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 anger is a relational act of nonacceptance, then others will either yield to the angry person or resist. In the case of anger, much has to do with the question of legitimacy. In one study, Larissa Tiedens, Phoebe Ellsworth, and I asked U.S. business students to read a vignette in which a boss and an employee formed a sales team whose mission failed. It was not clear from the description whose fault this was, yet the students assumed that the boss was angry, and the employee felt either sadness or guilt. Emotions were simply derived from the power hierarchy: anger was associated with a higher rank, and sadness and guilt were associated with a lower rank. This tells us at minimum that the students in our sample were more exposed to angry bosses than to angry employees. Power or status is associated with anger. Even in some cultures that condemn anger-like emotions generally, a type of legitimate anger occurs that is reserved to individuals in a position of power or authority. Among the Ifaluk, there is a special word for the kind of anger that is exempt from condemnation: song (“justifiable anger”). Song is typically claimed by powerful members of Ifaluk society, and a response to rule or value violations. Similarly, in everyday Japanese life, anger is generally considered “immature,” but individuals with higher educational and professional status, who have the authority to take decisions, do report angry behaviors. When it is the privilege of the powerful, anger may take on a slightly different meaning as setting or guarding group norms, rather than responding to individual frustration. There is some indication that the powerful anger that is found in Japan is of a healthy kind, whereas anger in the United States (the kind associated with frustration) is unhealthy. In a series of well-designed studies, Larissa Tiedens showed that anger as a power move may pay off. Her research was sparked by the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton; she observed the president being ostensibly angry some times and sad at other times. Would he earn more credit being angry than being sad?, she wondered. In an experiment, Tiedens asked college students to watch short clippings of the impeachment hearings that she selected to show the president either angry or sad. Independent of their political affiliation, Tiedens’s respondents supported impeachment more when they had seen the sad rather than the angry Clinton. Apparently, Clinton’s move of nonacceptance and entitlement convinced the students.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  If all was settled at Jerusalem, what exactly was the issue at Antioch? Understand, by the way, all those new questions that would inevitably arise from this Christian Jewish mutation, from trying to live faithfully and participate actively in an eschatological climax that involved an era rather than an instant, a process occurring over human time (even if expected to be short) rather than a flash of divine light. Two missions, one led by Peter to convert Jews, and another led by Barnabas and Paul to convert pagans, sounded like a magnificent compromise at Jerusalem. But the Gentiles were not clearly separated geographically from the Jews, and, besides, all those first apostles were themselves Jews. How exactly would that work out in practice as distinct from theory and in diaspora cities as distinct from Jerusalem? What happened at Antioch was therefore inevitable. It was only a matter of time. Here is the Antioch problem. When a Christian Jewish assembly and a Christian gentile assembly existed in the same city and wanted to eat together in celebration of the Lord’s Supper, were kosher restrictions necessary for everyone or unnecessary for anyone? Should the Gentiles change and accept kosher or the Jews change and avoid kosher? The custom at Antioch was the latter option—kosher was not observed by anyone at joint meals. But James commanded them to change and follow the former option—kosher was to be observed by everyone at joint meals. All agreed to do so, except Paul, who accused Peter of hypocrisy (he uses the word twice). “I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” (2:14). Simon, by the way, was his ordinary name; Peter and Cephas were bilingual nicknames, the former in Greek and Latin, the latter in Hebrew and Aramaic. Like everyone else, Peter had first gone along with the no-kosher-for-anyone option at joint meals, but he now wanted Gentiles to submit to the kosher-for-everyone alternative. We do not have Peter’s reply, but undoubtedly he would have said something like this: “It is not hypocrisy, Paul. It is simple courtesy.” Paul admits to the Galatians that everyone, even Barnabas, opposed him at Antioch, and although he does not say so, we think he broke with them all and went west never to return except for one final, fatal visit to Jerusalem. But the question is, was his position the most advisable one at Antioch?

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

  the essence of the Minorite rule, that Christ was still living at the time the lance was thrust into his side, and that the rational soul has not the form of a body. Olivi’s memory was defended by Ubertino da Casale, and the council passed no sentence upon his person. In the bull Exivi de paradiso,123 issued 1813, and famous in the history of the Franciscan order, Clement seemed to take the side of the Spirituals. It forbade the order or any of its members to accept bequests, possess vineyards, sell products from their gardens, build fine churches, or go to law. It permitted only "the use of necessity," usus arctus or pauper, and nothing beyond. The Minorites were to wear no shoes, ride only in cases of necessity, fast from Nov. 1 until Christmas, as well as every Friday, and possess a single mantle with a hood and one without a hood. Clement ordered the new general, Alexander of Alessandra, to turn over to Olivi’s followers the convents of Narbonne, Carcassonne and Béziers, but also ordered the Inquisition to punish the Spirituals who refused submission. In spite of the papal decree, the controversy was still being carried on within the order with great heat, when John XXII. came to the throne. In the decretal Quorumdam exegit, and in the bull Sancta romana et universalis ecclesia, Dec. 30, 1317, John took a positive position against the Spirituals. A few weeks later, he condemned a formal list of their errors and abolished all the convents under Spiritual management. From this time on dates the application of the name Fraticelli124 to the Spirituals. They refused to submit, and took the position that even a pope had no right to modify the Rule of St. Francis. Michael of Cesena, the general of the order, defended them. Sixty-four of their number were summoned to Avignon. Twenty-five refused to yield, and passed into the hands of the Inquisition. Four were burnt as martyrs at Marseilles, May 7, 1318. Others fled to Sicily.125 The chief interest of the controversy was now shifted to the strictly theological question whether Christ and his Apostles observed complete poverty. This dispute threatened to rend the wing of the Conventuals itself. Michael of Cesena, Ockam, and others, took the position that Christ and his Apostles not only held no property as individuals, but held none in common. John, opposing this view, gave as arguments the gifts of the Magi, that Christ possessed clothes and bought food, the purse of Judas, and Paul’s labor for a living. In the bull Cum inter nonnullos, 1323, and other bulls, John declared it heresy to hold that Christ and the Apostles held no possessions. Those who resisted this interpretation were pronounced, 1324, rebels and heretics. John went farther, and gave back to the order the right of possessing goods in fee simple, a right which Innocent IV.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  One might argue that almost everybody writing poetry in English, and p er haps in most ot h e r European languages as well, has been i nfluenced by th e p oetics of this great pair. Many sh are the opposition to i ndustrial civilization; but not all by any means concur in the politics. Adorno and Horkheimer show early on how some of the key features of this modernism can be integrated into a stance on the left. The reactions and prolongation s differ greatly dependi n g on what they associate and dis sociate. There is a kind of response which associated the epiphanies of 'pure' auto-telic poet ry with reaction and anti-humanism, and which tries to recover a public poetry, one which could be part of a conversation between poet and the broader public of a nation or class. Thi s p oetry turns away from epiphany; it aims to reveal, or celebrate, or make m ore intense and vivid some dimension of public experience. Something of this impetus made Auden write: All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The Romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the l ie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky; There is no such thing as the Stat e And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no :Choice To the citize n or t he police; We must love one another or die. 74 Br echt in anothe r way was mov ed by this to a more aggressive rejection of 'p ur e p oetry '. What these writers have taken from modernism is a facet of its n eg ative movement, the p itiless stripping of Romantic illusion and confront i n g us with a hard-edged reality . Like the mod ernists t hey retrieve and release 48 4 • S U B TL ER LANG U A GE S a certain experience; but it is not so much the inner dimension of meanin g which is restored to vividness as common realities and hopes, pains an d fulfilments. In the same vein in 1935 Pablo Neruda called for an "impure poet ry", on e which was to be "ravaged by the labour of our hands as by an acid, saturated with sweat and smoke, a poetry that smells of urine and white lilies, a poetry on which every human activity, permitted or forbidden, has imprinted its mark". Later, when he joined the Communist p arty, he supplemented this with a ringing attack on "Gidean intellectualists, Rilkean obfuscators of lif e, specious existentialist jugglers, surrealist poppy flowers, bright only in y o ur graves, europeanizing modish carcas ses, pale maggots in the cheese of capitalism".

• From Between Us

  Andrew, a supervisor of an electrical department for the state government, was called in to solve a problem in some public building. Against protocol, a security guard in the building demanded that Andrew justify his intervention for a fire report. Andrew declined, but the security guard insisted, and asked for Andrew’s qualifications, which Andrew perceived as “overstepping his bounds.” I was very angry . . . that anybody . . . would even question my ability. . . . And . . . to me [he] would be a subordinate . . . and so that seemed to be the worst that he was kind of on a lower level than me questioning me. I think he was trying to maybe get ahead, thinking that would help him in his job. Andrew lashes out briefly, but then withdraws from the conversation. Bob, Andrew’s friend and colleague, steps in on Andrew’s behalf, and asks the guard for his ID. Andrew reports that, as a result, [The guard] ended up getting fired over it. . . . He ended up losing his job over it, . . . he was very aggressive, yeah. Like Jim before, Andrew attributes improper motives (“he was trying to maybe get ahead”) and norm-violating behavior (“he was very aggressive”) to the security guard. These attributions justify his anger, while also eschewing challenges to his self-esteem. Our U.S. respondents often indicated that they did not think much good of the people who had offended them, and understandably, they distanced themselves (as did Jim), or took stance against the offender (as did Andrew). On the Japanese side, anger looked very different. Remember that angry behavior is considered “immature” in Japan. The Japanese interviews referred to different situations, so a direct comparison of emotional episodes in the same circumstances is not possible. Yet, the gestalt of the Japanese “anger” episodes was really different. Emiko, a Japanese woman in her thirties, had been waiting at home for her sister to call and make final arrangements to go out for dinner with their father, but her sister did not call until the next morning. Emiko was clearly inconvenienced, and yes, offended: I thought she would be coming, and so I was stuck at the house and unable to make plans, but I did not hear from her all day . . . my father was coming to Tokyo, and the three of us had made a promise to eat out together. At the very least, she could have let us know if she was not coming but she did not. . . . I ended up going to the meeting place myself. If it had just been me waiting, that would have been bearable–I would have thought to myself “as usual”—but the promise included our father, so . . .

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

  He was given episcopal consecration and thus the three sees were joined in the hands of a man who was only 24. But Albrecht’s confirmation as archbishop was not secured without the payment of a high price. The price,10,000 ducats, was set by the authorities in Rome and did not originate with the German embassy, which had gone to prosecute the case. The proposition came from the Vatican itself and at the very moment the Lateran council was voting measures for the reform of the Church. It carried with it the promise of a papal indulgence for the archbishop’s territories. The elector Joachim expressed some scruples of conscience over the purchase, but it went through. Schulte exclaims that, if ever a benefice was sold for gold, this was true in the case of Albrecht.1332 The bull of indulgences was issued March 31,1516, and granted the young German prelate the right to dispose of pardons throughout the half part of Germany, the period being fixed at 8 years. The bull offered, "complete absolution—plenissimam indulgentiam — and remission of all sins," sins both of the living and the dead. A private paper, emanating from Leo and dated two weeks later, April 15, mentions the 10,000 ducats proposed by the Vatican as the price of Albrecht’s confirmation as having been already placed in Leo’s hands.1333 To enable him to pay the full amount of 30,000 ducats his ecclesiastical dignities had cost, Albrecht borrowed from the Fuggers and, to secure funds, he resorted to a two-years’ tax of two-fifths which he levied on the priests, the convents and other religious institutions of his dioceses. In 1517, "out of regard for his Holiness, the pope, and the salvation and comfort of his people," Joachim opened his domains to the indulgence-hawkers. It was his preaching in connection with this bull that won for Tetzel an undying notoriety. Oldecop, writing in 1516, of what he saw, said that people, in their eagerness to secure deliverance from the guilt and penalty of sin and to get their parents and friends out of purgatory, were putting money into the chest all day long. The description of Tetzel’s sale of indulgences and Luther’s protest are a part of the history of the Reformation. It remains, however, yet to be said, as belonging to the mediaeval period, that the grace of indulgences was popularly believed to extend to sins, not yet committed. Such a belief seems to have been encouraged by the pardon-preachers, although there is no documentary proof that any papal authorities made such a promise. In writing to the archbishop of Mainz, Oct. 31,1517, Luther had declared that it was announced by the indulgence-hawkers that no sin was too great to be covered by the indulgence, nay, not even the sin of violating the Virgin, if such a thing had been possible.

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

  18 no less than four thousand copies—an enormous number for those days—were published, and a new edition called for, besides reprints which soon appeared in Leipzig and Strassburg. The book is a most stirring appeal to the German nobles, who, through Hutten and Sickingen, had recently offered their armed assistance to Luther. He calls upon them to take the much-needed Reformation of the Church into their own hands; not, indeed, by force of arms, but by legal means, in the fear of God, and in reliance upon his strength. The bishops and clergy refused to do their duty; hence the laity must come to the front of the battle for the purity and liberty of the Church. Luther exposes without mercy the tyranny of the Pope, whose government, he says, "agrees with the government of the apostles as well as Lucifer with Christ, hell with heaven, night with day; and yet he calls himself Christ’s Vicar, and the Successor of Peter." The book is divided into three parts: — 1. In the first part, Luther pulls down what he calls the three walls of Jericho, which the papacy had erected in self-defense against any reformation; namely, the exclusion of the laity from all control, the exclusive claim to interpret the Scriptures, and the exclusive claim to call a Council. Under the first head, he brings out clearly and strongly, in opposition to priestcraft, the fundamental Protestant principle of the general priesthood of all baptized Christians. He attacks the distinction of two estates, one spiritual, consisting of Pope, bishops, priests, and monks; and one temporal, consisting of princes, lords, artificers, and peasants. There is only one body, under Christ the Head. All Christians belong to the spiritual estate. Baptism, gospel and faith,—these alone make spiritual and Christian people.245 We are consecrated priests by baptism; we are a royal priesthood, kings and priests before God (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 5:10). The only difference, then, between clergy and laity, is one of office and function, not of estate. Luther represents here the ministerial office as the creature of the congregation; while at a later period, warned by democratic excesses, and the unfitness of most of the congregations of that age for a popular form of government, he laid greater stress upon the importance of the ministry as an institution of Christ. This idea of the general priesthood necessarily led to the emancipation of the laity from priestly control, and their participation in the affairs of the Church, although this has been but very imperfectly carried out in Protestant state churches. It destroyed the distinction between higher (clerical and monastic), and lower morality; it gave sanctity to the natural relations, duties, and virtues; it elevated the family as equal in dignity to virginity; it promoted general intelligence, and sharpened the sense of individual responsibility to the Church.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  God knows I didn’t want to be in love. It was cliché—men and women and their social conformities to celebrate love. Engagement pictures made me want to vomit—especially when they were taken on railroad tracks. I always pictured Thomas the Train rolling over them, his smiley blue face beaded with their blood. I didn’t want to want those things. Love was good enough, without the three-layered almond/fondant wedding cake and the sparkly blood diamonds encased in white gold. Just love. And I loved Nick. Hard. Nick loved wedding cake. He told me so. He also told me that he’d like for us to have one someday. In that moment, my heart rate slowed, my eyes glazed and I saw my entire life flash before my eyes. It was pretty—because it was with Nick. But I hated it. It made me angry that he’d expect me to live that way. The way normal people lived. “I don’t want to get married,” I told him, trying to control my voice. We used to have this game we’d play. As soon as we’d see each other, we’d dialogue the physical description of what the other person looked like. It was a writer’s game. He’d always start with, button nose, limpid eyes, full lips, freckles. Now he was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “Well, what do you want to do then?” We were sitting on our knees in front of his coffee table, sipping warm sake and eating lo mein with our fingers. “I want to eat with you, and fuck and see things that are beautiful.” “Why can’t we do that after the wedding?” he asked. He licked each of his fingers and then mine, and leaned back against the couch. “Because I respect love too much to get married.” “That’s bitter.” I stared at him. Was he kidding? “I don’t think I’m bitter just because I don’t want the same things you want.” “We can come to a compromise. Be like Persephone and Hades,” he said. I laughed. Too much sake. “You’re not brooding enough to be Hades, and unlike Persephone, I don’t have a mother.” My mouth clamped shut and I started sweating. Nick’s head immediately tilted to the right. I wiped my mouth with a napkin and stood up, grabbing the containers of food and carrying them to the kitchen. He followed me in there. I wanted to kick him off my heels. Nick’s mother was still married to his father. Thirty-five years. And from what I’d seen they were happy, uncomplicated years. Nick was so well balanced it was ridiculous. “Is she dead?” He had to ask twice. “To me.” “Where is she?” “Off being selfish somewhere.” “Aha,” he said. “Do you want dessert?”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Christmas comes. Isaac is very quiet. But I was wrong; we don’t eat beans. He cooks us a feast over our little makeshift stove in the attic: canned corn, spam, green beans and, to top it all off, a can of pumpkin pie filling. For breakfast. For a moment, we are happy. Then Isaac looks at me and says, “When I first opened my eyes and saw you standing over me, I felt like I took my first breath in three years.” I grind my teeth. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! “We only knew each other for three months before this,” I say. “You don’t know me.” But, even as I say it, I know it’s not true. “You were just my doctor…” He’s wearing the expression of someone being slapped over and over again. I slap him once more to put an end to this. “You took things too far.” He walks out before I can say any more. I bury my face. “Fuck you, Isaac,” I say into my pillow. At noon the lights turn on. Isaac’s head appears through the trapdoor a minute later. I wonder where he’s been. My bet is on the carousel room. He takes one look at my face and says, “You knew.” I knew. “I suspected.” He looks incredulous. “That the power would come back?” “That something would happen,” I correct him. I knew that the power would come back. He disappears again, and I hear his steps pounding down the stairs. Clomp, clomp, clomp. I count them until he reaches the bottom. Then I hear the front door hit the wall as he swings it wide. I flinch at all the cold air he’s letting in, then remember that the power is back. HEAT! LIGHT! A WORKING TOILET! I feel impassive. This is a game. The zookeeper gave us light. As a gift. On Christmas Day. It’s symbolic. He thinks light came into my life on Christmas Day when I met Isaac. “You’re just a badly written character,” I say out loud. “I’ll kill you off, my darling.” When Isaac comes back his face is ashen. “The zookeper was here,” he says. I get chills. They skitter up my legs and arms like little spiders. “How do you know?” He holds out his hand. “We have to go downstairs.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I moan. It’s an ugly, guttural sound. “Why did I forget all that?” I’m still treating her like she’s my shrink; asking her questions like she’s sane enough to know the answers. She’s your zookeeper. She tried to kill you. “It happens. We block out things that thrrreaten to break us. It’s the brain’s best defense mechanism.” I’m struggling for air. “This was all an experiment to you. You took advantage of your position. Of what I told you.” All my gusto is gone. I just need answers so I can get out of here. Get out of here and go where? Home, I tell myself. Whatever that is. “Do you remember what you asked me in our last session?” I stare at her blank faced. “You asked, ‘If there were a God, why would he let these terrible things happen to people?’” I remember. “With free will comes bad decisions; decisions to drink and drive and kill someone’s child. Decisions to murder. Decisions to choose whom we love, whom we spend our life with. If God decided to never let anything bad happen to people, he would have to take away their free will. He would become the dictator and they would be his puppets.” “Why are you talking about God? I want to talk about what you did to me!” And then I know. Saphira locking me in the house with Isaac, the man she believed was my safety and salvation, controlling the medicine, the food, what we saw, how we saw it—it was all her experimenting with free will. She became God. She’d said something once in one of our sessions: Picture yourself standing on a cliff where you not only fear falling, but dread the possibility of throwing yourself off. Nothing is holding you back, and you experience freedom. The cliff! Why hadn’t I seen it? “Do you know how many people there are just like you? I heard it every day; pain, sadness, regret. You wanted a second chance. So I gave it to you. I gave you not the person you wanted, but the person you needed.” I don’t know what to say. My ten minutes are almost over. “Don’t make out like you did this for me. You’re sick. You’re—” “You are sick, my dear,” she interrupts. “You were self destructing. Ready to die. I just gave you some perspective. Helped you to see the truth.” “What’s the truth?” “Isaac is your truth. You were too blinded by your past to see that.” I’m breathless. My mouth hangs open as I stare at her. “Isaac has a wife. He has a baby. You act like you care so much, but you did this to him, too. Made him suffer for no reason. He almost died!”

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Therefore, when he imposes punishments on them, it is not out of hatred of the people, but he does so simply out of concern for them.” 10 He should be impartial and unselfish, punishing friends and family if necessary and rewarding his enemies. A poem attributed to Han Fei gave the ruler’s wu wei almost mystical significance: By doing without knowledge, he possesses clear-sightedness, By doing without worthiness, he gets results, By doing without courage, he achieves strength. 11 The law was not supposed to be a method of punishment and suppression. It was an education that would accustom king and subjects to behave in a different way. Once this reformation was complete, there would be no further need for punishments; everybody would act in accordance with the best interests of the state. Yet for all his good intentions, Han Fei also suffered a violent end; he was slandered and imprisoned, and in 233, rather than submit to execution, accepted the option of committing suicide. Before he had become a Legalist, Han Fei had studied under the most distinguished Confucian philosopher of his time and probably acquired much of his idealism from his teacher. Xunzi (c. 340–245), a passionate, poetic, yet rigorously rational thinker, managed to absorb insights of other philosophers into his own Confucian perspective and created a powerful synthesis. 12 He did not think that Mohists, Yangists, and Legalists were wrong; they simply stressed only one side of a complex argument, and it was possible to learn something from them all. Xunzi was also profoundly influenced by Daoist ideas. His book was more cogently argued and organized than any other text of Axial Age China, yet at times his prose modulated easily into poetry and his logic into mystical insight. Xunzi was appalled by the new pragmatism, which he believed had led to a decline in moral standards. Everywhere he went he saw “scheming and plotting,” and the selfish pursuit of wealth, power, and luxury. 13 Because princes refused to allow themselves to be restrained by the li, they pursued their own ambitions ruthlessly, and violence and warfare became endemic. Xunzi did not accept the realism of the Legalists; he still believed that a compassionate king was the only person who could restore peace and order, but he was prepared to consider any system that might bring relief, even if it departed from traditional Confucian principles. Xunzi was an activist; he longed for a government post, but was no more successful than Confucius and Mencius. He was three times appointed master of the Jixia Academy, but had to leave Qi when its tyrannical King Min expelled the scholars from his kingdom. In 255, he moved to Chu, where the prime minister made him a magistrate, but he lost his post in 238 when his patron was assassinated.

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

  Those Christians who remained loyal to the Church but could see how the intrinsic violence of Christendom violated the gospel teaching were inevitably conflicted. Unable to admit that the “heretics” had a point, yet furious with them for drawing attention to their dilemma, they projected these sentiments outward, in forms monstrous and inhuman. There were paranoid fantasies of a highly organized, clandestine Catharist Church determined to destroy the human race and restore Satan’s kingdom.102 We shall see that similar conspiracy fears would later erupt in other societies that were going through a traumatic modernization process and would also result in violence. The Council of Rheims (1157) described the Cathars “hiding among the poor and under the veil of religion … moving from place to place and undermining the faith of simple people.”103 Soon Jews would be said to belong to a similar international conspiracy.104 Even a fair-minded man like Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, who claimed to be reaching out to the Muslim world with love rather than force, described Islam as a “heresy and diabolical sect” addicted to “bestial cruelty.”105 At the outset of the Second Crusade he wrote to King Louis VII of France that he hoped he would kill as many Muslims as Moses and Joshua had killed Amorites and Canaanites.106 During this period Satan, often pictured as a monstrous human being with horns and a tail, became a far more menacing figure in Western Christianity than in either Judaism or Islam. As they made their stressful transition from a political backwater to a major world power, Europeans were terrified of an unseen “common enemy,” representing what they could not accept in themselves and associated with absolute evil.107 [image file=image_rsrcDZA.jpg] Innocent III had achieved a virtual papal monarchy in Europe, but no other pope would match his power. Secular rulers, such as Louis VII of France (1137–80), Henry II of England (r. 1154–89), and Frederick II all challenged this papal supremacy. They had built powerful kingdoms with government institutions that could intrude more than ever before into the lives of ordinary people, so they were all zealous persecutors of “heretics” who threatened the social order.108 They were not “secularists” in our sense; they still regarded royal power as sacred and war as holy, but they had developed a Christian theology of war that was quite different from that of the official church. Again, we find it impossible to pinpoint a single, essentialist “Christian” attitude to war, fighting, and violence. The Christian template could be used to very different effect by different groups.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Why would you do that?” I cry. That was so cruel. I grab the only thing I see—a dishtowel—and I hold it against the cut that we made together. He has blood running down his chest, I have it running down my arm. It’s morbid and confusing. When I look up for his answer he is looking at me intently. “What did you feel?” he asks. I shake my head. I don’t know what he’s asking me. Does he need stitches? There must be a needle somewhere around here … thread. “What did you feel when that happened?” He’s trying to catch my eyes, but I can’t take my eyes from his blood. I don’t want the life to bleed out of Isaac. “You need stitches,” I say. “At least two…” “Senna, what did you feel?” It takes me a minute to focus. He really wants me to answer that? I open and close my mouth. “Hurt. I don’t want you to hurt. Why would you do that?” I am so angry. Confused. “Because that’s what I feel when you hurt yourself.” I drop the dishtowel. Nothing dramatic—it’s just become too heavy to hold along with my understanding. I look down at where it lies between my feet. There is a bright red stain on one side of it. Isaac bends to pick it up. He also picks up the knife and places it back in my hand. Grabbing my wrist, he leads me back to the table and firmly plants me in front of it. “Write,” he says, gesturing to the wood. “What?” He grabs the hand that’s holding the knife. I try to pull away again, but his eyes still me. “Trust me.” I stop fighting. He presses the tip into the wood this time. Carves a straight line. “Write here,” he says. I know what he’s telling me, but it’s not the same. “I don’t write on my body. I cut it.” “You write your pain on your skin. With a knife. Straight lines, deep lines, jagged lines. It’s just a different kind of word.” I get it. All at once. I feel grief for everything that I am. Landscape is playing in the background, a strange soundtrack, a constant soundtrack.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  The reticence or condemnation of the establishment would thus ofte n d rive the c ommitted abo l itionist to rebellion. In fact, something of th e s ame dialec tic was at work within the churche s a s ha d originally help e d to generate the unbelieving Enlightenment. From one Calvinist pe rsp ective, too great an identification with the cause could lead to the Papist error of seeking salvation in works. From the perspective of a committed abolitionist, anything less than full commitment was backslidin g. The two views coul d bar el y coexist. But to the extent that the hyper Augustinian view comes to be accepted as the defi n ition of Christian fait h, that it comes to be generally accepted that wholesale dedication to secular r eform sits uneasil y with this faith, to that degree those committed to the cause may feel forced outsid e orthodox Christianity by the very force of th at commitment. The paradox is that a religio u s impulse an d vision ma y sometimes drive people out of religious b elief. Something of these pressures ca n be seen in the care e r o f t he America n aboliti onist minister Henry C l a rke Wright. " Christ is the Prince of mor al Our Victorian Contemporaries · 4oz r eformers . .. as well as the Prince of Peace, , , he affir m ed. But he was o utraged b y the establishment's complicity in slavery and i ts persecution of William Lloyd Gar ri so n , an d he bega n t o evolve towards more heterodox vi ews. He wrote a tract entitled: "The Bible, if Opposed to Self-Evident Truth, is Self-Evident Falsehood'\ A nd he declared, " In spirit and in practice, Voltaire was nearer the king do m of heaven than the slaveholding clergy of America". 12 We can see here a slide towards a mutually supportive opposition, in w nich hyper-Augustinia n Christianity stre ngth en s the moral credentials of u �1belief; and this in turn deepens the suspicions of hyper- A ugustinian believers about secular reform. Something like this polarization is evident in t he French Enlightenment. And the slide towards it has been visible among s ocially committed Christians since-witness, for example, the China mis sionaries in our own day who ended up Communists. Something very i mportant ha pp ened in the nineteenth century when these reformers and others stepped outside the boundaries of belief. But it would be a mistake to think of this as part of a smooth, continuing, unidirectional move towards 's ecularization'.13 The initial impulse underlying reform was a d eeply religious one, and something of this remains.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The police come next. All official looking. I tell them I want to speak to Saphira before I speak to them. They want my statement; they’re clicking the little buttons on the ends of their pens and pushing tape recorders at me, but I stare at them tight lipped until I can speak to Saphira. “You can speak to her when you’re well enough to come in to the station,” they tell me. A chill runs through my body. They have her. Here. “That’s when I’ll speak to you, then,” I tell them. A day before I am discharged I am visited by two doctors; one is an oncologist and the other an orthopedic surgeon. The ortho guy holds up the x-rays they took of my leg. “The bone didn’t heal straight, which is why you have pain when you put too much pressure on it. I’ve scheduled you for—” “No,” I tell him. He brings his eyes to my face. “No?” “I’m not interested in fixing it. I’ll leave it how it is.” I open the magazine on my lap to signal that the conversation is over. “Ms. Richards, with all due respect, the irregular fusion of your bone that was caused by the accident will be something that pains you for the rest of your life. You will want to have the surgeries needed to repair it.” I close my magazine. “I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they’ve lived through.” “That’s a very unique perspective,” he says. “But not practical.” I fling the magazine across the room. It flies with surprising force and hits the door with a healthy thud. Then I pull down my hospital gown—all the way—until the scars on my chest are exposed. He looks like he might pass out. “I like my scars,” I say. “I earned them. Now, get out.” As soon as the door shuts behind him, I scream. The nurses come rushing in, but I throw my water jug at them. At the rate I’m going they’re going to put me in the psych ward. “Get out!” I scream at them. “Stop telling me how to live my life!” I am much nicer to the oncologist. She got my file from the hospital in Seattle and ran the yearly tests that I’d missed during my imprisonment. When she gives me the results she sits on the edge of my bed. It reminds me so much of Isaac that I feel overwhelmed. When she is finished she tells me that I am built to fight; emotionally and physically. I actually smile.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  We see this not o nly in those e nam oured o f reductiv e ex p l a nations but in another way in classical utilitaria nism. T he aim of this philosophy was precisely to reje ct all qualitative d ist inct ion s an d to co nstrue Inescapable Frameworks • 2.3 al l hum an g oals a s on the same footin g , susceptible theref or e of common q u a ntifi cation and calculation accordin g to some common 'curren cy', My th e sis here is that this idea is de eply m istaken. But as I said above, it is m o tiva t ed itself b y moral reasons, and these reasons form an es se ntial part of th e p ic ture of the framewo rk s people live by in our day. This has to do with what I called in section r.3 the 'affirm at i on of or din ar y life'. The notion th at the life of production and r e production, of wo rk a nd the family, is the main locus of the g ood life flies in the face of what w er e o ri g inall y the dominant distinctions of our civilization. For both the w a rr io r ethic and the Platonic, ordinary life in this sense is part of th e l o we r range, part of what contrasts with the incomparably higher. The affirmation of ordinary life therefore involves a polemical stance towards th es e traditional views and their implied elitism. This was true of the Reformation theolo g ies, w hich are the ma in source o f the drive to this affirmation in modern times. It is this polemical stance, carr ied over and transposed in secular g ui se, which p owers the reductive views l i ke utilitarianism which want to denounce all qualitative distinctions. They are all accused, ju st as the honour ethic or the monastic ethic of supererogation was earlier, of wrongly and perversely downgrading ordinary life, of failin g to see that our destiny lies here in production and reproduction and not in some a lle g ed higher sphere, of bein g blind to the dignity and worth of ordinary human desire and fulfilment. In this , naturalism and utilitarianism touch a strong nerve of modern sensibility, and this explains some of the ir persuasive force. My claim is here that they are nevertheless deeply c onfused.

• From Between Us

  The sister apologized afterwards, but Emiko was not sure what it was worth, because this was her sibling’s usual disregard. Yet, Emiko decided it was not worth complaining about too much: she knew that she and her sister had different perspectives. Even if I had told her: “I was waiting for you, and I was not able to plan my day without knowing what you were up to,” she would have no doubt replied: “Why didn’t you just go without waiting for me?” But the reason I stayed home was so that she could reach me, since neither of us have a cell phone and it’s difficult to contact each other, but . . . (laugh) . . . (silence). Emiko’s response was not to take distance and vilify her sister, as many American respondents reported, but rather to come up with a solution: I thought I want my sister to have a cell phone, she answered when asked what she had felt like doing. The majority of the Japanese respondents analyzed the anger target’s behavior, without vilifying them. They tried to understand the behavior of the person who had offended them, if not explain it away. Even Emiko’s reflections that it was in her sister’s nature to be lax can be understood as an attempt to explain or analyze the behavior. Our Japanese respondents sometimes went as far as to justify the behavior of their target of anger: Emiko pondered that it was hard for her sister to call, because she did not have a cell phone. This did not change her being offended by the behavior, but it did put it in perspective. Most Japanese respondents also reported “doing nothing at all,” because any behavior would have been useless or counterproductive: Emiko thought her sister would not have been responsive to her complaints. A pattern among the Japanese respondents emerged: they tried to adjust, and coped with the situation as best as they could. Emiko talked to her sister, but saw the solution in a cell phone. Hiroto, the Japanese man whom I introduced in chapter 2, similarly tried to understand the motives of the fellow committee member who criticized him. Hiroto felt “offended and annoyed” that this woman had started to annex his tasks, he thought she was wrong, he took some distance, but also sought to be cooperative in the committee. And Chiemi, the student whose grandparents criticized her for being late so often, even though she was usually home early, also focused on the relationship. She may have wanted to have more “fun until late at night,” but she smiled away their criticism and made an effort to come home early after this exchange with her grandparents.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  In his view, Haggis’s emotional state on the Tone Scale at that moment was a 1.1, Covertly Hostile. By adopting a tone just above it—Anger—he hoped to blast Haggis out of the psychic place where he seemed to be lodged. Isham made what he calls an intellectual decision to be angry. “Paul, I’m pissed off,” he told Haggis. “There are better ways to do this. If you have a complaint, there’s a complaint line.” Anyone who genuinely wanted to change Scientology should stay within the organization, Isham argued, not quit. All of his friends believed that if he wanted to change Scientology, he should do it from within. They wanted him to recant and return to the fold or else withdraw his letter and walk away without making a fuss. Haggis listened patiently. A fundamental tenet of Scientology is that differing points of view must be fully heard and acknowledged. But when his friends finished, they were still red-faced and angry. Haggis suggested that as good Scientologists, they should at least examine the evidence. He referred them to the St. Petersburg Times articles that had so shaken him, and to certain websites written by former members. He explained that his quarrel was with the management and the culture of the church, not with Scientology itself. By copying them on his resignation letter, he had hoped that they would be as horrified as he by the practices that were going on in the name of Scientology. Instead, he realized, they were mainly appalled by his actions in calling the management of the church to account. Haggis’s friends came away from the meeting with mixed feelings— “no clearer than when we went in,” Archer felt. What wasn’t said in this meeting was that this would be the last time any of them would ever speak to Haggis. Isham did consider Haggis’s plea to look at the websites or the articles in the St. Petersburg Times, but he decided “it was like reading Mein Kampf if you wanted to know something about the Jewish religion.” After that first meeting with friends on his back porch, Haggis had several lengthy encounters with Tommy Davis and other representatives of the church. They showed up at his office in Santa Monica—a low- slung brick building on Broadway, covered in graffiti, like a gang headquarters. The officials brought thick files to discredit people they heard or assumed he had been talking to. This was August 2009; shooting for The Next Three Days in Pittsburgh was going to start within days, and the office desperately needed Haggis’s attention.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  30 Even if we think that Holbach and Diderot are unjust to La Mettrie, the fact remains that they are on to a live issue, and one that fo r a variety of reasons was more salient in Franc e than in England. In the Anglo-Saxon countries generally, the force of the ethic of ordinary life and benevolence was such, not only among intellectuals but in the whole society, that it c arr ied over from theistic or deist i c to unbelieving forms almost without interruption. B ut Fr a n ce w en t throu g h a quite differ e nt evolu t ion. The seventeenth century saw a strong t e nsion between ethical outlooks which drew on anci ent philosophy, pr inci pa lly Stoicism and Epicureanism, on one hand , and a hyper-Augustinian Jansenism on the other. 31 In the latter part of his re ign, Louis XIV favoured the increasing domination of a clerical, triump ha list Catholicism and a stern moralism. After h is death, aristocratic society of th e Regency period swung to th e opposite extreme of frivolity and moral la xit y . In these condi t ions, Deism developed its own forms in France, evolving much more clandes t inely , passionately anti-clerical and anti-Catholic, a n d often i nspired by the work of Spinoza. One of the crucial developments which p r ovided the background for th e Encyclopaedists in France was the merging of t his French D eism with the English varieties. We might speak of the importation of English Deism int o France and the corresponding transformation of French thought. In a se n se, Radical Enlightenment · 3 3 5 t h e two intellectual culture s grew together in the eighteenth century , came d o se to fusion, and the result was what we know as the Enlightenment, a b i li ngual product of the two societies (or more a cc urately England, Scotland, F ra nce, and America ) . In France, Voltaire was the major architect of this fusion, principally t h r ough his Lettres philosophiques of 1734, though others also played a part: M ontesquieu, for instance, in his prai s e of English politics. With the fusion, th e themes of English Deism become c urrent in France as well. The Abbe de S aint-Pierre coins the term 'bienfa isance', 32 which is then taken up by Volt a ire and others and occupies a central place in the outlook of the p h ilosophes. But important differences of emphasis naturally remain. In France, the struggle against religion, in paticular Catholic Christianity, takes on over whelming importance, at times threatening to crowd out other crucial asp ir ations. It was essential to show its falseness, its misanthropy, its destructiveness.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  As we see in the epics of Homer, for a Greek aristocrat of the eighth century, public speaking was as important as military prowess.58 In the Mycenaean period, the king had been simply primus inter pares, and had to listen to the advice of the lords. Discussion of public policy continued in the polis, and because the farmers took part in government, they also had to develop debating skills. Everybody was forced, in however rudimentary a way, to think about abstract principles of justice and morality, as they argued about practical problems. The farmers were starting to become more like the nobility; an important characteristic of the polis was that the whole citizenry would gradually take over the old aristocratic ethos.59 Debate was an agon, a contest between the various speakers, in which the person who argued best was the victor. The Greeks retained the ancient Indo-European passion for competition that some of the Vedic Indians were beginning to discard. The agon was a law of life, and paradoxically, the nobility achieved a sense of solidarity by competing with one another.60 Now that the entire polis was becoming an aristocratic, warrior society, farmers were beginning to acquire this agonistic spirit too. Homer shows that the Greek warlords were driven to excel, even at the expense of others. There was no esprit de corps, because each lord strove to fulfill his own personal destiny. Everybody was expected to be remarkable, and that meant everybody was a rival in the battle for singularity that informed every activity. Instead of self-surrender, therefore, there was fierce egotism in the polis. There was also an inherent aggression. The creation of the poleis had often been violent. The establishment of a community that could resist its neighbors and rivals had not always been peaceful. Village communities had often been forced to join a polis against their will. Synoeicism (“unification”) had meant uprooting, resistance, and a good deal of misery—a birth agony reflected in many of the founding myths of the poleis.61 The city had drawn people together, but had all too often achieved this violently. Each polis also had to compete constantly with the other poleis for power and wealth.