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.

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• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  developing the rebelliousness herself, she looks to externalize it in the form of the rebellious male. If she senses a man might be like this, based on his appearance, she will project fantasies that are charged and sexual. Oftentimes she chooses a man who is relatively young because this makes him less threatening, less of a patriarch. But his youth and immaturity make it almost impossible to form a stable relationship, and her angry side will come out as she grows disenchanted. Once a woman recognizes she is prone to this projection, she must come to terms with a simple fact: what she really wants is to develop the independence, assertiveness, and power to disobey in herself. It is never too late to do so, but these qualities must be built up and developed in small steps, everyday challenges in which she practices saying no, breaking some rules, et cetera. Becoming more assertive, she can begin to have relationships that are more equal and satisfying. The Fallen Woman: To the man in question, the woman who fascinates him seems so different from those he has known. Perhaps she comes from a different culture or social class. Perhaps she is not as educated as he is. There might be something dubious about her character and her past; she is certainly less physically restrained than most women. He thinks she’s earthy. She seems to be in need of protection, education, and money. He will be the one to rescue and elevate her. But somehow the closer he gets to her, the less it turns out as he had expected. In Swann’s Way , volume 1 of the novel In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, the protagonist, Charles Swann—based on a real person—is an aesthete, a connoisseur of art. He is also a Don Juan who is deathly afraid of any relationship or form of commitment. He has seduced many women of his class. But then he meets a woman named Odette, who is from a decidedly different social circle. She is uneducated, a bit vulgar, and some would say she is a courtesan. She intrigues him. Then one day, while staring at a reproduction of a biblical scene from a Botticelli fresco, he decides she resembles a woman in the painting. Now he is fascinated and begins to idealize her. Odette must have had a hard life, and she deserves better. Despite his fear of commitment, he will marry her and educate her in the finer things of life. What he doesn’t realize is that she does not at all resemble the woman he fantasizes about. She is extremely clever and strong willed, much stronger than he is. She will end up making him her passive slave, as she continues to have affairs with other men and women. Men of this type often had strong mother figures in their childhood. They became good, obedient boys, excellent students at school. Consciously they are attracted to well-educated women, to

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  195Lecture 20—Christian Missions and Moral Reform CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY õKing Afonso had seen the moral perils of European greed early on, even though he was caught up in the slave trade himself. Capturing members of rival tribes and selling them to European slavers was a key means by which he held onto power and kept his rivals in check. õTherefore, it’s all the more remarkable that he pleaded with the authorities in Rome to see how slavery undermined the moral authority of Christianity in Africa. This is what he said: “Merchants are taking every day our natives, sons of the land and sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives ... and so great is the corruption and licentiousness that our country is being completely depopulated.” õBut the slave trade only continued to grow. For most average people in West Africa during the 17 th and 18 th centuries, Christianity was seeming less and less like the faith of righteous Africans and more like the evil ideology of white men who shackled them and shipped them thousands of miles to a life of hard labor and violent death. õAn anti-slavery activist named Lourenco da Silva de Mendouca was disturbed by this brutality. He was born in Brazil to an African family, and went to Rome in person in 1684 to beg the pope to intercede. His report on the suffering and death that slavers inf licted on Africans made a big impression on the pope and his advisors. But Rome was no match for the powerful mix of greed and racism that drove the expansion of the slave trade into a thriving global industry. õIn many cases, ministers and missionaries gave a message that told enslaved people to accept their lot in life and serve their masters in good faith, while the masters received praise for rescuing supposed barbarians and saving their souls.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid. BORN A CRIME I grew up in South Africa during apartheid, which was awkward because I was raised in a mixed family, with me being the mixed one in the family. My mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is black. My father, Robert, is white. Swiss/German, to be precise, which Swiss/Germans invariably are. During apartheid, one of the worst crimes you could commit was having sexual relations with a person of another race. Needless to say, my parents committed that crime. In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Race-mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason. Humans being humans and sex being sex, that prohibition never stopped anyone. There were mixed kids in South Africa nine months after the first Dutch boats hit the beach in Table Bay. Just like in America, the colonists here had their way with the native women, as colonists so often do. Unlike in America, where anyone with one drop of black blood automatically became black, in South Africa mixed people came to be classified as their own separate group, neither black nor white but what we call “colored.” Colored people, black people, white people, and Indian people were forced to register their race with the government. Based on those classifications, millions of people were uprooted and relocated. Indian areas were segregated from colored areas, which were segregated from black areas—all of them segregated from white areas and separated from one another by buffer zones of empty land. Laws were passed prohibiting sex between Europeans and natives, laws that were later amended to prohibit sex between whites and all nonwhites. The government went to insane lengths to try to enforce these new laws. The penalty for breaking them was five years in prison. There were whole police squads whose only job was to go around peeking through windows—clearly an assignment for only the finest law enforcement officers. And if an interracial couple got caught, God help them. The police would kick down the door, drag the people out, beat them, arrest them. At least that’s what they did to the black person. With the white person it was more like, “Look, I’ll just say you were drunk, but don’t do it again, eh? Cheers.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 3: Further, fervor added to fervor produces greater fervor. But “the addition of a greater anger banishes already existing anger,” as the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 3). Therefore anger does not cause fervor. On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 16) that “anger is fervor of the blood around the heart, resulting from an exhalation of the bile.” I answer that, As stated above ([1435]Q[44], A[1]), the bodily transmutation that occurs in the passions of the soul is proportionate to the movement of the appetite. Now it is evident that every appetite, even the natural appetite, tends with greater force to repel that which is contrary to it, if it be present: hence we see that hot water freezes harder, as though the cold acted with greater force on the hot object. Since then the appetitive movement of anger is caused by some injury inflicted, as by a contrary that is present; it follows that the appetite tends with great force to repel the injury by the desire of vengeance; and hence ensues great vehemence and impetuosity in the movement of anger. And because the movement of anger is not one of recoil, which corresponds to the action of cold, but one of prosecution, which corresponds to the action of heat, the result is that the movement of anger produces fervor of the blood and vital spirits around the heart, which is the instrument of the soul’s passions. And hence it is that, on account of the heart being so disturbed by anger, those chiefly who are angry betray signs thereof in their outer members. For, as Gregory says (Moral. v, 30) “the heart that is inflamed with the stings of its own anger beats quick, the body trembles, the tongue stammers, the countenance takes fire, the eyes grow fierce, they that are well known are not recognized. With the mouth indeed he shapes a sound, but the understanding knows not what it says.” Reply to Objection 1: “Love itself is not felt so keenly as in the absence of the beloved,” as Augustine observes (De Trin. x, 12). Consequently when a man suffers from a hurt done to the excellence that he loves, he feels his love thereof the more: the result being that his heart is moved with greater heat to remove the hindrance to the object of his love; so that anger increases the fervor of love and makes it to be felt more.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Everyone at the table stiffened, but no one answeted her. I bent the straw into a circle. “Be careful, Grant,” I warned her. “You're looking at your own reflection.” Grant laughed. “T ain’t like you. I didn’t do the change.” My anger was greater than the situation called for. I could taste it, bitter on my tongue. I leaned forward. Everyone held their breath. My voice was low and menacing. “How far are you willing to go, Grant? How much of yourself are you willing to give up in order to distance yourself from me?” Grant’s face betrayed her. She had felt my power for a moment and it aroused her. I knew it had, I could see it in her eyes. I knew a secret about Grant’s desire and I wanted to wield it like a weapon. I wanted butchness to be quantity, not a quality, so I could out- butch her. Grant stirred her drink with her finger. Her face flushed. Edna and Jan stared at their laps. I could feel Frankie silently pleading with me to let Grant off the hook. I refocused on Grant and saw a beaten butch, preserved in alcohol. I could smell her humiliation. I remembered how she forced the men in the factories to show her some respect. Slowly her belief that she deserved it had eroded. And suddenly my own words echoed in my ears: How much of myself was I willing to give up to distance myself from her? “You know what I remember, Grant?” Everyone looked up at me. “I remember when we unloaded frozen food on the docks near the lake.” I glanced at Edna. The faint smile on her lips was a gift for me. Grant nodded. “Yeah, those were the good old days, weren't they?” I shook my head. “Some of it was a nightmare. I sure wouldn’t want to go back to the bar raids and the drunken fights. They’re only good old days ’cause I don’t have to live them anymore.” Grant leaned forward. “You wouldn’t want to go back to those days?” Stone Butch Blues 309 I laughed. “Not even at gunpoint. The only things I miss are the ways we stood up for each other, how we tried to make a home for each other. And we could do that right here.” It was time to change the subject. I glanced over at Edna. “Did Jan tell you ’m trying to find out what happened to Al?” Edna looked up at Jan, not at me. Jan dropped her eyes. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, kid.” Edna watched the anger flare in my eyes.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ Yet the tsar and the church hierarchy were not too interested in religious reform or experimentation. For Tsar Nicholas, despite his nod to toleration, religious orthodoxy was inseparable from political loyalty. The Orthodox Church used the tsar’s view of religion to beat down any rival church that got too powerful. õ The Russian Orthodox Church’s relationship with the government meant that when people got fed up with the tsar, they were likely to feel fed up with the church too. The church had a long history of maneuvering for more wealth and political power, which could leave it open to the Marxist argument that religion was just a tool that the ruling class used to exploit average people. That was just what happened. õ In the early years of the 20th century, a new degree of public anger began to build against Nicholas II and his family. Russia was wracked by financial troubles, growing labor unrest, and the international embarrassment of losing a war against the Japanese in 1905. 246 The History of Christianity II õ When the tsar decided to bring Russia into World War I—partly in an attempt to win back some military prestige—things did not go as he planned. By 1915, the Russians had lost hundreds of thousands of men; parts of the Russian army were near mutiny. Two years later, when Nicholas asked his troops to step in and quell political protests against his rule, they refused. He was forced to abdicate the throne in March of 1917. THE BOLSHEVIK COUP õ At first, members of the Duma, the Russian parliament, established a provisional government to run the show while they figured out what to do next. But this government was too weak to control the factions vying for power, particularly the Bolsheviks, the most radical of the various left-wing activists who wanted true revolution. õ The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took power in October. The next summer, Lenin ordered the execution of the royal family, even the children. It took four years of civil war before Lenin and the Bolsheviks managed to destroy their opposition and consolidate power. õ Lenin was a disciple of Marxism, although he put his own twist on Karl Marx’s ideas. Marx was a materialist who dismissed religion as just a fiction used by the powerful to justify their own continuing rule, “an opiate of the people” that makes the miserable lives of the masses easier to bear. But Marx believed in freedom of conscience and didn’t call for forcing religious believers to abandon their faith. Lecture 25—The Church and the Russian Revolution 247

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  316 The History of Christianity II widespread literacy, and healthcare. This would ideally be an infrastructure that didn’t require too much government investment and was free from Catholic control. õ Therefore, it was convenient that these early missionaries from the brand-new Bible Societies of Britain and the United States were keen to go around founding schools and hospitals. If they wanted to use their Protestant Bibles as teaching aids, the liberals thought that was a reasonable price to pay. õ The Protestant missionaries became dependent on liberals in government, and all the while conservative Catholics were fuming, labeling these foreign Protestants as agents of godlessness and political pawns. For example, when an American missionary founded the first Protestant church in Chile, in the 1850s, the local Catholic authorities insisted that the church be surrounded by a high wall. TWENTIETH-CENTURY REVIVAL õ At the end of the late 19 th century, Latin American Protestantism was a fairly small, urban movement. This began to change in the 20th century. On the eve of the new year in 1909, a revival began in a Methodist church in Valparaíso, Chile. õ An American missionary named Willis Hoover was pastor there, and he’d heard stories about some of the international revivals inspired by the big one on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. A friend had given his wife a booklet about a big revival in India in 1906 that probably introduced him to the idea of “baptism in the Holy Spirit” and speaking in tongues.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I sucked in a deep breath of air. “Grant, don’t. I love Theresa. ’m real upset and sore right now. Be very careful where you push.” Grant shrugged. “Well, it’s time to get over her and move on.” The whistle blasted. Grant and I headed for the lunchroom through skids stacked so high with boxes they reminded me of desert buttes. I was glad to have a job. The recession was deepening, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors had just announced massive layoffs. Grant tipped me off about this steady temp work at the box factory. We punch-cut corrugated catdboard, pizza boxes—all kinds of boxes. My head hurt from the endless staccato of the jackhammers used to chisel away the trim. “So did you get your own place yet?” Grant asked. I nodded. “Yeah. I ended up at Gloria’s for a month before I saved up enough money.” Grant smiled. “She let you stay that long? Maybe she likes you.” I shook my head. “Naw, it just worked out for 170 = Leslie Feinberg her, too. She works nights. I drove the kids to school in her car and picked them up so she could sleep when she got home. Then I worked second shift. It was perfect. I like her kids. I still take the kids out on the weekend sometimes.” Grant grinned. “Sounds real homey.” “Aw, Grant. Change the subject. Hey, have you heard from Ed?” We both looked up at each other, startled. I had forgotten for a moment about the bar fight, when Grant had lashed out at Ed in misdirected rage. I loathed the part of Grant that was so mean- spirited and hateful. Grant watched me remember. “Ed never liked me,” she said. “She doesn’t like me ’cause ’m white.” I shook my head. “Oh, that’s not true, Grant. She’s mad at you for the things you said to her the night you fought her in the bar.” Grant dropped her eyes. “Jesus, I said I was sorry.” “C’mon, Grant!” I slapped the tabletop. “What if some guy called you a pervert or a freak and then later he told you he was sorry he raised his voice? I don’t get it, Grant. ’ve watched you at work; you’re friendly with everybody.” Grant rubbed her eyes. “Well, sometimes my mouth just doesn’t know as much as the rest of me, especially when I’ve had a few too many.” She shrugged. “Tm a real fuck-up sometimes.” I wondered who Grant was under all those layers of hurt and anger. Grant leaned back in her chair. “Are you going through with it?” I knew what she meant—hormones. “Yeah. I don’t know what else to do.” Grant poured me coffee from her thermos. “It would be a lot easier if we went to the sex-change clinic. They give you hormones for free. The only thing is you have to take all these tests and they interview your family and everything,”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  great generals and the best artists, inventors, and tradesmen. Under her influence, a man or woman could see the world with perfect clarity and hit upon the action that was just right for the moment. For Athens, her spirit was invoked to unify the city, make it prosperous and productive. In essence, Athena stood for rationality, the greatest gift of the gods to mortals, for it alone could make a human act with divine wisdom. To cultivate his inner Athena, Pericles first had to find a way to master his emotions. Emotions turn us inward, away from nous , away from reality. We dwell on our anger or our insecurities. If we look out at the world and try to solve problems, we see things through the lens of these emotions; they cloud our vision. Pericles trained himself to never react in the moment, to never make a decision while under the influence of a strong emotion. Instead, he analyzed his feelings. Usually when he looked closely at his insecurities or his anger, he saw that they were not really justified, and they lost their significance under scrutiny. Sometimes he had to physically get away from the heated Assembly and retire to his house, where he remained alone for days on end, calming himself down. Slowly, the voice of Athena would come to him. He decided to base all of his political decisions on one thing— what actually served the greater good of Athens. His goal was to unify the citizenry through genuine love of democracy and belief in the superiority of the Athenian way. Having such a standard helped him avoid the ego trap. It impelled him to work to increase the participation and power of the lower and middle classes, even though such a strategy could easily turn against him. It inspired him to limit wars, even though this meant less personal glory for him. And finally it led to his greatest decision of all—the public works project that transformed Athens. To help himself in this deliberative process, he opened his mind to as many ideas and options as possible, even to those of his opponents. He imagined all of the possible consequences of a strategy before committing to it. With a calm spirit and an open mind, he hit upon policies that sparked one of the true golden ages in history. One man was able to infect an entire city with his rational spirit. What happened to Athens after he departed from the scene speaks for itself. The Sicilian expedition represented everything he had always opposed—a decision secretly motivated by the desire to grab more land, blinded to its potential consequences. Understand: Like everyone, you think you are rational, but you are not. Rationality is not a power you are born with but one you acquire through training and practice. The voice of Athena simply stands for a higher power that exists within you right now, a potential

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  including Jeffrey Katzenberg (see chapter 11 for more on this). If people quit on these tyrants, they are fine with that. This demonstrates that the individual retains some independence, and they will find a replacement who will be more submissive, at least for the time being. They may also increase their difficult behavior to test certain individuals and get them to quit or submit. Such tyrants may try to act like helpless children. They are the temperamental artist or genius type, so naturally brilliant and absentminded. Their pleas for assistance from you and their urgent need for you to do more seem to express their vulnerability. They use such feigned weakness to justify the ugly nature of their tyranny. It is very hard to strategize against such types, because most often they are your superiors and have real power over you. They tend to be hypersensitive and prone to anger, which makes any form of resistance or inner detachment hard to maintain. Overt rebellion will only make the situation worse. You must first realize that this strategy of theirs is more conscious than it appears. They are not weak and helpless but cunning tyrants. Instead of lingering on anything positive they’ve said or done, think only of their manipulations and harshness. Your ability to detach from them emotionally will neutralize the obsessive presence they try to instill. But in the end nothing really will work, because if, in their hypersensitivity, they detect your distance, their behavior will only get worse. The only real counter is to quit and recuperate. No position is worth such abuse, for the damage to your self-esteem could take years to recover from. Controlled Aggression We are born with a powerful energy that is distinctly human. We can call it willpower, assertiveness, or even aggression, but it is mixed with our intelligence and cleverness. It was revealed to us in its purest state in childhood. This energy made us bold and adventurous, not only physically but mentally, wanting to explore ideas and soak up knowledge. It made us actively search for friends with whom we could explore together. It also made us rather relentless when it came to solving problems or getting what we wanted. (Children can often be bold in what they ask for.) It made us open to the world and to new experiences. And if we felt frustrated and helpless for long enough periods of time, this same energy could make us unusually combative. As we get older and we encounter mounting frustrations, resistance from others, and feelings of impatience for power, some among us may become chronically aggressive. But another phenomenon is even more common: we become uncomfortable with and even frightened of that assertive energy within, and our own potential for aggressive behavior. Being assertive and adventurous could lead to some failed action, making us feel exposed and vulnerable. If we express this energy too much, people may not like

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Anger: It is natural and healthy for you to feel anger at certain types of people—those who unfairly block your advancement, the many fools who have power but are lazy and incompetent, the sanctimonious critics who espouse their clichés with so much conviction and attack you without understanding your views. The list could go on forever. Feeling such anger can be a powerful motivating device to take some kind of action. It can fill you with valuable energy. You should embrace it and use it throughout your life for such a purpose. What might make you hold back or tamp down your anger is that it can seem to be such a toxic and ugly emotion, as it often is in our culture. What makes anger toxic is the degree to which it is disconnected from reality. People channel their natural frustrations into anger at some vague enemy or scapegoat, conjured up and spread by demagogues. They imagine grand conspiracies behind simple inescapable realities, such as taxes or globalism or the changes that are part of all historical periods. They believe that certain forces in the world are to blame for their lack of success or power, instead of their own impatience and lack of effort. There is no thought behind their anger, and so it leads nowhere or it becomes destructive. You must do the opposite. Your anger is directed at very specific individuals and forces. You analyze the emotion—are you certain that your frustration does not stem from your own inadequacies? Do you really understand the cause of the anger and what it should be directed at? In addition to determining if it is justified and where the anger should be directed, you also analyze the best way to channel this emotion, the best strategy for defeating your opponents. Your anger is controlled, realistic, and targeted at the actual source of the problem, never losing sight of what initially inspired the emotion. Most people engage in some cathartic release of their anger, some giant protest, and then it goes away and they slip back into complacency or become bitter. You want to cool your anger, bring it more to a simmer than a boil. Your controlled anger will help give you the resolve and patience you will need for what might be a longer struggle than you had imagined. Let the unfairness or injustice lie in the back of your mind and keep you energized. The real satisfaction comes not in one spasm of emotion but in actually defeating the bully and exposing the narrow-minded for who they are. Do not be afraid to use your anger in your work, particularly if it is allied to some cause or if you are expressing yourself through something creative. It is often the sense of contained rage that makes an orator so effective; it was the source of much of the charisma of Malcolm X. Look at the most lasting and compelling

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  more prone than others to go into that deep narcissistic rage. They are hypersensitive. They also like to stir up constant drama as a means to justify their power—they are the only ones who can solve the problems they create. This also gives them more opportunities to be the center of attention. The workplace is never stable under their direction. Sometimes they can become entrepreneurs, people who found a company because of their charisma and ability to attract followers. They can have creative flair as well. But for many of these leader types, eventually their own inner instability and chaos will come to be mirrored in the company or group they lead. They cannot forge a coherent structure or organization. Everything must flow through them. They have to control everything and everyone, their self- objects. They will proclaim this as a virtue—as being authentic and spontaneous—when really they lack the ability to focus and create something solid. They tend to burn and destroy whatever they create. Let us imagine narcissism as a way of gauging the level of our self-absorption, as if it existed on a measurable scale from high to low. At a certain depth, let us say below the halfway mark on the scale, people enter the realm of deep narcissism. Once they reach this depth, it is very difficult for them to raise themselves back up, because they lack the self-esteem device. The deep narcissist becomes completely self-absorbed, almost always below the mark. If for a moment they manage to engage with others, some comment or action will trigger their insecurities and they will go plummeting down. But mostly they tend to sink deeper into themselves over time. Other people are instruments. Reality is just a reflection of their needs. Constant attention is their only way of survival. Above that halfway mark is what we shall call the functional narcissist , where most of us reside. We also are self-absorbed, but what prevents us from falling deep into ourselves is a coherent sense of self that we can rely upon and love. (It is ironic that the word narcissism has come to mean self-love, when it is in fact the case that the worst narcissists have no cohesive self to love, which is the source of their problem.) This creates some inner resiliency. We may have deeper narcissistic moments, fluctuating below the mark, particularly when depressed or challenged in life, but inevitably we elevate ourselves. Not feeling continually insecure or wounded, not always needing to fish for attention, functional narcissists can turn their attention outward, into their work and into building relationships with people. Our task, as students of human nature, is threefold. First, we must fully understand the phenomenon of the deep narcissist. Although they are in the minority, some of them can inflict an unusual amount of harm in the world. We must be able to distinguish the toxic types that stir up drama and try to turn us into objects they can

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  And they were largely invisible. America had a cancer in its system—extreme inequalities in wealth, and the willingness to spend vast sums of money on an absurd war, while blacks in inner cities were left to rot and riot. His depression now mixed with growing anger. In his conversations with friends, people noticed a new edge to him. In one retreat with his staff, he said, “All too many people have seen power and love as polar opposites. . . . [But] the two fulfill each other. Power without love is reckless, and love without power is sentimental.” At another retreat, he talked of new tactics. He would never abandon nonviolence as the means, but the civil disobedience campaign would have to be altered and intensified. “Nonviolence must mature to a new level . . . mass civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to the larger society, there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point.” The movement was not about integrating blacks into the values of American society but about actively altering those values at their root. He would add to the civil rights movement the need to address poverty in inner cities and to protest the Vietnam War. On April 4, 1967, he expressed this widening of the struggle in a speech that got lots of attention, almost all negative. Even his most ardent supporters criticized it. Including the Vietnam War would only alienate the public from the cause of civil rights, they said. It would anger the Johnson administration, whose support they depended upon. It was not part of his mandate to speak so broadly. He had never felt so alone, so attacked by his many critics. By early 1968 his depression had become deeper than ever. He felt the end was near—some among his many enemies were going to kill him for all that he had said and done. He was exhausted by the tension and felt spiritually at a loss. In March of that year, a pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, invited King to his city, hoping he could help support a strike by black sanitation workers, who had been treated horribly. There had been marches, boycotts, and protests, and the police had responded brutally. The situation was explosive. King put them off—he felt depleted. But as so often happened in these circumstances, he realized it was his duty to do what he could, and so he agreed. On March 18 he addressed an enormous crowd in Memphis, and their enthusiastic response cheered him up. He heard that voice once again supporting and urging him forward. Memphis would have to be a key part of his mission.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  One day I came home from work and found Theresa stewing in anger at the kitchen table. Some of the lesbians from a newly formed group on campus had mocked her for being a femme. They told her she was brainwashed. “I’m so bad,” Theresa thumped the table. “They told me that butches were male chauvinist pigs!” I knew what male chauvinist meant, but I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with us. “Don’t they know we don’t deal the shit, we get shit on?” “They don’t care, honey. They’te not going to let us in.” “Should Jan and Grant and Edwin and I go to one of these meetings and try to explain?” Theresa put her hand on my arm. “It won't help, honey. They’re very angry at butches.” “Why?” She thought about the question. “TI think it’s because they draw a line—women on one side and men on the other. So women they think look like men ate the enemy. And women who look like me are sleeping with the enemy. We’re too feminine for their taste.” “Wait a minute,” I stopped her. “We’re too masculine and you’re too feminine? Whatdya have to do, put your index fingers in a meter and test in the middle?” Theresa patted my arm. “Things are changing,” she said. “Yeah,” I told her, “but sooner or later they'll change back.” “Things don’t change back,” she sighed, “they just keep changing.” I slapped the table. “Then fuck those people. Who needs them, anyway?” Theresa frowned and played with my hait. “T need the movement, Jess. And so do you. Remember you once told me about a factory you worked where the guys didn’t want the butches to come to the union meetings?” I nodded. “Yeah, so?” She smiled. “You told me Grant said to hell with the union. But you knew the union was a good thing. You said what was wrong was keeping out the butches. You tried to organize to get the butches into the union, remember?” Theresa held me tight against the warmth of her body and kissed my hair. She gave me time to think about what she’d said, instead of shooting off my mouth. I felt scared, so I got up and started making dinner. Theresa just sat at the kitchen table looking out over out backyard. I wished we hadn’t traveled to meet friends at the bar in Rochester that weekend. If we’d just stayed home, I wouldn’t have gotten busted. But that was wishful thinking. I lay on a precinct cell floor, alone in a strange city, my mouth pressed against the cold concrete. I wondered if I was close to death because I seemed to be drifting away from the world. Only two things tethered me to life—one was the feel of the cold stone against my lips, the other was the faint strains of a Beatles tune coming from a radio somewhere in the jail. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I worked briefly on a movie version of Stone Butch Blues until I discovered that the producer’s prospectus was trying to raise capital from investors by offering a sexual fantasy: an invitation to watch butches being raped by police. I requested that no movie be made; I don’t believe any movie can be made true to the intention of the book. 354 = Leslie Feinberg No permission for derivative use: A cartoonist was trying to parlay her comic book drafts of Stone Butch Blues into a book deal. She contacted me about this and I denied permission. She then put her version of Stone Butch Blues up on the web. Her cover was an interracial butch/femme couple slow-dancing, a white butch and an African- American femme with a gardenia in her hair. This was the artist’s fantasy. This couple and this scene is nowhere to be found in Szone Butch Blues. I repeatedly asked the artist to take her comic book version off the web, but was only able to get her to take down this derivative work after repeated efforts and great exertion on my part. I had never given permission for her detivative/ digital use of Stone Butch Blues. Respect begins with asking and receiving permission. I do not give permission for any derivative use of Stone Butch Blues, and not just because of illness. When I was a child, I made my own crystal radio set from a block of wood, orange juice cans, some wites and transistors, and I discovered the world of narrative dramas I couldn’t see—not like the movies and 'T'V. These were stories I could only hear, and imagine in my mind what the characters looked like. That’s how I wrote Stone Butch Blues. A lot of people say it’s cinematic, but they are seeing it projected on the screen of their own imagination. I made a decision in writing Stone Butch Blues based on my anger at seeing how many white writers used whiteness as a default and only described a character if they were of color. Based on my anger at writers who only used thinness as the default and only identified characters as being fat, at writers who didn’t name a character if they were able-bodied or didn’t have a disability, but did label them if they did. I decided I wasn’t going to do that. In Szone Butch Blues we discover the characters through their reactions to racism and other bigotries. I don’t name who the characters ate. I don’t tell, I show. That means that different people who read this book may have different views about the sizes, and shapes, and abilities, and so forth of these characters. And as readers those are all valid experiences.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  unconsciously. According to Jung, this Shadow has a thickness to it, depending on how deep the level of repression and the number of traits that are being concealed. Nixon would be said to have a particularly thick Shadow. When we experience those moments when people reveal the dark side, we can see something come over their face; their voice and body language is altered—almost as if another person is confronting us, the features of the upset child suddenly becoming visible. We feel their shadow as it stirs and emerges. The Shadow lies buried deep within, but it becomes disturbed and active in moments of stress, or when deep wounds and insecurities are triggered. It also tends to emerge more as people get older. When we are young, everything seems exciting to us, including the various social roles we must play. But later in life we tire of the masks we have been wearing, and the leakage is greater. Because we rarely see the Shadow, the people we deal with are somewhat strangers to us. It is as if we only see a two-dimensional, flattened image of people—their pleasant social side. Knowing the contours of their Shadow makes them come to life in three dimensions. This ability to see the rounded person is a critical step in our knowledge of human nature. Armed with this knowledge, we can anticipate people’s behavior in moments of stress, understand their hidden motives, and not get dragged under by any self-destructive tendencies. The Shadow is created in our earliest years and stems from two conflicting forces that we felt. First, we came into this world bursting with energy and intensity. We did not understand the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior; we only experienced natural impulses. Some of these impulses were aggressive. We wanted to monopolize our parents’ attention and receive much more of it than our siblings. We experienced moments of great affection but also powerful dislikes and hatreds, even of our parents for not meeting our needs. We wanted to feel superior in some way and appreciated for it—in appearance, strength, or smartness. We could be remarkably selfish if we were denied what we wanted, and turn devious and manipulative to get it. We could even find some pleasure in hurting people, or fantasize about getting revenge. We experienced and expressed the full gamut of emotions. We were not the innocent angels people imagine children to be. At the same time, we were completely vulnerable and dependent on our parents for survival. This dependence lasted for many years. We watched our parents with eagle eyes, noting every signal of approval and disapproval on their faces. They would chastise us for having too much energy and wish we could sit still. They sometimes found us too willful and selfish. They felt that other people were judging them by the behavior of their children, so they wanted us to be nice, to put on a show for others, to act like the sweet angel. They

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ Some background: Italy was not a unified country in the 1400s. Instead, it was a collection of independent city-states—among them Rome, Milan, Venice, and Florence. The Medici, a very rich banking family, had dominated Florentine politics for much of the 15th century. But in 1494, some wealthy citizens banded together and toppled them. They declared the city a truly free republic. õ Savonarola had come to the city several years earlier and had gained quite a reputation as a preacher, and now he seized the opportunity. He nominated himself the moral leader of republican Florence. His goal was to lead the city into its divine destiny as heaven on earth, a New Jerusalem. õ Savonarola believed that the Apocalypse was at hand and Christians had very little time to prove to a wrathful God that they worshipped God alone—not the luxuries of earthly life. Savonarola thought that some of the worst idolaters of all happened to live in the Vatican, where Pope Alexander VI was famous for his string of mistresses, illegitimate children, and debauched parties. õ When Savonarola preached, the air seemed to fizz with his rage and passion. He even persuaded his followers to renounce their furs, jewels, and other fancy items and toss them into a burning heap known as the “bonfire of the vanities.” THE RENAISSANCE AND CAPITALISM õ From the 14th century to the 16th century, Florence was essentially headquarters of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural movement marked by the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek philosophy, and the desire to find beauty and truth without necessarily relying on the church’s standards and dogmas. õ The leading thinkers of the Renaissance favored mastering ancient languages and reading texts carefully. That applied to the Bible too, meaning the closer you could get to the original text of scripture, the more accurate your understanding of Christ’s message would be. Some Lecture 1—Prophets of Reform before Protestantism 5

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  321Lecture 32—Liberation Theologies in Latin America LATIN AMERICA AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT õProtestant conservatives agreed with the future pope there. They saw liberation theology as dangerous too, for many of the same reasons. Moreover, many Latin American evangelicals had strong links to the American Christian right. Another way of putting it might be: The American Christian right liked to meddle in Latin American affairs almost as much as the U.S. government did. õAmerican televangelists and radio ministries have had a huge impact in Latin America. For example, Pat Robertson used his TV channel to promote the Contras, the CIA-backed force fighting the communist Sandinistas, who took power in Nicaragua in 1979. õLatin American Protestants didn’t just fall into line behind American busybodies. And the more Latin American evangelicals learned about their North American colleagues, the more many of them realized that there were real theological differences between them. õThey generally shared a traditional view of gender roles and a commitment to anti-communism. But like many Christians in the developing world, more progressive Latin American evangelicals did not share the attitude of many Northern evangelicals that a commitment to social justice, to reforming the structural sin in society and calling on the government to help do so, makes one uncommitted to preaching the gospel. õAt an international conference of evangelicals in 1974 at Lausanne, Switzerland, evangelical leaders René Padilla (from Ecuador) and Samuel Escobar (from Peru) insisted that the conference’s official statement had to stress the church’s social responsibility. õThe prominent Argentinian evangelist Luis Palau, for his part, criticized Lausanne for being too cooperative with liberals. He preached that real social change can only come with winning more hearts for Christ, not through large-scale social reform. 322The History of Christianity II SUGGESTED READING Gonzalez and Gonzales, Christianity in Latin America. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhy were Protestant immigrants both a boon and a threat to the Catholic regimes of Latin America? äHow did Protestant and Catholic missionaries and priests respond to the challenges of evangelization among rural communities and the poor? äWhy did conservative evangelicals in the United States spend so much time and money meddling in Latin American affairs? 323 LECTURE 33 PROPHETIC RELIGION IN MODERN AFRICA T he Nigerian minister Daniel Olukoya is the head of a religious empire called Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, which has its headquarters outside of the enormous city of Lagos. This ministry has other branches all over Nigeria and in the United States, Europe, and other African countries. Olukoya preaches a particularly potent version of the prosperity gospel. This is a form of Christianity that emphasizes an idea that appears throughout the Bible—the notion that God rewards true believers with worldly blessings and punishes those who don’t keep the faith.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  himself. He has more of an animus than an anima. The woman will be drawn to feminine men. There are many such contrasexual couples, some more overt than others, and they can be successful if both sides get what they want—a famous historical example would be the composer Frédéric Chopin and the writer George Sand, Sand being more like the husband and Chopin like the wife. If they are homosexual, the man or woman will still be in search of the contrasexual qualities undeveloped from within. In general, people are imbalanced, overidentifying with the masculine or feminine and drawn to the polar opposite. Your task as a student of human nature is threefold: First you must try to observe the anima and the animus as they manifest themselves in others, particularly in their intimate relationships. By paying attention to their behavior and patterns in these situations, you will have access to their unconscious that is normally denied to you. You will see the parts of themselves they have repressed, and you can use such knowledge to great effect. Pay special attention to those who are hypermasculine or hyperfeminine. You can be sure that below the surface lurks a very feminine anima for the man and a very masculine animus for the woman. When people go extra far in repressing their feminine or masculine qualities, these will tend to leak out in a caricatured form. The hypermasculine man, for instance, will be secretly obsessed with clothes and his looks. He will display an unusual interest in people’s appearances, including other men, and make rather snippy judgments about them. Richard Nixon desperately tried to project a macho image to those who worked for him as president, but he was constantly commenting on and fussing over the color of the suits they wore and the drapes in his office. The hypermasculine man will express strong opinions about cars, technology, or politics that are not based on real knowledge, and when called on this, he will become rather hysterical in his defense, throw a tantrum, or pout. He is always trying to contain his emotions, but they can often have a life of their own. For instance, without wanting to, he will suddenly become quite sentimental. The hyperfeminine woman will often be concealing a great deal of repressed anger and resentment at the role she has been forced to play. Her seductive, girlish behavior with men is actually a ploy for power, to tease, entrap, and hurt the target. Her masculine side will leak out in passive-aggressive behavior, attempts to dominate people in relationships in underhanded ways. Underneath the sweet, deferential façade, she can be quite willful and highly judgmental of others. Her willfulness, always under the surface, will come out in rather irrational stubbornness in petty matters. Your second task is to become aware of the projecting mechanism within yourself. (See the next section for common types of projections.) Projections have a positive role to play in your life,

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  As it turns out, any relationship with them will have to revolve around their needs; they have suffered too much in the past to attend to your needs. They are the center of the universe. Feeling and expressing their misfortune gives them their sense of importance, of being superior in suffering. You can measure the levels of grandiosity in people in several simple ways. For instance, notice how people respond to criticism of them or their work. It’s normal for any of us to feel defensive and a bit upset when criticized. But some people become enraged and hysterical, because we have called into doubt their sense of greatness. You can be sure that such a person has high levels of grandiosity. Similarly, such types might conceal their rage behind a martyred, pained expression meant to make you feel guilty. The emphasis is not on the criticism itself and what they need to learn but on their sense of grievance. If people are successful, notice how they act in more private moments. Are they able to relax and laugh at themselves, letting go of their public mask, or have they so overidentified with their powerful public image that it carries over into their private life? In the latter case, they have come to believe in their own myth and are in the grip of powerful grandiosity. Grandiose people are generally big talkers. They take credit for anything that is even tangential to their work; they invent past successes. They talk of their prescience, how they foresaw certain trends or predicted certain events, none of which can be verified. All such talk should make you doubly dubious. If people in the public eye suddenly say something that gets them into trouble for being insensitive, you can ascribe that to their potent grandiosity. They are so attuned to their own great opinions that they assume everyone else will interpret them in the right spirit and agree with them. Higher grandiose types generally display low levels of empathy. They are not good listeners. When the attention is not on them, they have a faraway look in their eyes and their fingers twitch with impatience. Only when the spotlight is on them do they become animated. They tend to see people as extensions of themselves— tools to be used in their schemes, sources of attention. Finally, they exhibit nonverbal behavior that can only be described as grandiose. Their gestures are big and dramatic. At a meeting, they take up a lot of personal space. Their voice tends to be louder than others, and they speak at a fast pace, giving no one else time to interrupt.