contempt for others, and that self-righteousness has actually replaced love and mercy. Genuine humility and a genuine sense of duty towards one’s fellow men could not do this; but self-humiliation and self-negating “conscience” are only one side of an hostility, the other side of which is contempt for and hatred against others. The hostility of man against himself is contained in the superego. The superego was originally the internalization of an external and dangerous authority. Unless regeneration by the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Spirit means sinlessness, and the present possession of a resurrection body, not every part of a believer is yet renewed and freed by the redemption of Calvary from the effects of the Fall. HENCE THERE IS GROUND FOR THE POSSIBLE OPERATION OF DECEIVING SPIRITS. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Since absolute sinlessness and the present possession of the resurrection body are not taught in the Scriptures as attainable while on Earth, the chance of deception is logically and reasonably possible—even while the spirit and heart of man is renewed by the Holy Spirit. If we come to facts of experience, the proofs are so abundant as to be beyond our capacity to handle in the limited space of this essay, not only in the unregenerated World but in those who are undoubtedly children of God and spiritual believers. If we knew ourselves and our actual condition as sinners, s depicted in God’s Word, we would be in greater safety from the enemy. It is the ignorance of our true condition even with the new life from God implanted in us, and our blind confidence of safety without an intelligent basis for that assumption, which lays us open to being deceived by Satan through our very certainty of being free from his deception. Since the government and public schools no longer instill patriotism in Americans, it is your jobs as parents to teach your children to be patriotic and to buy American cars. Back in the 1950s, housekeepers would brag about teaching the children they took care of to be the first in the neighbourhood to memorize the pledge of allegiance. However, today’s kids are taught by the TV how to sing theme songs to their favourite cartoons. Let us not forget to remind our children of what an honour it is to live in America and to be an American. “Christology is a function of soteriology.” The Christ who brings the New Being is a unique event which saves the whole of humanity and the whole of the Universe. The task of Christology is to work out the universal significance of this simple and unrepeatable historic fact. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The New Testament account supplies the concrete details of an individual, personal life, whole the Christological symbols convey the universal significance of the Christ. Thus, myth and symbols are the very language of religion, and to demythologize “would silence the experience of the holy.” Two central Christological symbols reveal the significance of Jesus as the Christ: the Cross, which symbolizes His subjection to existence, and the Resurrection, which symbolized His Victory over it. The Cross and the Resurrection are mutually interdependent, for the triumph of the Resurrection supposes the death on the Cross, and the Cross would have been no different from the death of any other man if the Christ had not risen. Building on this close relationship, we establish the Cross as the paradigm according to which the Resurrection is to be understood. The Cross is both an event and a symbol or, better, a symbol based on an event. As the crucifixion story of Jesus, it enjoys a comparatively high degree of historical probability. As the Cross of Jesus who is the Christ, it is the myth of the bearer of the new eon who suffers the death of a convict and slave under the powers of that old eon which He is to conquer. The Resurrection must be viewed in the same way, as event and symbol, but with this difference, that the New Testament reports of the factual element of the Resurrection are far more mysterious and uncertain than those of the crucifixion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The resurrection system was a familiar one in ancient religions, but a real experience made it possible for the disciples to apply the known symbol of resurrection to Jesus, thus acknowledging Him definitely s the Christ. This experienced event brought the certainty that He who is the bringer of the new eon cannot finally have succumbed to the power of the old eon. The physical resurrection of the body of Jesus, holds that the soul of Jesus first appeared to His disciples, which allowed them to communicate with the dead. However, the full resurrection revived the whole personality, body and soul. It was a negativity which was overcome, and this negativity was not the death of one man, but the disappearance of Him in whom the New Being was manifest. By His death he disappeared from the present experience of the disciples. Jesus of Nazareth became indissolubly united with the reality of the New Being. He is present wherever the New Being is present. In this way the concrete individual life of man Jesus of Nazareth is raised above transitoriness into the eternal presence of God as Spirit. The Resurrection is the restitution of Jesus as the Christ, a restitution which is rooted in the personal unity between Jesus and God ad in the impact of this unity on the minds of the apostles. The experience of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ had to come first, but, after the death of Jesus, the disciples’ experience of His living presence restored Him to His Christhood. Faith in the Resurrection of the Christ does not depend upon historical research or theological theories. Certainty can come only from faith, and faith assures us the victory of Jesus the Christ over the conditions of existence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Faith is based on the experience of being grasped by the power of the New Being through which the destructive consequences of estrangement are conquered. It is certainty of one’s own victory over the death of existential estrangement which creates the certainty of the Resurrection of the Christ as event and symbol; but it is not historical conviction or the acceptance of biblical authority which creates this certainty. Jesus of Nazareth is the medium of the final revelation because He sacrifices Himself completely to Jesus as the Christ. The Christ possesses perfect unity with God. However, since Jesus of Nazareth is only the bearer of this revelation, He must not point to Himself, but to the ground of being. The Cross says No to Jesus while revealing the Yes of the Christ’s unbroken union with God. In other words, the Cross is the symbol of the Protestant principle. When it comes to the criterion of faith, that symbol is most adequate which expresses not only the ultimate but also its own lack of ultimacy. Jesus could not have been the Christ without sacrificing Himself as Jesus to Himself as the Christ. What is particular in Him (Jesus) is that He Crucified the particular in himself for the sake of the Universal. This liberates His image from bondage both to a particular religion…and to the religious sphere as such. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
With this image, particular yet free from particularity, religious yet free from religion, the criteria are given under which Christianity must judge itself. Moreover, the No of the Cross applies equally to the followers of the Christ: No finite being can attain the infinite without being broken as He who represented the World, and its wisdom and its power, was broken on the Cross. And, finally, of special interest to us, theonomy is based upon the Protestant principle, the Yes and the No of the Cross. For Jesus the Christ overcomes autonomy by His transparency to the ground of being (the Yes), and He resists heteronomy by the humiliation of His death (the No). One who delights in the Lord shall be like a tree planted by streams of waters, that bring forth its fruit in its season, and whose lead does not wither; and whatever one does one shall prosper. Teach me, O Lord, Thy way, that I may walk in Thy truth; make my heart firm to revere Thy name. Open my eyes that I may behold the wonders of Thy Holy Christian Bible. O my way be directed to observe Thy statutes. Guide me in Thy truth, and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God. Thy teachings ever make for righteousness; give me understanding, and I shall live. The only real poverty is poverty of mind. Reverence for God is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Eternal is true understanding. Where there is no knowledge, there is no reverence for God; where there is no reverence for God, there is no true knowledge. The Book of Mormon and Holy Christian Bible endows man with modesty and reverence. And taches one to be virtuous, pious, upright and faithful. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Expressing the beliefs of his revolutionary generation, it was Mr. Jefferson, once again, who asserted that governments must behave with “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority.” The United States of America and Europe—still at the dawn of the Second Wave era—were just beginning the long process that would turn them eventually into industrial mass societies. The concept of majority rule perfectly fit the needs of these societies. Our present mass democracy is the political expression of a mass production, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass society. Today, as we have seen, we are leaving industrialism behind and rapidly becoming a de-massified society. In consequence it is growing increasingly difficult—often impossible—to mobilize a majority or even a governing coalition. In the United States of America, I do not see the basis for any positive majority on anything today. In the place of a highly stratified society in which a few major blocs ally themselves to form a majority, we have a configurative society—one in which thousands of minorities, many of them temporary, swirl and form highly novel, transient patterns, seldom coalescing into a consensus of major issues. The advance of Third Wave civilization thus weakens the very legitimacy of many existing governments. The Third Wave also challenges all of our conventional assumptions about the relationships of majority rule to social justice. Throughout the era of Second Wave civilization in fight for majority rule was humane and liberating. In still-industrial countries like Africa today, it remains so. In Second Wave societies, majority rule almost always meant a fairer break for the poor. For the poor were the majority. As an economy expands or as it trade with other countries grows, a point will come when the present value of the social benefits of shifting toward a more rule-based governance will exceed the costs of the required investment. However, the switch need not occur at the optimal point. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
There are many reasons why the political and economic realities will delay the shift. First and foremost, the fixed costs of rule-based governance are a public investment; therefore society must solve a collective-action problem to put such a system in place. This is not automatic; there are the usual problems of free riding, underestimation of the benefits to future generations in today’s political process, and the veto power held by those who stand to lose from the change. Even when public investment for a rule-based system has been made, people used to the relation-based system who want to switch must make some private investments to learn the rules and their operation. Their benefit from the switched will depend on how many others make the switch. This positive feedback externality can lean to too few switchers, or even a lock-in that keeps the old system in use. In turn, the expectation of this can reduce the social benefits of the changeover and therefore delay or deter the initial public investment. The benefits of the new system may be unequally distributed, and some participants may even lose. The reputational capital in the relation-based system is an asset that would become worthless in a pure rule-based system, so incumbents stand to lose from the change and will therefore resists it by political means. They currently successful businesspeople and financiers, who are almost by definition the heaviest users of the existing relation-based system, are also usually active participants in the political process, and adept at marshaling their special interests in an organized way. They can also stall and frustrate a government’s attempts at reform. And it seems like if a Republican wants to take office in California, where 30 percent of residents are poor or near poor, and 12.3 percent are below the poverty line, they will have to focus on policies to help the poor and on family values. The same holds true for the President of America. The middle class is at 50 percent and has consistently been shrinking since a peak of 61 percent in 1971. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are poor. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
CRESLEIGH HOMES HAVENWOOD | HOMESITE 67
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Humankind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality
We live in a labyrinthine World of puzzling objects, enigmatical events, and practically unintelligible (sometimes even mystical) relationships that we cannot hope ever to comprehend entirely. A word is a slur when it is when it means to express strong negative attitudes towards members of a group, attitudes in some sense grounded in nothing more than membership in the group. A slur against a group of people, for example, is a word which speakers know (and as competent speakers are expected to know) is used to insult and display contempt for an individual based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, age and so forth. What makes a word a slur I that it is used to do certain things, that has a certain illocutionary potential. Given what slurs are used to do, it is no surprise tht their use often achieves extreme effect on their targets—humiliation, subjection, shame. Slurs can be used without displaying contempt or causing hurt. This happens, for example, when a slur is appropriated by its targets: it is an insult to no one, save perhaps the individual for who the slur is aimed as uses it as a term to identify themselves. A slur can be self-ascribed to record one’s status as a victim of discrimination or worse. There need beno racism in an epithet’s use by comedians to make fun or criticize various attitude and behaviours of both one who slurs and one who I slurred. One may use a slur in order to teach someone that it is a word which should not be used. And an epithet can sometimes be used non-offensively in indirect discourse or narrative to portray someone else’s racist remark or attitude. The use of slurs often reflects a complicated web of attitudes, including discomfort about or fear of what seemed pronounced physical and cultural differences. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Truth is, and has always been, a central topic in philosophy. Direct interest in the word true itself may ebb and flow, but it is never far from center stage. We tend to assume that truthfulness and morality go together in a clear and simple way. In an ordinary community of morally decent people there is a need for trust and community standards for telling the truth, but ordinary community, unlike the ideal scientific community, must continually face the ambiguous problem of when to tell how much of what truth and to whom. Telling the whole truth about everything to everybody all the time is an impossibility but even if it were possible, it probably would not be desirable. Deception is a touchy subject. We should all repudiate all harmfully exploitative deceptions such as consumer fraud, insider trading, the misuse of public office and public trust for self-interest, kids hiding their dope and alcohol and pregnancies from their parents, husbands and wives cheating on each other, large-scale tax evasion, the false and vicious reason of racism and sexism, TV news reporters preying on vulnerable, semiliterate audiences, marijuana and cigarette advertising, and so on. The list of reprehensible exploitations is enormous and grows longer daily. As children we are taught to revere the principle of truth telling before we have achieved a clear understanding of what truth is. For a child, how is the truth different from a captivating story tht takes us off into other vivid realities? From saying things that make people feel good? From whatever saves us when we are in danger? Truth, fantasy, goodness, happiness, excitement are not automatically separated in the thoughts of young children. Children have to be taught to isolate truth and truth telling for special treatment. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
As our experiences widen, however, we also learn through wonderfully indirect and subtle means that truth telling, like every other moral principle, has its drawback in practice, and sometimes we have to pass over it in our calculations for getting on as decent and successful human beings. Deception is found in every culture (only attitudes toward it differ), probably because it provides advantage in carrying out one’s intentions, and because it offer a chance to escape confrontations without having to fight. We humans are active, creative mammals who can represent what exists as if it did not, and what does not exist as if it did. And we do this easily and routinely. Concealment, obliqueness, silence, outright lying—all help to hold Nemesis at bay; all help us abide to large helpings of reality. T.S. Eliot was right when he reminded us that “Humankind/Cannot bear very much reality.” In civilization no less than in the wilderness, survival at the water hole does not favor the fully exposed and unguarded self. Deception, it seems, is a vital part of practical intelligence. Much of human interaction is take up with the giving and getting of impressions, which are composed of some plain truth and some fancy, some display and some concealment, something said and something suggested, something focused and something blurred. All this for the purpose of getting done what you want to do. Lying requires a reason while telling the truth does not. Truthfulness in statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage occurring to oneself or another. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Thus the definition of a life as merely an intentional untruthful declaration to another person does not require the additional condition that it must harm another. For a lie always harms another; if not some other particular human, still it harms mankind generally, for it vitiate the source of the law itself. Things happen; we witness some aspects of an event from a particular vantage point; we interpret what we have taken in with our senses; we discover or compose an acceptable meaning from that subjectivity limited rendering of “fact”; express an edited, personalized version of the result, to a selected audience, at a chosen time, if we want to. There is a vast psychological distance between the “things that happen” and what we are later able to say about them, no matter how sincerely we try to be objective and to get it right. Lifelong uncertainty about the “truth” is an attribute of human sensibility; it is a product of the interplay of memory and imagination, history and choice. Truth is fully present in our experiences. We can know truth. However, the multifarious and discordant sentiments which divine mankind, afford a great temptation to skepticism, and many are carried away by it. The open enemies of the gospel take occasion from hence to justify their rejection of it: many of its professed friend have written as if they thought, that to be decided, amidst so many minds and opinions, were almost presumptuous. The principle, if not the only use of which they would make of these differences is, to induce a spirit of moderation and charity, and to declaim against bigotry. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
To say nothing at present how these terms are perverted and hackneyed in a certain cause, let two things be seriously considered—First, Whether this was the use made by the apostles of the discordant opinions which prevailed in their times, even amongst those who “acknowledged the divinity of our Saviour’s mission?” In differences amongst Christians which did not affect the kingdom of God, nor destroy the work of God, it certainly was: Such were those concerning means, drinks, and days, in which the utmost forbearance was inculcated. However, it was otherwise in differences which affected the leading doctrines and precepts of Christianity. Forbearance in these cases would, in the account of the sacred writers, have been a crime. If Christianity be of God, and He have revealed His will in the holy scriptures, light is come into the World, though the dark minds of sinful creatures comprehend it not. It does not follow, because many wander in mazes of fruitless speculation, that there is not a way to plain that a way-faring man or one who “walketh in the truth,” though a fool, shall not err. The numerous sects among the Greeks and Romans, and even among the Jews, at the time of our Saviour’s appearing, did not prove that there was no certain knowledge to be obtained of what was truth. Our Lord considered Himself as speaking plainly, or He would not have asked the Jews as he did, “Why do ye not understand my speech?” The apostles and primitive believers saw their way plainly: and though we cannot pretend to the extraordinary inspiration which was possessed by man of them; yet, if we humbly follow their light, depending on the ordinary teachings of God’s Holy Spirit, we shall see ours. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Truth, we may be certain, is the same thing as what in the scriptures is denominated “the gospel,” “the common salvation,” “the common faith,” “the faith once delivered to the saints,” “the truth as it is in Jesus,”; and what this is, may be clearly understood by the brief summaries of the gospel, and of the faith of the primitive Christians, which abound in the New Testament. Of the former the following are a few of many examples: “God so loved the World the He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life—The Son of Man came to seek and save that which is loft—I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me—To Him give all the prophets witnesses, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins—We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them that believe, the wisdom of God, and the power of God—I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified—Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye find; by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast what I preached to you, unless ye have believed in vain: for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and the He rose again the third day, according to the scriptures—This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ came into the World to save sinners, of whom I am chief—This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, any other: for there is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
If language have any determinate meaning, it is here plainly taught the mankind are not only sinners, but in a lost and perishing condition, without help or hope, but what arises from the free grace of God, through the atonement of His Son; the He died as our substitute; that we are forgiven and accepted only for the sake of what He hath done and suffered; that in his person and work all evangelical truth concentrates; that the doctrine of salvation for the chief of sinners through His death, was so familiar in the primitive times, as to become a kind of Christian proverb, or “saying;” and that on “standing,” and final “salvation.” In this doctrine be received, Christianity is received: If not, the record which God hath given of His Son is rejected, and He Himself treated as a lair. When this doctrine is received in the true Spirit of it, (which it never is by a sinner ready to perish) all those fruitless speculations which tend only to bewilder the mind, will be laid aside; just as malice, and guile, and envies, and evil-speaking are laid aside by Him who is born of God. They will fall off from the mind, like the coat of the chrysalis, of their own accord. Many instances of this are occurring. Persons who, after having read and studied controversies, and learned first to one opinion and then to another, till their minds have been lost in uncertainty, have at length been brought to think of the gospel, not as a matter of speculation, but as that which seriously and immediately concerned them: and embracing it as good news to them who are ready to perish, have not only found rest to their fouls, but all their former notions have departed from them, as a dream when one awaketh. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The Christological problem begins when men realize they are estranged and wonder about a new reality with the power to conquer existence, but it does not end with the simple acceptance of Jesus as the Christ. The baptismal confession that Jesus is the Christ is the text of which the Christological dogma is the commentary. The dogma has a twofold purpose: to affirm and defend the Christian message against distortion, and to express it in conceptual terms. The first function guards the substance; the second function imparts form. The aim of the early conciliar Christological formulas was to preserve both the Christ-character and the Jesus-character of the event of Jesus as the Christ. The homoousion of Nicaea maintained the Christ-character against the Arians who would make Jesus a semi-divine being. Chalcedon warded off the attacks of the monophysites upon the Jesus-character of the Christ. Both councils succeeded in affirming and defending the substance of the Christian message, but they did so in spite of the inadequate intellectual tools of the two-natures theory. The task of present-day Protestant Christology is the development of new forms to express the substance of Nicaea and Chalcedon. However, the basic inadequacy lies in the term “nature.” When applied to man, it is ambiguous; when applied to God it is wrong. “Human nature” can mean three things: essential or created nature, existential or estranged nature, and an ambiguous unity of the two. All three meanings can be applied to Jesus as the Christ, although the second must be qualified insofar as estrangement, while remaining a real possibility, is taken into the unity with God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Because of this ambiguity and need for qualification, it is imperative to dismiss altogether the term “human nature” in relation to Christ and replace it by a description of the dynamics of His life. The term “divine nature” must be understood as that which makes God what He is, His essence. However, God also has existence, or, more exactly, He is beyond both essence and existence. “Divine nature,” cannot be applied to the Christ precisely because the New Bing is not beyond essence and existence, but in existence. The Christ is a personal life in a definite period of history, subject to birth and death, temptation and finitude. The assertion that Jesus as the Christ is the personal unity of a divine and a human nature must be replaced by the assertion that in Jesus as the Christ the eternal unity of God and man has become historical reality. This is better than the two natures which lie beside each other like blocks and whose unity cannot be understood at all. In Spirit Christology, we understand that God was in Jesus the Christ because the divine Spirit totally grasped His human spirit. In this sense, one can speak of the faith of the Christ which is the state of being grasped unambiguously by the Spiritual Presence. However, although the Spirit is unambiguously present in the Christ, His faith still has a fragmentary character due to the fact tht He is subjected to the conditions of existence. Two important implications follow from Spirit Christology. First, it is not the spirit of the man Jesus that makes Him the Christ, but the Spirit of God, and thus the dangers of a Jesus-theology are avoided. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
And secondly, the Spiritual Presence in history is the same as the Spiritual presence in the Christ; hence, He is not an isolated event, but touches the whole history through the activity of the spirit. Admittance of the possibility of deception is in the stage in break of truth upon the mind, although it may sometimes precede the doubt. To admit the possibility of being deceived—or mistaken—in any aspect of new experience or action, or even view of truth, is really a possibility which should be acknowledged by every believer; and yet so subtle is the deception of the enemy tht almost invariably the attitude of each one is tht though “others” may be open to deception, he or she is the exception to the rule. This certainty of personal exception is so deep-seated with the most visibly deceived person that the longest battle is simply to obtain entrance to the mind for the one thought of possible deception in any point at all. The believer seems armed with unshaken assurance that though others may be misled, he certainly is not; he “beholdeth the mote” in his brother’s eye and is blind—blind to the “beam” in his own. However, an open attitude to truth says, “Why not I as well as others? May not my assurance of safety be a deception of the enemy, as much as the deception I see in others?” Why all believers should admit the possibility of deception by deceiving spirits may be considered just here: The primary fact to be recognized by every human being is the complete and utter ruin of the first creation at the Fall—when the First Adam admitted the poison of the serpent, which permeated and corrupted his whole being beyond repair. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The utter corruption of the human race as a consequence is unmistakably declared in the New Testament: “The old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit,” reports Ephesians 4.22. “Being darkened in their understanding; alienated from the life of God,” reports Ephesians 4.18. “We all once lived in the lusts of flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest,” reports Ephesians 2.3. Thus the Apostle Paul described the whole race of man, Gentile and Jew, Pharisee and Publican: In all, he said, “the prince of the power of the air” has operated, as “the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.” All agencies plan, as do all persons and families; planning in the generic sense distinguishes us humans from creatures who cannot transcend the immediate. However, planning in the specific sense of highly modern attainments in social organization is what we mean when we speak of the planning stage in family agencies. In the long history of man’s ascent toward rationality in social affairs, conscious awareness of the planning process in action agencies ranks as a major invention. The image of the competent man is out of place except in the context of modern planning. The generalized outlines of the democratic planning process which follows should not be taken as a recommendation that every family agency should immediately plunge into the planning stage. Planning by a family agency is not unlike the planning by a person of his career. When the aim of an agency is personal development, there are many reasons why its planning method should self-consciously follow a model which permits the agency to transform itself by its own operations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Since Dr. Cooley in 1902, if not long before, many thinkers have held that human nature and the social order reflect each other. There have been divergent opinions whether the line of causation runs from personality to community (“human nature writ large”), or whether the person as microcosm incorporates as habit the regular recurrences which constitute the institutional fabric of society. The developmental view conceives a spiral of interaction between the careers of persons and institutions. It is the obligation of the family agency that adopts the aim of optimal development to maintain this nexus in a dynamic sense. To keep the parallel always in mind can cumulatively influence multitudes of decisions. In concrete terms, the action of agencies, families, and individuals is not a constant flow; it is episodic, organized in fairly regular, qualitatively distinguishable sequences. As a unit of reference, the behavior of each of the three can usefully be brought together in a conceptual analysis of the planning process that is applicable to all three levels of abstraction. To study the phases of the planning process, as seen in the furthest advanced of the family agencies, is to see in enlarged detail what in family or personal living may be only implicit or rudimentary. However, from this enlargement of the social act one can then derive clues and questions which are relevant when observing the smallest sequence of interpersonal behaviour. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Before there is an agency, or planning, or the possibility of planning, there must be a public with a problem. The public and the problem are defined in reference to each other. They never stand alone, and cannot be defined alone. A problem always belongs to some group of people, and generally speaking any group comes into existence as a group because its members feel that they are confronted by a common problem or problems. However, an outside expert cannot always determine what constitutes the problem of a group. And yet the problem exists and arguments may abound as to how to define it. Alternatively, a certain state of affairs may be a problem to an observer without being regarded as a problem to those whom it seems to affect. If a state of affairs affecting a number of people is also to become the problem of the group, then the members of the group must participate in defining the problem. Otherwise it is not their problem and they are not likely to feel responsible for its solution. The expert may assist in the recognition and clarification of a problem, but must be prepared for his interpretations to be rejected. Each phase of the planning process, when fully developed in a community or a large institution, employs a characteristic type of document. In this first or problem phase, such a document functions primarily to call attention to a problem and to convince the public involved that something ought to be done about it. The definition of what ought to be done occurs in later phases of the planning process, and yet in the successful attention-getting and definition of the problem, the outlines of later phases vaguely emerge. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
On this account, the importance of the problem phase of planning is often underestimated; that is, action goes off without adequate preparation. Even more often, the importance of getting the public involved and committed to solution of the problem is underestimated. Yet it is the arousal of concern, and participation in the definition of the problem as their problem, which motivates the public to act. Effort in the Calvinist doctrine had still another psychological meaning. The fact that one did not tire in that unceasing effort and that one succeeded in one’s moral as well as one’s secular work was a more or less distinct sign of being one of the chosen ones. The irrationality of such compulsive effort is that the activity is not meant to create a desired end but serves to indicate whether or not something will occur which has been determined beforehand, independent of one’s own activity or control. This mechanism is a well-known feature of compulsive neurotics. Such persons when afraid of the outcome of an important undertaking may, while awaiting an answer, count the windows of houses or trees on the street. If the number is even, a person feels that thing will be right; if the number is uneven, it is a sign that he will fail. Frequently this doubt does not refer to a specific instance but to a person’s whole life, and the compulsion to look for “signs” will pervade it accordingly. Often the connection between counting stones, playing solitaire, gambling, and so on, and anxiety and doubt, is not conscious. A person may play solitaire out of a vague feeling of restlessness and only an analysis might uncover the hidden function of his activity: to reveal the future. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
In Calvinism this meaning of effort was part of the religious doctrine. Originally it referred essentially to moral effort, but later on the emphasis was more and more on effort in one’s occupation and on the results of this effort, that is, success or failure in business. Success became the sign of God’s grace; failure, the sign of damnation. These considerations show that the compulsion to unceasing effort and work was far from being in contradiction to a basic conviction of man’s powerlessness; rather was it the psychological result. Effort and work in this sense assumed an entirely irrational character. They were not to change fate since this was predetermined by God, regardless of any effort on the part of the individual. They served only as a means of forecasting the predetermined fate; while at the same time the frantic effort was a reassurance against an otherwise unbearable feeling of powerlessness. This new attitude towards effort and work as an aim in itself may be assumed to be the most important psychological change which has happened to man since the end of the Middle Ages. In every society man has to work if he wants to live. Many societies solved the problem by having the work done by slaves, thus allowing the free man to devote himself to “nobler” occupations. In such societies, work was not worthy of a free man. In medieval society, too, the burden of work was unequally distributed among the different classes in the social hierarchy, and there was a good deal of crude exploitation. However, the attitude toward work was different from that which developed subsequently in the modern era. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Work did not have the abstract character of producing some commodity which might be profitably sold on the market. One worked in response to a concrete demand and with a concrete aim: to earn one’s livelihood. There was, as Max Weber particularly has shown, no urge to work more than was necessary to maintain the traditional standard of living. It seems that for some groups of medieval society work was enjoyed as a realization of productive ability; that many others worked because they had to and felt this necessity was conditioned by pressure from the outside. What was new in modern society was that men came to be driven to work not so much by external pressure but by an internal compulsion, which made them work as only a very strict master could have made people do in other societies. The inner compulsion was more effective in harnessing all energies to work than any outer compulsion can ever be. Against external compulsion there is always a certain amount of rebelliousness which hampers the effectiveness of work or makes people unfit for any differentiated task requiring intelligence, initiative, and responsibility. The compulsion to work by which man was turned into his own slave driver did not hamper these qualities. Undoubtedly capitalism could not have been developed had not the greatest part of man’s energy been channeled in the direction of work. There is no other period in history in which free men have given their energy so completely for one purpose: work. The drive for relentless work was one of the fundamental productive forces, no less important for the development of our industrial system than steam and electricity. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
The obsolescence of many of today’s governments is not some secret we alone have discovered. Nor is it a disease of America alone. The fact is that building a Third Wave civilization on the new wreckage of Second Wave institutions involves the design of new, more appropriate political structures in many nations at once. This is a painful yet necessary project that is mind-staggering in scope and will no doubt take decades to complete. In all likelihood it will require a protracted battle to radically overhaul the United States of America’s Congress, the House of Commons, and the House of the Lord, the French Chamber of Deputies, the Bundestag, the Diet, the giant ministries and entrenched civil services of many nations, their constitutions and court systems—much of the unwidely and increasingly unworkable apparatus of existing representative governments. Nor will this wave of political struggle stop at the national level. Over the months and decades ahead, the entire “global law machine”—from the United Nations at one end to the local city or town council at the other—will eventually face a mounting, ultimately irresistible demand for restructuring. All these structures will have to be fundamentally altered, not because they are inherently evil or even because they are controlled by this or that class or group, but because they are increasingly unworkable—no longer fitted to the needs of a radically changed World. To build workable governments anew—and to carry out what may well be the most important political task of our lifetimes—we will have to strip away the accumulated cliches of the Second Wave era. And we will have to rethink political life in terms of three key principles. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Indeed, these may well turn out to be the root principles of the Third Wave governments of tomorrow. Business in a relation-based system will expand at those margins where diminishing returns set in most slowly. This will mean preserving the closeness of the relation, even at the cost of undertaking a new activity that is not economically so close—not such a good complement in production or consumption. In such a system we will see diversified conglomerates whose component parts have nothing in common except common ownership by a closely knit extended family or similar network. One does indeed see such hodgepodge family empires in many less-developed countries (LDCs), for example India and Turkey. The South Korean chaebol, and the Japanese zaibatsu and their successor keiretsu, are also causes in point. Even in advanced industrial countries with rule-based governance, there are incentives to build diversified conglomerates—tax systems with double taxation of dividends make it costly to take profits out of the corporate sector and therefore artificially lower the cost of reinvesting retained earnings, and agency problems allow to management to indulge in its tastes for running large empires. However, in smaller and LCDs where relation-based governance prevails, the incentives to expand into seemingly unrelated activities are that much stronger. Another way to express this is to day that a relation-based system has a larger benefit of internal finance from the supply side. Thisbenefit is usually looked at from the demand side—the needs of a firm’s finance for investment are met at lower costs from retained earnings than from external borrowing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
However, the return to retained earnings is higher if reinvested within the firm than is possible from investments in external markets. Where borrowing and lending between different firms and their owner occurs, it will tend to be within some identifiable group defined by links that enable enforcement of implicit contracts based on reputation. This suggests that the “crony capitalism” that is observed in many LDCs (and condemned by outsiders) may have it place within their governance structure. Of course you deal with, and lend to, cronies. Non-cronies may defraud you and run away with your money; having no relation with them, you would have no recourse. “Crony socialism” existed under the central planning systems in socialist economies, and continued in the transition period. However, this compartmentalization of capital markers has a cost; it constrains that movement of capital to its most productive uses in response to changing conditions. Therefore it comprises another source of diminishing returns for the relation-based system. Transition to a rule-based system would allow more efficient reallocation of capital to take advantage of productive opportunities outside the group. Finally, although a relation-based system has low fixed costs, it can have large sunk costs—the reputational capital that makes time-separated transactions credible has to be built up, and is valuable. The combination of large sunk costs, and the small size of the economy where relation-based governance usually prevails, can create high entry barriers. Therefore one should expect to see high concentrations, or even monopolies, in such systems. That is indeed observed, not only in finance and production, but also in trade. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the high $600s
Now Selling!
No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,377 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
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Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Havenwood is renowned for its magnificently peaceful and pristine community, where modern establishments harmoniously coexist with the historical community.
Randolph Harris Research and Development 