Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 208 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Hosea 12 Ephraim Reminded 1 E PHRAIM FEEDS on the [emptiness of the] wind And [continually] pursues the [parching] east wind [which brings destruction]; Every day he multiplies lies and violence. Further, he makes a covenant with Assyria And (olive) oil is carried to Egypt [to seek alliances]. [Is 30:6 , 7 ] 2 The LORD also has a dispute [a legal complaint and an indictment] with Judah, And He will punish Jacob in accordance with his ways; He will repay him in accordance with his deeds. 3 In their mother’s womb he took his brother by the heel, And in his maturity he contended with God. [Gen 25:26 ; 27:36 ] 4 He wrestled with the angel and prevailed; He wept [in repentance] and sought His favor. He met Him at Bethel And there God spoke with [him and through him with] us— [Gen 28:12–19 ; 32:28 ; 35:1–15 ] 5 Even the LORD , the God of hosts, The name of Him [who spoke with Jacob] is the LORD . 6 Therefore, return [in repentance] to your God, Observe and highly regard kindness and justice, And wait [expectantly] for your God continually. 7 A merchant, in whose hand are false and fraudulent balances; He loves to oppress and exploit. 8 Ephraim said, “I have indeed become rich [and powerful as a nation]; I have found wealth for myself. In all my labors they will not find in me Any wickedness that would be sin.” [Rev 3:17 ] 9 But I have been the LORD your God since [you became a nation in] the land of Egypt; I will make you live in tents again, As in the days of the appointed and solemn a festival. [Lev 23:39–43 ] 10 I have also spoken to [you through] the prophets, And I gave [them] many visions [to make My will known], And through the prophets I gave parables [to appeal to your sense of right and wrong]. 11 Is there wickedness (idolatry) in Gilead? Surely the people there are worthless. In Gilgal [they defy Me when] they sacrifice bulls, Yes, [after My judgment] their [pagan] altars are like the stone heaps In the furrows of the fields. 12 Now Jacob (Israel) fled into the open country of Aram (Paddan-aram), [Gen 28:2 , 5 ] And [there] Israel (Jacob) worked and served for a wife, And for a wife he kept sheep . [Gen 29:18–20 ; 30:31 ; 31:38–41 ] 13 And by a prophet (Moses) the LORD brought Israel up from Egypt, And by a prophet Israel was preserved. 14 Ephraim has provoked most bitter anger; So his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him [invoking punishment] And bring back to him his shame and dishonor. Hosea 13 Ephraim’s Idolatry 1 W HEN EPHRAIM spoke, there was trembling and terror.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Sounding a note of concern similar to that expressed by Murray twenty years earlier, Bambara complained about Black women being “jammed in the rigid confines of those basically oppressive social contrived roles,” arguing that these investments were rooted in the economic demands made on men to accumulate property in a capitalist system and with the imposed cultural dictates of Christianity. If precolonial African societies were an indicator, Bambara argued (despite her skepticism over white anthropological accounts of Africa), “no rigid and hysterical separation based on sexual taboos” existed.58 Still, Black men frequently remained invested in the idea “that Black women must be supportive and patient so that Black men can regain their manhood. The notion of womanhood—they argue … is dependent on his defining his manhood. So the shit goes on.” These men, she accused, were “obsessive,” about their “lost balls.” But revolution “entails at the very least cracking through the veneer of this sick society’s definition of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’”59 Not only would engagement with revolution transform the self, and implode gender role ideology, but it would necessarily transform family structures. Invoking Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism, Bambara argued that when willfully engaged in a revolutionary freedom struggle, “the ‘family’ was no longer a socially ordained nuclear unit to perpetuate the species or legitimize sexuality, but an extended kinship of cellmates and neighbors linked in the business of actualizing a vision of a liberated society.”60 As Brooks demanded of intellectuals, Bambara turned the notion of family on its head and then offered up a completely reconfigured concept that she viewed as more relevant to the aims of Black revolutionary struggle. Black women, particularly Black clubwomen, had been the original theoreticians of the Black family as an institution. Like Cooper who argued that “a race is but a total of families,” Bambara connected family configuration to the articulation of racial identity or “Blackhood.”61 But she rejected the respectable ideas of family that Cooper and early race women believed in. Bambara entered into that long intellectual legacy of theorizing race and family, cultivated by Black women, showing more concretely the linkages between one’s racial goals and the ways in which that directly related to the structure of the Black family. However, she rejected the liberal, assimilationist paradigms that Murray and others adopted by associating binary configurations of gender with hierarchical ideas propagated by white supremacy, capitalism, and Christianity. Bambara thus insisted on the need for a political and economic revolution.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  2 “You who hate good and love evil, Who tear the skin off my people And their flesh from their bones; 3 You who eat the flesh of my people, Strip off their skin from them, Break their bones And chop them in pieces as for the pot, Like meat in a kettle.” 4 Then they will cry to the LORD , But He will not answer them; Instead, He will even hide His face from them at that time [withholding His mercy] Because they have practiced and tolerated and ignored evil acts. [Is 1:15 ] 5 Thus says the LORD concerning the [false] prophets who lead my people astray; When they have something good to bite with their teeth, They call out, “Peace,” But against the one who gives them nothing to eat, They declare a holy war. 6 Therefore it will be night (tragedy) for you—without vision, And darkness (cataclysm) for you—without foresight. The sun shall go down on the [false] prophets, And the day shall become dark and black over them. 7 The seers shall be ashamed And the diviners discredited and embarrassed; Indeed, they shall all cover their mouths [in shame] Because there is no answer from God. 8 But in fact, I am filled with power, With the Spirit of the LORD , And with justice and might, To declare to Jacob his transgression And to Israel his sin. 9 Now hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob And rulers of the house of Israel, Who hate and reject justice And twist everything that is straight, 10 Who build Zion with blood [and extortion and murder] And Jerusalem with violent injustice. 11 Her leaders pronounce judgment for a bribe, Her priests teach for a fee, And her prophets foretell for money; Yet they lean on the LORD , saying, “Is not the LORD among us? No tragedy or distress will come on us.” [Is 1:10–15 ] 12 Therefore, on account of you a Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become b a heap of ruins, And the mountain of the house [of the LORD ] shall become like a densely wooded hill. [Jer 26:17–19 ] Micah 4 Peaceful Latter Days 1 B UT IT shall come about in the last days That the mountain of the house of the LORD Shall be established as the highest and chief of the mountains; It shall be above the hills, And peoples shall flow [like a river] to it. 2 And many nations shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD , To the house of the God of Jacob, That He may teach us about His ways And that we may walk in His paths.” For the law shall go forward from Zion, And the word of the LORD [the revelation about Him and His truth] from Jerusalem. 3 And He will judge between many peoples And render decisions for strong and distant nations.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  By 1913, she argued that Garrison’s history in the abolition movement demonstrated that “if it had not been agitation, continuous, earnest almost fierce agitation against the iniquitous institution of slavery, we might have all been slaves today.” 21 Meddling, then, had merely been a euphemism for agitation, and by 1913, she clearly determined to throw off the use of euphemisms and drive right to the point. Surely “college educated men and women knew that no race which allowed its rights violently to be snatched away without a loud and earnest protest against it, could maintain its own self-respect.” Yet, much to her chagrin, racial elites continued to suggest that “agitation would do us no good.” 22 To these critics, she riposted, “it is quite true that the wrong kind of agitation would do us no good. The wrong kind of church-going or the wrong kind of any good thing will do us no good.” 23 In language that she would return to in her 1951 speech, she set about making clear exactly what the right kind of agitation should look like. Deriding the “blatant, rattle-brained people who tear passion to tatters about wrongs, both real and fancied, in season and out,” Terrell insisted that it was nonetheless “unreasonable to condemn the proper, dignified agitation which is the only way to arouse the conscience of the public against evils and injustices of a certain kind.” 24 Dignified agitation was proper agitation; and the dignified class should be in the vanguard of dignified agitators. Dignified agitation took as its goal the shifting of public opinion by unapologetically calling attention to the violation of rights and the preponderance of wrongs. Her invocation of dignity also recalls Cooper’s calls for Black women to secure the “undisputed dignity of [their] womanhood.” On the one hand, Terrell, as I will demonstrate momentarily, invoked “dignified” synonymously with respectable. But her use of that word also suggests that she concedes the inherent dignity and personhood of Black people, and that it is from that space of “undisputed dignity” that she advocates for the importance of agitation as a means to secure the dignity of Black life. Her commitments to racial agitation both revise and augment existing genealogies of racial agitation theory within Black intellectual thought, especially among African American women. Ida B. Wells is usually the race woman most associated with the work of racial agitation. She developed her philosophy of racial agitation under the mentorship of newspaper editor T. Thomas Fortune, one of the most radical race theorists of the nineteenth century. 25 Under Fortune’s tutelage, Wells rejected saccharine aspirations toward racial integration and embraced armed self-defense as a response to lynching and white racist violence. Terrell is rarely understood to be a part of this same intellectual genealogy, usually because of her class politics, but like Wells, she rejected uplift politics as the sole or primary path to Black freedom. Both women believed in insistent and sustained agitation to bring about social change.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  And the public, long inured to this prescribed sort of amputation, no longer deeply cares. Indeed, there is little revolt of any sort left in modern man. He no longer acts, he reacts. He is the victim who at long last has been caught in his own trap. What I am trying to say by all this is that the question to what extent a writer may be permitted to speak freely and naturally—on any question, any subject—is only part of a greater question, in a word: what is freedom ? Men will fight and die, apparently, for greater political or economic freedom, perhaps even for religious freedom, but when it comes to education—what and how our children should be taught—or the right to speak and act freely in the domain of sex, or even to write about sex openly, honestly, unashamedly, they display striking little courage. So it seems to me, at any rate. Yet sex and education are of cardinal importance in the creation of any social fabric. Indeed, there are many today who are convinced that most of our woes stem from our reluctance or our inability to cope with these fundamental issues. To get back to the core of the matter…. I repeat that, in writing The Rosy Crucifixion , I had but one thought in mind-to tell the story of the crucial years which marked a turning point in my life, and to relate my experiences (good and bad) as honestly and as faithfully as possible. In short, to expose the whole man and thus, obliquely, the society which fostered him. It therefore seems somewhat ridiculous to be asked, as I often am, whether I could not have written otherwise, meaning—could I not have rendered my words and thoughts more palatable, less offensive to public taste. (Who are the arbiters of taste, by the way?) This same sort of question has been put to every innovator throughout the ages. I should like to add, moreover, that I very much question the wisdom, the purity and the understanding of the so-called guardians of morality who so brashly assume responsibility for the mental, moral and spiritual health of the dear public. What tests have they undergone to earn the right to judge and condemn those who do not subscribe to their view of life? No, the real protectors, not of the “public” but of humanity, are never moralists but rather men of spirit. These men I revere. They do not talk good and evil, they talk God. They do not judge, punish and condemn; they show compassion. And what is compassion if not understanding tempered by love? No, I have no fear that those who read my works will become depraved or demoralized. Indeed, I possess thousands of letters from readers all over the world which tell the opposite story.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Forgive me, but I must go into it further…. The last time it happened was while I was writing Plexus . During the year or so that I was occupied with this work—one of the worst periods, in other respects, that I have ever lived through—the inundation was almost continuous. Huge blocks—particularly the dream parts—came to me just as they appear in print and without any effort on my part, except that of equating my own rhythm with that of the mysterious dictator who had me in his thrall. In retrospect I wonder about this period, for the reason that every morning on entering my little studio I had first to quell the surge of anger, disgust and loathing which the daily drama inevitably aroused. Quieting myself as best I could, reproving and admonishing myself aloud, I would sit before the machine—and strike the tuning fork. Bang! Like a sack of coal it would spill out. I could keep it up for three or four hours at a stretch, interrupted only by the arrival of the mailman. At lunch more wrangling. Just sufficient to bring me to the boil. Then back to my desk, where I would again tune in and race on until the next interruption. When I had finished the book, a rather long one, I was so keyed up that I confidently expected to write two more books—pronto . However, nothing worked out as I had expected. The world went to smash about me. My own little world, I mean. For three years thereafter I was unable to advance more than a page at a time, with long intervals between these spurts. The book which I was endeavoring to write—getting up the courage to write, would be better!—I had been thinking and dreaming about for over twenty-five years. My despair reached such a point that I was almost convinced my writing days were over. To make matters worse, my intimate friends seemed to take pleasure in insinuating that I could write only when things were bad for me. It was true that seemingly I had no longer anything to fight. I was only fighting myself, fighting the venom which I had unconsciously stored up. To come back to the Voice…. There was The World of Lawrence , to take another instance. Begun at Clichy, continued in Passy and abandoned after the writing of some seven to eight hundred pages. A misfire. A flop. Yet what a grand affair it was!

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  4 They pour out words, speaking arrogant things; All who do evil boast proudly. [Jude 14 , 15 ] 5 They crush Your people, O LORD , And afflict and abuse Your heritage. 6 a They kill the widow and the alien And murder the fatherless. 7 Yet they say, “The LORD does not see, Nor does the God of Jacob (Israel) notice it.” 8 Consider thoughtfully, you senseless (stupid ones) among the people; And you [dull-minded] fools, when will you become wise and understand? 9 He who made the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see? 10 He who instructs the nations, Does He not rebuke and punish, He who teaches man knowledge? 11 The LORD knows the thoughts of man, That they are a mere breath (vain, empty, futile). [1 Cor 3:20 ] 12 Blessed [with wisdom and prosperity] is the man whom You discipline and instruct, O LORD , And whom You teach from Your law, 13 That You may grant him [power to calm himself and find] peace in the days of adversity, Until the pit is dug for the wicked and ungodly. 14 For the LORD will not abandon His people, Nor will He abandon His inheritance. 15 For judgment will again be righteous, And all the upright in heart will follow it. 16 Who will stand up for me against the evildoers? Who will take a stand for me against those who do wickedness? 17 If the LORD had not been my help, I would soon have dwelt in [the land of] silence. 18 If I say, “My foot has slipped,” Your compassion and lovingkindness, O LORD , will hold me up. 19 When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your comforts delight me. 20 Can a throne of destruction be allied with You, One which frames and devises mischief by decree [under the sacred name of law]? 21 They band themselves together against the life of the righteous And condemn the innocent to death. 22 But the LORD has become my high tower and defense, And my God the rock of my refuge. 23 He has turned back their own wickedness upon them And will destroy them by means of their own evil; The LORD our God will wipe them out. Psalm 95 Praise to the LORD , and Warning against Unbelief. 1 O COME, let us sing joyfully to the LORD ; Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before His presence with a song of thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with songs. 3 For the LORD is a great God And a great King above all gods, 4 In whose hand are the depths of the earth; The peaks of the mountains are His also. 5 The sea is His, for He made it [by His command]; And His hands formed the dry land.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  12 “Therefore their way will be to them like slippery paths In the dark; they will be pushed and fall into them; For I will bring disaster on them, In the year of their punishment,” says the LORD . 13 “And I have seen a foolish and an offensive thing in the prophets of Samaria: They prophesied by Baal and caused My people Israel to go astray. 14 “Also I have seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem: They commit adultery and walk in lies; They encourage and strengthen the hands of evildoers, So that no one has turned back from his wickedness. All of them have become like Sodom to Me, And her inhabitants like Gomorrah. 15 “Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts in regard to the prophets, ‘Behold, I am going to feed them [the bitterness of] wormwood And make them drink the poisonous water [of gall], For from the [counterfeit] prophets of Jerusalem Profaneness and ungodliness have spread into all the land.’ ” 16 Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Do not listen to the words of the [false] prophets who prophesy to you. They are teaching you worthless things and are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own mind and imagination And not [truth] from the mouth of the LORD . 17 “They are continually saying to those who despise Me [and My word], ‘The Lord has said, “You will have peace” ’; And they say to everyone who walks after the stubbornness of his own heart, ‘No evil will come on you.’ 18 “But who [among them] has stood in the council of the LORD , That he would perceive and hear His word? Who has marked His word [noticing and observing and paying attention to it] and has [actually] heard it? 19 “Behold, the tempest of the LORD has gone forth in wrath, A whirling tempest; It will whirl and burst on the heads of the wicked. 20 “The anger of the LORD will not turn back Until He has set in motion and accomplished the thoughts and intentions of His heart; In the last days you will clearly understand it. 21 “I did not send [these counterfeit] prophets, Yet they ran; I did not speak to them, Yet they prophesied. 22 “But if they had stood in My council, Then they would have caused My people to hear My words, Then they would have turned My people from their evil way And from the evil of their decisions and deeds. 23 “Am I a God who is at hand,” says the LORD , “And not a God far away?” 24 “Can anyone hide himself in secret places So that I cannot see him?” says the LORD . “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD .

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  32 “Behold, you are to them like a love song by one who has a pleasant voice and plays well on a stringed instrument [merely to entertain them]; for they hear your words but do not practice them. 33 “So when it comes to pass—as it most certainly will—then they will know [without any doubt] that a prophet has been among them.” Ezekiel 34 Prophecy against the Shepherds of Israel 1 A ND THE word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, the [spiritual] shepherds, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Woe (judgment is coming) to the [spiritual] shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? 3 “You eat the fat [the choicest of meat], and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the best of the livestock, but you do not feed the flock. 4 “You have not strengthened those who are weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bandaged the crippled, you have not brought back those gone astray, you have not looked for the lost; but you have ruled them with force and violence. 5 “They were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the predators of the field. 6 “My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill; My flock was scattered over all the face of the earth and no one searched or sought them.” ’ ” [Matt 9:36 ] 7 Therefore, you [spiritual] shepherds, hear the word of the LORD : 8 “As I live,” says the Lord GOD , “certainly because My flock has become prey, My flock has even become food for every predator of the field for lack of a shepherd, and My shepherds did not search for My flock, but rather the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock; 9 therefore, you [spiritual] shepherds, hear the word of the LORD : 10 ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand My flock from them and make them stop tending the flock, so that the shepherds cannot feed themselves anymore. I will rescue My flock from their mouth, so that they will not be food for them.” ’ ” The Restoration of Israel 11 For thus says the Lord GOD , “Behold, I Myself will search for My flock and seek them out. 12 “As a shepherd cares for his sheep on the day that he is among his scattered flock, so I will care for My sheep; and I will rescue them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  grounded yourself. All of these thoughts will help you manage your emotions next time. I was recently talking with someone who said they find themselves thinking back on these situations all the time, but that it rarely feels helpful to them. This person said that they find themself getting emotional all over again. They said they feel like they are reliving the experience and getting all worked up a second (or third or fourth) time. I have two thoughts on this. First, it’s ok to get emotional about it later. In fact, it can even be a good thing because it allows you to practice the calming- down strategies I’ve been describing. If you find yourself getting worked up in these moments, take a moment to run through the progression above. Find your pause, take a breath, relax your muscles, try to ground yourself. Second, a mistake many people make in these moments is being overly focused on what the other person did. This sort of rumination is really common. People get caught up in “can you believe they did that” instead of spending time thinking about their own contributions to the situation and how they responded to the person. In keeping with the game film analogy, it is like watching game tape, but only of the other team. You want to spend time thinking about and analyzing the entire situation, and that includes your role in things. They Don’t All Yell and Swear Of course, for these emotionally charged moments to happen, we have to recognize that people are angry with us in the first place. That is not always the case. People do not always know when someone is mad at them, and that is because not everyone who is angry behaves in a way that looks like the stereotypical angry person. They don’t all yell and swear. In the next chapter, we’ll talk about how anger can look a lot of different ways. * There’s really no way to answer this one. We don’t have a consistent mechanism to track this sort of thing over time. My best guess is that, in some ways, we are angrier than we used to be, but that we’re also witnessing

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  length of the survey and getting angry about some of the questions. The survey itself is intended to be angering, with questions such as “With how many men (other than your father) has your mother had extramarital relationships?” So if you’re playing along at home, we have three different independent variables here, epinephrine or placebo (two levels), information about the shot (three levels), angry or euphoric (two levels), for eighteen different research categories. What the researchers were really interested in here was not vision as the participants were told, but rather, the happiness or anger the participants experienced going through the study. These were measured through observations of the participant’s behavior and a survey at the end of the study. Imagining you’re a participant in this study, you’ve got a couple of different sources of information. Are you having a physiological reaction to the epinephrine? Were you accurately informed what that reaction would feel like? Is the person in the room with you angry or happy? Most interesting to me is the group who received a shot and didn’t know what it would do. This is the group that I would expect to be most likely to take on the emotions of the stooge. They are having a mild, emotion-like physiological response, and were not expecting it. To explain that reaction, they might look to their environment. Indeed, that’s what happened. Participants who had been uninformed or even misinformed about how their body would react to the shot were more likely to become happy when the stooge was happy and angry when the stooge was angry. In the euphoric condition, they joined in on the fun and even engaged in some entertaining activities the stooge wasn’t engaging in. Plus, they just said they were happier on a self-report scale. For anger, similar findings. If they did not know what the impact of the shot would be, they got angry along with the stooge. I like to think about this study in terms of Sarah’s story above. While no one at the show was given shots of epinephrine that day, there was undoubtedly some elevated tension and anxiety associated with being in public and in a crowded space. Many of those patrons probably were having a physiological reaction consistent with an epinephrine burst simply because they were nervous about being out. Did they recognize that or did they attribute it to the frustration

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  It might require an offline conversation, time spent calming down before connecting again, or something else. Staying in the Moment One thing that has always struck me about online anger and hostility is how free people often feel to attack one another in ways I can’t imagine they would in person. The things I have been called online are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced offline. That said, character assaults can look a lot of different ways. They aren’t always overtly hostile or intentionally cruel. Sometimes, we insult people unintentionally by overgeneralizing or labeling them in more subtle ways. A conversation with a person who is angry ends up being about more than it should be because we have a hard time staying in the moment. In this next chapter, we’ll talk about how to avoid character assaults when talking with an angry person. * This quote is somewhat jaw-dropping when you consider what’s happened since it was written in 2014 and how public anger has informed those events. Both the 2016 and 2020 US elections were driven largely by anger, much of it propagated by social media. * Far from it. According to the 2012 study by Drs. Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman, news content that evokes high-arousal emotions, particularly anger or fear, are more likely to go viral. So the material that makes its way to you is likely to evoke those feelings. * My students once shared with me that a relatively common way to get revenge on someone is to intentionally post an unflattering photo of them online. I collected some data on it and found that, indeed, 4 per cent of participants had done this. I wouldn’t call that “common” but it’s definitely happening. It also got me wondering how many unflattering photos have been taken of me when I’m teaching and shared by angry students. * I can’t help but think back to what Dr. Rosenthal (chapter 4 ) said regarding crowds existing in an online world. We know one of the reasons why people do things in groups that they might not do alone is because they feel a sense of anonymity when they are in a crowd. The same psychological principles that drive in-person mobs may drive online mobs. * Can you think of any celebrities – or maybe even world leaders – who have a habit of taking to social media to express anger and hostility? * The origin of the emoticon reveals that it exists for exactly this purpose. When a joke was misunderstood on a message board at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982, one of the people involved in the online conversation, Scott E Fahlman, responded with “I propose the following character sequences for joke markers: :). Read it sideways.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Vivaldo. “Be glad.” He stood over Rufus for yet another moment, then he said, “I’m going to take you out and buy you a pizza. You hungry, child, that’s why you carrying on like that.” He went into the kitchen and began to wash his face. Rufus smiled, watching him, bent over the sink, under the hideous light. It was like the kitchen in St. James Slip. He and Leona had ended their life together there, on the very edge of the island. When Rufus had ceased working and when all his money was gone, and there was nothing left to pawn, they were wholly dependent on the money Leona brought home from the restaurant. Then she lost this job. Their domestic life, which involved a hideous amount of drinking, made it difficult for her to get there on time and also caused her to look more and more disreputable. One evening, half-drunk, Rufus had gone to the restaurant to pick her up. The next day she was fired. She never held a steady job again. One evening Vivaldo came to visit them in their last apartment. They heard the whistles of tugboats all day and all night long. Vivaldo found Leona sitting on the bathroom floor, her hair in her eyes, her face swollen and dirty with weeping. Rufus had been beating her. He sat silently on the bed. “Why?” cried Vivaldo. “I don’t know,” Leona sobbed, “it can’t be for nothing I did. He’s always beating me, for nothing, for nothing!” She gasped for breath, opening her mouth like an infant, and in that instant Vivaldo really hated Rufus and Rufus knew it. “He says I’m sleeping with other colored boys behind his back and it’s not true, God knows it’s not true!” “Rufus knows it isn’t true,” Vivaldo said. He looked over at Rufus, who said nothing. He turned back to Leona. “Get up, Leona. Stand up. Wash your face.” He went into the bathroom and helped her to her feet and turned the water on. “Come on, Leona. Pull yourself together, like a good girl.” She tried to stop sobbing, and splashed water on her face. Vivaldo patted her on the shoulder, astonished all over again to realize how frail she was. He walked into the bedroom. Rufus looked up at him. “This is my house,” he said, “and that’s my girl. You ain’t got nothing to do with this. Get your ass out of here.” “You could be killed for this,” said Vivaldo. “All she has to do is yell. All I have to do is walk down to the corner and get a cop.” “You trying to scare me? Go get a cop.” “You must be out of your mind. They’d take one look at this situation and put you under the jailhouse.” He walked to the bathroom door. “Come on, Leona. Get your coat. I’m taking you out of here.”

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Those practices almost silenced the brilliant Pauli Murray, not only through explicit sexism, but also through covert forms of homophobia and heterosexism couched in the language of respectability. These Jane Crow politics concretized a racial leadership model that allowed only (putatively) straight, middle-class men to lead. Part of what it must mean to be a race man in the twenty-first century is to radically disavow the politics of Jane Crow. That would mean, for instance, rejecting the kind of all-male list practices that constitute Betrayal and that Black women public intellectuals have written against since the 1890s. The barrier of the all-male constituted leadership list is something that Black women have challenged by offering their own lists of important female leaders. I discuss the importance of this practice of listing in the introduction and chapter four. But it is the refusal of Baker and others to acknowledge the ways in which Black women have offered new and productive ideas to uplift Black communities, and the desire to resituate Black leadership squarely within the hands of a committed, if radical, male few that makes projects like Beyond Respectability intellectually and politically necessary. The election of President Barack Obama has also contributed to a resurgence of discussions about Black leadership and about the kinds of models that are most effective in uplifting African American communities. Certainly, the landscape of twenty-first-century Black political and intellectual leadership looks monumentally different than it did even thirty years ago. Patricia Hill Collins argues that “black public intellectuals differ from their historical counterparts and from their domestic contemporaries in several ways.” 12 They have “unprecedented access to print media” and broadcast media; they are not necessarily “in daily contact with African American communities or African Americans”; and they have benefited from America’s fascination and obsession with questions of race. Broad levels of access to media have shifted the meaning of the term public among these well-known intellectuals. Imani Perry notes that “from the late-19th until the mid-20th century, it was a matter of course that African-American intellectuals engaged in public life in a multitude of ways. They developed school curriculums, worked in and for civil-rights organizations like the NAACP, and participated in civic organizations, churches, and professional societies.” 13 For instance, Anna Julia Cooper not only earned a doctorate and wrote scholarly books, but she also served as principal of the M Street School in Washington, D.C. Written in 2005, Collins’s reflections are all the more salient given both President Obama’s election (and reelection) and the astronomical proliferation of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and digital content-sharing platforms like YouTube. Perry, too, points out that “the democratizing power of new digital forms of communication and 24-hour cable television news networks has renewed the role of the black public intellectual.” Perry therefore attempts to steer junior academicians back to the older model of public scholarship, which means direct forms of community engagement, encouraging them not to view public as being synonymous with doing media.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: “He shall be called a j Nazarene.” Matthew 3 The Preaching of John the Baptist 1 I N THOSE days a John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the Wilderness of Judea [along the western side of the Dead Sea] and saying, 2 “b Repent [change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret past sins, live your life in a way that proves repentance; seek God’s purpose for your life], for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 3 This is the one who was mentioned by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “THE VOICE OF ONE SHOUTING IN THE WILDERNESS , ‘PREPARE THE ROAD FOR THE LORD , c MAKE HIS HIGHWAYS STRAIGHT (level, direct)!’ ” [Is 40:3 ] 4 Now this same John had clothing made of camel’s hair and a [wide] leather d band around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. [Lev 11:22 ; 2 Kin 1:8 ; Zech 13:4 ] 5 At that time Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; 6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins. 7 But when he saw many of the e Pharisees and f Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the [divine] wrath and judgment to come? 8 “So produce fruit that is consistent with repentance [demonstrating new behavior that proves a change of heart, and a conscious decision to turn away from sin]; 9 and do not presume to say to yourselves [as a defense], ‘We have Abraham for our father [so our inheritance assures us of salvation]’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children (descendants) for Abraham. [Luke 3:8 ] 10 “And already the axe [of God’s judgment] is g swinging toward the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 “As for me, I baptize you h with water because of [your] repentance [that is, because you are willing to change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret your sin and live a changed life], but He (the Messiah) who is coming after me is mightier [more powerful, more noble] than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to remove [even as His slave]; He will baptize you [who truly repent] with the Holy Spirit and [you who remain unrepentant] with i fire (judgment).

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  In 2016, an article in The Lancet Psychiatry referred to online impulsivity as “a public health issue” and explained a number of ways that impulsivity was exacerbated in the online environment.67 The highlighted anonymity was an issue, but the article also pointed to the absence of some controls that exist in the offline environment. The fear of consequences when offline (from police or other people in power like teachers or parents) are not as present online, so some hostile, cruel, or aggressive behaviors feel safer. Rewards and Modeling An unusual but important dynamic that occurs on social media is the way people are rewarded and encouraged for hostility. As evidenced by the Fan et al. study described earlier, anger spreads more quickly online than other emotions (so, for instance, angry tweets are more likely to be liked and retweeted than non-angry tweets). What this means to the person posting, then, is that their posts are most likely to be rewarded with likes and shares if they are angry or if they cause anger. It goes back to that basic behaviorism that we discussed in chapter 3 . People emote in the ways they are rewarded for, so when they are rewarded for anger, hostility, and aggression, they keep doing it. Of course, as was discussed in chapter 3 , emotional expressions aren’t completely informed by rewards and punishments. Modeling also plays a role. People do what they see others do, especially others of similar or higher status. So the already angry nature of social media tends to bring on more anger. The existence, too, of celebrities and politicians* using social media as a tool for anger, hostility, and cruelty models for people that this is an acceptable way to emote. Again, the hostility and anger that already exist online tends to drive even more hostility. ANGER FACT Survey respondents report being aggressive online approximately once per month on average.68 Strategies for Dealing with Anger Online Much of what we’ve already discussed in this book remains relevant here. You should of course, for example, make sure you keep your goals in mind, stay calm, and ask if the anger is justified. In some ways these things are actually a little easier in the online environment because you usually have time to calm down and give some thought to your response. Whether you are dealing with a stranger or someone you know, there are, however, some specific things to consider when dealing with anger online. At the core of each of these, though, is the need to avoid adding additional fuel to the fire by bringing in your own anger. Wait I had a professor in college who never let students ask about a grade within 24 hours of getting the grade. She said she wanted the emotional response to the grade to dissipate before they had a conversation about it.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  When kids are angry, they often lash out physically or verbally in ways that might be dangerous or that caregivers don’t want to encourage. Those lashing- out behaviors are usually dealt with quickly, so children are often immediately scolded for particular expressions. For instance: Getting punished for yelling at a sibling. Being made to go to their room until they cool off. Being reprimanded for swearing out of frustration. Being praised for taking deep breaths. Being taught and then praised for going and punching a pillow or a stuffed animal.* But these are just examples of the overt and intentional rewards and punishments that come with anger (these are the ones that parents and teachers dole out on purpose). Because anger is a social emotion (we most frequently feel it in the context of social situations), there are all sorts of natural rewards and punishments that emerge. A parent might be so scared of a child’s tantrums, for example, that they repeatedly give into the child’s anger, rewarding and encouraging it for next time. The child then learns that their anger can be a tool for getting what they want. Alternatively, a child’s angry outburst may alienate a friend or otherwise damage the relationship. They may learn from this that anger is scary and potentially harmful. Other examples include: Being praised by peers for standing up for yourself. Punching something and hurting your hand. Bullying a classmate and getting what you want from them. In the 1950s, this perspective on learning, referred to as behaviorism, was the dominant view in psychology. Most behaviorists at the time, in fact, were not concerned about emotion at all. Since feelings like anger weren’t observable behaviors, they focused on the actions and expressions associated with them. Instead of studying and talking about anger, they studied and talked about aggression. Instead of studying fear, they studied avoidance (the behavior most

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  Things reached their low point when I had to undergo a week of basic training at a site a few hours from San Antonio. There I learned such invaluable things as how to handle weapons (I won a sharpshooter medal for rifle accuracy) and how to crawl low under barbed wire while live machine-gun bullets zoomed overhead (at least we were told they were live bullets—no one ever tested it). In those pre-iPhone days, Marilyn and I had no contact whatsoever during this time. When I returned, I learned that she had developed acute appendicitis the day after I left. She had been taken to the military hospital for an emergency appendectomy, while military personnel took care of our children. Four days after her surgery, the chief surgical resident paid a home visit in the evening to tell Marilyn that the pathology report indicated she had an intestinal cancer that would require major resection of the large bowel; he even drew sketches for her to show me indicating the parts of the bowel to be removed. When I returned home the following day, I was shocked by the news and the surgeon’s sketches. I rushed to the army hospital and obtained the pathology slides, which I sent by special delivery to physician friends back east. They all agreed that Marilyn had a benign carcinoid tumor that required no further treatment whatsoever. Even now, fifty years later, as I write about it, I feel great anger toward the army for not notifying me, and for suggesting major and irreversible surgery for a completely benign condition. All that was behind us now as we looked out over the mountains and the light blue water in this new setting, and I was thrilled and relieved to see the lively, vivacious Marilyn back with me again. I looked again toward Kailua and Lanikai. Living there would be entirely impractical: we had very little money and the army offered inexpensive military housing at the Schofield Barracks. But I was as enchanted as Marilyn and, within a few days, we had rented a small house in Lanikai one block away from one of the world’s most lovely beaches. The Lanikai beach has taken up permanent residence in both of our minds: it remains the most beautiful we have ever seen, and ever since, whenever we walk on a beach with powdery but firm sand, we look at each other and say, “Lanikai sand.” Long after we left Hawaii, we returned regularly to that beach, which now, alas, has been greatly eroded. We lived there for one year, until we learned that an admiral had unexpectedly been reassigned to the South Pacific, and his house on the neighboring Kailua beach was for rent. We immediately rented it and were so close to the water that I could be surfing or snorkeling while I was on call: Marilyn would signal that I had a phone call by waving a large white towel from the veranda.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Though Murray first named Jane Crow at Howard, her experience of sexism in legal circles radiated outward. In 1944, she applied to do graduate work at Harvard Law, a tradition for the top student in the Howard graduating class. This time, she was rejected not because of race, but because Harvard Law did not admit women. Yet again undaunted, Murray wrote to the Dean of Harvard Law School, outlining the reasons that she should be granted admission. Among her laundry list of appeals, she noted that even though she was a woman, she typically took a male perspective on things and that this might account for her persistence in applying for admission to Harvard.40 Though it is unclear why Murray thought it a good idea to highlight her biological femaleness when her goal was to have Harvard overlook it, it is clear that by the end of her tenure at Howard Law, she had medically confirmed herself to be biologically female and had begun to assimilate some notion of gender identity as a woman. The specter of exclusion on the basis of her sex undoubtedly made the process of accepting herself as a woman all the more difficult and exasperating.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  The critical question remains, however, what contingent social relations does that presumption of being, authority, and universal subjecthood serve? Why value the usurpation of that authoritarian notion of the subject? Why not pursue the decentering of the subject and its universalizing epistemic strategies? Although Wittig criticizes “the straight mind” for universalizing its point of view, it appears that she not only universalizes “the” straight mind, but fails to consider the totalitarian consequences of such a theory of sovereign speech acts. Politically, the division of being—a violence against the field of ontological plenitude, in her view—into the distinction between the universal and the particular conditions a relation of subjection. Domination must be understood as the denial of a prior and primary unity of all persons in a prelinguistic being. Domination occurs through a language which, in its plastic social action, creates a second-order, artificial ontology, an illusion of difference, disparity, and, consequently, hierarchy that becomes social reality. Paradoxically, Wittig nowhere entertains an Aristophanic myth about the original unity of genders, for gender is a divisive principle, a tool of subjection, one that resists the very notion of unity. Significantly, her novels follow a narrative strategy of disintegration, suggesting that the binary formulation of sex needs to fragment and proliferate to the point where the binary itself is revealed as contingent. The free play of attributes or “physical features” is never an absolute destruction, for the ontological field distorted by gender is one of continuous plenitude. Wittig criticizes “the straight mind” for being unable to liberate itself from the thought of “difference.” In temporary alliance with Deleuze and Guattari, Wittig opposes psychoanalysis as a science predicated on an economy of “lack” and “negation.” In “Paradigm,” an early essay, Wittig considers that the overthrow of the system of binary sex might initiate a cultural field of many sexes. In that essay she refers to Anti-Oedipus: “For us there are, not one or two sexes, but many (cf. Guattari/Deleuze), as many sexes as there are individuals.” 39 The limitless proliferation of sexes, however, logically entails the negation of sex as such. If the number of sexes corresponds to the number of existing individuals, sex would no longer have any general application as a term: one’s sex would be a radically singular property and would no longer be able to operate as a useful or descriptive generalization. The metaphors of destruction, overthrow, and violence that work in Wittig’s theory and fiction have a difficult ontological status. Although linguistic categories shape reality in a “violent” way, creating social fictions in the name of the real, there appears to be a truer reality, an ontological field of unity against which these social fictions are measured. Wittig refuses the distinction between an “abstract” concept and a “material” reality, arguing that concepts are formed and circulated within the materiality of language and that that language works in a material way to construct the social world.