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 Between Us

  If my husband contests my anger by yelling back, and saying that he is the one to be angry, that this is no way to come home, that my whining drives him mad as well as making him angry, I may have to choose another stance: swallow my anger, apologize. Over time, my husband’s responses to my anger will also predict whether I become angry in similar situations in the future. In my cultural context, being angry is acceptable under these circumstances. Communicating to my husband that I am angry may not be pleasant in the moment, but it tells him to respect me, and ultimately may result in a more honest and satisfying relationship between us, one in which both of us get our needs met. The act of nonacceptance can be “right” when the relationship goal is that both partners express their own needs, and that each makes sure that their individual goals are met. Anger is considered a useful and normal, if not pleasant, emotion in many Western European and American contexts. In adolescence, anger and conflict are often accepted as necessary steps towards the important developmental goal of independence (see chapter 3 ). Even beyond adolescence, anger has a good role to play in a variety of relationships, private and public: it sets clear boundaries in both. It is the “normal” response to goal-blockage or frustration: a representative study of middle-aged U.S. Americans reportedly acted angry more often, the more frustration they met. Anger has not always been an acceptable emotion, not even in the United States. In the nineteenth-century Victorian era, women’s selfless love was the cornerstone of marriage. Had I been a Victorian woman, I would have shouldered the inconvenience of my husband being late without ever becoming angry. My dignity would have consisted of meeting my role obligations and serving my husband selflessly. I would have had no reason, but also no justification, for being angry. And the slightest reference to anger might have prompted condemnation. Before the end of the seventeenth century, Western diarists had difficulty describing themselves as angry; they lacked the entitlement that is foundational to anger. Roger Lowe, a seventeenth-century shopkeeping apprentice who kept a diary, described many situations that were noxious and arousing, but he never described himself as angry. Some of his most difficult interactions were with his master, who did not do much to teach him the art of shopkeeping: “I thought it sad for me to be ingaged 9 yeares . . . to sell my Master’s ware . . . and get no knowledge.” When his master promises and then refuses to give him a new set of clothes, he also describes his feelings as grief: “soe I would have none and parted with grieve.”

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Miscavige pulled Rinder out of the Hole and ordered him to help Davis deal with the BBC, although he added, “ You’re Tommy Davis’s servant.” Sweeney immediately sensed that Rinder had been demoted. Rinder was “ gaunt, hollow-eyed, strange with a hint of niceness.” Tommy was now “the top dog, gleaming teeth, snappily suited, charming but creepily so.” When Sweeney refused to accede to the church’s restrictions (mainly that he agree not to use the word “cult” in his report) and began independently reporting on the accusations of defectors, he was shadowed by private investigators. A Scientology film crew showed up to document the making of the BBC documentary. Cameras were pointed at cameras. Davis appeared unannounced at Sweeney’s hotel and even traveled across the country to disrupt his interviews with Scientology dissidents. Sweeney had covered wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya, but he had never had such emotional and psychological pressure placed upon him. During these confrontations, Rinder trailed behind Davis, staring blankly into space as Davis goaded the reporter, inches from his face. When Sweeney suggested that Scientology is a “ sadistic cult,” Davis, wearing sunglasses, checked with his cameraman to see that the camcorder was running, then said, “Now listen to me for a second. You have no right to say what is and what isn’t a religion. The Constitution of the United States of America guarantees one’s right to practice and believe freely in this country. And the definition of religion is very clear. And it’s not defined by John Sweeney. For you to repeatedly refer to my faith in those terms is so derogatory and so offensive and so bigoted. And the reason you kept repeating it is ’cause you wanted a reaction like you’re getting right now. Well, buddy, you got it! Right here, right now, I’m angry! Real angry!” Davis turned and walked away, trailed by Sweeney, who protested, “It’s your turn to listen to me! I’m a British subject.…” Another confrontation took place at the “ Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” exhibit in Hollywood. Davis once again moved in, nose to nose with Sweeney. “You’re accusing members of my religion of brainwashing!” He was referring to an earlier interview Sweeney had conducted with another Scientologist. “No, Tommy,” Sweeney responded, his voice rising, “you were not there—” “Brainwashing is a crime,” Davis said. “Listen to me! You were not there! At the beginning! Of the interview!” Sweeney shouted in an oddly slow cadence. “You did not hear! Or record! The interview!” “Do you understand that brainwashing is a crime?” Davis said, unfazed by Sweeney’s enraged screams. Davis’s composure and his spirited defense of his church made quite a contrast with the sputtering and eventually deeply chagrined reporter, who apologized to BBC viewers on the air. In March 2007, John Travolta’s new movie, Wild Hogs , a comedy about two middle-aged men who decide to become bikers, was scheduled to open in Britain.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Then everything was silent for a moment. I listened breathlessly. The carriage door slammed, the horse began to pull—the rolling of the carriage for a short time—then all was over. * * * * * For a moment I thought of taking vengeance, of killing him, but I was bound by the abominable agreement. So nothing was left for me to do except to keep my pledged word and grit my teeth. * * * * * My first impulse after this, the most cruel catastrophe of my life, was to seek laborious tasks, dangers, and privations. I wanted to become a soldier and go to Asia or Algiers, but my father was old and ill and wanted me. So I quietly returned home and for two years helped him bear his burdens, and learned how to look after the estate which I had never done before. To labor and to do my duty was comforting like a drink of fresh water. Then my father died, and I inherited the estate, but it meant no change. I had put on my own Spanish boots and went on living just as rationally as if the old man were standing behind me, looking over my shoulder with his large wise eyes. One day a box arrived, accompanied by a letter. I recognized Wanda’s writing. Curiously moved, I opened it, and read. “Sir.— Now that over three years have passed since that night in Florence, I suppose, I may confess to you that I loved you deeply. You yourself, however, stifled my love by your fantastic devotion and your insane passion. From the moment that you became my slave, I knew it would be impossible for you ever to become my husband. However, I found it interesting to have you realize your ideal in my own person, and, while I gloriously amused myself, perhaps, to cure you. I found the strong man for whom I felt a need, and I was as happy with him as, I suppose, it is possible for any one to be on this funny ball of clay. But my happiness, like all things mortal, was of short duration. About a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then I have been living in Paris, like an Aspasia— And you?—Your life surely is not without its sunshine, if you have gained control of your imagination, and those qualities in you have materialized, which at first so attracted me to you—your clarity of intellect, kindness of heart, and, above all else, your— moral seriousness . I hope you have been cured under my whip; the cure was cruel, but radical. In memory of that time and of a woman who loved you passionately, I am sending you the portrait by the poor German.

• From Between Us

  Right emotions help to foster relationships that are valued in the culture and wrong emotions support condemned forms of relating. Right emotions are culturally encouraged and rewarded, and wrong emotions are culturally avoided and punished. This is, very simply speaking, the logic of cultural differences in emotions. Cultural differences in emotions owe their logic to an OURS model of emotions—to what they do in our social and cultural worlds. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to two emotions: anger and shame. Both are considered “right” in some cultures (or positions), but “wrong” in others. These emotions, associated as they are with dominance and avoiding exclusion, respectively, allow us to see how emotions weave the social fabric of our relationships, but also how they become part of, and are shaped by, the relationship in which they occur. By the end of this chapter, you will understand that anger and shame may run many different courses, depending on whether they are considered right or wrong in your culture (and for your position)—that is, depending on how others respond to them. And what, might you ask, does this mean for the universality of anger and shame? Are the same anger and the same shame hidden behind the different ways in which these emotions unfold? Stay tuned. Anger Rather than being merely an internal force that prods an individual, an emotion is a taking of a stance in a relationship. To illustrate this, let’s stay close to home. Suppose I am angry that my husband is late for dinner: I cooked us a special meal, one that I know he likes, and he did not bother to let me know he was going to be late. Perhaps I am angry that dinner is getting cold, or more likely I feel my efforts went unappreciated. When my husband eventually does come home, I give him an earful. It is not hard to see how this could change our relationship, at least momentarily. But the point I want to make is slightly more subtle than that anger comes with behavior that affects your relationship. Anger itself takes a stance in your relationship: By getting angry, I take the position that what my husband did—disrespecting me when I made an effort—is not okay. I demand and expect better treatment. The majority of emotions take place in unfolding social interactions. What happens to my anger—the stance I initially take—is dependent on its reception. Does my husband express regret, does he promise change, does he tread more carefully around me than he usually does and try to please me? Or, to the contrary, does he contest my version of the reality and replace it with his own?

• From Between Us

  My experience of sticking out like a sore thumb served as a cue to suppress my indignation or weaken it. At first, I tried to not express what I felt, or not as bluntly. But after a while, I lost my sense that it was natural to feel this way, and I traveled some distance towards learning emotional ways that were more effective and better understood in my new cultural environment. When I did show indignation or anger on occasion, as with the journalist from my university’s magazine, I immediately realized that this was a relic from my time in the Netherlands. It did not feel “right” anymore, not in that context. My emotions came to serve respect and politeness rather than intellectual autonomy. The learning was not merely cosmetic; I felt less anger and indignation. I never became fully North Carolinian, but I do think my waltz became smoother over the years. Less stepping on other people’s toes. In the same way my emotions had once allowed me to be part of a Dutch relationships, they now allowed me to grow more in sync with my North Carolinian environment. My colleagues Heejung Kim, Jozefien De Leersnyder, Alba Jasini, and I have come to see similar changes in immigrant populations that we study. These changes are what we call in psychology jargon emotional acculturation: learning to do emotions in the new culture’s ways. In much of our research, we studied emotional acculturation by comparing the emotions of immigrant minorities with those of the average majority respondent for a particular type of situation. Suppose that Ayse, a second-generation Turkish Belgian student, was reprimanded by her teacher for talking, and then asked, in front of the whole class, to leave the room. Looking at Ayse’s feelings (see figure 7.1), we can see that she was somewhat angry, but she also felt respect for the teacher, and ashamed because she should have paid the teacher more respect. Her “profile” was one of much anger, combined with quite a bit of shame and respect. We compared Ayse’s profile with how her Belgian-majority peers on average felt in a similar situation. They were angry, but some also felt pride, perhaps questioning the teacher’s intervention (“Why does she treat me like a three-year-old?”). The average profile for the Belgian students shows that, in this particular case, anger was important in the Belgian profile, as it was for Ayse, but shame and respect were not. Ayse’s feelings did not “fit” the Belgian average—the norm—that well.

• From Between Us

  . . . America has very different standards for who gets the privilege of expressing anger and defiance, without fear of grave consequence. Angry white agitators can be labeled good people, patriots and revolutionaries, while angry black agitators are labeled identity extremists, thugs and violent opportunists. Anger is about entitlement, and if others deny you that entitlement, it may turn against you. If anger is associated with a position of power, being angry can be a gamble. Will others accept your power claim? In a classic ethnography, anthropologist Edward Schieffelin describes how anger among the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea is a power move: “A man whose expectations have been frustrated or who has suffered wrong at the hands of others does not usually suppress his annoyance. Rather he is likely to orchestrate his anger into a splendid rage . . .” Thus showing anger is a claim for compensation. The person who is angry expresses their entitlement and conveys their expectation that others will make up for their suffering and support them. Yet, Kaluli often prevent angry claims before they gain rhetorical force. They do so by questioning their legitimacy. In everyday contexts, anger is countered by shaming. For instance, rather than either granting a child the food that they angrily claim, and also rather than refusing it, the parent will ask: “Is it yours?” Of course, shaming a more powerful opponent is risky, because they will override shame, and dominate the interaction by intimidation. They will just repeat and amplify the original relational acts of anger. There are also cultures and situations where anger is a claim to legitimacy, without which you would loose position in a fragile hierarchy. This is the case in so-called honor cultures. Honor in these cultures is as much a claim to precedence as it is a virtue. As a claim to precedence, honor is a scarce resource in the social world to be defended by anger. In the 1990s, cultural psychologists Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett studied honor in the southern United States. “A key aspect of the culture of honor is the importance placed on the insult and the necessity to respond to it. An insult implies that the target is weak enough to be bullied,” they write. In an experiment that cultural psychologists have come to refer to as “the asshole experiment,” male college students were insulted as they squeezed by a research assistant who was just opening a drawer cabinet in a narrow hallway. Compared to those from the North, male students from the southern part of the United States were more readily angered when insulted. Anger was essential if they wanted to maintain their honor, as it calls a halt to the erosion of one’s social position.

• From Between Us

  In puberty, it helps the adolescent to gain independence. And it may also highlight societal wrongdoings, sparking movements for justice (nonacceptance of the current situation). Measured anger is considered right and healthy in European American contexts. This is not true everywhere. Especially in tightly knit communities, anger is often considered wrong (examples were described in more length in chapter 4). Utku Inuit shared with Jean Briggs that anger is a dangerous emotion that threatens equanimity and generosity—valued qualities. Similarly, Buddhist Tibetans regard lung lang (“being angry”) as “a fundamentally destructive sentiment, equally harmful to self and others . . . as arising from an intrinsically flawed motivational state (a desire to harm another sentient being) and generative of ultimately bad results.” The Ifaluk, the Polynesian group that hosted anthropologist Catherine Lutz, also condemned everyday anger. The irritability that accompanies sickness, frustration building up over the succession of minor unwanted things, or the annoyance at relatives not living up to their obligations, all of these varieties of anger were perceived to be immoral and undignified. Similarly, anger in Japan is considered a destructive emotion, better to be avoided. Where relational harmony is prioritized over individual autonomy, anger is considered wrong. Importantly, where the concept of anger has undesired outcomes, it may have helped to write emotion stories as well—away from anger. Some languages have concepts that seem to be in place for the very reason of retaining some elements of anger without having to engage in the whole story: concepts that re-route the urge of action. The Samoan emotion of musu “expresses a person’s reluctance to do what is required of him or her,” but without blaming anyone. It is typically reported in the context of unreasonable demands made by one’s parents, and semantic similarity tests confirm a close association between musu and the word for anger in Samoan, ita. The word allows actions of nonacceptance without implying the unthinkable of criticizing the parents’ demands. Something analogous may be true for shame in Western cultures. Sociologist Thomas Scheff suggests that shame in contemporary American society is taboo, as it stands for real and/or imagined rejection by others. And, if acknowledged as shame, such rejection would end in low self-esteem, shrinking, and withdrawing from contact. But since these acts are all undesirable in a culture where self-esteem is key and the goal is to be independent from others, shame is avoided.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him? Sovereign mover of the stars and the heart of man, may he not instruct us by employing the one or convince us by graving himself in the other? Let him, one of these days, upon the Sun indite the law, writ out in letters of fire, the law as he wants us to understand it, in the version that pleases him; then from one end of the universe to the other, all mankind will read it, will behold it at once, and thereafter will be guilty if they obey it not. But to indicate his desires nowhere but in some unknown corner of Asia; to select for witnesses the craftiest and most visionary of people, for alter ego the meanest artisan, the most absurd, him of the greatest rascality; to frame his doctrine so confusedly it is impossible to make it out; to limit knowledge of it to a small group of individuals; to leave the others in error and to punish them for remaining there.... Why, no, Therese, no, these atrocities are not what we want for our guidance; I should prefer to die a thousand deaths rather than believe them. When atheism will wish for martyrs, let it designate them; my blood is ready to be shed. Let us detest these horrors, Therese; let the most steadfast outrages cement the scorn which is patently their due.... My eyes were barely open when I began to loathe these coarse reveries; very early I made it a law unto myself to trample them in the dust, I took oath to return to them never more; if you would be happy, imitate me; as do I, hate, abjure, profane the foul object of this dreadful cult; and this cult too, created for illusion, made like him to be reviled by everyone who pretends to wisdom." Chapter 13 "Oh! Monsieur," I responded, weeping, "you would deprive an unfortunate of her fondest hope were you to wither in her heart this religion which is her whole comfort. Firmly attached to its teachings, absolutely convinced that all the blows leveled against it are nothing but libertinage's effects and the passions', am I to sacrifice, to blasphemies, to sophistries horrible to me, my heart's sweetest sustenance ?" I added a thousand other arguments to this one, they merely caused the Count to laugh, and his captious principles, nourished by a more male eloquence, supported by readings and studies I, happily, had never performed, daily attacked my own principles, without shaking them.

• From Between Us

  The German mothers in this study were not nearly as patient with their disobedient children as the Japanese mothers had been. Rather than accepting their children’s behavior as immature, as the Japanese mothers had done, the German mothers were quick to infer that their disobedient child had been acting on purpose. Remarks such as “he wants to make me angry” were not uncommon, and many German mothers reacted to their child’s disobedience with their own anger. As an unintended side effect, the German interactions often escalated, with the child and the mother both being angry. My reading is that German mothers treated the disobedience of their children as a power conflict between two individuals with different interests (whereas the Japanese mothers felt responsible for their children and the relationship). Notably, the anger that German five-year-old kids showed during these interactions with their mother, predicted their aggression nine years later (and also explained that, nine years later, the same German children were more aggressive than the Japanese children who had participated in the study). The German mothers may not have so much wanted their children to be angry, but by assuming their child’s individuality and intention, and by showing anger themselves, they created the circumstances for anger. Psychologists Peggy Miller and Linda Sperry followed three working-class mothers who lived in South Baltimore, each with a two-and-a-half-year- old daughter. The mothers also encouraged anger, but not completely in the same way as the German mothers. The South Baltimore mothers wanted to teach their girls to “be strong, to suppress hurt feelings, and to defend themselves when wronged.” When narrating their own lives, the Baltimore mothers described experiences in which they themselves had a great deal of anger and aggression. The girls were not protected from hearing about these incidents. The mothers seemed to want their children to know how to respond to the harsh realities of life in which they might find themselves one day (as their mothers had). Tells one of the mothers: He started that shit, he was embarrassed to walk down the street with me ’cause my stomach was startin’ to get big and all that. I said, “Well get the hell out then.” The morale of this story was: If you want to stand your ground, you have to show anger. This was exactly what the Baltimore mothers wanted to convey to their girls: “Don’t be a sissy!” When their child was hurt or wronged, these moms encouraged their child’s anger, and helped them “not being a sissy.” One mother helped her little girl by explaining to an older child: “She ain’t got no . . . blanket. That’s why she’s yelling.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Sometimes I hate him. When he does the dishes, he shakes off each one before setting it in the drying rack. Water flies everywhere. A couple of drops always hit me in the face. I have to leave the room to avoid smashing a plate against his head. He hums in the shower. I can hear him from all the way downstairs, mostly AC/DC and Journey. He wears mismatched socks. He squints his eyes when he reads and then insists that there is nothing wrong with his eyesight. He closes the lid of the toilet. He looks at me funny. Like, really funny. Sometimes I catch him doing it and he doesn’t even bother to look away. It makes my face and neck get this tingly burn feeling. He barely makes any noise when he moves. He sneaks up on me all the time. When you’ve been kidnapped it’s never a good idea to be too quiet when entering a room. He’s received countless elbows in the ribs and loose-handed slaps as a result. “Is there anything I do that irritates you?” I ask him one day. We are both in irritable moods. He’s been lurking; I’ve been stalking. We bump into each other as I come from the kitchen and he comes from the little living room. We stand in limbo in the space between the two rooms. “I hate it when you go comatose.” “I haven’t done that in a while,” I point out. “Four days at least. Give me something more tangible.” He looks up at the ceiling. “I hate it when you watch me eat.” “Gah!” I throw my hands up in the air—which is completely unlike me. Isaac snickers. “You eat with too many rules,” I tell him. There is humor in my voice. Even I can hear it. He narrows his eyes like something is bothering him, then he seems to shake it off. “When I met you, you didn’t listen to music with words, “ he says, folding his arms across his chest. “What does that have to do with anything?” “Why don’t we discuss this over a snack.” He points to the kitchen. I nod but don’t move. He takes a step forward, placing us impossibly close. I step back twice, allowing him room to move into the kitchen. He sets crackers on a plate with some beef jerky and dried bananas and puts it between us. He makes a show out of eating a cracker, hiding his mouth behind his hand in mock embarrassment. “You live by rules. Mine are just more socially appropriate than yours,” he says. I snicker. “I’m trying really hard not to watch you eat,” I tell him. “I know. Thanks for making the effort.” I pick up a piece of banana. “Open your mouth,” I say. He does without question. I toss the banana at his mouth. It hits his nose, but I lift my hands in triumph. “Why are you celebrating?” He laughs. “You missed.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In short, something extraordinarily stupid and base, which was neither in my character nor in hers. “I was beside myself. I accused her of indelicacy. She made the same accusation against me, and the dispute broke out. In her words, in the expression of her face, of her eyes, I noticed again the hatred that had so astonished me before. With a brother, friends, my father, I had occasionally quarrelled, but never had there been between us this fierce spite. Some time passed. Our mutual hatred was again concealed beneath an access of sensual desire, and I again consoled myself with the reflection that these scenes were reparable faults. “But when they were repeated a third and a fourth time, I understood that they were not simply faults, but a fatality that must happen again. I was no longer frightened, I was simply astonished that I should be precisely the one to live so uncomfortably with my wife, and that the same thing did not happen in other households. I did not know that in all households the same sudden changes take place, but that all, like myself, imagine that it is a misfortune exclusively reserved for themselves alone, which they carefully conceal as shameful, not only to others, but to themselves, like a bad disease. “That was what happened to me. Begun in the early days, it continued and increased with characteristics of fury that were ever more pronounced. At the bottom of my soul, from the first weeks, I felt that I was in a trap, that I had what I did not expect, and that marriage is not a joy, but a painful trial. Like everybody else, I refused to confess it (I should not have confessed it even now but for the outcome). Now I am astonished to think that I did not see my real situation. It was so easy to perceive it, in view of those quarrels, begun for reasons so trivial that afterwards one could not recall them. “Just as it often happens among gay young people that, in the absence of jokes, they laugh at their own laughter, so we found no reasons for our hatred, and we hated each other because hatred was naturally boiling up in us. More extraordinary still was the absence of causes for reconciliation. “Sometimes words, explanations, or even tears, but sometimes, I remember, after insulting words, there tacitly followed embraces and declarations. Abomination! Why is it that I did not then perceive this baseness?” CHAPTER XIII. “All of us, men and women, are brought up in these aberrations of feeling that we call love. I from childhood had prepared myself for this thing, and I loved, and I loved during all my youth, and I was joyous in loving. It had been put into my head that it was the noblest and highest occupation in the world.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But what? “He gave her a questioning glance. On her face the expression of anguish and ennui changed, it seemed to me, when she looked at him, into an expression of anxiety for him. For a moment I stood in the doorway, holding the dagger hidden behind my back. Suddenly he smiled, and in a voice that was indifferent almost to the point of ridicule, he said: “‘We were having some music.’ “‘I did not expect—,’ she began at the same time, chiming in with the tone of the other. “But neither he nor she finished their remarks. The same rage that I had felt the previous week took possession of me. I felt the need of giving free course to my violence and ‘the joy of wrath.’ “No, they did not finish. That other thing was going to begin, of which he was afraid, and was going to annihilate what they wanted to say. I threw myself upon her, still hiding the dagger, that he might not prevent me from striking where I desired, in her bosom, under the breast. At that moment he saw . . . and, what I did not expect on his part, he quickly seized my hand, and cried: “‘Come to your senses! What are you doing? Help! Help!’ “I tore my hands from his grasp, and leaped upon him. I must have been very terrible, for he turned as white as a sheet, to his lips. His eyes scintillated singularly, and—again what I did not expect of him—he scrambled under the piano, toward the other room. I tried to follow him, but a very heavy weight fell upon my left arm. It was she. “I made an effort to clear myself. She clung more heavily than ever, refusing to let go. This unexpected obstacle, this burden, and this repugnant touch only irritated me the more. I perceived that I was completely mad, that I must be frightful, and I was glad of it. With a sudden impulse, and with all my strength, I dealt her, with my left elbow, a blow squarely in the face. “She uttered a cry and let go my arm. I wanted to follow the other, but I felt that it would be ridiculous to pursue in my stockings the lover of my wife, and I did not wish to be grotesque, I wished to be terrible. In spite of my extreme rage, I was all the time conscious of the impression that I was making upon others, and even this impression partially guided me. “I turned toward her. She had fallen on the long easy chair, and, covering her face at the spot where I had struck her, she looked at me. Her features exhibited fear and hatred toward me, her enemy, such as the rat exhibits when one lifts the rat-trap.

• From Between Us

  German mothers wanted their children to be emotionally expressive, because they hoped their children would grow up to confidently express their own preferences, and develop their personal talents; Nso mothers wanted their children to be calm, because their goal was to raise children who respect older people, obey their parents, and maintain social harmony. Similarly, Taiwanese parents admonished their toddlers to be calm rather than crying, and to adjust to (or prevent) undesirable events. In each context, children’s emotions were socialized to become socially valued adults in their cultures: autonomous movers or related adjusters. There is another way of looking at these differences: Nso and Taiwanese children may be socialized to have emotions outside-in, whereas middle-class German and white American children are socialized to have emotions inside-out. Outside-in emotions are cultivated to first meet the needs of the environment, including relationships with others. Inside-out emotions follow the feelings out. By the time mothers talk with their three-year-old children about emotional experiences in the recent past, either emphasizing the social consequences or emphasizing the feeling itself, the groundwork may have been laid. The attention of Jiang, the three-year-old Chinese boy we met in chapter 2, may have been focused outward for a full three years; during the same three years, the attention of George, the three-year-old American boy that we also met in chapter 2, was turned inward. This was the case even before they engaged in conversations with their moms in which the same respective outlooks were reinforced. Raising a Child with Anger There is no culture that wants their children angry all the time, yet it is very clear that anger is valued in some and demonized in other cultures. Middle-class white American parents consider anger unavoidable in their children, and cherish the underlying traits. There are the “terrible twos,” in which toddlers play with a sense of independence, and go through a “no” stage, in which they become “assertive and contrary.” Then there is adolescence, starting as early as ten years old, in which conflict with parents increases, and adolescents have outbursts of anger. In both stages, as well as in between, anger—if not likeable—is a sign of healthy independence. An article on adolescence in Psychology Today (by the author of the book Who Stole My Child?) reads that “anger is a frequently occurring issue, not just for the young person, but for parents as well. How could it be otherwise?” The reasons according to the author? “Parents can get angry in their frustrating fight for influence, adolescents can get angry in their frustrating fight for freedom.” At different developmental stages, anger is an unavoidable part of the power struggle that ensues between middle-class American parents and their increasingly autonomous children.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Papal power had plummeted during the fourteenth century, and the balance of power had passed to the kings. Seven successive popes had resided in Avignon (1309–77), firmly under the thumb of the French kings. In 1378 a disputed papal election divided the Church between the supporters of Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon, and the kings of Europe had taken sides according to their own rivalries. The schism ended only with the election of Martin V at the Council of Constance in 1417, but the popes, now safely back in Rome, never recovered their former prestige. There were reports of corruption and immorality, and in 1492 Rodrigo Borgia, father of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia and two other illegitimate children, had won the papacy by flagrant bribery, taking the name of Alexander VI. His chief goal as pontiff was to break the power of the Italian princes and secure their wealth for his own family. His mandate to Ferdinand and Isabella was, therefore, of dubious spiritual value. The early colonialists stormed violently into the New World as if they were conducting a giant acquisition raid, greed melding seamlessly with pious intent. The Portuguese set up sugar plantations in the Cape Verde Islands, and between three and five million Africans were torn from their homes and enslaved there. No American colony would be as gravely implicated in slavery. When the Portuguese finally rounded the Cape and exploded aggressively into the Indian Ocean, their bronze cannons made short work of the slender dhows and junks of their rivals. By 1524 they had seized the best ports in eastern Africa, western India, the Persian Gulf, and the Malacca Straits, and by 1560 they had an oceanwide chain of settlements based on Goa. 7 This was a purely trading empire: the Portuguese made no attempt to conquer territory inland. Meanwhile, the Spanish had invaded the Americas, slaughtering the indigenous peoples and seizing land, booty, and slaves. They may have claimed to fight in the name of Christianity, but Hernán Cortés was brutally frank about his real motivation: he simply wanted “to get rich, not to work like a peasant.” 8 In Montezuma’s Aztec Empire in central Mexico, in each city Cortés would invite local chieftains to the central square, and when they arrived with their retainers, his small Spanish army would gun them down, loot the city, and go on to the next. 9 When Cortés arrived in the Aztec capital in 1525, Montezuma was already dead, and his now- shattered empire passed into Spanish hands. Survivors were decimated by European diseases for which they had no immunity. Some ten years later Francisco Pizarro, using similar military tactics, brought smallpox to the Inca Empire in Peru. For Europeans, colonialism brought unimaginable wealth; for the native peoples, it brought death on an unprecedented scale.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At the second Conference, seven bishops of the Britons, with a number of learned men from the Convent of Bangor, appeared, and were advised by a venerated hermit to submit the Saxon archbishop to the moral test of meekness and humility as required by Christ from his followers. If Augustin, at the meeting, shall rise before them, they should hear him submissively; but if he shall not rise, they should despise him as a proud man. As they drew near, the Roman dignitary remained seated in his chair. He demanded of them three things, viz. compliance with the Roman observance of the time of Easter, the Roman form of baptism, and aid in efforts to convert the English nation; and then he would readily tolerate their other peculiarities. They refused, reasoning among themselves, if he will not rise up before us now, how much more will he despise us when we shall be subject to his authority? Augustin indignantly rebuked them and threatened the divine vengeance by the arms of the Saxons. "All which," adds Bede, "through the dispensation of the divine judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted." For, a few years afterwards (613), Ethelfrith the Wild, the pagan King of Northumbria, attacked the Britons at Chester, and destroyed not only their army, but slaughtered several hundred34 priests and monks, who accompanied the soldiers to aid them with their prayers. The massacre was followed by the destruction of the flourishing monastery of Bangor, where more than two thousand monks lived by the labor of their hands. This is a sad picture of the fierce animosity of the two races and rival forms of Christianity. Unhappily, it continues to the present day, but with a remarkable difference: the Keltic Irish who, like the Britons, once represented a more independent type of Catholicism, have, since the Norman conquest, and still more since the Reformation, become intense Romanists; while the English, once the dutiful subjects of Rome, have broken with that foreign power altogether, and have vainly endeavored to force Protestantism upon the conquered race. The Irish problem will not be solved until the double curse of national and religious antagonism is removed. § 12. Conversion of the Other Kingdoms of the Heptarchy. Augustin, the apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, died A.D. 604, and lies buried, with many of his successors, in the venerable cathedral of Canterbury. On his tomb was written this epitaph: "Here rests the Lord Augustin, first archbishop of Canterbury, who being formerly sent hither by the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, and by God’s assistance supported with miracles, reduced king Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ, and having ended the days of his office in peace, died on the 26th day of May, in the reign of the same king."35 He was not a great man; but he did a great work in laying the foundations of English Christianity and civilization.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But let us ignore ethics for a moment, since it's theology you want. Be advised then, young innocent, that the religion you fall back upon, being nothing but the relationship between man and God, nothing but the reverence the creature thinks himself obliged to show his creator, is annihilated instantly this creator's existence is itself proven illusory. "Primitive man, terrified by the phenomena which harried him, had necessarily to believe that a sublime being unknown to him had the direction of their operation and influence; it is native to weakness to suppose strength and to fear it; the human mind, then too much in its infancy to explore, to discover in Nature's depths the laws of motion, the unique springs of the entire mechanism that struck him with awe, found it simpler to fancy a motor in this Nature than to view Nature as her own mover, and without considering that he would have to go to much more trouble to edify, to define this gigantic master, than through the study of Nature to find the cause of what amazed him, he acknowledged this sovereign being, he elaborated rituals to worship it: from this moment each nation composed itself an overlord in conformance with its peculiar characteristics, its knowledge, and its climate; soon there were as many religions on earth as races and peoples and not long after, as many Gods as families; nevertheless, behind all these idols it was easy to recognize the same absurd illusion, first fruit of human blindness. They appareled it differently, but it was always the same thing. Well, tell me, Therese, merely because these idiots talk drivel about the erection of a wretched chimera and about the mode of serving him, must it follow that an intelligent man has got to renounce the certain and present happiness of life; like Aesop's dog, must he abandon the bone for the shadow and renounce his real joys for hallucinations? No, Therese, no, there is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author; once supposed, that author is naught but a decayed version of herself, is merely what we describe in school by the phrase, a begging of the question. A God predicates a creation, that is to say, an instant when there was nothing, or an instant when all was in chaos. If one or the other of these states was evil, why did your God allow it to subsist? Was it good ? Then why did he change it ? But if all is now good at last, your God has nothing left to do; well, if he is useless, how can he be powerful? And if he is not powerful, how can he be God?

• From Between Us

  They also told us how angry (or ashamed) they would have been. There was agreement among participants that anger does not feel the same whether you walk in Joshua, Matthew’s, Anthony’s, or Richard’s shoes. But how exactly individuals described these different instances of anger varied across two sets. Interestingly, the same sets did occur in all cultures, but cultures differed with respect to the most common sets. For shame we found three sets, and here too, shame sets occurred in all three cultures, but their respective prevalence was different. The first set of anger experiences was reported by the great majority of Japanese students, and only by a small part of U.S. and Belgian students. It was characterized by blaming distant others most. For example, individuals in this set thought that Richard’s roommate’s behavior was much more inappropriate and unfair than were Joshua’s friend’s and Matthew’s dad’s. Furthermore, individuals in this first set were not so preoccupied when friends or relatives were offensive, especially not when friends or relatives had acted intentionally, such as was the case for Matthew’s dad. The second set of anger was most common in the U.S. and Belgium. It was characterized by blaming close others who did not meet relational norms. In this set, individuals blamed Joshua’s friend and Matthew’s dad more than Richard’s roommate. The friend and the dad were seen to be more unfair and behaving more inappropriately than a group of strangers. These same individuals reported that they would be very preoccupied in Joshua’s or in Matthew’s situation, where it involved a friend or a relative, but much less when strangers were either inconsiderate or purposefully offensive, as was the case for Anthony and Richard, respectively. In Joshua’s and Matthew’s place only, would they feel unable to concentrate on anything else and paralyzed. This second set of anger instances was found in the majority of American and Belgian students, but only in a very small minority of Japanese students. The different sets appear to be consistent with the dominant cultural concerns: whereas Japanese are primarily concerned with protecting their close relationships (and thus refrain from other-blame in these instances), Americans and Western Europeans are more concerned with protecting their autonomy, and this concern plays a more central role in close relationships, where relational norms ensure good treatment while allowing for autonomy. At one point in my career I would have told you that people’s emotional lives are different, but emotions themselves are the same. But what would it mean that emotions are the same? What if the episodes of emotions are the emotions?

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I see only the wood at first. Then he reaches over me with a pink Zippo and holds it as close to the inner wall as he can. Strange, I think, at first—there is writing on the walls. Some of the wood is obscuring it. I reach inside and move a couple of the logs over. I start shaking. He wraps his arms around my torso and squeezes, then leads me backwards to the sofa where I sit. Part of me wants to break away to go look some more, but I feel. I feel too much. If I don’t stop feeling I’m going to explode. Pages of my book—over and over—wall-papered on the inside of the closet like a slap in the face. “What does it mean?” I ask Isaac. He shakes his head. “A fan? I don’t know. It’s someone playing games.” “How did we never notice that before?” I want to press my fingers into the sides of his face and force him to look at me. I want him to tell me that he hates me, because for some reason he is here as a result of me. But he doesn’t. Nothing he does is encumbered by blame or anger. I wish I could be like that. “We weren’t looking,” he says. “What else are we not seeing because we aren’t looking?” “I have to read what’s in there.” I stand up, but Isaac pulls me back. “It’s Chapter Nine.” Chapter Nine? I reach for it in my mind. Then I let it go. Chapter Nine hurts. I wish I hadn’t written it. I tried to get the publishers to take it out of the manuscript before the book went to print. But they felt it was necessary to the story. The day the book hit shelves, I sat in my white room, holding back my vomit, knowing that everyone was reading Chapter Nine and living my pain. I don’t want to read it, so I stay sitting. “Chapter Nine is—” I cut him off. “I know what it is,” I snap. “But why is it there?” “Because someone is obsessed with you, Senna.” “No one knew that was real! Who did you tell?” I am screaming; so angry I want to throw something large. But the zookeeper didn’t give us anything large to throw. Everything is bolted, sewn into the walls and floors like this is a dollhouse. “Stop it!” He grabs me, tries to slow me down. His voice is getting loud. I release mine, too. If he’s going to yell I’m going to yell louder. “Then why are you here?” I punch his chest with both of my fists. He sits down abruptly. It throws me off. I was all geared up to fight.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Where were you when someone stole me away in the middle of the night and starved me in the middle of the goddamn arctic tundra?” I cut off the space between us and pound three hard times on his chest. “Where. Did. You. Go.” He’s shaking. I’m dropping things on him like a hailstorm, but I don’t give a fuck. I even say things like fuck now, because I don’t want to waste another second on the white room way I lived my life. He’s here now. But, Isaac was here then … and then … and then … and then. “I was so hung up on you that I missed it,” I say. I’m shaking so bad. I’m shaking worse than Nick, who looks like the weak, trembling leaf he’s always been. I want to crush him between my fingertips. “What did you miss, Brenna?” I don’t like the way he says my name. “Ahhh … agh…” I bend at the waist. Succulent, heavy tears drop right out of my eyes and onto the floor. Splat. I cry now, I think. All the time. And it’s so much fun. “I missed my chance,” I say, standing up straight and crushing the tears with the toe of my shoe. “With my soulmate.” Nick looks confused, then it comes. He sees his replacement, the guy locked in a house with his ex-muse. “The doctor?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “Isaac. His name is Isaac.” “ I’m your soulmate. I wrote that book for you.” He looks like he’s trying to convince himself, bobbing Adam’s apple and all. “You don’t know the first thing about what it is to have a soulmate.” I feel such a pull toward Isaac I wonder if he’s having this same fight with Daphne. “It’s time for you to leave,” I say. It feels so good to say it. Because this time, I’m not even going to cry. Before I shower, before I eat, before I crawl into bed and sleep off my fourteen-month nightmare, I call a cab. I have him pull into my garage, then I stand next to his window and check him out. Small guy, early twenties, bald by choice. I can see the shadows of where his hair should be. He’s fighting that receding hairline with a shaved head. Defiant and a little ballsy, because we can all see why he’s doing it. His eyes are wide and shifty; either the news vans freaked him out, or he’s having withdrawals. He’ll do, I think. I climb into the front seat. “Do you mind?” I ask. But I don’t really care if he says no. I buckle my seatbelt. “Take me to one of those stores with the lumber and the tools.” He spits out a couple options and I shrug. “Whatever.”

• From Between Us

  There is another way of looking at these differences: Nso and Taiwanese children may be socialized to have emotions outside-in, whereas middle- class German and white American children are socialized to have emotions inside-out. Outside-in emotions are cultivated to first meet the needs of the environment, including relationships with others. Inside-out emotions follow the feelings out. By the time mothers talk with their three-year-old children about emotional experiences in the recent past, either emphasizing the social consequences or emphasizing the feeling itself, the groundwork may have been laid. The attention of Jiang, the three-year-old Chinese boy we met in chapter 2, may have been focused outward for a full three years; during the same three years, the attention of George, the three-year-old American boy that we also met in chapter 2, was turned inward. This was the case even before they engaged in conversations with their moms in which the same respective outlooks were reinforced. Raising a Child with Anger There is no culture that wants their children angry all the time, yet it is very clear that anger is valued in some and demonized in other cultures. Middle- class white American parents consider anger unavoidable in their children, and cherish the underlying traits. There are the “terrible twos,” in which toddlers play with a sense of independence, and go through a “no” stage, in which they become “assertive and contrary.” Then there is adolescence, starting as early as ten years old, in which conflict with parents increases, and adolescents have outbursts of anger. In both stages, as well as in between, anger—if not likeable—is a sign of healthy independence. An article on adolescence in Psychology Today (by the author of the book Who Stole My Child?) reads that “anger is a frequently occurring issue, not just for the young person, but for parents as well. How could it be otherwise?” The reasons according to the author? “Parents can get angry in their frustrating fight for influence, adolescents can get angry in their frustrating fight for freedom.” At different developmental stages, anger is an unavoidable part of the power struggle that ensues between middle-class American parents and their increasingly autonomous children. No one wants to be the parent in the supermarket dealing with their out-of-control toddler throwing a tantrum, no one wants to be on the other end of a disobedient kindergartener, and no one wants the be at the receiving end of adolescents’ resentment and slamming of doors.