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 Cultish (2021)

  In late 2020, things were already going south for the company due to COVID-19 lockdowns forcing location closures left and right, when multiple damning exposés surfaced online: According to reporting from Vox, underneath all the motivational Soulspeak, studios across the country harbored long track records of toxicity . Cults of personality formed around certain “Master” instructors, who took advantage by creating hierarchies of favorite and least favorite clients, giving private “off-the-clock” rides, and allegedly sleeping with some students. (“Your riders should want to be you or fuck you” was a mantra instructors reportedly learned and internalized. One all-star openly referred to her riders as “little sluts.”) Some top instructors were known for verbally bullying riders and “lesser” employees, as well as stoking all the studio drama that surrounded them, relishing in their deification, like high school Queen Bees. Purportedly, SoulCycle HQ knew of and condoned the bad behavior, covering up complaints about its most prized instructors making bigoted side comments to riders and staff. (Let’s just say they involved the words “Aunt Jemima” and “twinks” and calling curvy staffers “not on brand.”) Reports of sexual harassment had allegedly been ignored, as well. The company “treated [instructors] like Hollywood stars anyway,” read one headline, which Natalia Petrzela DMed me the hour it broke. Insiders reported that higher-ups threw complaints in the trash, while bankrolling one implicated instructor’s $2,400 Soho House membership and rental Mercedes-Benz, like nothing happened. This news didn’t exactly come as a shock. “When you elevate instructors as godlike, abuses of power will follow,” Natalia tweeted. “It makes sense that we saw this kind of reckoning first in yoga, where leaders have long been revered as ‘gurus’; it was only a matter of time for instructors [with] a ‘cult following.’” I read a 2020 study from the European Journal of Social Psychology revealing that folks who received “spiritual training” in certain supernatural crafts like energy healing and lightwork were more prone to narcissistic tendencies (bloated confidence in their abilities, increased hunger for success and social approval, denigration of anyone lacking their self-evaluated superpowers, etc.). This was compared to people who hadn’t gone through any spiritual training at all, as well as students studying less performative disciplines, like meditation and mindfulness. The study showed that even as these gurus encouraged compassion and self-acceptance in others, their own egos swelled. “Master” SoulCycle instructors seem to display a similar response: existing pride in their natural charisma combined with the company’s extreme training is the recipe for a god complex closer to that of a 3HO Swami than an ordinary mortal employed to teach stationary cycling. As of this writing, SoulCycle hasn’t commented on the specific accusations or fired any alleged abusers. And CrossFit loyalists have ensured that their beloved culture—Hero WoDs, beast mode, and all—lives on, no matter the brand name. Some say the mark of a truly “successful cult” is the power to outlast the death or cancellation of its founder.

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  Because there was no wishful thinking in them? Because, being so horrible, they were therefore all the more likely to be true? But there are fear-fulfilment as well as wish-fulfilment dreams. And were they wholly distasteful? No. In a way I liked them. I am even aware of a slight reluctance to accept the opposite thoughts. All that stuff about the Cosmic Sadist was not so much the expression of thought as of hatred. I was getting from it the only pleasure a man in anguish can get; the pleasure of hitting back. It was really just Billingsgate—mere abuse; ‘telling God what I thought of Him.’ And of course, as in all abusive language, ‘what I thought’ didn’t mean what I thought true. Only what I thought would offend Him (and His worshippers) most. That sort of thing is never said without some pleasure. Gets it ‘off your chest.’ You feel better for a moment. But the mood is no evidence. Of course the cat will growl and spit at the operator and bite him if she can. But the real question is whether he is a vet or a vivisector. Her bad language throws no light on it one way or the other. And I can believe He is a vet when I think of my own suffering. It is harder when I think of hers. What is grief compared with physical pain? Whatever fools may say, the body can suffer twenty times more than the mind. The mind has always some power of evasion. At worst, the unbearable thought only comes back and back, but the physical pain can be absolutely continuous. Grief is like a bomber circling round and dropping its bombs each time the circle brings it overhead; physical pain is like the steady barrage on a trench in World War One, hours of it with no let-up for a moment. Thought is never static; pain often is. What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal? I begin to see. My love for H. was of much the same quality as my faith in God. I won’t exaggerate, though. Whether there was anything but imagination in the faith, or anything but egoism in the love, God knows. I don’t. There may have been a little more; especially in my love for H. But neither was the thing I thought it was. A good deal of the card-castle about both.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  No matter what he says, I stay calm and respond with as few words as possible, remembering that my kids are in the backseat, listening to every word. “Okay,” I say. “I see. Sure. Okay. Yes, I see your point.” But this is incredible—literally. As in, I literally do not believe that Trotsky actually means a word of what he is saying. Hardly anyone saw the comment I posted, and I deleted it only minutes after posting it. What’s more, Trotsky is the one who called and told me how Spinner had behaved like an imbecile with Barbara in the first place. If Trotsky were saying, Look, we both know Spinner is an idiot, but you can’t make jokes about her, I might believe he’s sincere. But that’s not what he is saying. He is saying that Spinner is right, that she has a legitimate grievance. He’s saying that he agrees with Cranium, that I probably should be fired. This is stunning. I don’t know how this has happened, but Trotsky has changed—utterly. It’s like the final scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where you think Donald Sutherland is still human, but then he points and opens his mouth and you realize he’s become... one of them. This all feels like a pretext, as if Trotsky has been looking for any excuse, no matter how small, to make a stink and start driving me out of the company. I remember the email he sent me earlier in the month, asking me, as a friend, why I wanted to continue working at HubSpot. Trotsky had insisted otherwise, but that message had felt like a not very subtle clue that he wanted me to leave. Maybe he was hoping I would write back and say, Hey, you’re right, this isn’t working, and I’m not going to return from my leave of absence. Instead I called and told him that I wanted to keep working at HubSpot. It’s true that I have been losing heart, and I have decided to start looking for a different job, but in the meantime I’d like to keep getting a paycheck. Now we have gone to the next level: Trotsky is using his manager voice and running through a list of things I have done wrong. Really I’ve done just one thing, and it’s just a small comment, and for that matter whatever slight or insult Spinner is claiming to have suffered, it’s nothing compared to the open battle that Trotsky and Spinner engaged in on Facebook a few months before, when he was ranting about elephants and she was accusing him of being a woman hater. That argument didn’t lead to anyone getting threatened with firing.

• From Cultish (2021)

  As he declared, “The free-enterprise system . . . is a gift of God to us, and we should understand it, embrace it, and believe in it.” According to DeVos, if you feel as though you’ve been shut out of the system your whole life, then you’d be an imbecile not to give up on bureaucracy and turn to an MLM. This is the rhetoric that permeates Amway’s legendary rallies, where the run of show might go something like this: Delivered with the anthemic cadence of a Pentecostal preacher, an emcee kicks off with some anecdote about one or two of Amway’s most successful IBOs. Then they introduce the featured speaker. Soundtracked by the Rocky theme song, the orator emerges while attendees go berserk. The speaker—typically a white, male, gem-level IBO pocketing tens of thousands of dollars for the appearance—narrates his emotional success story while clicking through a PowerPoint of the homes, yachts, cars, and vacations he’s acquired thanks to Amway. Shouts of “Ain’t it great?” and “I believe!” echo throughout the venue. Diamonds and Pearls call out “How sweet it is!” An award presentation follows, and in closing, the audience joins in a tearful performance of “God Bless America.” At the end, uplines look their downlines in the eye and literally say, “I love you.” It doesn’t take a sociologist to see how deceptive it is to drop the “love” bomb on one’s business subordinates—especially knowing they will never make a dime from the relationship, much less buy a yacht. Most recruits don’t even want a yacht. They’d have no use for a yacht. Again, the reason they struck up with the company in the first place and then attended this overblown conference was because they’re a stay-at-home mom or an immigrant attempting to build a decent life. Say you’re an MLMer who’s been in business for a while, even attended a conference or two, and have finally started feeling like you want to get out. Mention these inklings to anyone inside, and you can expect your upline to spam your inbox with messages guilt-tripping and gaslighting you into staying. Becca was fortunate that her mother-in-law was a fairly chill upline, so when she decided to quit while she was ahead, a year into Optavia, she only had a handful of calls to ignore. But for other MLMers, the exit cost feels enormous. While there probably won’t be Scientology-esque threats of alien body-snatching, you very well might experience agonizing guilt and anxiety that you’re giving up on your dreams and losing a surrogate family. One former Amway IBO lamented how terrible it felt to have people who once told her they loved her suddenly ghost her with no remorse: “Right at the beginning you’re confronted with love . . . [and] attention by Amwayians. You get the impression that people are really interested in you as a person. That’s simply not true.

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

  A vital principle was at stake, and the Christian standing of the Gentile converts must be maintained at all hazards, now or never, if the world was to be saved and Christianity was not to shrink into a narrow corner as a Jewish sect. Whatever might do in Jerusalem, where there was scarcely a heathen convert, this open affront to brethren in Christ could not be tolerated for a moment at Antioch in the church which was of his own planting and full of Hellenists and Gentiles. A public scandal must be publicly corrected. And so Paul confronted Peter and charged him with downright hypocrisy in the face of the whole congregation. He exposed his misconduct by his terse reasoning, to which Peter could make no reply.470 "If thou," he said to him in substance, "who art a Jew by nationality and training, art eating with the Gentiles in disregard of the ceremonial prohibition, why art thou now, by the moral force of thy example as the chief of the Twelve, constraining the Gentile converts to Judaize or to conform to the ceremonial restraints of the elementary religion? We who are Jews by birth and not gross sinners like the heathen, know that justification comes not from works of the law, but from faith in Christ. It may be objected that by seeking gratuitous justification instead of legal justification, we make Christ a promoter of sin.471 Away with this monstrous and blasphemous conclusion! On the contrary, there is sin in returning to the law for justification after we have abandoned it for faith in Christ. I myself stand convicted of transgression if I build up again (as thou doest now) the very law which I pulled down (as thou didst before), and thus condemn my former conduct. For the law itself taught me to exchange it for Christ, to whom it points as its end. Through the Mosaic law as a tutor leading me beyond itself to freedom in Christ, I died to the Mosaic law in order that I might live a new life of obedience and gratitude to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer my old self that lives, but it is Christ that lives in me; and the new life of Christ which I now live in this body after my conversion, I live in the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if the observance of the law of Moses or any other human work could justify and save, there was no good cause of Christ’s death his atoning sacrifice on the cross was needless and fruitless." From such a conclusion Peter’s soul shrank back in horror. He never dreamed of denying the necessity and efficacy of the death of Christ for the remission of sins. He and Barnabas stood between two fires on that trying occasion.

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

  Gregory completed, with increased energy and the weight of official authority, the moral reform of the clergy as a means for securing the freedom and power of the Church. He held synod after synod, which passed summary laws against simony and Nicolaitism, and denounced all carnal connection of priests with women, however legitimate, as sinful and shameful concubinage. Not contented with synodical legislation, he sent letters and legates into all countries with instructions to enforce the decrees. A synod in Rome, March, 1074, opened the war. It deposed the priests who had bought their dignity or benefices, prohibited all future sacerdotal marriage, required married priests to dismiss their wives or cease to read mass, and commanded the laity not to attend their services. The same decrees had been passed under Nicolas II. and Alexander II., but were not enforced. The forbidding of the laity to attend mass said by a married priest, was a most dangerous, despotic measure, which had no precedent in antiquity. In an encyclical of 1079 addressed to the whole realm of Italy and Germany, Gregory used these violent words, "If there are presbyters, deacons, or sub-deacons who are guilty of the crime of fornication (that is, living with women as their wives), we forbid them, in the name of God Almighty and by the authority of St. Peter, entrance into the churches, introitum ecclesiae, until they repent and rectify their conduct."

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

  In November, 1166, Frederick crossed the Alps a fourth time, with a strong army, marched to Rome, captured the Leonine city, put Pascal III. in possession of St. Peter’s, and was crowned again, with Beatrice, Aug. 1, 1167. Alexander defended the city on the other side of the Tiber, but soon withdrew to Benevento. The emperor, victorious over armies, found a more formidable enemy in the Roman fever, which made fearful ravages among his bishops, noblemen, and soldiers. He lost in a few weeks his bravest knights and two thousand men by the plague. He broke up his camp in great haste, and marched to Pavia (September, 1167).137 He found all Lombardy in league against him, and recrossed the Alps for safety, alone and almost a fugitive, but with unbroken spirit and a determination to return. The second anti-pope died, Sept. 20, 1168, and with him the power of the schism collapsed. Calixtus III. was elected his successor, but he was a mere shadow, 1168–1178.138 Barbarossa undertook a fifth campaign to Italy in 1174. He destroyed Susa, and, descending through Piedmont, besieged the new city of Alessandria, which was named in honor of Alexander III., and strongly fortified. Here he found determined resistance. His forces were weakened by a severe winter. He was forsaken by his strongest ally, the Saxon duke, Henry the Lion. He fought a pitched battle against the Lombards, near Legnano, May 29, 1176. He rushed, as usual, into the thickest of the fight, but was defeated after terrible slaughter, and lost his shield, banner, cross, lance, and coffers of silver and gold. He retired with the remnant of his army to Pavia. He was left without a single ally, and threatened in Germany by the dangerous rivalry of Henry the Lion. He now took serious steps towards a reconciliation with Alexander, the spiritual head of his enemies. The emperor sent Archbishop Christian of Mainz (his chancellor, ablest general, and diplomat), Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg, Bishop Conrad of Worms, and Protonotary Wortwin to Anagni, with full powers to treat with the pope (October, 1176). Alexander received the commissioners with marked respect, and in private conferences, lasting over a fortnight, he arranged with them the preliminary terms of peace, which were to be ratified at Venice during a personal interview between him and the emperor. The pope, provided with a safe-conduct by the emperor, left Anagni on Christmas, 1176, in company with his cardinals and the two commissioners of the kingdom of Sicily, Archbishop Romuald of Salerno and Count Roger of Andria, and arrived at Venice, March 24, 1177. The emperor tarried at Chioggia, near Venice, till July 23. The peace negotiations between the pope and the imperial commissioners began in May and lasted till July. They were conducted on the basis of the previous negotiations in Anagni. § 30. The Peace of Venice. 1177.

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

  The path of anti-Semitism was early struck by Church and Christian state. The mediaeval legislation followed closely the precedent of earlier enactments.913 The synod of Elvira, 306, forbade Christians to eat with Jews and intermarry with them. Theodosius II., 439, excluded them from holding public office. The civil edicts, offering the alternative of baptism or death, were inaugurated by King Sisibut of Spain. When princes, as in Lyons, protected Jewish merchants, prelates violently protested, as did Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, apostle as he was in some particulars of modern enlightenment.914 Among the enactments of this period are the following: The Jews were forbidden to employ Christian nurses, servants, or laborers, to publicly sell meat, to work on Sundays or feast days, to employ Christian physicians,915 or to practise usury, and were commanded to make a money payment to the priest at Easter, and to wear a distinguishing patch or other object on their garments. On the other hand, Christians were forbidden to attend Jewish funerals and marriages, and were punished for borrowing from Jews. None of the regulations was so humiliating as the one requiring the Jew to wear a distinguishing costume or a distinguishing patch upon his garments. This patch was ordered placed on the chest, or on both chest and back, so that the wearer might be distinguished from afar, as of old the leper was known by his cry "unclean," and that Christians might be prevented from ignorantly having carnal connection with the despised people. At the instance of Stephen Langton the synod of Oxford, 1222, prescribed a woollen patch, and Edward I., 1275, ordered the yellow patch worn by all over seven. Louis IX. ordered that the color of the patch should be red or saffron, the king of England that it should be yellow. Its size and shape were matters of minute enactment. The Fourth Lateran gave the weight of its great authority to this regulation about dress, and decreed that it should be enforced everywhere. Dr. Graetz pronounces this law the culminating blow in the humiliation of his kinsmen. He declares that Innocent III. brought more misery upon the Jews than all their enemies had done before, and charges him with being the first pope who turned the inhuman severity of the Church against them.916 The position Innocent took was that God intended the Jews to be kept, like Cain, the murderer, to wander about on the earth designed by their guilt for slavery till the time should come in the last days for their conversion.917

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

  The complications in Southern France were one of the chief questions brought before the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. Raymund was present and demanded back his lands, inasmuch as he had submitted to the Church; but by an overwhelming majority, the synod voted against him and Montfort was confirmed in the possession of his conquests.1112 When Raymund’s son made a personal appeal to Innocent for his father, the pope bade him "love God above all things and serve Him faithfully, and not stretch forth his hand against others’ territory" and gave him the cold promise that his complaints against Montfort would be heard at a future council.1113 The further progress of the Albigensian campaigns requires only brief notice here, for they were converted into a war of territorial plunder. In 1218, Montfort fell dead under the walls of Toulouse, his head crushed by a stone. In the reign of Honorius, whose supreme concern was a crusade in the East, the sectaries reasserted themselves, and Raymund regained most of his territory. But the pope was relentless, and again the sentence of excommunication was launched against the house of Toulouse. In 1226, Louis VIII. took the cross, supported by the French parliament as well as by the Church. Thus the final chapter in the crusades was begun, a war of the king of France for the possession of Toulouse. Louis died a few months later. Arnold of Citeaux, for nearly twenty years their energetic and iron-hearted promoter, had preceded him to the grave. Louis IX. took up the plans of his royal predecessor, and in 1229 the hostilities were brought to a close by Raymund’s accepting the conditions proposed by the papal legate. Raymund renounced two-thirds of his paternal lands in favor of France. The other third was to go at his death to his daughter who subsequently married Louis IX.’s brother, and, in case there was no issue to the marriage, it was to pass to the French crown, and so it did at the death of Jeanne, the last heir of the house of Toulouse. Thus the domain of France was extended to the Pyrenees. Further measures of repression were directed against the remnants of the Albigensian heresy, for Raymund VII. had promised to cleanse the land of it. The machinery of the Inquisition was put into full action as it was perfected by the great inquisitorial council of Toulouse, 1229. The University of Toulouse received papal sanction, and one of its chief objects was announced to be "to bring the Catholic faith in those regions into a flourishing state."1114 In 1244, the stronghold of Montségur was taken, the last refuge of the Albigenses. Two hundred of the Perfect were burned.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Fairly”, I said, “but why do you take all the room?” and I jostled him aside: he immediately pushed me hard and I slapped his face as I had promised. The elder boys held him back or the fight would have taken place then and there: “will you fight?” he barked at me and I replied, “as much as you like, bully!” It was arranged that the fight should take place on the next afternoon, which happened to be a Wednesday and half-holiday. From three to six would give us time enough. That evening Stackpole asked me to his room and told me he would get the Doctor to stop the fight if I wished; I assured him it had to be and I preferred to have it settled. “I’m afraid he’s too old and strong for you”, said Stackpole: I only smiled. Next day the ring was made at the top of the playing field behind the haystack so that we could not be seen from the school. All the Sixth and nearly all the school stood behind Jones; but Stackpole, while ostensibly strolling about, was always close to me. I felt very grateful to him: I don’t know why; but his presence took away from my loneliness. At first the fight was almost like a boxing-match. Jones shot out his left hand, my head slipped it and I countered with my right in his face: a moment later he rushed me but I ducked and side-stepped and hit him hard on the chin. I could feel the astonishment of the school in the dead silence: “Good, good!” cried Stackpole behind me: “that’s the way.” And indeed it was the “way” of the fight in every round except one. We had been hard at it for some eight or ten minutes when I felt Jones getting weaker or losing his breath: at once I went in attacking with all my might; when suddenly, as luck would have it, I caught a right swing just under the left ear and was knocked clean off my feet: he could hit hard enough, that was clear. As I went into the middle of the ring for the next round Jones jeered at me: “You got that, didn’t ye, Pat!” “Yes”, I replied, “but I’ll beat you black and blue for it” and the fight went on. I had made up my mind, lying on the ground, to strike only at his face. He was short and strong and my body-blows didn’t seem to make any impression on him; but if I could blacken all his face, the masters and especially the Doctor would understand what had happened.

• From The Historical Jesus (Great Courses) (2000)

  VI. It is clear that Jesus face widespread rejection among the Jewish people to whom he preached and had numerous controversies with other Jewish teachers of his day. A. It was not these legal disputes with the Pharisees that ultimately led to Jesus’ execution. The Pharisees were not the power players in Jesus’ day; they had no political clout, civil authority, or legislative jurisdiction. They were a group of highly respected and seriously religious Jews, but they were not influential, at that time, in political affairs. Their disputes with Jesus could not have led to his crucifixion. B. The religious authorities responsible for Jesus’ arrest and trial were the Sadducees and high priests in the Temple of Jerusalem. 1. When Jesus left the familiar rural environs of his childhood and took his apocalyptic message of the coming judgment of God to the 34 ©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership capital city of Jerusalem, he aroused the opposition of those who were powerful enough to silence him. 2. Once he offended them by proclaiming that they too would face God’s coming wrath, his own days became numbered. Essential Reading: Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet, chap. 1 1 . Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. II. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, chap. 14. Suggested Reading: Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, chaps. 9-10. Questions to Consider: 1. How do you think we can explain the persistent report that Jesus was widely rejected by those who knew him, including his own family? How could they not realize who he was? 2. Think of the most heated arguments that you’ve gotten into. Are they with people who are close with you or with people you scarcely know? In light of your experience, what do you make of Jesus’ heated disagreements with the Pharisees? Is it possible that they were at such odds precisely because they knew each other well and agreed on some of the most basic issues? ©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 35 Lecture Twenty The Last Days of Jesus

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

  Between March and May 1525, peasant communities in southern and central Germany had resisted the centralizing policies of the princes that deprived them of traditional rights, and by hardheaded bargaining, many villages had managed to wrest concessions from them without resorting to violence. But in Thuringia, in central Germany, lawless peasant bands roamed the countryside, looting and burning convents, churches, and monasteries. 39 In his first pamphlet on the Peasants’ War, Luther had tried to be even-handed and had castigated the “cheating” and “robbing” of the aristocracy. But in his view the peasants had committed the unpardonable sin of mixing religion and politics. Suffering, he maintained, was their lot; they must obey the gospel, turn the other cheek, and accept the loss of their lives and property. They had had the temerity to argue that Christ had made all men free—an opinion that clearly chimed with New Testament teachings but cut no ice with Luther. He insisted that “a worldly kingdom cannot exist without an inequality of persons, some being free, some imprisoned, some lords, some subjects.” 40 Luther encouraged the princes to use every possible means to suppress the peasant agitators : Let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisoned, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog: if you do not strike him, he will strike you and a whole land with you. 41 The rebels, he concluded, were in thrall to the devil, and killing them was an act of mercy, because it would rescue them from this satanic bondage. Because this rebellion threatened the entire social structure, the state suppressed it savagely: as many as a hundred thousand peasants may have died. The crisis was an ominous sign of the instability of early modern states at a time when traditional ideas were being widely questioned. The reformers had called for reliance on scripture alone but would find that the Bible could be a dangerous weapon if it got into the wrong hands. Once people began reading their Bibles for themselves, they soon saw glaring discrepancies between Jesus’s teachings and current ecclesiastical and political practice. The Anabaptists (“Re-baptizers”) were especially disruptive because their literal reading of the gospel led them to condemn such institutions as the Holy Roman Empire, the city council, and the trade guild. 42 When some Dutch Anabaptists managed to seize control of Münster in northwestern Germany in 1534, instituting polygamy and banning private property, Catholics and Protestants—for once in firm agreement—saw this as a political threat that could easily be emulated by other towns.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  The first struggle has to do with the determination of many members of the psychiatric profession that psychologists should not be allowed to practice psychotherapy, nor to have administrative responsibility over “mental health” work, especially if this involved psychiatrists. I first met this opposition in Rochester, New York, when our highly successful Child Study Department, a branch of a social agency, was being reorganized in 1939 into a new and independent Rochester Guidance Center. A vigorous campaign, partly aboveboard and partly behind the scenes, was made to discontinue my services as director and to substitute a psychiatrist. There seemed to be no question about the quality of my work. The argument was simply based on the view that a psychologist could not head up a mental health operation—it was simply “not done.” Although the Child Study Department had employed psychiatrists on a part-time basis for years, the psychiatrists had now decided it was out of the question for psychologists to have the power to employ them. I could not point to any important precedent, nor could I claim the support of any professional group. It was a lonely battle. I am very grateful to the board of directors, who were almost all laymen, for eventually deciding the dispute in my favor. It had been a life-and-death struggle for me because it was the thing I was doing well and the work I very much wanted to continue. After an interim lull of five years at Ohio State University, the struggle was renewed with even more vigor at the University of Chicago, where I went in 1945. Not one of the rapid succession of chairmen of the Department of Psychiatry was willing to cooperate with the unorthodox fledgling Counseling Center. Finally, one of these men demanded of the University administration that the Counseling Center be closed, since its members were practicing medicine (namely, psychotherapy) without a license. There was still no professional support for our activities from the APA or any other psychological organization. I mounted a blistering counterattack, with all the evidence I could muster. Again I am grateful, this time to the chancellor of the University, for his fair-minded

• From The Decameron (1353)

  obliged to return to Rome; and because I wish to take Sophronia with me, I have revealed to you that which otherwise I might have continued to conceal. If you are wise, you will cheerfully accept it, for had I wished to deceive or offend you, I could have disowned her and left her on your hands. But heaven forbid that the heart of a Roman should ever harbour so cowardly a design. ‘Sophronia then is mine, not only by the consent of the gods and the authority of human law, but through the good sense of my friend Gisippus and the skilful manner of my wooing her. But it seems that you disapprove of this, possibly because you think yourselves wiser than the gods and your fellow beings, for you obstinately persist in doing two things that are highly repugnant to me. In the first place you hold on to Sophronia when you have no right to do such a thing without my consent; and secondly you treat Gisippus, to whom you are deeply indebted, as your enemy. It is not my intention to prove to you still further how foolishly you are behaving, being content for the present to offer you some friendly advice: to wit, that you should forget about your grievances, set all your anger aside, and see that Sophronia is restored to me, so that I may depart from Athens in peace, as your kinsman, and live henceforth as one of yourselves. For of this you may be certain, that whether or not you like what has been done, if you fail to heed my advice I shall take Gisippus with me, and once I return to Rome, I shall make quite sure that she who is rightfully mine is restored to me, however much you may object. And you shall learn from experience what havoc can be wrought by the wrath of a Roman, once you have made him your lifelong enemy.’ Having said what he had to say, Titus, his features contorted with anger, rose to his feet; and taking Gisippus by the hand, he led him out of the temple, tossing his head from side to side and looking daggers at all the people present, as if to show how little he was daunted by their numbers. The people he had left behind in the temple, in part persuaded by the force of his arguments, in part alarmed by his concluding words, decided of one accord that since Gisippus had turned them down, it was better to have Titus as their kinsman than to have lost a kinsman in Gisippus and gained an enemy in Titus. So they went and sought out Titus, and told him they were willing that Sophronia should be his, adding that they would be glad to have him as a dear kinsman and Gisippus as a good friend. And after celebrating their friendship and kinship in a style suited to the occasion, they went their separate ways.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Yet there were many—often at the opposite end of the social and political scale—who dissented. As the classicist Mason Hammond points out, it was under the reign of these “good emperors,” famous for their caution and humanity, that the policy of persecuting Christians first became widespread.78 Simultaneously the Roman provinces were racked with the revolt of the Jews under Trajan and Hadrian, and revolts of the Egyptians under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.79 How many of those suffering the pressures of imperial power, the historian Naphtali Lewis asks, “would have recognized Gibbon’s words as a description of the world in which they lived?”80 G. de Ste. Croix, in his massive Marxist history of social class in ancient times, indicts Christians for failing to criticize the dominant ideology of the Roman Empire. The Christians failed, he argues, because their ideas were molded by “irresistible social pressures”81 (which he does not enumerate) and because of what he calls their “complete indifference, as Christians, to the institutions of the world in which they lived.”82 Yet Christian apologists certainly did attack not only the pagan gods and the imperial cult,83 as we have seen, but also the traditional construction of the origins of the Roman Empire. They offered in its place a damning and, in effect, “demythologizing” view of Roman history. Tertullian, for example, challenges “the groundless assertion of those who maintain that, as a reward for their unique devotion to religion, the Romans have been raised to such heights of power as to become masters of the world.”84 Is “the progress of the empire,” then, as Roman patriotic myth contends, “the reward the gods have paid to the Romans for their devotion”? On the contrary, says Tertullian, “if I am not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars, and expanded by victories. Moreover, you cannot have wars and victories without taking—and often destroying—cities.”85 In their wars of conquest, he continues, the Romans have destroyed and despoiled temples indiscriminately with houses and palaces. The Romans succeeded, he concludes, by subordinating their purported piety to their obsession for conquest. Minucius Felix, too, challenged those who said the Romans “deserved their power” because of their consummate piety; he argued instead that the empire originated from a defensive pact formed by criminals and murderers: “Did not [the Romans] in their origin, when gathered together and fortified by crime, grow by the terror of their own ferocity?” First they started wars, drove their neighbors from their lands, and destroyed nearby cities through military force. Capturing, raping, and enslaving their victims, they increased their power: “The Romans were not so great because they were religious, but because they were sacrilegious with impunity.”86

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  When Jovinian did refer to Paul’s authentic letters, he instinctively followed selective techniques of exegesis that certain Protestants later perfected. He ignored those passages that express Paul’s religious preferences for celibacy (including much of 1 Corinthians 7), and seized instead upon those in which Paul offered merely pragmatic reasons for sexual abstinence, such as the statement that “concerning virgins I have no command from the Lord, but I give my opinions.… I think that it is good, ‘because of the present distress,’ for a person to remain as he is” (1 Corinthians 7:25–26). “Here,” Jerome said, “our opponent goes utterly wild with excitement: This is his strongest battering ram with which he shakes the walls of virginity.”47 According to Jovinian, where Paul did advise celibacy, he recommended it only on practical grounds, not moral ones. Jovinian himself endorsed and lived by such advice. He maintained his own celibacy, but warned others who made the same choice, “Do not be proud; you and your married sisters are equally members of the same church.”48 When Jerome read Jovinian’s treatise, he said, he heard “the hissing of the old serpent; by counsel such as this, the dragon drove man from Paradise.”49 What bothered Jerome especially was that Jovinian, despite his excommunication, was supported by some of the leading Christians of Rome—the same Christians for whom Jerome, the champion of asceticism, was now persona non grata. Jerome acknowledged that even though everyone praised celibacy, not everyone took it seriously, even as a qualification for the priesthood: That married men are elected to the priesthood, I do not deny; the number of virgins is not so great as that of the priests that are needed. Does it follow that because all the strongest men are chosen for the army, weaker ones should not be taken as well? … How is it, then, you will say, that frequently, when priests are ordained, a virgin is passed over, and a married man taken? Perhaps because he lacks other qualities in keeping with virginity.50 Jerome adds that many factors flaw elections: Sometimes the judgment of the commoner people is at fault;… often it happens that married people, who form the larger portion of the people, in approving married candidates, in effect approve themselves; and it does not occur to them that the mere fact that they prefer a married person to a virgin proves their inferiority to virgins. Jerome dared point out that even bishops choose from the ranks of the clergy not the best, but the cleverest, men … or, as though they were handing out positions in an earthly service, they give them to their kinsmen or relatives; or they listen to the dictates of money. And, worse than all, they promote the clergy who smear them with flattery.51

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Hugo grabbed for his cane and successfully rose from his knees as Anaïs officially introduced them. “This is my husband Rupert Pole. Hugo Guiler.” Instead of putting out a hand to shake Hugo’s, Rupert bellowed, “What’s he doing here? I thought we agreed all visitors would go through me!” “I was as surprised to see Hugo as you are,” Anaïs said calmly, and begged Hugo to leave the room. “You understand, Hugo, dear,” she said, “so I can have the same talk with Rupert.” Leaning heavily on his cane, a fragile old man, Hugo shut the hospital room door behind him. Anaïs said to Rupert, “Sit down please, darling. We need to talk.” The heavy metal chair screeched as Rupert pulled it to her bedside and sat. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Why is Hugo here? Does it have to do with all that estate-planning? That has got to stop, too!” She just watched him indulgently until he realized he was sounding like a bully. Abashed, he mellowed his tone and told her, “I have good news. We have a donation for the entire cost of UCLA acquiring your diaries.” Anaïs was overcome with relief. The money would help take care of Rupert and Hugo after she was gone! It would afford Hugo a full-time nurse when the time came and fund a literary trust to pay Rupert to keep her name alive. Ten years before, she’d re-written her Diary to cater to the times, a desperate gamble. It had paid off in a trifecta, with book royalties, fame, and now this bequest for her two men. “Rupert, you are going to have to look out for Hugo when I’m gone. You have to promise me.” “I promise, but we won’t talk about you being gone.” His anger had dispersed. It was a storm she had learned to let pass, knowing that when it did, his essential goodness would shine again. He gently lifted her bruised hand with the needle in it and kissed the damp palm. “You are going to get well.” “You and I both know that isn’t true.” “No, I don’t know that isn’t true!” “I believe you do know because otherwise you would not be eyeing my successor.” The veins reddened on his nose. “What do you mean? There could never be a successor to you.” “I mean your new girlfriend.” She was referring to the Japanese literature student who had come to pay respects to her and had caught Rupert’s eye. He overreacted and countered, “Anaïs, this is crazy! How much of that Darvon did they give you today?”

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  An allowance. Like a child again, she thought. She wanted Hugo to get his job back, but she didn’t look forward to playing the role of banker’s wife again. That battle-ax Betty Friedan, who’d written The Feminine Mystique, was right: society made women dependent on their husbands to survive. She felt the craziness that had driven her into the fountain rise again. She wanted to yell at Hugo that he thought he was her superior when really he was a fool who didn’t know what went on right under his nose, but she caught herself. She had to hold onto what was left of her frazzled nerves and shaky body for one more day and night, for the dinner with George Moore. That night she played her old role of Hugo’s enchanting wife to the hilt. She entranced Mr. and Mrs. Moore with her practiced Parisian stories about Antonin Artaud, Lawrence Durrell, and Henry Miller. She squeezed Hugo’s hand under the table to reassure him of the good impression they were making. When she and Hugo got back to the apartment, they were hopeful he’d get his old job back. She held it together until the following afternoon, when she broke down in Dr. Bogner’s office. Anaïs gasped for breath between sobs, “I can’t do it anymore! I’ve become my mother!” “How do you mean?” Bogner asked, looking up from her knitting with her good eye. “All I do is work to take care of other people. I’m dependent on them and angry at them like my mother.” Bogner nodded, a sign for Anaïs to continue. “If I’d put the same time and energy into making a living for myself, instead of trying to help the men in my life, I’d be … I’d be free. Instead Hugo wants to make me dependent on an allowance again!” “Perhaps it’s not too late for you to be self-supporting.” To Anaïs this was an outrageous idea. She was sixty-two years old. The only real job she’d ever had was as an artist’s model before she’d married Hugo. The short time she’d worked as a lay psychotherapist in New York was literally under Dr. Otto Rank in bed. She hadn’t finished high school and had no secretarial or cooking skills. “It is too late.” She sighed. Bogner remained as impassive as her glass eye. “If money were not a problem, what is it that you would want to do?” “That’s impossible to answer,” Anaïs said. “Money is the problem.” “Use your creativity,” Bogner urged calmly. “Pretend you had all the money you could possibly need. What would you do?” “I’d just go back to giving money to Hugo and Rupert to prove my supposed jobs, only I’d finally get a raise.”

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

  Yet not all the volunteers were devout; some were not even observant, although in Peshawar many would be influenced by such hard-line Islamists as Zawahiri, who had suffered arrest, torture, and imprisonment in Egypt for alleged involvement in the Sadat assassination. And so Afghanistan became a new Islamist hub. Young militants from East Asia and North Africa were sent to the front to increase their commitment, and the government of Saudi Arabia actually encouraged its own young to volunteer. 12 To understand the Saudi influence, one must reckon with what may seem a contradiction. On the one hand, after the Iranian Revolution, the kingdom had become one of America’s chief regional allies. On the other hand, it subscribed to an extremely reductive form of Islam, which had been developed in the eighteenth century by the Arabian reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92). Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had preached a return to the pristine Islam of the Prophet and repudiated such later developments as the Shiah, Sufism, Falsafah, and the jurisprudence ( fiqh ) on which all other Muslim ulema depended. He was particularly distressed by the popular veneration of holy men and their tombs, which he condemned as idolatry. Even so, Wahhabism was not inherently violent; indeed, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had refused to sanction the wars of his patron, Ibn Saud of Najd, because he was fighting simply for wealth and glory. 13 It was only after his retirement that Wahhabis became more aggressive, even to the point of destroying Imam Husain’s shrine in Karbala in 1802 as well as monuments in Arabia connected with Muhammad and his companions. At this time too, the sect insisted that Muslims who did not accept their doctrines were infidels (kufar ). 14 During the early nineteenth century, Wahhabis incorporated the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah into their canon, and takfir, the practice of declaring another Muslim an unbeliever, which Ibn Abd al-Wahhab himself had rejected, became central to their practice. 15 The oil embargo imposed by the Gulf States during the 1973 October War had sent the price soaring, and the kingdom now had all the petrodollars it needed to find practical ways of imposing Wahhabism on the entire ummah. 16 Deeply disconcerted by the success of the Shii revolution in Iran, which threatened their leadership of the Muslim world, the Saudis intensified their efforts to counter Iranian influence and replaced Iran as the chief ally of the United States in the region. The Saudi-based Muslim World League opened offices in every region inhabited by Muslims, and the Saudi ministry of religion printed and distributed translations of the Quran, Wahhabi doctrinal tracts, and the works of Ibn Taymiyyah, Qutb, and Maududi to Muslim communities in the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia, the United States, and Europe. In all these places, they funded the building of Saudi-style mosques, creating an international aesthetic that broke with local architectural traditions, and established madrassas that provided free education for the poor, with, of course, a Wahhabi curriculum.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Dr. Bigge thought the offence very grave: “the morals of a boy”, he declared, “were the most important part of his education: the matter must be probed to the bottom: he thought that on reflection I would not deny that I had seen a College boy that night in colors and in suspicious company.” I thereupon got up and freed my soul; the whole crew seemed to me mere hypocrites. “In the Doctor’s own House”, I said, “where I take evening preparation, I could give him a list of boys who are known as lovers, notorious even, and so long as this vice is winked at throughout the school, I shall be no party to persecuting anybody for yielding to legitimate and natural passion.” I had hardly got out the last words when Cotteril, the son of the Bishop of Edinburgh, got up and called upon me to free his House from any such odious and unbearable suspicion. I retorted immediately that there was a pair in his house known as “The Inseparables” and went on to state that my quarrel was with the whole boardinghouse system and not with individual masters who, I was fain to believe, did their best. The Vice-principal, Dr. Newton, was the only one who even recognized my good motives: he came away from the meeting with me and advised me to consult with his wife. After this I was practically boycotted by the masters: I had dared to say in public what Wolverton and others of them had admitted to me in private a dozen times. Mrs. Newton, the vice-principal’s wife, was one of the leaders of Brighton society: she was what the French call une maitresse femme, and a born leader in any society. She advised me to form girls’ classes in literature for the half-holidays each week; was good enough to send out the circulars and lend her drawing-room for my first lectures. In a week I had fifty pupils who paid me half a crown a lesson and I soon found myself drawing ten pounds a week in addition to my pay. I saved every penny and thus came in a year to monetary freedom. At every crisis in my life I have been helped by good friends who have aided me out of pure kindness at cost of time and trouble to themselves. Smith helped me in Lawrence and Mrs. Newton at Brighton out of bountiful human sympathy. Before this even I had got to know a man named Harold Hamilton, manager of the London & County Bank, I think, at Brighton. It amused him to see how quickly and regularly my balance grew: soon I confided my plans to him and my purpose: he was all sympathy. I lent him books and his daughter Ada was assiduous at all my lectures.