Home » Posts tagged 'english'
Tag Archives: english
The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over
Your identity is like your shadow, not always visible, but always present. Plato once said, “I (and all persons) will survive death and destruction of my body insofar as what I essentially am is simple, immaterial soul something whose own essence is being alive.” The person who experiences himself as an ego and whose sense of identity is that of ego-identity naturally wants to protect this thing—him, his body, memory, property, and so on, but also his opinions and emotional investments which have become part of his ego. He is constantly on the defensive against anyone or any experience which could disturb the permanence and solidity of his mummified existence. In contrast, the person who experiences himself not as having but as being permits himself to be vulnerable. Nothing belongs to him except that he is by being alive. However, at every moment in which he loses his sense of activity, in which he is unconcentrated, he is in danger of neither having anything nor being anybody. This danger he can meet only by constant alertness, awakeness, and aliveness, and he is vulnerable compared with the ego-man, who is safe because he has without being. Transcendence is part of the phenomena of “human experiences.” Transcendence is customarily used in a religious context, and it refers to transcending the human dimensions to arrive at the experience of the divine. Transcending makes good sense in a theistic system; from a nontheistic standpoint it can be said that the concept of God was a poetic symbol for the act of leaving the prison of one’s ego and achieving the freedom of openness and relatedness to the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
If we speak of transcendence in a non-theological sense, there is no need for the concept of God. However, the psychological reality is the same. The basis for love, tenderness, compassion, interest, responsibility, and identity is precisely that of being versus having, and that means transcending the ego. It means letting go of one’s ego, letting go of one’s greed, making oneself empty to fill oneself, making oneself poor to be rich. Since the birth of living substances and transmitted by millions of years of evolution, in our wish to survive physically, we obey the biological impulse imprinted on us. The wish to be alive “beyond survival” is the creation of man in history, his alternative to despair and failure. The discussion of “human experiences” culminates in the statement that freedom is a quality of being fully humane. Inasmuch as we transcend the realm of physical survival and because we are not driven by fear, impotence, narcissism, dependency, etcetera, we transcend compulsion. Love, tenderness, reason, interest, integrity, and identity—they all are the children of freedom. Political freedom is a condition of human freedom only because it furthers the development of what is specifically human. Political freedom in an alienated society, which contributes to the dehumanization of man, becomes un-freedom. One of the fundamental elements of the human situation is man’s need for values which guide his actions and feelings. Of course, there is usually a discrepancy between what people consider their values to be and the effective values which direct them and of which they are not aware. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
In the industrial society, the official, conscious values are those of the religious and humanistic traditions: individuality, love, compassion, hope, etcetera. However, these values have become ideologies for most people and are not effective in motivating human behaviour. The unconscious values which directly motivate human behaviour are those which are generated in the social system of the bureaucratic, industrial society, those of property, consumption, social position, fun, excitement, etcetera. This discrepancy between conscious and ineffective and unconscious and effective values creates havoc within the personality. Having to act differently from what he has been taught and professes to abide by makes man feel guilty, distrustful of himself and others. It is that very discrepancy which our young generation has spotted and against which it has taken such an uncompromising stand. Values—the official or the factual ones—are not unstructuralized items but form a hierarchy in which certain supreme values determine the others as necessary correlates to the realization of the former. The development of those specifically human experiences forms the system of values within the psychospiritual tradition of the West and of India and China during the last 4,000 years. Since these values rest upon revelation, they were binding for those who believed in the source of revelation, which means, as far as the West is concerned, in God. In the West, the question arises whether the hierarchy of values presented by Western religion can have any foundation other than that of revelation by God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
We find among those who do not accept God’s authority as the foundation of values the following patterns: Complete relativism which claims that all values are matters of personal taste and have no foundation beyond such taste. Since man’s freely chosen project can be anything and hence a supreme value, because it is authentic, Sartre’s philosophy basically does not differ from this relativism. Another concept of values is that of socially immanent values. The defenders of this position start with the premise that the survival of each society with its own social structure and contradictions must be the supreme goal for all its members and hence that those norms which are conducive to the survival of that society are the highest values and are binding for everyone. Ethical norms are identical with social norms and social norms serve the perpetuation of any given society—including its injustices and contradictions. It is obvious that the elite which governs a society uses all the means at its disposal to make the social norms on which its power rests appear to be sacred, universal norms, either revealed by God or inherent in human nature. Another value concept is that of biologically immanent values. The reasoning of some of the representatives of this thought is that experiences like love, loyalty, group solidarity are rooted in corresponding feelings in the animal: human love and tenderness are seen as having their roots in the animal mother’s attitude toward its young, solidarity as rooted in the group cohesion among many animal species. This view does answer the critical question of the difference between human tenderness, solidarity, and other “human experiences” and those observed in the animal kingdom. Biological immanent value systems often arrive at results which are the very opposite of the human-oriented one discussed here. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
In a well-known type of social Darwinism, egotism, competition, and aggressiveness are conceived as the highest values because they are allegedly the main principles on which survival and evolution of the species rest. If this self-initiated learning is to occur, it seems essential that the individual be in contact with, be faced with, a real problem. Success in facilitating such learning often seems directly related to this factor. Professional people who come together in a workshop, because of a concern with problems they are facing, are a good example. Almost invariably, when they are given the facilitating climate, they at first resist the notion of being responsible for their own learning, and then seize upon this as an opportunity, and use it far beyond their expectations. On the other hand, students in a required course expect to remain passive, and may find themselves extremely perplexed and frustrated at being given freedom. “Freedom to do what?” is their quite understandable question. So it seems reasonably clear that man be confronted by issues which have meaning and relevance for him. In our culture we tend to try to insulate the student from all the real problems of life, and this constitutes a difficulty. It appears that if we desire to have students learn to be free and responsible individuals, then we must be willing for them to confront life, to face problems. Whether we are speaking of the inability of the small child to make change, or the problem of his older brother in installing the Wi-Fi, or the problem of a college student and adult in formulating his views on international policy, or dealing effectively with his interpersonal relationships, some real confrontation by a problem seems necessary condition for this type of learning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The forgotten hero is often the middle-class citizen, who goes quietly about his business, providing for himself and his family without making demands upon the state. The crushing effect of taxation upon such people is what is eroding the middle-class. Since the Revolution, the dogmas of the Enlightenment have been traditional ingredients of the America faith. American social thought has been optimistic, confident of the special destiny of the country, humanitarian, democratic. Its reformers relied upon the sanctions of natural rights. Optimism is sometimes a hollow defiance of the realities of social struggle, and our natural rights are nowhere to be found in nature. Humanitarianism, democracy, and equality are not eternal verities, but the passing mores of a stage of social evolution. In an age of helter-skelter reforms, confidence in one’s ability to will and plan their destinies is unwarranted by history or biology or any of the facts of experience—and the best one can do is to bow to natural forces. The best type of teacher is one who will facilitate a profound trust in the human organism. If we distrust the human being, then we must cram him with information of our own choosing, lest he go his own mistaken way. However, if we trust the capacity of the human individual for developing his own personality, then we can permit him the opportunity to choose his own way in his learning. Hence it is evident we need teachers who hold a confident view of man. Another element of the teacher’s function which stands out is his sincerity, his realness, his absence of a façade. He can be a real person in his relationship with his students. He can be angry. He can also be sensitive and sympathetic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Because a competent teacher accepts his feelings as his own, he has no need to impose them on his students. He can dislike a student product without implying that it is objectively bad of that or that the student is bad. It is simply true that he, as a person, dislikes it. This he is a person to his students, not a sterile tube through which knowledge is passed from one generation to the next. As one’s sensitivity develops and his conscience refines, he comes to regard certain actions as sinful which he formerly regarded as innocent. There is a guiding conscience in a man which develops or weakens as he responds to the forces and influences playing on and in him from both bygone lives and the current incarnation. It is this preoccupation with choosing good and avoiding evil, with religious feelings and moral virtues, that lift man above the animal. We must interpret the word duty in a larger sense, not merely as some social task imposed on us from without, but as a spiritual decision imposed on us from within. When they really mean keeping up appearances before others, it is a faculty use of the term self-respect. If we understand its twofold character, we shall understand the mysterious nature of conscience. What we commonly experience as the inward voice of conscience is simply the distilled result of accumulated experience, and this includes the experience of many Earth lives also. This voice is usually a negative one, because it more often warns, admonishes, and hinders us from wrong conduct. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
There is a rarer experience of conscience, however, which is the voice of our own Overself, that divine consciousness which transcends our personal self. This voice is usually an optimistic one since it directs, guides, and explains with a wisdom which comes from beyond the fears and hopes, the suggestions and customs, that organized society and patriarchal convention have implanted in our subconscious mind. Its external development of a so-called evil course of conduct may or may not coincide with the disapproval arising from ancient experience or divine wisdom, for it is merely a matter of social convenience, cultural development, or geographical custom. It may indeed be defective, false, or even quite immoral guidance, for mob passion often masquerades as social conscience. This is the kind of conscience which has a history. It changes with changing circumstances and evolves with evolving grades of culture. The trial and death of Sokrates is a classic case illustrating the conflict between genuine and pseudo-conscience. When I was in India, I learnt that to commit suicide under any circumstance was the worst of human since whereas when I was in Japan, I learnt that the failure to commit suicide, under certain circumstances, was itself one of the worst sins. In both countries the individual pseudo-conscience tenders its counsel to commit or not to commit suicide according to the suggestions implanted from outside in the individual mind by collective society. The voice of outer convention is conscience in its commonest form, the voice of personal experience is the wisdom of the human personality and the distillate of many incarnations, and the serene monition of the Overself is conscience in its purest form, the true innermost voice of divine wisdom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The ego takes his conscience over and fits it to suit himself. That voice within you which whispers that one act is right and another wrong, is in the end none other than the voice of the Overself. Only it may come to us as from afar, remote and muffled, halting and intermittent, because it must come amid other voices which are more clamant and closer to your inner ear. When formalism is stretched out into hypocrisy and when compromise is accepted to the point of surrender, social conventions have drowned a man’s conscience. Everyone has some degree of conscience. So, in relationships with others, an awareness of the promptings of this inner voice—in the light of and supplemented by the teachings of Masters like Jesus as the Christ—will clarify one’s course of thought and action. Under the pressure of his personal ego but haunted by the commandments of respected prophets, he finds himself occasionally in moral dilemmas. How shall a man meet different moral situations? What line of conduct should he follow on different occasions? How shall he resolve each conflict of duty? These are questions which he alone can best solve. It is his own conscience which is at stake. However, this does not mean that he should disdain whatever sources of guidance may be available to him. It means that what he must do circumstances at his stage of evolution is not necessarily what other men would have to do. We can depend on making a correct ethical choice always only when we have consciously worked out a true philosophical basis for all our ethics; otherwise, we shall be at the mercy of those many possible changes of which feeling itself is at the mercy. It is not a question of what course of action will be most effective, but of what will be most ethical. Neither of these two factors can be ignored with impunity; both must be brought into a balanced relation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
It is more prudent to “sense” the emanations imprinted in the auric field surrounding a personal than to trust alone to the words he utters or the claims he makes. Those who depend on other persons to make decisions for them or to solve problems, lose the chance of self-development which the situation offers them. In trying to reach a decision about his work and how he can best serve others, the individual must turn to the Overself and not to other sources, for direction. When confronted by difficult decisions, one must be especially careful to take into consideration the future effects of one’s choice. A decision based on sentiment, or on other emotional reactions, unchecked by reason, cannot solve any problem—as the student has, undoubtedly, already learned. It is necessary to examine experience—one’s own, and that of others—in so leads to painful repetition of avoidable suffering. This is true of personal relationships. There will come a time in the life of each student when certain critical decisions will have to be made. These, together with the quality of the ideals he pursues and his whole general attitude, will determine the circumstances of the remainder of that incarnation. There are so many sides to even the simplest situation that the aspirant will at times be bewildered as to what to do or how to act. He will waver from one decision to another and be unable to take up any firm ground at all. At such a time it is best to wait as long as possible and thus let time also make its contribution. If by waiting a little man can see his way more clearly and reach a more conducive decision, he should wait. However, if it only befuddles his mind still further, then he should not. We are not always given the chance to choose between simple good and evil. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The situations which organized human society develops for us do not infrequently offer the choice only between lesser and larger evils. We see among neurotics this same long-drawn inability to form decisions, or dread of their being wrong is made. If he can successfully analyse the personal and emotional factors involved in in, in every situation requiring an important decision, he will get a truer one. Judgements made in haste, actions done rashly, without proper consideration, and decisions given out of impatience and excitement are likely to be of less value than the opposite kind. In our case study of Clare, she had a lot of problems involving judgements in her relationships. Her boyfriend Peter often disregarded her feelings. Recently, Peter rejected Clare when she asked him to take a trip with her out of town. When he broke to her the news of having to stay in town, there had been no tenderness, no regret, no sympathy. It was only toward the end of the evening, when she cried bitterly, that he turned affectionate. In the meantime, he had made her bear the brunt of the distress/ He had impressed on her that everything was her fault. He had acted in the same way as her mother and brother had acted in her childhood, first stepping on her feelings, and then making her feel guilty. Incidentally, it is interesting to see here how the meaning of a fragment became clearer because she had picked up her courage to rebel, and how this elucidation of the past in turn helped her to become straighter in the present. Clare then recalled any number of incidents in which Peter had made implicit or explicit promises and had not kept them. Moreover, she realized that this behaviour showed itself also in more important and more intangible ways. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Clare saw that Peter had created in her the illusion of a deep and everlasting love, and yet was anxious to keep himself apart. It was as if he had intoxicated himself and her with the idea of love. And she had fallen for it, as she had fallen for the story of the robbers. Finally Clare recalled the associations she had before that early dream: thoughts of her friend Eileen, whose love faded out during the illness, and the novel in which the heroine felt estranged from her husband. These thoughts too, she realised now, had a much more serious connotation than she had assumed. Something within her seriously wanted to break away from Peter. Though she was not happy about this insight she nevertheless felt relieved. She felt as if a spell had been broken. In following her insight Clare began to wonder why it had taken her such a long time to obtain a clear picture of Peter. Once these traits in him were recognized they appeared so conscious to her that it was hard to overlook them. She saw then that she had a strong interest in not seeing them: nothing should prevent her from seeing in Peter the realisation of the great man of her daydream. Also, she saw for the first time the whole parade of figures whom she had hero-worshiped in a similar way. The parade started with her mother, whom she had idolized. Then Bruce had followed, a type in many ways that were like Peter. And the daydream man and many others. The dream of the glorious bird now definitely crystalized as a symbol for her glorification of Peter. Always, because of her expectations, she had hitched her wagon to a star. And all the stars had proved to be candles. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Many think that Clare should have realized long ago that Peter promised more than he could keep. She had seen it some months before, but she had neither taken it seriously, nor appreciated the whole extent of Peter’s unreliability. At that time her thought had been predominantly an expression of her own anger at him; now it had crystallized to an opinion, a judgement. Moreover, she did not then see the admixture of sadism behind his façade of righteousness and generosity. If she blindly expected him to fulfill all her needs, she could not possibly have arrived at this clear vision. Her realization that she had fantastic expectations, and her willingness to put the relationship on a give-and-take basis, had made her so much stronger than she could not dare to face his weakness and thus sake the pillars on which the relationship rested. In the Victorian Age, we are taught, man was the victim of repression. He was raised and lived in an atmosphere heavy with censorship. Proper behaviour was very formally prescribed; the domain of the improper was large and its contents were determined by the silent agreement of parents, of teachers, of preachers, of friends. That which was improper was not talked about and that which was not talked about was improper. Since speaking of certain things was verboten, it was difficult to understand (and prohibited to try to understand) why these things were proscribed. Those matters not admitted to discussion were naturally not proper to think upon. However, it is a far easier chore to restrain the tongue than to inhibit the thought. And though the impulses can be denied labels, or even falsely labeled, as impulses they permit of only one natural translation. Lust may become poetry and prurience may become scholarship, but only so much of libido is translatable. Always there is an irreducible minimum which demands expression (and recognition?)—else a man will be very nervous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
So discoveries Dr. Freud and so taught Dr. Freud. And in his searching examination of the nervous man (and woman) he learned of the tricks and failures of repression. He demonstrated that certain neurotic symptoms represented the partial failures of repression. He helped society to see that pleasures of the flesh were what was being repressed in Victorian culture. It was Dr. Freud’s intention to give man a greater freedom (if only be reducing the number of forces and constraints determining his behaviour) by enhancing his knowledge of himself as a biological organism. And the impact of Freudian psychology has been to bring a very perceptible degree of new freedom into at least one aspect of man’s functioning. Now it is not only acceptable to have impulses for pleasures of the flesh, recognised and labeled as such, but it is allowed to talk about those impulses. We are an unrepressed and liberated culture—at least as regards pleasures of the flesh. We have publicly guiltless freedom of expression concerning matters involving pleasures of the flesh and even when there are frustrations of malfunctions of pleasures of the flesh, these are not stringently reserved for the physician’s consulting room. Paradoxically, the individual who may by nature be reserved and believed that pleasures of the flesh should be a private matter (without necessarily having any unhealthy attitudes toward it) may suffer from the repression of her “prudery”! Is there something repressive about our Freudian liberation? Repression is in essence a biological phenomenon—it is psychological only with respect to the content of what is repressed, and this is determined largely by the values peculiar to a culture at a particular time. Dr. Freud’s discovery of the sexual basis of some neuroses and of the techniques for alleviating repression, together with the science of contraception, have served largely to solve the problems of the sex-life of modern man, only to leave him with the problems of his love-life—problems possibly more difficult of solution because they are inaccessible to our technology. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The freedom of pleasures of the flesh which resulted from Dr. Freud’s lifting of the forces of repression may now be recruited in the repression of our acquired drives to love and to be loved. It is further paradox that Dr. Freud’s efforts to liberate man and to free him from repression should have resulted in the cult of the expert psychotherapist. We have learned to appreciate the pathological effects of repression and to be sensitive to the benefits of emotional ventilation; we have learned that when we are troubled it is good to talk to someone. However, the forces of repression have been served by the cultural fallacy that it is good to talk only to a very select group of persons. Now we are confronted by a cultural neurosis so that people who would speak freely of their life involving pleasures of the flesh to even casual acquaintances feel that less “intimate” personal problems, their anxieties, frustrations, conflicts, and confusions must be revealed only in the magic privacy of the psychotherapist’s office. The person with a painful and perplexing personal problem is loath to ask a friend to share the knowledge of it, and his friend is loath to encourage him to talk it out. Reluctance to share one’s problems with even a very close friend can be traced not simply to the rise of modern psychiatry and the enhanced public awareness of psychotherapy. The mental health movement has a definite impact on dissuading individuals from looking to “non-experts” for even passively supportive roles. By emphasizing the activities of mental health specialist any by attributing to the psychiatrist, psychologist or other “expert” a specificity of therapeutic effect (which has thus far not been demonstrated) it has encouraged the notion that the non-expert cannot be truly helpful, and hence, that it is useless to talk with him. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Furthermore, the sensitive and help-oriented individual has been led to believe that either by failure to do something specific or, more likely, by virtue of making an inappropriate response he can do serious psychological injury to the friend who “consults” him. There appears to be a difference between the genders in degree of reluctance to share worries and anxieties, with women generally more ready than men to ventilate their concerns. With the greater proneness of women to introspection, self-doubt, and conflict, the injunction against “causal therapy” may have more impact on their tendency to seek professional help. This may partly account for the fact that two thirds of psychiatric clinical patients are females. Rousseau taught that human nature was essentially good, whereas Calvin taught that it was essentially bad. Philosophy teaches that the innermost core of human nature is essentially good, but the outer and visible husk is a mixture of good and bad, varying with individuals as to the proportions of this mixture. The mark of true goodness is, first, that it never by thought, word, or deed injuries any other living creature; second, that it has brought the lower nature under the bidding of the higher; and third, that it considers its own welfare not in isolation but always against the background of the common welfare. If he is to adhere to the principles of philosophical living, and if he is to place a correct emphasis on where it should belong, there are three different forms of wrong action which he must carefully separate from each other in his mind. First, the most important, is the sin in moral behaviour; second is the error in practical judgment; third is the transgression of the social code. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Marx postulated the interdependence between the economic basis of society and the political and legal institutions, its philosophy, art, religion, etcetera. The former, according to Marxist theory, determined the latter, the “ideological superstructure.” However, Marx and Engels did not show, as Engels admitted quite explicitly, how the economic basis is translated into the ideological superstructure. By using the tools of psychoanalysis, this gap in Marxian theory can be filled, and it is possible to show the mechanisms through which the economic basic structure and the superstructure are connected. One of these connections lies in the social character, the other in the nature of the social unconscious. According to Dr. Freud, character is defined as “the pattern of behaviour characteristic for a given individual.” While other authors like William McDougall, R.G Gordon and Kretschmer have emphasized the conative and dynamic element of character traits. Dr. Freud developed not only the first but also a most consistent and penetrating theory of character as a system of striving which underlies, but are not identical with, behaviour. Behaviour traits are described in terms of actions which are observable by a third person. Thus, for instance, the behaviour trait of “being courageous” would be defined as behaviour which is directed toward reaching a certain goal without being deterred by risks to one’s comfort, freedom, or life. Or parsimony as a behaviour trait would be defined as behaviour which aims at saving money or other material things. However, if we inquire into the motivation and particularly into the unconscious motivation of such behaviour traits, we find that the behaviour trait covers numerous and entirely different character traits. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Courageous behaviour may be motivated by ambition so that a person will risk his life in certain situations in order to satisfy his craving for being admired; it may be motivated by suicidal impulses which drive a person to seek danger because, consciously or unconsciously, he does not value his life and wants to destroy himself; it may be motivated by sheer lack of imagination so that a person acts courageously because he is not aware of the danger awaiting him; finally, it may be determined by a genuine devotion to the idea or aim for which a person acts, a motivation which is conventionally assumed to be the basis of courage. Superficially the behaviour in all these instances is the same despite the different motivations. I say “superficially” because if one can observe such behaviour minutely, one finds that the difference in motivation results also in subtle yet significant differences in behaviour. If his courage is motivated by devotion to an idea rather than by ambition, an officer in battle, for instance, will behave quite differently in different situations. In the first case, if the risks are in no proportion to the tactical ends to be gained. he would not attack in certain situations. If, on the other hand, he is driven by vanity, this passion may make him blind to the dangers threatening him and his soldiers. His behaviour trait of “courage” in the latter case is obviously a very ambiguous asset. Another illustration is parsimony. A person may be economical because his economic circumstances make it necessary; or he may be parsimonious because he has a stingy character which makes saving an aim for its own sake, regardless of the realistic necessity. Here, too, motivation would make some difference regarding the behaviour itself. In the first case, the person would be very well able to discern a situation where it is wise to save from one in which it is wiser to spend money. In the latter case he will save regardless of the objective needed for it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Another factor which is determined by the difference in motivation refers to the prediction of behaviour. In the case of a “courageous” soldier motivated by ambition we may predict that he will behave courageously only if his courage can be rewarded. In the case of the soldier who is courageous because of devotion to his cause, we can predict that the question of whether his courage will find recognition will have little influence on his behaviour. The Sacramento Fire Department’s courage is certainly motivated by ambition. Here is the story of one of the firefighters. “To be honest with you, a collapsed building was never a thought that entered my mind. I always thought that fighters were firefighters, and that’s all they did. I never really gave a lot of thought to even interior firefighting until I actually got into the job and realized, as I was training and going through fire school, that there is a lot more to this job than people know. I certainly never realized that it is as involved as it is. There’s something different every day. And when we got the collapsed building, that was far above anything I might have imagined.” The forces by which man is motivated, the way a person acts, feels, and thinks is largely determined by the specificity of his character and is not merely the result of rational responses to realistic situations. The dynamic quality of character traits, and the character structure of a person represents a particular form in which energy is channeled in the process of living. Please be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure that they are receiving all required resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Our Explore More Tour is returning with even more rooms to discover! 🗝️
Building upon the foundations of our classic mansion tour, Explore More offers the chance to delve deeper into the history, architecture, and intrigue of the mansion.
And for the first time ever, we will be unlocking doors to the oldest sections of the home, giving you access to previously restricted areas. Enhance your visit by adding this extra layer of discovery, starting May 25th, 2024. Tickets on sale now!
🎟️ | link in bio. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
If You Want the Prizes of Life, You Must Elevate Your Thoughts
If he who suffers from the hallucination—for usually it is nothing less—that an ideal existence can be found by emigrating to some distant spot turns, himself into a different man, then it may be turned into a reality. Our higher nature bids us aspire to inner growth, development, self-control, and ennoblement. It goes further and seeks freedom from enslavement by the passions, thus lifting the human nature above the animal. Animal ties to the World are given, mediated by his instincts. Man, set apart by his self-awareness and the capacity to feel lonely, would be a helpless bit of dust driven by the winds if he did not find emotional ties which satisfied his need to be related and unified with the World beyond his own person. However, in contrast to the animal, he has several alternative ways thus to be tied. As in the case of his mind, some possibilities are better than others; but what he needs most in order to his sanity is some tie to which he feels securely related. The one who has no such tie is, by definition, insane, incapable of any emotional connection with his fellow man. The discontent with a spiritually unfulfilled life has a twofold origin—from personal experiences of the World outside and from vaguely felt pressures by the Soul within for the man to surpass himself. There is thus a reciprocal working of negative and positive feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The easiest and most frequent form of man’s relatedness is his “primary ties” to where he comes from—to blood, soil, clan, to mother and father, or, in a more complex society, to his nation, religion, or class. These ties are not primarily of pleasures of the flesh, but they fulfill the longing of a man who has not grown up to become himself, to overcome the sense of unbearable separateness by continuing what “primary ties”–which are natural and necessary for the infant in his relationship to his mother—is obvious when we study the primitive cults of worship of the soil, of lakes, of mountains, or of animals, often accompanied by the individual’s symbolic identification with these animals (totem animals). We see it in the matriarchal religions in which the Great Mother and the goddess of fertility and of the soil are worshipped. There seems to be an attempt to overcome these primary ties to mother and Earth in the patriarchal religions, in which the great father, the god, king, tribal chief, law, or state are objects of worship. However, although this step from the matriarchal to the patriarchal cult in society is a progressive one, the two forms have in common the fact that man finds his emotional ties to a superior authority, which he blindly obeys. By remaining bound to nature, to mother or father, man indeed succeeds in feeling at home in the World, but he pays a tremendous price for this security, that of submission, dependence, and a blockage to the full development of his reason and his capacity to love. When he should become an adult, he remains a child. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Today the many individual cases of “mother fixation” are explained by orthodox psychoanalysts as a result of an undissolved tie to the mother. This explanation ignores the fact that the tie to mother is only one of the possible answers to the predicament of human existence. The dependent individual of the twenty-first century, living in a culture which in its social aspects expects him to be independent, is confused and often neurotic because his society does not provide him—as do more primitive societies—with the social and religious patterns to satisfy need for dependency. This fixation to mother is a personal expression of one of the answers to human existence which some cultures have expressed in religious forms. It is an answer, though one which conflicts with the full development of the individual. If only man finds a higher form of feeling at home in the World, if not only his intellect develops, but also his capacity to feel related without submitting, at home without being imprisoned, intimate without being stifled, only then can the primitive forms of incestuous ties to mother, soil, etcetera, of benign and of malignant ecstasies disappear. On a social scale, this new vision was expressed from the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the middle of the first millennium—one of the most remarkable periods in human history. The solution to human existence was no longer sought in the return to nature nor in blind obedience to the father figure, but in a new vision that man can again feel at home in the World and overcome his sense of frightening loneliness; that he can achieve this by the full development of his human powers, of his capacity to love, to use his reason, to create and enjoy beauty, to share his humanity with all his fellow men. Christianity proclaimed this new vision. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The new bond which permits man to feel at one with all men is fundamentally different from that of the submission-bond to father and mother; it is the harmonious bond of brotherhood in which solidarity and human ties are not vitiated by restriction of freedom, either emotionally or intellectually. This is the reason why the solution of brotherliness is not one of subjective preference. It is the only one which satisfied the two needs of man: to be closely related and at the same time to be free, to be part of a whole and to be independence. It is a solution which has been experienced by many individuals and also by groups, religious or secular, which were and are able to develop the bonds of solidarity together with unrestricted individuality and independence. In order to understand fully the human predicament and the possible chocies man is confronted with, we must understand that there is another conflict inherent in human existence. Inasmuch as man has a body and bodily needs essentially the same as those of the animal, he has built-in striving for physical survival, even though the methods he uses do not have the instinctive, reflexlike character which are more developed in the animal. Man’s body makes him want to survive regardless of circumstance, even of happiness or unhappiness, slavery of freedom. As a consequence of the will to survive, man must work or force other to work for him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the past history of man, most of man’s time was spent on food gathering. With the animal, it essentially means gathering the food in the quantity and quality his instinctive apparatus suggest to him. In man there is much greater flexibility in the kind of food he can choose; but more than this, man, once he begins the process of civilization, works not only to gather food but to make clothes, to build shelters, and, in the more advanced cultures, to produce the many things which are not strictly necesary for his physical survival but which have developed as real needs forming the material basis for a life which permits the development of culture. If man were satisfied to spend his life by making a living, there would be no problem. Although he does not have the instinct of ants, an antlike existence would nevertheless be perfectly tolerable. However, it is part of the human condition that man is not satisfied with being an ant, that aside from this sphere of biological or material survival, there is a sphere characteristic of man which one can all the trans-survival or trans-utilitarian sphere. What does this mean? Precisely because man has awareness and imagination, and because he has the potential of freedom, he had an inherent tendency not to be dice thrown out of the cup. He wants not only to know what is necesary in order to survive, but he wants to understand what human life is about. He is the only case of life being aware of itself. He wants to make use of those faculties which he has developed in the process of mere biological survival. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Hunger and pleasures of the flesh, as purely physiological phenomena, belong to the sphere of survival. (Dr. Freud’s psychological system suffers from the main error which was part of the mechanistic materialism of his time and which led him to build a psychology on those drivers which serve survival.) However, man has passions which are specifically human and transcend the function of survival. Nobody has expressed this more clearly than Marx: “Passion is man’s faculties striving to obtain their own object.” In this statement, passion is considered as a concept of relation or relatedness. The dynamism of human nature inasmuch as it is human is primarily rooted in this need of man to express his faculties in relation to the World rather than in his need to use the World as a means for the satisfaction of his physiological necessities. This means: because I have eyes, I have the need to see; because I have ears, I have the need to hear; because I have a mind, I have the need to think; and become I have a heart, I have the need to feel. In short, because I am a man, I am in need of man and the World. Marx makes very clear what he means by “human faculties” which relate to the World in a passionate way: “His human relationships to the World—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting, loving—in which all the organs of his individuality are the…expression (Betaetigung) of human reality…In practice I can only relate myself in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Philosophy does not believe that any man is doomed to continue to sin, but that every man is capable of rising to a life higher than that which he has previously lived. It believes, too, in the forgiveness of sins and in the truth of hopefulness. It is not pessimistic but reasonably optimistic in its long-range views. Whatever within himself keeps a man from seeing the Real and knowing the True must be got rid of, or rectified. And whatever he lacks within himself and also keeps him away from them must be acquired. The struggle to attain these things may not interest most people, whose desire for self-improvement is not strong enough to move their will: but it is well worthwhile. There is a devilish cunning in the human ego, animalistic beastliness in the human body, angelic sublimity in the human soul. However, this is only the appearance of things. All three conditions are really mental conditions. They pertain, after all, to the mind. We must root out the evil or foster the good there and there alone. Occult power should not be sought until the battle for self-mastery has been largely won. The nobler part of his self may exist in a man even though he has not yet come to awakening. There are three activities which he needs to keep under frequent examination and constant discipline—his thoughts, his speech, and his action. The quester who wants to keep his integrity in a corrupt World may not be able to live up to his ideal but at least he need not abandon it. The direction in which he is moving does still count. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
It is not his business to reform others while he himself remains as he is. The attack on them will only provoke them to answering attack. Temptation is easiest cast out at first thought. As the number of thoughts grow, control grows harder too. A year ago at New Year’s I was talking with a Navajo man who had said “Happy New Year” to me. I asked him if he thought the New Year would be good for him or if it would be like my own life, “I think there is no end to being down—and then things change. They go alone well, and I think ‘now at last, everything is all right’–and then it isn’t.” He nodded, and said simply, “Just like us.” There was complete acceptance that life was the same for both of us, even though I had never been hungry as he had, had never been in jail as he had, and had never been forced to submit to the imposition of another culture as he had. That this is true, I know through listening to a woman talk for seventeen hours, in three days, about her life. Her life had been as “different” from mine as mine from the Navajo’s. We had very little. This woman had been born to Old Masters, a yacht with a crew of twenty-eight men, and everything that went with that. The more I listened, the more I mew that there had been no difference between the lives of the Princess and the Pauper. The innerness the same. Sometimes it is clearly the mainstream of a person’s life even though smaller streams confuse it. Other times, it has showed only briefly in a person when through stress or ease the barriers went down. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This used to be a puzzle to me: which was the person? Other people said that what a person was most of the time was what he was, and this confused me, because it seemed reasonable and yet—what the person was at times in privacy seemed so much more vibrant, living, real. Sometimes his pouring out of it was almost more than I could bear, the agony of man’s knowing his inability to be what he knew himself to be. Sometimes it was gentle and tender, this knowing and so sad. Which is the person? A woman told me that one day she was at a football game waving a pennant and cheering, when suddenly the hand holding the pennant fell to her lap, and with all the excited mob around her she thought, “Why am I doing this? I haven’t enjoyed it for fifteen years.” Which was real—the fifteen years or the moment? The knowing of the realness in another person—his desperate desire to be non-hurtful, loving, responsive, constructive (or creative), at one with others—seems to me to explain why one person sometimes stays with another against all reason, and not necessarily with good judgment. A very simple “ignorant” woman, who had every reason to hate her being to know this, “He wants to be good.” Mothers often know this in their children and defend them—not their behaviour—when they are destructive. Observations, and the associations and question they arose, are the raw material. However, work on them takes time, as does every analysis. In a professional analysis, a definite hour is set apart every day or every other day. This arrangment is expedient but it also has certain intrinsic values. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Patients wiith mild neurotic trends can, without disadvantage, see the analyst merely when they are in trouble and want to discuss their difficuties. However, if a patient in the clutches of a severe neurosis were advised to come only when he really wanted to, he would probably play hooky whenever he had strong subjective reasons for not going on, that is, whenever he developed a “resistance.” This means that he would stay away when actually he needed the most help and when the most constructive work could be done. Another reason for regularity is the necessity to preserve some measure of continuity, which is the very essence of any systematic work. Both reasons for regularity—the trickiness of resistances and the necessity to maintain continuity—apply, of course, to self-analysis as well. However, here I doubt whether the observance of a regular hour would serve these purposes. The differences between professional analysis and self-analysis should not be minimized. It is much easier for anyone to keep an appointment with an analyst than with himself, because in the former instance he has a greater interest in keeping it: he does not want to be impolite; he does not want to expose himself to the reproach that he stayed away because of a “resistance”; he does not want to lose the value that the hour might have for him; he does not want to pay for the time reserved for him without having utilized it. These pressures are lacking in self-analysis. Any number of things that apparently or actually permit of no delay would interfere with the time set apart for analysis. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
A regular, predetermined time for self-analysis is unfeasible also because of inner reasons—and these quite apart from the subject of resistances. A person might feel like thinking about himself during a spare half hour before dinner but resent it as a nuisance at a prearranged time before he leaves for his office. Or he may not find any time during the day but have the most illuminating associations while taking a walk at night or while falling asleep. In this respect, even if his zest to express himself is diminished, even the regular appointment with the analyst whenever he feels a particular urge or willingness to talk with him, but must appear at the analyst’s office at the arranged time. Because of external circumstances this disadvantage can scarcely be eliminated, but there is no good reason why it should be projected into self-analysis, where these circumstances are not present. Still another objection to rigid regularity in self-analysis lies in the fact that this process should not become a “duty.” The connotation of “have to” would rob it of its spontaneity, its most precious and most indispensable element. If a person forces himself to his daily exercises when he does not feel like taking them, there is no great harm done, but in analysis listlessness would make him lame and unproductive. Again, this danger may exist also in professional analysis, but there it can be overcome by the analyst’s interest in the patient and by the very fact of the common work. In self-analysis a listlessness produced by overstressed regularity is not so easily dealt with, and it may well cause the whole undertaking to peter out. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Thus in analysis regularity of work is not an end in itself but is rather a means that serves the two purposes of preserving continuity and combating resistances. The patient’s resistances are not removed because he always appears for his appointment at the analyst’s office; his coming merely enables the analyst to help him understand the factors at play. Nor is consistent punctuality any guarantee that he will not jump from one problem to another and gain only disconnected insights; it is an assurance of continuity only for the work in general. In self-analysis, too, these requirements are essential. Therefore, they do not demand a rigid schedule of appointments with oneself. If a certain irregularity in work should make a person shirk a problem, it will catch up with him. And even at the expense of time it is wiser to let it slide until he himself feels that he had better go after it. Self-analysis should remain a good friend to fall back upon rather than a shcoolmaster pushing us to make our daily good marks. Needless to say, this warning against compulsive regularity does not imply taking things easy. If we want it to be a meaningful factor in our life, just a friendship must be cultivated. If we take it seriously, only then can analytical work at ourselves can yield its benefits. Finally, no matter how genuinely a person regards self-analysis as a help toward self-development rather than as a quick panacea, there is no use in his determining to pursue this work consistently from now until the day he dies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
In pursuing its preventive and therapeutic aims, and especially in arousing the interest and support of the public, the mental hygiene movement (which has become the mental health movement) has of necessity communicated in overly simplified terms about mental illness and mental health. The ways of seeking mental health are not always clearly distinguished from the ways to avoid mental illness. Mental health is most readily (though not most helpfully) defined as the absence of mental illness. Mental illness is defined in terms of certain symptoms, and the specifications of those symptoms has been a primary responsibility of psychiatrists. As the mental health movement has gained momentum the psychiatrist has found himself increasingly on call to speak out to the public about mental health (rather than illness) and it is only human of him to react to his enhanced prestige by relinquishing the smaller role of expert pathologist-therapist for the smaller role of expert pathologist-therapist for the larger role of arbiter of social values. In this role, the psychiatrist has frequently expanded the domain of mental illness to include all degrees and kinds of psychological distress, failing to appreciate that human suffers some pains not because he is sick but because he is human. Invitation to the role of “expert” in an area in which society has suddenly developed intense interest is always a seductive one. (Note the number of chemists and physicists who have become “social” scientists since World War II!) #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
If he occasionally failed to note that as an authority on values, the psychiatrist well may be forgiven; the meaning of existence, and how to live he is at best on par with other learned and thoughtful men. The psychologists and social workers have not been noticeably less susceptible to the sacerdotal appeal, but have been called less frequently to the altar than have the psychiatrists. The mental health movement together with psychiatry suffers from imprecision in the definition and delineation of psychopathology. The subjectivity of diagnosis, especially where neurotic behaviour is in question, coupled with expansive or inclusive trends in the diagnostician, creates particular problems when by broadcast methods the public is being encouraged to self-examination and to the seeking of “preventive” therapy. The insufficiency of therapeutic resources to meet the legitimate needs of truly neurotic patients is seriously exacerbated when uncritical enthusiasm encourage persons with the non-neurotic frustrations common to all inhabitants of a less-than-perfect World to seek expert therapy, and when ambiguous nosology encourages the therapist to a nondiscriminating investment of his expensively acquired skills. There is a historical parallel to this problem which has been noted in the earlier period of the mental hygiene movement: “Indeed, so great was the enthusiasm over mental hygiene, that it led for a long time to a dangerous overemphasis on the mental factors in problems of social work. The important sociological factors were lost sight of while psychological factors were given almost exclusive attention. Mental Hygiene was being ‘oversold’ by over-enthusiastic adherents.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest of man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. This crystallization of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up to now. In handicraft and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool; in the factory the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instruments of the machines that he must follow. In manufacture, the workmen are part of a living mechanism; in the workmen are part of a living appendage. Or (education of the future will) combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, on the penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crippled by lifelong repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of man, by the fully developed individual…to whom the different social functions he performs are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers. Alienation is the sickness of man. Since it starts necessarily with the beginning of division of labour, that is, of civilization transcending primitive society, it is not a new sickness; it is most strongly developed in the working class, yet it is a sickness from which everybody suffers. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
When it has reached its peak, only then can the sickness be cured; only the totally alienated man can overcome the alienation—he is forced to overcome his alienation since he cannot live as a totally alienated man and remain sane. Man has to become the conscious subject of history, experience himself as the subject of his powers and thus emancipate himself from the bondage to things and circumstances. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied. The freedom in this field cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialized man, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power; that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most adequate to their human nature and most worthy of it. But it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can flourish only upon that realm of necessity as its basis. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many people admire firefighters. It is a very normal thing for one to become a firefighter. A firefighter we will call “Dieter” shares with us his account. “I wanted to be one so bad, I just wished that I could be done with high school, with all of the crap, and have it over with. When you’re a fourteen-year-old and you’re going down and riding with squads, all the other things—high school football games, dances, and stuff like that—are anticlimactic. I was seeing what real men do. And when I got a little older, I was actually doing a man’s job. I was strong for a high school kid, and when I would go to the firehouse, they’d let me work as a firefighter. That was in a suburb. I see these jokers getting off the train. You ask a kid in a school, ‘What does your dad do for a living?’ They say, ‘I don’t know, he goes to some office.’ Well, I knew what my old man did for a living. I knew why we were eating and why we had a roof over our heads. It’s because my old man was busting his backside as a fireman, freezing in the wintertime and having rocks thrown at him in the summertime. I knew what he was doing. Other people, they take the train and they commute back and forth to the city, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s not for me. I want to do something that’s important, that’s vital. If these jokers did not go to work, nobody would miss them.’ Of course, now that I’m a little bit more mature, I realize everybody’s job is just as important. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“I don’t think firemen are supermen, by any means. At the time, I thought, ‘Hey, firemen are strong, and they’re doing an important job, and people’s lives depend upon them being here.’ Other jobs are not like that, and the police did not appeal to me. I didn’t want to be a doctor. Anyhow, I was working for this town in California, waiting to get called by the Sacramento Fire Department. I was still single, going with my future wife, and her dad was a big mucky, muck at construction company. I came down on vacation, and I took the fire test here. I didn’t even know if I wanted the job, and I didn’t think I could get it. Well, for the first time in something like six years, they took guys right off the top of the list. So as a result, we got a bunch of guys who were schoolteachers, guys with engineering degrees, and all kinds of real sharp guys in our class. Take the time to get to know the Sacramento Fire Department, and be sure them to thank them for keeping our community safe. Also, out of the kindness of your heart, please be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. If you are dissatisfied with yourself abandon yourself! You can make a start by abandoning its negative ideas, its animal passions, and its sharp critiques of others. You are responsible for them: it is you who must get rid of them. He must refuse to allow himself to become emotionally overwhelmed by an unthinking majority or intellectually subservient to an unworthy convention. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
A testament to real Folk Victorian styling, this delightful home offers the best in thoughtful floor planning. From the covered front porch, the home opens to a well-executed entry foyer. To the left is the causal family room with fireplace and proximity to the laundry room and mud rooms. To the right is the open living room with a sliding glass door and optional fireplace. This room connects to the dining area, also with a large window. The kitchen/breakfast room combination features either a large window or sliding glass door to the rear covered porch, a huge center island, a large pantry and a butler’s pantry. Second floor bedrooms include a well-planned master suite and up to four family bedrooms, with an optional loft that dominates the upstairs lobby. There is also a powder room on the first floor and three bathrooms upstairs. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
If Man Has Entered the Gates of Hell, He Has Left Behind His Own Humanity
Human nature comprises some deep characteristics which yearn to satisfy particular needs and impulses, such as aggression, the ego that drives him towards pleasurable experiences, the need for love, and avoidance of pain in all areas of life. When considering as an essential factor in the functioning of the social system, this undertaking goes beyond what is called “psychology.” It should more properly be called a “science of man,” a discipline which deals with the data of history, sociology, psychology, theology, mythology, physiology, economic, and art, as far as they are relevant to the understanding of man. Man was—and still is—easily seduced into accepting a particular form of being human as his essence. To the degree to which this happens, man defines his humanity in terms of the society with which he identifies himself. However, while this had been the rule, there have been exceptions. There were always men who looked beyond the dimensions of their own society—and while they may have been called fools or criminals in their time, they are the roster of great men as far as the record of human history is concerned—and visualized something which can be called universally human and which is not identical with what a particular society assumes human nature to be. There were always men who were bold and imaginative enough to see beyond the frontiers of their own social existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Man has been defined as Homo faber—the tool maker. Indeed, man is a tool maker, but our ancestors before they were fully human were tool makers too. Man has been defined as Homo sapiens, but in this definition all depends on what is meant by sapiens. To use thought for the purpose of finding better means for survival and ways to achieve what we want—this capacity animals also have, and there is at best a quantitative difference been men and animals as far as this kind of achievement is concerned. If, however, one means by sapiens knowledge in the sense of thought which tries to understand the core of phenomena, thought that penetrates from the deceptive surface to what is “really real,” thought the purpose of which is not to manipulate but to comprehend, then Homo sapiens would, indeed, be a correct definition of man. Man has been defined as Homo ludens—man the player, play meaning nonpurposeful activity transcending the immediate needs for survival. Indeed from the time of the creators of the cave paintings to the present day, man has indulged in nonpurposeful activities. There are two other definitions of man that we should add. One: Homo negans—man who say “no,” although most men say “yes” when their survival or their advantage requires it. From a statistical standpoint on human behaviour, man should be called, rather, the yes-man. However, from the standpoint of the human potential, man is distinguished from all other animals by his capacity to say “no,” by his affirmation of truth, love, integrity, even at the expense of physical survival. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Another definition of man would be Homo eperans—the hoping man. To hope is an essential condition of being human. If man has given up all hope, he has entered the gates of hell—whether he knows it or not—and he has left behind his own humanity. Perhaps the most significant definition of the species characteristic of man has been given by Marx, who defined it as “free, conscious activity.” Probably more such definitions could be added to the ones just mentioned, but they still do no justice to the question: What does it mean to be human? They emphasize only certain elements of being human without trying to give a more complete and systematic answer. Any attempt to give an answer will immediately meet with the objection that at the very best such an answer is no more than metaphysical speculation, perhaps poetic, but at any rate the expression of subjective preference rather than a statement of any definitely ascertainable reality. These last words call to mind the theoretical physicist who might speak of his own concepts in terms of an objective reality and yet disclaim any final statement he might make about the nature of matter. Indeed, even if human evolution were to far transcend the present point of history, in which man has hardly begun to be fully human, no final statement about what is means to be human can be made now: it is possible that it may never be made. However, a skeptical attitude toward the possibility of making final statements about the nature of man does not mean that a number of statements cannot be made which have a scientific character, that is to say, which draw conclusions from observing the facts, conclusions which are correct in spite of the fact that the motivation to find the answer was the wish for a happier life. On the contrary, the function of Reason is to promote the art of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
What knowledge can we draw on in order to answer the question, what does it mean to be human? The answer cannot lie in the direction which such answers have often taken: that man is good or bad, loving or destructive, gullible or independent, et cetera. Obviously, man can be all this just as he can be musical or tone-deaf, sensitive to painting or colour-blind, a saint or a rascal. All these and many other qualities are various possibilities of being human. In fact, they are all within each one of us. To be fully aware of one’s humanity means to be aware that, “Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto” (I am a man and nothing human is alien to me); that each one carries all of humanity within himself—the saint as well as the criminal: as Goethe put it, that there is no crime of which one cannot imagine oneself to be the author. All these manifestations of humanity are not the answer to what does it mean to be human. They are only answering the question, how different can we be and yet be human? If we want to know what it means to be human, we must be prepared to find answers not in terms of different human possibilities, but in terms of the very conditions of human existence from which all these possibilities spring as possible alternatives. These conditions can be recognized as a result not of metaphysical speculation but of the examination of the data of anthropology, history, child psychology, individual and social psychopathology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The hopeless pessimist who asserts that men cannot improve their inborn character, that they will be exactly the same faulty creatures at sixty that they were at twenty, may be right about some men but is certainly wrong about others. Every Quester who tries hard enough proves him wrong. Character may be bettered by bettering conduct, which is visible, just as it may by bettering feeling, which is not. If the check to a weakness, a shortcoming, an undesirable impulse, or a negative emotion is given instantly, if retreat from it is made before it has time to swell and strengthen, victory is very largely assured. He need not be too ashamed because he has felt these things, provided he pulls himself together. They are what he has inherited from past births, plus what he has picked up in the present one, and it is inevitable or “natural” that he should experience them. Even the saints have endured them repeatedly, but those who conquered in the end knew this trick instantly outwitting the enemy. He will undergo periods of purification, when the animal appetites such as lust and gluttony, and the animal passions such as wrath and hate, will have to be brought under better control. The discipline involved is both a kind of penance for past sins and a preparation for future enlightenment. It may be that these baser attributes need to be pushed up out of latency near the surface, in order to deal with them more effectually. If so, this will come about through some sort of crisis. He need not be distressed for it will be ultimately beneficent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The ability to throw negative thoughts out of his mind is so valuable that a deliberate and daily effort to cultivate it is well worthwhile. This is as true of one’s self-originated thought as of those picked up from outside, whether unwittingly from other persons, or absorbed through susceptibility from environments. Anyone can go on living but not everyone can go on living worthily. We are all imperfect and the making of mistakes is to be expected. The mishandling of problems need not surprise us and the yielding to weaknesses is a common experience. Let us grant all this, but it does not excuse us from being bereft of the desire for self-improvement, of the aspiration for self-ennoblement, or of the search for self-enlightenment. Man has an animal body, shared certain instinctive reactions, desires, and passion with other animals. However, mentally and morally there are creative impulses, functions, ideas, and ideals which increasingly separate him from them as he develops and put him on a higher plane. The ethical standards of the disciple are, or should be, as far beyond those of conventional good men, as their standards are beyond those of evil men. He may have to pass successively through the three stages of intemperate idealism, disappointed idealism, and philosophic idealism. The last is as balanced and discerning as the first is not. The faults of character and defects in personality which bar advancement in the quest will also bar advancement in other spheres of human life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Being in him, these advancements will inevitably bring their results on the physical plane in the time of course. They will manifest themselves in his business or career, his home or social relations. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the self-improvement brought about by the quest’s discipline will be to his advantage in other ways. In persons who are moving toward greater openness to their experiencing, there is an organismic commonality of value directions. These common value directions are of such kinds as to enhance the development of the individual himself, of others in his community, and to make for the survival and evolution of his species. It has been a striking fact of my experiences that in therapy, where individuals are valued, where there is greater freedom to feel and to be, certain value directions seem to emerge. These are not chaotic directions but instead have a surprising commonality. This commonality is not dependent on the personality of the therapist, for I have seen these trends emerge in the clients of therapists sharply different in personality. This commonality does not seem to be due to the influences of any one culture, for I have found evidence of these directions in cultures as divergent as those of the United States of America, Holland, France, and Japan. I like to think that this commonality of value directions is due to the fact that we all belong to the same species—that just as a human infant tends, individually, to select a diet similar to that selected by other human infants, so a client in therapy tends, individually, to choose value directions similar to those chosen by other clients. If they were genuinely free to choose, as a species there may be certain elements of experience which tend to make for inner development and which would be chosen by all individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
A few of the values I see in my clients as they move in the direction of personal growth and maturity: They tend to move away from facades. Pretenses, defensiveness, putting up a front, tend to be negatively values. They tend to move away from “oughts”. The compelling feeling of “I ought to do or be thus and so” is negatively valued. The client moves away from being what he “ought to be,” no matter who has set that imperative. They tend to move away from meeting the expectations of others. Pleasing others, as a goal in itself, is negatively valued. Being real is positively valued. The client tends to move toward being himself, being his real feelings, being what he is. This seems to be a very deep preference. Self-direction is positively valued. The client discovers an increasing pride and confidence in making his own choices, guiding his own life. One’s self, one’s own feelings come to be positively valued. From desiring some fixed goal, clients come to prefer the excitement of being a process of potentialities being born. Perhaps more than all else, the client comes to vaule an openness to all of his inner and outer experience. To be open to and sensitive to his own inner reactions and feelings, the reactions and feelings of others, and the realities of the objective World—this is a direction which he clearly prefers. This openness becomes the client’s most valued resource. Sensitivity to others and acceptance of others is positively valued. The client comes to appreciate others for what they are as he has come to appreciate himself for what he is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Finally, deep relationships are positively valued. To achieve a close, intimate, real, fully communicative relationship with another person seems to meet a deep need in every individual, and is vey highly valued. These then re some of the preferred directions which I have observed in individuals moving toward personality maturity. Though this list is inadequate and to some degree perhaps inaccurate, it holds exciting possibilities. I find it significant that when individuals are prized as persons, the values they select do not run the full gamut of possibilities. I do not find, in such a climate of freedom, that one person comes to value fraud and murder and thievery, while another values a life of self-sacrifice, and another values only money. Instead there seems to be a deep and underlying thread of commonality. I dare to believe that when the human being is inwardly free to choose whatever he deeply values, he tends to value those objective, experiences and goals which make for his own survival, growth, and development, and for the survival and development of others. I hypothesize that it is characteristic of the human organism to prefer such actualizing and socialized goals when he is exposed to a growth-promoting climate. In any culture, given a climate of respect and freedom in which he is valued as a person, the mature individual would tend to choose and prefer these same value directions. This is a highly significant hypothesis which could be tested. Though the individual of whim I am speaking would not have a consistent or even stable system of conceived values, the valuing process within him would lead to emerging value directions which would be constant across cultures and across time. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Another implication I see is that individuals who exhibit the fluid valuing process I have tried to describe, whose value directions are generally those I have listed, would be highly effective in the ongoing process of human evolution. If the human species is to survive at all on this globe, the human being must become more readily adaptive to new problems and situations, must be able to select that which is valuable for development and survival out of new and complex situations, and if he is to make such selections; he must be accurate in his appreciation of reality. The psychologically mature person, I have described has the qualities which would cause him to value those experiences which would make for the survival and enhancement of the human race. He would be a worthy participant and guide in the process of human evolution. Finally, it appears that we have returned to the issue of universality of values, but by a different route. Instead of universal values “out there,” or a universal value system imposed by some group—philosophers, rulers, or priests—we have the possibility of universal human value directions emerging from the experiencing of the human organism. Evidence from therapy indicates that both personal and social values emerge as natural, and experienced, when the individual is close to his own organismic valuing process. If he can learn again to be in touch with it, the suggestion is that though modern man no longer trusts religion or science or philosophy nor any system of beliefs to give him his values, he may fund an organismic valuing base within himself, and it will prove to be an organized, adaptive and social approach to the perplexing value issues which face all of us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
With the existence of three apparently different kinds of psychotherapists, we may ask if the different processions provide a range of backgrounds in respect to social class origins sufficient to make possible “natural understanding” across the full range of cultural variables represented in the client population. A second, closely related question is: Does there appear to be evidence of a meaningful division of labour, or assortative mating, such that the differential backgrounds of clients show some degree of appropriate relationship to the differential backgrounds of therapists? With a view to the possibilities suggested by these questions, this we investigated the distribution of certain biographical and sociocultural factors in samples representative of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social workers. Mental illness is a cultural universal. Persons who show recognizable patterns of deviant behaviour are found in every culture. A pattern is recognized as a set of behaviours that are deviant with respect to the modal behaviours of the individual’s group and that are repeated in different members of the group. The level of complexity of social organization or the degree of civilization achieved may vary widely; the society may be urban or rural, industrial or agrarian, nomadic or settled—but in every carefully studied sociocultural group (defined as a collection of persons having functional membership in a community and out of that membership deriving common and interdependent responsibility and shared interests) the sometime occurrence of one or more patters of deviant behaviour has been noted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The specific content and detailed form of the “insanity” reflects peculiarities of the particular culture in which it occurs. In respect to content, mental illness can be seen easily to have the quality of cultural relativity. It is in part this act of the cultural relativity of the content of emotional disorder that leads some authorities to claim that “mental illness” is not a scientific concept but rather a “convenient myth” which “has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had.” Cultural relativity in the definitions of what is conforming behaviour and what is sick (id est, non-conforming) behaviour does not negate the universality of the phenomenon of disordered behaviour; as a broad phenomenon which appears repeatedly within all cultures it is accessible to scientific inquiry. The amount of awareness of emotionally based disturbances in personality has varied over time and varies today from culture to culture. In earliest history apparently only the most deranged behaviours achieved sufficient attention to be recorded. As civilizations have prospered and as the arts of inquiry have become more sensitive, there has been growing recognition of more subtle expressions of psychological disorder. With the extension of the domain of mental illness there have been a parallel increase in the complexity and sophistication of explanations of emotional symptomatology. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
When considering neurosis, we look at a case study of a man called Tom. Tom was a medical assistant to a great clinician. He was deeply interested in his work and was favoured by his chief. A genuine friendship had developed between them, and they often lunched together. Once after such a luncheon Tom had a mild stomach upset which he ascribed to the food, without giving it further attention. After the next luncheon with the chief he felt nauseous and faint, considerably worse than the first time. He had his stomach examined but there was no pathological finding whatever. Then the disturbance occurred a third time, now with a painful sensitivity to smells. Only after the third luncheon did it strike him that all these upsets had occurred when he was eating with the director. As a matter of fact he had felt constrained with the director recently, sometimes not knowing what to talk about. And he knew the reason. His research work had led him in a direction which was opposite to the direction which was opposite to the director’s convictions. In recent week he had become more firmly convinced of his own findings. He had wanted to talk with the chief but somehow never got around to doing it. He was aware of procrastinating but the old man was rather rigid in scientific matters and did not easily tolerate dissension. Tom have showed aside his concern by telling himself that a good talk would solve everything. If the stomach upset had to do with fears, he reasoned, then his fears must be much greater than he had admitted to himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
He sensed that this was so and simultaneously had two proofs of it. One was that while having these thoughts he suddenly started to feel ill, just as he had felt after the luncheons. The other was that he realized just as suddenly what had started his reaction. During the luncheon in which the illness had first developed the director had made derogatory remarks about the ingratitude of Tom’s predecessor. He had expressed his resentment against these young fellas, who learned much from him and then left and did not even bother to keep in touch with him on scientific matters. All that Tom felt consciously at that moment was sympathy for the chief. He had repressed his knowledge that actually what the director could not tolerate was that the predecessor had gone his own independent way. Thus Tom became aware that he has closed his eyes to an existing danger, and he also recognized the extent of his fears. His work was creating a real danger to his good relationship with the director, and thereby a danger to his career. The old man might really turn against him. He felt somewhat panicky at this thought and wondered if it might be better for him to check his findings once more—or even forget about them. It was only a brief thought, but it showed him a flash that this was a conflict between his scientific honesty and the immediate exigencies of his career. By repressing his fears he had pursued an ostrich policy, the purpose of which was to avoid having to make a decision. With that insight he felt free and relieved. He knew it was a hard decision but did not doubt that it would be in favour of his conviction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
This story was not an example of self-analysis but merely an example of how great the temptation sometimes is not to be straight with oneself. Tom was a friend of mine, an unusually well-balanced fellow. Even though it is possible that he had certain hidden neurotic tendencies, such as a need to deny any fears, these did not make him a neurotic person. It might be objected that the very fact of his unconsciously shirking a decision was an expression of a deeper neurotic disturbance. However, there is certainly no sharp borderline between healthy and neurotic, and therefore it seems preferable to leave it as a matter of emphasis and regard Tom for all practical purposes as a healthy person. This episode would then represent a situational neurosis, that is, a neurotic upset caused primarily by the difficulties in a particular situation and lasting only so long as the conflict is not consciously faced and solved. Despite the fact that a critical estimate has been given of the results attained in each of these examples, they might, when regarded together, elicit an overoptimistic impression about the potentialities of occasional self-analysis, an impression that one can easily stumble over an insight and pick up something precious. A who feels helplessly caught in his neurotic entanglements tends to hope against hope for a miracle. It should be understood clearly that it is impossible to cure a severe neurosis, or any essential part of it, by occasional self-analysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The neurotic personality is not a piecemeal conglomeration—to use the expression of Gestalt psychologists—of disturbing factors, but has a structure in which each part is intricately interrelated to each other part. It is possible through occasional work at oneself to grasp an isolated connection here or there, to understand the factors immediately involved in an upheaval and to remove a peripheral symptom. However, to bring about essential changes it is necessary to work through the whole structure, that is, it requires a more systematic analysis. This occasional analysis, by its very nature, contributes but little to comprehensive self-recognition. Each problem that is clarified automatically introduces a new one. If these leads that offer themselves are not picked up the insights necessarily remain isolated. As a therapeutic method occasional self-analysis is entirely adequate for the situational neurosis. Also in mild neuroses it can yield very satisfactory results. However, in more intricate neuroses it is little more than a leap in the dark. At the very best it can do no more than release a tension here or there, or illuminate at random the meaning of one or another disturbance. Furthermore, while most people lie at least a few times each day, it is not those little white lies that hurt others. It is the big morbid ones that cause pain and destruction that we need to think about. Some deceptions occur to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. Other deceptions can change your life. We all also have lies that we tell to ourselves. Sometimes we tell lies to help us try harder at things in life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Now, historical materialism is not at all a psychological theory; its main postulate is that the way in which man produces determines his practice of life, his way of living, and this practice of life determines his thinking and the social and political structure of his society. Economy in this context refers not to a psychic drive, but to the mode of production; not to a subjective psychological but to an objective socioeconomic factor. Marx’s idea that man is formed by his practice of life was not a new as such. However, in Marx’s system what was new is that he analyzed in detail what these institutions are, or rather, that the institutions themselves were to be understood as part of the whole system of production which characterizes a given society. Various economic conditions can produce different psychological motivations. One economic system may lead to the formation of ascetic tendencies, as early capitalism did; another economic system to the preponderance of the desire to save and hoard, as nineteenth century capitalism did; still another, to the preponderance of the desire for spending and for ever-increasing consumption, as twenty-first capitalism does. There is only one quasi-psychological premise in Marx’s system: man must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before he can purse politics, science, art, religion, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given society, form the foundation upon which social and political institutions, and even art and religion, have been evolved. Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his mode of production. All this does not mean, however, that the drive to produce or consume is man’s main motivation. On the contrary, Marx’s main criticism of capitalist society is precisely that this society makes the wish to “have” and to “use” into the most dominant desire in man; Marx believed that a man who is dominated by the desire to have and to use is a cripped man. His aim was a socialist society organized in such a way that not profit and private property, but the free unfolding of man’s human powers are man’s dominate aims. Not the man who has much, but the man who is much is the fully developed, truly human man. Where the Overself lives fully in man, he will not need to consider whether an act is righteous or not. Righteous acts will flow spontaneously from him and no other kind will be possible. However, for a beginner to practise prematurely such nonresistance to his impulses would be dangerous and foolish. Woman have a greater power in possessing the power of love. She can lift and redeem men, succor and save them, or degrade and destroy them. However, with this power comes great responsibility. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Being a firefighter also comes with great responsibility. However, many people do not know much about the lives of firefighters. One firefighter says he lived in a small apartment with his parent growing up. The bathtub was in the kitchen, and the fire escape in the front, a small yard with a clothesline, no washing machines or dryers in those days. When he was twelve, he spotted a car on fire. He pulled the firebox and waited for the apparatus to come. When the fire was out, he talked with the firemen, and they invited him to the firehouse. As a result, he had been associating with the fire service since he was a pre-teen. He never got in trouble, never had a police record, no drugs. His mother and father both worked, and so hi grandfather took care of him. He really did not have much family life, and spent most of his time at the firehouse. The firefighters helped him with his homework, and would make sure he got home before curfew. After he grew up a little, the fire department would let him come with them to put fires out. During the summer, he would go to camp and run cross-county, and learn how to swim. He eventually became a lifeguard and joined the swim team, winning All-American for two consecutive years. Then he joined the Navy and became a Navy diver and even trained for the Olympics. Eventually he wound up going to the Military Olympics, but could not compete because he and three other guys came down with food poisoning. His father worked in a manufacturing plant where grain was processes and would have to carry hundred-pound sacks from the factor down to the river, over a ramp, and load them on the barges. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The young man felt sorry for his father because he had to work so hard. His mother work at an electrical equipment factory wiring sockets and other things. She used to come home at night and tears and he could not understand why until he saw her hands. She had pin holes all over them from the wires that penetrated her fingers. The firefighters became so attached to the young man that they would let him sleep over at the firehouse on weekends. He started listening to fire calls on the radio, and one night they heard a third alarm on Broadway. He ran over to the firehouse as use used to do. It was raining and it was cold, and he helped the Engine pack some hose in the truck. The lieutenant would give him a ride home sometimes, and other firehouses would invite him to come and hang out with them. Although it was against rules and regulations, they stuck their neck out for the young man and did their best to look out for him and made sure he was safe and well cared for. He really enjoyed shining the brass on the old engine and would help out around the house. The men at the firehouse became like fathers to him, and treated him with respect. However, sometimes the guys would blow him off and his feelings would get hurt. When he grew up, he took care of two boys as well as the firefighters took care of him. He would take them home, contribute to their lives, and helped keep them out of trouble and away from drugs. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
As a result, the two boys are doing good. Other guys saw what he was doing and got involved with the same kids, taking them home, taking them to picnics, taking them to amusement parks. Times were different and there was a lot of compassion in the city, a lot of morale, a lot of unity. So, the young man the fire department took, not only mentored two boys, but he stayed out of trouble because he wanted to be a firefighter and figured a police record would disqualify him from the job. He did not have many friends his age, only a couple. One night, he did not go out with his friends, and went to the firehouse instead. A really good friend of his was killed that night by a hit-and-run car. He jumped off a crane into the street, and a car hit him and kept going. He reflected on how it might have been him. He attributes a lot of his staying out of trouble to hanging around the firehouse. The Sacramento Fire Department has been serving the community of Sacramento since the mid-1800, please be sure to make a donation to them. They really care about the community and the people in it. Honour a man not for his possession alone; honour him most for the use he makes of them. When a man departs this World, neither silver nor gold, nor precious stones accompany him; he is remembered only for his love of learning and his good need. Happy is the man who is rich in good deeds, for he shall be honoured in life, and be remembered along afterwards for his goodness. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it Stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
In The Winchester Mystery House there are connecting stairs and a “secret rest room” once used by Mrs. Winchester, which had long been walled up in the many structural changes in the historical mansion. Only the window of the walled-up room is still visible from the outside. It is in this area that psychics feel that the restless spirit of Mrs. Winchester is trapped. They believe she sleeps during the day and close to the premises for roaming and night. In the spring of 1968, the ghost of Mrs. Winchester made her initial appearance in the mansion. It was a warm night, and the caretakers were leaving. Suddenly, they were shocked at the amount of light coming from the skylight, they judged the time to be about midnight. They had the uncanny feeling of not being alone in the room. As their eyes got used to the darkness, they clearly distinguished the figure of a petite woman, gliding across the floor. Behind her, there was a man staring at a cabinet. Then he opened the cupboard, looked in it, and closed it again. Getting hold of himself, one of the caretakers noticed that the woman wore a black dress of the kind worn in the last century, and the man a white shirt and dark cravat of the same period. It never occurred to him that they were anything but people; he thought they were actors dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Winchester.
The woman then turned to her companion as if to say something, but did not, and walked off toward the dark room at the other end of the hallway. Then man then went back to the cabinet and leaned on it, head in hand. By now, the caretakers regained their wits and thought the intruders must be burglars, although they could not figure out how they entered the mansion, since it had been locked from the inside! Making a fist, one of the caretakers struck at the stranger, yelling, “Put your hands up!” His voice could be heard clearly along the corridors. Nursing his injured wrist, he realized that his visitors had dissolved into thin air. There was no one in the dark room. The door was securely locked. The skylight, on the third floor, could not very well have served as an escape route to anyone human. By now, the care takers knew Mr. Winchester and Mrs. Winchester had paid them a visit. Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Divine at the Center but Slightly Devilish at the Circumference
If it requires great and constant effort to model his character will not interest man, but to the quester it is an obligation. And this is so without his having to believe in all the windy rhetoric about the perfectibility of man. The reformation and even transformation of character is as much a sector of philosophy as the practice of concentration and the study of mind. The virtue which develops from disciplining thoughts and controlling self removes obstacles and gives power to truth’s pursuit. The ethical ideals of philosophy are lofty but nobody is asked or expected to jump to their realization, only to understand their direction; the ret of this inner work must develop at its own pace according to hi individual possibilities. Is it entirely useless to point out an ethical height to which very few can soar? No—the usefulness lies in the sense of right direction which it gives, in the inspiring love of truth and hope of self-betterment which it arouses. If we persist in holding it before us in aspiration, however unrealizable the ideal may be in all its perfection, we shall certainly approach it more closely in action. And the effort will give us more faith in life, make us more sensitive to its finer rhythms. If the lower self disturbs you, silence it by invoking it intellectually through declarations of spiritual truth and emotionally through genuflection in humble prayer. Do not accept the suggestion which drags you down, but instead seek for the pressure which lifts you up. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
To the extent that he purifies and ennobles himself, he qualifies himself for the reception of superior insight. If the aspirant will take care to fill his mind with thoughts that are always elevating, always beneficial, and always constructive; if he will be vigilant to keep out all thoughts that are degrading and destructive, this simple technique will keep his mind so continuously filled with the right kind of thought and feeling that he will unconsciously and little by little completely overcome the wrong kind. Thus his character will change and approach his ideals. As if man were nothing else but a divine being, we must not talk about this as the mystics do. We are philosophical students and should not be so one sided. We must tell men the whole and not a half-truth, which means we must tell them that they are a mixed lot, divine at the center but slightly devilish at the circumference; altruistic in their potential nature but somewhat selfish in their actual one. Everything that strengthens his better nature is useful and acceptable. Everything that weakens it is not. So difficult is true self-mastery that nothing in the World’s literature about it can overrate the accomplishment. When the beast in man will bow in homage before the intelligence in man, when the ideal of perfected being set up for him by the serene figure of the Sphinx shall be recognized, accepted, and striven for, then indeed will he become a conscious collaborator with the universal Mind. Whoever knows how ad where to look can find in himself the assurance of this ultimate victory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There should be no space in his mind for negative thoughts, no time in his heart for base feelings. It is not enough to repress a negative trait like jealousy or self-pity. One must also replace it by a positive trait. His spiritual progress will be measured not so much by his meditational progress as by his moral awakening. Not merely when he can understand it intellectually, but also when he can accept it emotionally, the truth will become truth for him, and still more when he can incorporate it into his behaviour patterns. He must look within himself for the impurities and falsities, the malice and envy, the prejudice and bitterness which belong to his lower nature. And he must work with all his willpower and thinking power to cast them out. He must walk towards the highest with every part of his being, with his whole psyche matured and balanced. He must not only seek to intuit what is real, but also to will what is good. It is when men come face-to-face with a real crisis, a real temptation, or a real hardship that they show their real character, not only their self-imagined or publicly reputed one. It must be remembered always that mere intellectual study is not so essential as the building of worthwhile character, which is far more important in preparing for the great battle with the ego. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The tendency to install technical progress as the highest value is linked up not only with our overemphasis on intellect but, most importantly, with a deep emotional attraction to the mechanical, to all that is not alive, to all that is man-made. This attraction to the non-alive, which is in its more extreme form an attraction to death and decay (necrophilia), leads even in its less drastic form to indifference toward life instead of “reverence for life.” Those who are attracted to the non-alive are the people who prefer “law and order” to living structure, bureaucratic to spontaneous methods, gadgets to living beings, repetition to originality, neatness to exuberance, hoarding to spending. They want to control life because they are afraid of its uncontrollable spontaneity; they would rather kill it than to expose themselves to it and merge with the World around them. They often gamble with death because they are not rooted in life; their courage is the courage to die and the symbol of their ultimate courage is the Russian roulette. The rate of our automobile accidents and preparation for thermonuclear war are a testimony to this readiness to gamble with death. And who would not eventually prefer this exciting gamble to the boring unaliveness of the organization man? One symptom of the attraction of the merely mechanical is the growing popularity, among some scientists and the public, of the idea that it will be possible to construct computers which are no different from man in thinking, feeling, or any other aspect of functioning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
It is possible to manufacture computers synthetically which are completely undistinguishable from human beings produced in the usual manner. There is no reason to suppose machines have any limitations not shared by man. The main problems, it seems to me, is not whether such a computer-man can be constructed; it is rather why the idea is becoming so popular in a historical period when nothing seems to be more rational, harmonious, and peace-loving being. One cannot help being suspicious that often the attraction of the computer-man idea is the expression of a flight from life and from humane experience into the mechanical and purely cerebral. When the majority of men are like robots, then indeed there will be no problem in building robots who are like men. The idea of the manlike computer is a good example of the alternative between the human and the inhuman machines. The computer can sever the enhancement of life in many respects. However, the idea that it replaces man and life is the manifestation of the pathology of today. The fascination with the merely mechanical is supplemented by an increasing popularity of conceptions that stress the animal nature of man and the instinctive roots of his emotions or actions. Dr. Freud’s was such an instinctive psychology; but the importance of his concept of libido is secondary in comparison with his fundamental discovery of the unconscious process in waking life or in sleep. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Many experts stress instinctual animal heredity, and have not offered any new or valuable insights into the specific human problem as Dr. Freud has done; they satisfy the wish of many to look at themselves as determined by instincts and thus to camouflage their true bothersome human problems. The dream of many people seems to be to combine the emotions of a primate with a computerlike brain. If this dream could be fulfilled, the problem of human freedom and of responsibility would seem to disappear. Man’s feelings would be determined by his instincts, his reason by the computer; man would not have to give an answer to the question his existence asks him. Whether one like the dream or not, its realization is impossible; the naked ape with the computer brain would cease to be human, or rather “he” would not be. Among the technological society’s pathogenic effects upon man, two more must be mentioned: the disappearance of privacy and of personal human contact. “Privacy” is a complex concept. It was and is a privilege of the middle and upper classes, since its very basis, private space, is costly. This privilege, however, can become a common good with other economic privileges. Aside from this economic factor, it was also based on a hoarding tendency in which my private life was mine and nobody else’s, as was my house and any other property. It was also a concomitant of cant, of the discrepancy between moral appearances and reality. Yet when all these qualifications are made, privacy still seems to be an important condition. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
First of all, because privacy is necessary to collect oneself and to free oneself from the constant “noise” of people’s chatter and intrusion, which interferes with one’s own mental processes. If all private data are transformed into public data, experiences will tend to become more shallow and more alike. People will be afraid to feel the “wrong thing”; they will become more accessible to psychological manipulation which, through psychological testing, tries to establish norms for “desirable,” “normal,” “healthy” attitudes. Considering that these tests are applied in order to help the companies and government agencies to find the people with the “best” attitudes, the use of psychological tests, which is by now an almost general condition for getting a good job, constitutes a severe infringement on the citizen’s freedom. Unfortunately, a large number of psychologists devote whatever knowledge of man they have to this manipulation in the interest of what the big organization considers efficiency. Thus, psychologists become an important part of the industrial and governmental system while claiming that their activities serve the optimal development of man. This claim is based on the rationalization that what is best for the corporation is best for man. It is important that the managers understand that much of what they get from psychological testing is based on the very limited picture of man which, in fact, management requirements have transmitted to the psychologists, who in turn give it back to management, allegedly as a rest of an independent study of man. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It hardly needs to be said that the intrusion of privacy may lead to a control of the individual which is more total and could be more devastating that what totalitarian states have demonstrated thus far. It is of vital importance to distinguish between a psychology that understands and aims at the well-being of man and a psychology that studies man as an object, with the aim of making him more useful for the technological society. There are factors that make it easy for a person to see his peculiarities in the course of his relationship with the analyst than in his association with others. His disturbing character traits—his diffidence, dependency, arrogance, vindictiveness, his tendencies to withdraw and freeze up at the slightest hurts, or whatever they may be—are always contrary to his best self-interests, not only because they render his associations with others less satisfactory but also because they make him dissatisfied with himself. This fact is often blurred, however, in his customary relations with others. He feels that he will gain something by staying dependent, by taking revenge, by triumphing over others, and therefore he is less willing to recognize what he is doing. The same traits displayed in analysis work so blatantly against his self-interest that he can scarcely fail to see their injurious character, and hence the urge to blindfold himself against them is considerably lessened. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, while it is not easy it is entirely within the range of possibility for a person to overcome the emotional difficulties involved in studying his behaviour toward others. Our past case study of Clare, we analyzed the intricate problem of her morbid dependency by scrutinizing her relation with her lover. And she succeeded in spite of the fact that both the difficulties mentioned above were present to a high degree: the disturbances in the personality of her lover were at least as great as her own; and certainly she had a vital interest, from the viewpoint of her neurotic expectations and fears, not to recognize that her “love” was actually a need for dependency. The other aspect of the relationship with the analyst is the explicit and implicit human help he extended to the patient. Whereas the other assistance he gives is replaceable to a greater or lesser extent, the merely human help is, by definition, entirely lacking in self-analysis. If the person who is working by himself is fortunate enough to have an understanding friend with whom he can discuss his findings, of if he can check up on them with an analyst from time to time, he will feel less alone in his work. However, neither expedient could wholly substitute for all the intangible values of working out his problems in close co-operation with another human being. The absence of this help is one of the factors that makes self-analysis the harder road. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
There is a great deal of concern today with the problem of values. Youth, in almost every country, is deeply uncertain of its value orientation; the values associated with various religions have lost much of their influence; sophisticated individuals in every culture seem unsure and troubled as to the goals they hold in esteem. The reasons are not far to seek. The World culture, in all its aspects, seems increasingly scientific and relativistic, and the rigid, absolute views on values which come to us from the past appear anachronistic. Even more important perhaps, is the fact that the modern individual is assailed from every angle by divergent and contradictory values claims. It is no longer possible, as it was in the not too distant historical past, to settle comfortably into the value system of one’s forebears or one’s community and live out one’s life without ever examining the nature and the assumptions of that system. In this situation it is not surprising that value orientations from the past appear to be in a state of disintegration or collapse. Men question whether there are, or can be, any universal values. It is often felt that we may have lost, in our modern World, all possibility of any general or cross-cultural basis for values. One natural result of this uncertainty and confusion is that there is an increasing concern about, interest in, and a searching for, a sound or meaningful value approach which can hold its own in today’s World. I share this general concern. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
I have also experienced the more specific value issues which arise in my own field, psychotherapy. The client’s feelings and convictions about values frequently change during therapy. How can he or we know whether they have changed in a sound direction? Or does he simply, as some claim, take over the value system of his therapist? Is psychotherapy simply a device whereby the unacknowledged and unexamined values of the therapist are unknowingly transmitted to an unsuspecting client? Or should this transmission of values be the therapist’s openly held purpose? Should he become the modern priest, upholding and imparting a value system suitable for today? And what would such a value system be? There has been much discussion of such issues, ranging from thoughtful and empirically based presentations such as that of D. D. Glad, to more polemic statements. As is so often true, the general problem faced by the culture is painfully and specifically evident in the cultural microcosm which is called the therapeutic relationship. I have observed changes in the approach to values as the individual grows from infancy to adulthood. If he is fortunate, I have observed further changes when he continues to grow toward true psychological maturity. Many of these observations grow out of my experience as a therapist, where I have had the rich opportunity of seeing the way in which individuals move toward a richer life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
From these observations, I believe I see some directional threads emerging which might offer a new concept of the valuing process, more tenable in the modern World. I have made a beginning by presenting some of these ideas partially in previous writings; I am speaking from my experience of the functioning human being, as I have lived with him in the intimate experience of therapy, and in other situations of growth, change, and development. A decisive step from primitive to civilized history lies in the rebellion of sons against the father, and the murder of the hated father. The sons then create a system of society based on a covenant which excludes further murder among the rivals and provides for the establishment of morality. The evolution of the child follows a similar path. The little boy at the age of five or six is intensely jealous of his father and represses murderous wishes against him only under the pressure of the castration threat. In order to liberate himself from continuous fear, he internalizes the incest taboo, and builds the nucleus around which his “conscience” is to grow (superego). Later on, the prohibitions and commands voided by other authorities and by society are added to the original taboos voiced by father. History is determined in its course by continuous contradictions. The productive forces grow and thus conflict with the older economic, social, and political forms. This conflict (for instance, between the steam engine and the previous social organization of manufacturing) leads to social and economic changes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The new stability, however, again is challenged by further development of the productive forces (for instance, from the steam engine to the use of gasoline, electricity, atomic energy), leading to new social forms which correspond better to the new productive forces. Together with the conflict between productive forces and sociopolitical structures goes the conflict between social classes. The feudal class based on older forms of production is in conflict with the new middle class of small manufacturers and businessmen; this middle class finds itself fighting, at some later point, against the working class as well as the leaders of big monopolistic enterprises which tend to strangle the earlies and smaller forms of enterprise. In the beginning of history, man is completely dependent on nature. In the process of evolution, he makes himself more and more independent of nature, begins to rule and transform nature in the process of work, and in transforming nature man transforms himself. Man’s dependence on nature limits his freedom and his capacity for thought; he is in many ways like a child. He slowly grows up, and only when he has fully mastered nature and thus become an independent being can he develop all his intellectual and emotional faculties. A socialist society is the one in which the grownup man begins to unfold all his powers. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The monolithic orientation of social work schools, and the particular use of psychiatrists or analysts to instruct in personality theory, has contributed to a generally stable entente cordiale between social workers and psychiatrists. Certainly the resulting facilitation of communication and coordination is apparently in the best interests of the patient. However, like the peace pacts between nations which successful avert war, there is no correlated impetus to make discoveries or achieve maximal efforts. At least one voice has expressed concern for the impact of this indoctrination on the specific contribution of the social worker: “Social problems are social problems, and you cannot psychoanalyze them out of existence. Psychiatric social service…is indispensable. However, psychiatric social service is increasingly becoming psychoanalytic social service, and more and more even the ‘social’ is being left out until only psychoanalytic service remains. That does not help people with real social family problems.” The psychologist in his formal training is exposed to a variety of truly psychological conceptualizations of the human mind, personality, and behaviour. He studies theories of learning, of perception, of motivation, of communication, of decision making, and so on. He studies scientifically accumulated information (as contrasted with retrospective clinical formulations based upon the pathology of adults) as to how the social, conceptual, and emotional equipment and behaviour dispositions of the human organism unfold, develop, integrate, and disintegrate from earliest infancy through adulthood to senility. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
We are bombarded with all sorts of persuasion daily. It is coming at us from all sides. The Internet, radio, television, your computer, your mobile phone, the people around you, it is all too much! In this day and age, we have much more persuasive action coming at us than ever before. That is because there are not only more ways to persuade people, but there are more things to persuade them about. The in-you-face persuasion is not so bad. You can take it or leave it, and at least you know what is happening. It is the dark persuasive tactics that you might not even be aware of that matter. First things first, your fundamental rights as a human being. This might seem like a thing that is understood by most people, but that is not always the case. So, we are going to go over what is unequivocally yours. Knowing what your rights are, gives you that line you can let people know you will not allow being crossed. We have to have lines—all of us do. As children, we learned to test our boundaries. If our parents had little to no boundaries, then we learned little until we became school age. Our peers and teachers would then set the boundaries our parents did not. Society will always let you know how far you can and cannot go. So, letting people know that you know what the socially accepted boundaries are is essential in your role as a citizen of the World. Another thing that needs to be pointed out about your rights is the fact that you do not have to answer questions anyone asks you about why you feel you have these rights. You have them, end of subject. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
If someone feels they have to ask you about your rights, they are only trying to get into your head to make you believe you do not actually have the right you are trying to uphold. Let us talk about your right to life. Not only do you have this right, but you have got the right to live your life in a way that is healthy and happy. If someone is infringing your life that is causing you to be or feel unhealth or unhappy, you have the unquestionable right to get away from them or make them get away from you—by force if necessary. What about respect? Do you have the right to be treated with respect by everyone? You are do. You should be treated with respect by anyone you first encounter. That is until you do something to lose that respect. The thing is that everyone is given respect in the first place. It is up to you if you can maintain that respect or not. And sometimes, you have got to try to earn it, once it has been lost. You also have the right to protect yourself from things that threaten to harm you in physical, mental, and emotional ways. This means that is a person is about to punch you in the face, you do not have to stand there and take it. You have got many possibilities for your recourse. You can hit back. You could dodge the punch. Or you can simply walk away—or run if you feel that threatened. And you can seek help if you feel like you cannot face a threat on your own. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Physical violence is easy to see how you have got the right to get away from a person who is threatening to harm you in that way. However, what about emotional and mental harm? Of course, you have the right to get away from anyone who is threatening or actually harming you in those ways. Again, you can do this on your own, or you might need help. Ask for help if you need it and stay away from the person who tried to or did cause you harm in any of these aspects. The things you want, the things you have opinions about, and how you feel are also rights that you have. Regardless if anyone else agrees with your or not, you also have the right to have all of these things. Your opinion might be yours alone. Others might have conflicting opinions. Just as you have a right to your opinion, they have the right to theirs as well. You also have a right to make your own priorities. What matters to you the most might not matter to someone else as much or at all. If someone thinks your priorities are not in line with what they want, that makes no difference. You need to believe in your priorities and stand by them. Do not allow anyone to influence what matters the most to you. A case in point for this is that your boss thinks you should focus more on your job instead of your family. He wants you to change your priorities. You know better than that now, do you not? It is your right to have your own priorities; no one can make you change them. Again, if you need help getting someone in authority over you to understand and accept this about you, then get the help you need to accomplish that. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
If you pay for something, do you feel that you have the right to have it? You sure do what that right. If you pay for gas before going back outside to pump it and there is no gas left to give you, you expect to get your money back, do you not? And if they refuse to give your money back, you know there are things you can do to get it back. And we are not talking about getting violent here. There are authorities to help you get what you paid for. If you need it, use that help. And here is a right that many of us do not know that we have. We all have the right to say no. That is all. We also have the right not to feel even an ounce of guilt for saying, no. Not even an ounce! That is right. You can say no, and you do not have to say another word after that. You do not have to explain a thing. As a matter of fact, if you want to shut the person bothering you up, simply tell that that it is your right to say no and you are exercising it. Smile, be happy about it. You said, no. And you do not feel bad about doing it either. When a negative reaction impulsively shows itself before you have been able to prevent it, make as your second thought a deliberate replacement or substitution of it, by the opposed beneficial one. For instance, a reaction of envy at someone’s good fortune should be substituted by the thought of appreciation of the good qualities or services which may have led it. When emotion is no longer able to cloud reason, when intellect is no longer able to dry up the feeling of conscience, a better judgment of affairs and a clearer perception of truth becomes possible. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
It takes a dedicated, committed, and courageous person to enter the blind, boiling darkness of a building on fire, to crawl through poisonous smoke, to confront the threat of the flames. The economic benefits of being a firefighter are not really great. The time off is fairly decent. Work schedules vary widely from place to place, but generally speaking firefighters have more time off in a consecutive way than most people. At the same time, many of them work forty-eight and sixty hours a week. When you go to work, you know you are going to sit in the firehouse kitchen with people who are interesting, funny, and worthy of your attention. Another benefit of being a firefighter is your sense of self-worth. You go out on a job, you eat some soke, you take a little heat, and you get the great satisfaction of confronting the flames and defeating them. You know you are doing a good job, and that is a very valuable benefit. There is not much money for the paid firefighters. Only the bosses get paid well. The fire commissioner of Sacramento gets paid more than many mayors. However, the ordinary firefighter is almost always paid less than a schoolteacher, generally on a parity with police officers—and he works more hours. The trouble is that seldom their time off is in sync with the rest of the World. When their kids are starring in the school play, they are working. If there is a rare family reunion at Thanksgiving, they are working. And when you should be celebrating the baby’s first Christmas, they are working. That is a minus. And that is the breaks. Please be sure to show love to the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Witchcraft is treated as a curious by-lane of history, a superstition long since dead, having no existence among, nor bearing upon, the affairs of the present day. It is a field of folk-lore, where one may gather strange flower and noxious weeds. Again, we often recognize the romantic treatment of Witchcraft. ‘Tis the Eve of S. George, a dark wild night, the pale moon can but struggle thinly through the thick massing clouds. The witches are abroad, and hurtle swiftly aloft, a hideous covey, borne headlong on the skirling blast. In delirious tones they are yelling foul mysterious words as they go: “Har! Har! Har! Altri! Altri!” To some peak of the Broken or lonely Cevennes they haste, to the orgies of the Sabbat, the infernal Sacraments, the dance of Acheron, the sweet and fearful fantasy of evil, “Vers les stupres impurs et lest baisers immondes.” Hell seems to vomit its foulest dregs upon the shrinking Earth’ a loathsome shape of obscene horror squats huge and monstrous upon the ebon throne; the stifling air reeks with filth and blasphemy; faster and faster whirls the witches’ lewd lavolta; shriller and shriller the cornemuse screams; and then a wan gray light flickers in the Eastern sky; a moment more and there sounds the loud clarion of some village chantieleer; swift as thought the vile phantasmagoria vanishes and is sped, all is quite and still in the peaceful dawn.
However, both the antiquarian and romanticist reviews of Witchcraft may be deemed negligible and impertinent so far as the present research is concerned, however entertaining and picturesque such treatment proves to many readers affording not a few pleasant hours, whence they are able to draw highly dramatic and brilliantly coloured pictures of old time sorceries, not to be taken too seriously, for these things never were and never could have been. The rationalist historian and the sceptic, when inevitably confronted with the subject of Witchcraft, chose a charmingly easy way to deal with these intensely complex and intricate problems, a flat denial of all statements which did not fit, or could not by some means be squared with, their own narrow prejudice. What matter the most irrefragable evidence, which in the instance of any other accusation would unhesitatingly have been regarded as final. What matter the logical and reasoned belief of centuries, of the most cultured peoples, the highest intelligences of Europe? Any appeal to authority—save his own. Such thing could not be. We must argue from that axion, and therefore anything which is impossible to explain away by hallucination, or hysteria, or auto-suggestion, or any other vague catch-word which may chance to be fashionable at the moment, must be uncompromisingly rejected, and a note of superior pity, to candy the so suave yet crushingly decisive judgment, has proved of great service upon more occasion than one.
Why examine the evidence? It is really useless and a waste of time, because we know that the allegations are all idle and ridiculous; the “facts” sworn to by innumerable witnesses, which are repeated in changeless detail century after century in every country, in every town, simply did not take place. How so absolute and entire falsity of these facts can be demonstrated the sceptic omits to inform us, but we must unquestioningly accept his infallible authority in the face of reason, evidence, and truth. Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris Research and Development 