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

  90 ​struck by the fate of another Clinton: Victoria L. Brescoll and Eric Luis Uhlmann, “Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead?,” Psychological Science 19, no. 3 (2008): 268–75. The quote is from Maureen Dowd, “Who’s Hormonal? Hillary or Dick?,” New York Times, February 8, 2006, as cited on Brescoll and Uhlmann, “Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead?,” 2008, p. 268. 90 ​there is an emotional glass ceiling: Among female job applicants, those who did not express any emotion, rather than being either sad or angry, were perceived to be most effective leaders. Angry men were perceived effective, as were neutral-looking men (Brescoll and Uhlmann, “Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead?”). 90 ​Davin Phoenix makes this point precisely: Davin Phoenix, “Anger Benefits Some Americans Much More than Others,” New York Times, June 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/opinion/george-floyd-protests-anger.html?referringSource=articleShare. 91 ​anger among the Kaluli . . . is a power move: Edward L. Schieffelin, “Anger and Shame in the Tropical Forest: On Affect as a Cultural System in Papua New Guinea,” Ethos 11, no. 3 (1983): 181–91. The quote appears on p. 183. It is not clear if the anger dynamics of Kaluli women are the same as those of men. 91 ​in so-called honor cultures: There are honor cultures around the world, and anger has been described as playing the role of claiming or reclaiming honor in the ones I know. There is quite a bit of anthropological work on honor cultures in Mediterranean regions (most notably Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986]; J. G. Peristiany, Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974]). 91 ​claim to precedence: Ayse K. Uskul et al., “Honor Bound: The Cultural Construction of Honor in Turkey and the Northern United States,” Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology 43, no. 7 (2012): 1131–51; Angela K.-Y. Leung and Dov Cohen, “Within- and between-Culture Variation: Individual Differences and the Cultural Logics of Honor, Face, and Dignity Cultures,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100, no. 3 (2011): 507–26. 91 ​honor in the southern United States: Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996); quote appears on p. 5; The original “asshole” experiment was reported also in D. Cohen et al., “Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An ‘Experimental Ethnography,’ ” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70, no. 5 (1996): 945–60. 92 ​separating children . . . at the Mexican border: The family separation policy was introduced under U.S. President Donald Trump’s tough immigration policy and adopted across the U.S.-Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018. Under the policy, more than four thousand children were separated from their parents, some of whom never saw each other again (“Immigration Policy of Donald Trump,” Wikipedia, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policy_of_Donald_Trump).

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  YOU CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT A PERSON FROM SEEING them in the water. Some people freak out and spaz their way around like giant insects, others slide in like seals, turn over, dive down, effortlessly. Some people kind of tread water with big goofy smiles, others look slightly broken-armed and broken-legged or as if they are in some kind of serious pain. I swam, once, with Ken Kesey. In a man-made reservoir up near Fall Creek. Puffy with drink, his bulk rounded and bulged around his former reputation. It was night swimming. Five people, I think. Totally, completely, unapologetically, rocket shot high. The moon kept coming in and out of focus as the clouds moved around. And the water was warm yet, so it must have been late summer, but in my mind it has the crisp clarity of fall for some reason. If it had been fall we would have frozen our tits off. So sometime in late summer less than a decade before he died, we entered the waters. Man-made reservoirs smell like dirt and concrete mixed with algae. I dove down into the black and opened my eyes. Looking into lake water at night is like looking into deep space while drunk. Black, and blurry. I resurfaced and strong-armed into a glide, went down, came up again, then took a look back, and saw his unmistakable head and burled broad shoulders. “Goddamn girl, what are you, some kind of mermaid?” he said. Spitting a stream of water. Yeah. In the black reservoir water we swam around each other looking at the sky, treading water, floating on our backs and letting our feet break the surface. Sometimes Kesey’s belly rose up like an island. We shot the shit, mostly he told stories … That’s a bald faced lie. Just now I made it sound like we casually shot the shit out there, but really my brain was as numb as a wad of cotton and I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say, so I just let him talk and I don’t even remember what he said because my head was expanding and contracting like an idiot’s. And he wasn’t really in the water with me. He was on the shore. But then he must have said something from somewhere that penetrated, because I opened my mouth, and it was nothing nothing nothing words until it wasn’t nothing anymore, and I was listing all the horrible things people had said to me since my baby died. Things like: “You know, it’s probably better that she died before you got to know her.” Or: “ Well what you really want in your 20s is the freedom to party.” Or my personal favorite, from my father’s sister, fascist catholic: “The saddest part is that she’ll go to hell, isn’t it, since she wasn’t baptized.”

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  In my story, Caddy is in the present. She lives next door to a tard neighbor boyman. Because she is sexually insatiable, and because he both scares her with his too white skin and his too big for his body head and his giant pants bulge and the sounds that come out of him instead of language and his pure physical brute force, she goes over to his house one day and takes her clothes off in front of him. He bellows that Benjy bellow. Then he attacks her and fucks her and nearly crushes her. She loves it. She laughs until she cries and an ambulance comes. Trite. So after fantasizing about the dark alley and stomping around and cursing all things Chang Rae Lee that day, I decided to get a Ph.D. Fuck all y’all “writers.” Woo Hoo. I took a break from creative writing workshops - though I have to tell you - I positively HAUNTED the halls of the creative writing department. I don’t know why. I’d just find myself there, looking at bulletin boards, seeing what readings were coming up, grabbing random fliers from the office nerds. Twice I walked by a gorgeous tall guy with a ponytail who looked seriously like Marlon Brando but I didn’t talk to him. Writing student. Sometimes the choices we make come from jealous lame petty places. But they are as real as it gets. I entered the Ph.D. program. I went on to gloriously immerse myself in Derrida and Lacan and Kristeva and Foucault. In Homi K. Bhabha and Ed Said and Gayatri bad ass Chakravorty Spivak. In Dickinson and Whitman and Plath and Sexton and Adrienne you want some of this Rich and Ai and Eliot and PoundBeckettStoppardDurasFaulknerWoolfJoyce (though he kinda always made me want to piss on his grave) SyngeCortazarBorgesMarquezClariceL’InspecteurHenryMillerAnaissexatiousNinDerekWalcottBertoltBrechtPynchonSilko WintersonDjunaBarnesOscarWildeGertrudethemanSteinFlannerymotherfuckingO’ConnorRichardWrightBaldwinToniMorrisonRayCarverJohnCheeverMaxineHongKingstonSapphireDennisCooperKathyyoumakemefeellikemyskinisbeingsheeredoffAcker - cascades of authors kicking Chang Rae Lee’s scrawny little ass. Take that. Yeah. Up until he won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 1995 and it was his book I was assigned to read. I can’t tell you how great that felt. But what nagged at me no matter how far into the literary intellectual pool I ventured, no matter how well I swam its waters, was the story I had yet to write. Itching my fingers like fire. Two terms later, I tried again. Graduate fiction writing workshop. This time the story I brought in wasn’t about voiceless women characters from literary history. This time the story was about my life. About fathers and swimming and fucking and dead babies and drowning. Written entirely in random fragments - how I understood my entire life. In the language - image and fragment and non-linear lyric passages - that seemed most precise. The story I brought in was called “The Chronology of Water.” Something was coming out of my hands. Something about desire and language. Chang Rae? Sorry I thought those things. Thanks for pissing me off all those years ago. Beautiful random nemesis. Love Grenade II

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Protestant schools flourished in south German cities as well as in the north. Then, in 1573, the Archduke Charles of Austria founded a Jesuit school. Freedom of religion was granted by the Diet of Bruck in 1578; but three years later the duke expelled evangelical pastors and forbade Graz citizens to attend the Protestant city school. The old duke died in 1590, and Protestantism again flourished during his son’s minority. When he attained his majority, however, the new Jesuit-trained duke announced: ‘I would rather rule a country ruined than a country damned’, and set about extirpating Protestantism by force. In 1598 he expelled all Protestant pastors and schoolmasters, and the next year he closed non-Catholic churches. The process was completed a generation later, in 1628, when 800 leading Protestant families were compelled to leave the country. The same forces were at work in Bavaria and, more spectacularly, in liberal Poland. There, Stephen Batory, elected king in 1574 on a platform of toleration, had allowed the Jesuits in as part of his policy of protecting both sides to the dispute. There were 360 in Poland by the time his successor, Sigismund III, a vehement Catholic, was elected in 1587. Thereafter, Catholics alone were appointed to office, and Catholic nobles were encouraged to evict Protestants from their estates; the courts ruled that Protestants might not use parish churches, and they were driven into the town halls; then, in 1607, the Protestant nobles were provoked into revolt, and its suppression marked the end of reform. As the papal nuncio reported: ‘A short time ago, it might have been feared that heresy would entirely supersede Catholicism in Poland. Now Catholicism is bearing heresy to its grave.’ The Jesuits were instrumental in turning the tide in Austria, Bavaria, in the prince- bishoprics of the Rhineland, and in Poland. Their city schools had a marked success in deflecting the bourgeoisie from reform to orthodoxy. But of course they worked chiefly through powerful individuals. Their last great success came in the 1680s, when Louis XIV’s Jesuit confessor, Le Tellier, finally persuaded the monarch to smash the Edict of Nantes and (it was said) actually drafted the revocation himself. But this influence was not exerted on the plane of morals and piety. In the confessional, the Jesuits and their powerful penitents had a lawyer-client relationship. The reason why they were popular confessors, especially of the great, was that they tended to identify good Christian behaviour with mere prudence, a kind of enlightened realpolitik redeemed only by religious intention: as Escobar, one of their moral theologians put it, ‘Purity of intention may be justification for acts contrary to the moral code and human law.’ They adopted the role of defence-advocate, trying to

• From The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide (2003)

  Rather than just go with the flow, I suggest to couples that once they recognize that they’re headed downhill, they stop and agree to take a time-out. They can separate if they wish, take a walk, clear their heads—do whatever is necessary to prevent further escalation. Then, if they desire, they can resume their conversation. The lengths of their breaks should be predetermined. I also tell couples that when one spouse needs a time-out, the other spouse must honor it. One of the reasons people are hesitant to break is that they fear that their spouses will not be willing to resume the conversation. This isn’t fair. If you take a break and one person still wants closure, it’s important to resume the conversation. Even if you don’t reach a resolution, it’s important for both people to have enough time to have their say. In my practice, I’ve noticed that many couples take a break from tough conversations. However, they do it in angry ways. One spouse leaves the room or leaves the house, and the other spouse becomes infuriated or feels abandoned. Time-outs aren’t bad; they’re good. But you have to have a game plan. You have to agree that it makes more sense to take a breather than hurt each other. Then you have to agree to reconvene with a clearer head. The infuriated spouse won’t feel angry anymore as long as s/he doesn’t feel abandoned. • Feelings aren’t right or wrong; they just are. One of the most common arguments I hear in my office revolves around one spouse’s discussing his or her feelings and the other spouse saying, “That’s not the right way to look at things,” or “That’s not the way it really is.” Boy, watch the sparks fly after that! No one wants to be told that the way you see things or the way you feel is incorrect. Everyone is entitled to his or her feelings. The way you see things is the way you see things. It’s not right or wrong; it just is. It’s essential that you steer clear from correcting your spouse when s/he discusses his or her perspective on things. Just listen. You can disagree, but understand that your opinion is just your opinion. It doesn’t make you any more correct. • Don’t mind-read.

• From The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide (2003)

  If correcting your spouse’s feelings is a primo button pusher, mind reading is another one. How do you feel when your spouse tells you what you are really thinking or meaning when you say something that you wish s/he would take at face value or what’s it like for you when your spouse says, “Don’t tell me you were going to call. I know you had no intention of calling me last night,” or “I could tell you were in a really bad mood when you came home”? Do you just love it? No, not exactly. I bet you get angry. No one likes to be second-guessed. If we wanted to marry the host of the psychic hotline, we would have married him or her. So, avoid telling your spouse that you know better than him or her what s/he’s thinking, feeling, or doing. You’ll be on safer ground. • Leave the past in the past. Stick to the point. Conversations deteriorate when the kitchen sink is thrown in. If you want to have a productive talk, choose one or two points you’d like to discuss, and leave it at that. Don’t wander; stay focused. Even if what your spouse is talking about reminds you of past injustices, keep your thoughts to yourself if you really want to make headway. Keeping score and dredging up the past are excellent ways to push your conversation into quicksand. If you don’t want to sink, stay on track. • No exaggeration. Another way to guarantee detours from a productive conversation is to use the words, always and never, as in, “You always forget to introduce me to your friends,” or “You never say a kind word to me.” When you exaggerate rather than discuss the issues at hand—proper introductions or kindness—your spouse will be reacting to the fact that you’re overlooking the fact that sometimes s/he gets it right. Your spouse will take issue with your black-and-white thinking. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t exaggerate. Talk about a specific incident rather than a personality flaw. Even if you feel as if your spouse does something undesirable all the time, you’re probably wrong, and besides, it’s not the best way to handle things. • No name calling. This is my “No, duh” tip for constructive conversation. It’s amazing that I should even feel it necessary to include it; however, I do. When couples get frustrated, they put on their verbal sparring gloves and call each other names. It’s very, very difficult to recover when someone has called you a mean-spirited name. Once name calling begins, agree to take a time-out. • Don’t get discouraged if your partner doesn’t follow your lead right away.

• From Open (2009)

  He stares. Then starts screaming. Brad, who never raises his voice to anybody, comes apart. What do you want me to say, Andre? What is it that you want me to say? You tell me he’s too good. How the fuck would you know? You can’t judge how he’s playing! You’re so confused out there, so blind with panic, I’m surprised you can even see him. Too good? You’re making him look good. But— Just start letting go. If you’re going to lose, at least lose on your own terms. Hit the fucking ball. But— And if you’re not sure where to hit it, here’s an idea. Just hit it to the same place he hits it. If he hits a backhand crosscourt, you hit a backhand crosscourt. Just hit yours a little better. You don’t have to be better than the whole fucking world, remember? You just have to be better than one guy. There isn’t one shot he has that you don’t have. Fuck his serve. His serve will break down when you start making your shots. Just hit. Just fucking hit. If we’re going to lose today, fine, I can live with it, but let’s lose on our terms. The last thirteen days, I’ve seen you lay it on the line. I’ve seen you rip it, under pressure, maim guys. So please stop feeling sorry for yourself, and stop telling me he’s too good, and for the love of God stop trying to be perfect! Just see the ball, hit the ball. Do you hear me, Andre? See the ball. Hit the ball. Make this guy deal with you. Make him feel you out there. You’re not moving. You’re not hitting. You may think you are, but trust me, you’re just standing there. If you’re going down, OK, go down, but go down with guns blazing. Always, always, always, go down with both guns blaaazing. He opens a locker and slams it shut. The door flaps and clangs. The referee appears. We’re back on court, gentlemen. Brad and Gil walk out of the locker room. I notice that as they slip through the door Gil gives Brad’s back a furtive pat. I walk slowly onto the court. We have a brief warm-up, then resume play. I’ve forgotten the score. I have to look at the scoreboard to remind myself. Oh yes. I lead, 1–0, in the second set. But Medvedev is serving. I think again of the final against Courier in 1991, the rain delay that disrupted my rhythm. Maybe this will be payback. Tennis karma. Maybe, as that rain delay befuddled me, this rain delay will help me right myself.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  Love, or in other words the striving of men's souls towards unity and the submissive behaviour to one another that results therefrom, represents the highest and indeed the only law of life, as every man knows and feels in the depths of his heart (and as we see most clearly in children), and knows until he becomes involved in the lying net of worldly thoughts. This law was announced by all the philosophies- Indian as well as Chinese, and Jewish, Greek and Roman. Most clearly, I think, was it announced by Christ, who said explicitly that on it hang all the Law and the Prophets. More than that, foreseeing the distortion that has hindered its recognition and may always hinder it, he specially indicated the danger of a misrepresentation that presents itself to men living by worldly interests- namely, that they may claim a right to defend their interests by force or, as he expressed it, to repay blow by blow and recover stolen property by force, etc., etc. He knew, as all reasonable men must do, that any employment of force is incompatible with love as the highest law of life, and that as soon as the use of force appears permissible even in a single case, the law itself is immediately negatived. The whole of Christian civilization, outwardly so splendid, has grown up on this strange and flagrant- partly intentional but chiefly unconscious-misunderstanding and contradiction. At bottom, however, the law of love is, and can be, no longer valid if defence by force is set up beside it. And if once the law of love is not valid, then there remains no law except the right of might. In that state Christendom has lived for 1,900 years. Certainly men have always let themselves be guided by force as the main principle of their social order. The difference between the Christian and all other nations is only this: that in Christianity the law of love had been more clearly and definitely given than in any other religion, and that its adherents solemnly recognized it. Yet despite this they deemed the use of force to be permissible, and based their lives on violence - so that the life of the Christian nations presents a greater contradiction between what they believe and the principle on which their lives are built: a contradiction between love which should pre scribe the law of conduct, and the employment of force, recognized under various forms-such as governments, courts of justice, and armies, which are accepted as necessary and esteemed. This contradiction increased with the development of the spiritual life of Christianity and in recent years has reached the utmost tension.

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

  Later, Jews, Christians, and Muslims would all make the biblical god a symbol of absolute transcendence, similar to Brahman or Nirvana.16 In the Pentateuch, however, Yahweh is a war god, not unlike Indra or Marduk but with one important difference. Like Indra, Yahweh had once fought chaos dragons to order the universe, notably a sea monster called Leviathan,17 but in the Pentateuch he fights earthly empires to establish a people rather than a cosmos. Moreover, Yahweh is the intransigent enemy of agrarian civilization. The story of the tower of Babel is a thinly veiled critique of Babylon.18 Intoxicated by fantasies of world conquest, its rulers were determined that the whole of humanity live in a single state with a common language; they believed that their ziggurat could reach heaven itself. Incensed by this imperial hubris, Yahweh reduced the entire political edifice to “confusion” (babel).19 Immediately after this incident, he ordered Abraham to leave Ur, at this date one of the most important Mesopotamian city-states.20 Yahweh insisted that the three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—exchange the stratified tyranny of urban living for the freedom and equality of the herdsman’s life. But the plan was flawed: again and again the land that Yahweh had selected for the patriarchs failed to sustain them.21 This was the Hebrew dilemma: Yahweh insisted that his people abandon the agrarian state, but time and again they found that they could not live without it.22 To escape starvation, Abraham had to take temporary refuge in Egypt.23 His son Isaac had to abandon pastoral life and take up farming during a famine but became so successful that he was attacked by predatory neighboring kings.24 Finally, when “famine had grown severe throughout the world,” Jacob was forced to send ten of his sons to Egypt to buy grain. To their astonishment, they met their long-lost brother Joseph in Pharaoh’s court.25

• From Open (2009)

  Nick, however, gets a nasty case of cabin fever. He wants to go out, see the sights. Guys, he says, we’re in Paris! Eiffel Tower? The frickin’ Louvre? Been there, done that, Philly says. I don’t want to go near the Louvre. And I don’t have to. I can close my eyes and see the scary painting of the man hanging from the cliff while his father clutches at his neck and his other loved ones hang from his limbs. I tell Nick, I don’t want to see anything or anyone. I just want to win this fucking thing and go home. I MARCH THROUGH THE EARLY ROUNDS, playing well, and then run into Courier again. He wins the first set in a tiebreak but falters and gives me the second. I take the third and then, in the fourth, he curls up and dies, 6–0. His face turns red. His face turns Hot Lava. I want to tell him: I hope that was enough cardio for you. But I don’t. Maybe I’m maturing. Without question I’m getting stronger. Next up is Chang. The defending champ. I play with a chip on my shoulder, because I still can’t believe he’s won a slam before me. I envy his work ethic, admire his court discipline—but I just don’t like the guy. He continues to say without compunction that Christ is on his side of the court, a blend of egotism and religion that chafes me. I beat him in four. In the semis I play Jonas Svensson. He has a massive serve that kicks like a mule, and he’s never afraid to come to the net. He plays better on fast surfaces, however, so I feel good about catching him on the clay. Since he has a big, looping forehand, I decide early that I’m going to bum-rush his backhand. Again and again I go to that vulnerable backhand, seizing a quick lead, 5–1. Svensson doesn’t recover. Set, Agassi. In the second set I grab a 4–0 lead. He breaks back to 3–4. That’s as close as I let him get. To his credit, he finds a ray of confidence and wins the third set. Normally I’d be rattled. But this year I look to my box and see Gil. I replay his parking lot speech, and win the fourth set, 6–3. I’m in the final—at last. My first final at a slam. I’m facing Gómez, from Ecuador, whom I just beat weeks ago. He’s thirty, on the verge of retiring—in fact, I thought he was retired. At last, the newspapers say, Agassi is going to realize his potential. THEN, CATASTROPHE STRIKES. The night before the final, I’m taking a shower and I feel the hairpiece Philly bought me suddenly disintegrate in my hands. I must have used the wrong kind of conditioner. The weave is coming undone—the damned thing is falling apart. In a state of abject panic I summon Philly to my hotel room.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 32 3/23/2011 2:13:58 PAUL (VO) (CONT’D) From their very opening statement, Silence Equals Death, it’s art, it’s culture, and it was, you know, it transformed the dialogue. [PROTEST CHANTING] 2:14:07 PROTESTORS (on archival video) Sixty thousand dead from AIDS! Where was George?! Fight back! Fight AIDS! Health care is a right! Health care is a right! 2:14:16 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on protest sign) GREED = DEATH STOP AIDS PROFITEERING 2:14:20 EILEEN (VO/ON) That was the first time I crossed a picket line. I wanted to go in to the AIDS conference because there was information I wanted to get inside. And what they were screaming and hollering about I agreed with, so-- But then I- I realized that everybody is doing what they need to do. They need to be out there screaming and hollering and pushing because things don’t happen unless you push, and I needed to go in to get that information so I could take care of them. And so maybe (chuckles) once I figured that out it was a little easier to cross that picket line. 2:14:58 PROTESTORS (on archival video) Act up! Fight back! Fight AIDS! Act up! 2:15:01 EILEEN (VO) I mean, that was when drugs weren’t on the fast track, where it took ten years to get a drug approved, and the activists really worked for that to change. 2:15:11 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on t-shirt) ACT UP 2:15:18 CLEVE JONES (VO) Neil Yeager. James Martin Case. 2:15:25 DANIEL (VO/ON) One of the way I s- came back into the world was through the Names Project, which was the AIDS memorial quilt, which Cleve Jones started. 2:15:35 CLEVE JONES …and my friend Marvin Feldman.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  sanctity. But Constantinople believed the opposite: the refusal of the flesh to rot was a certain sign of heresy; it might remain thus for 1,000 years, or until the person was properly absolved. But of course this violent disagreement on a central aspect of the cult did not, in practice, make any difference, since all that Constantinople shipped westwards were bones and scraps of clothing. As for Rome’s own ‘discoveries’, these went north and west to powerful sovereigns, in exchange for diplomatic or military support. In 826, the Emperor Louis the Pious exerted tremendous pressure on the Pope to hand over the body of St Sebastian, which was taken in triumph to Soissons; there were popular riots in Rome when the Pope gave in. Again, in 834, the Roman mob howled when the Pope sold the relics of St Alexander and St Justin to a delegation from Freising, who handed over to him, in return, ‘a noble and weighty pile of precious things’. Ten years after this, Sergius II sold to Abbot Varcuard of Prum the relics of St Chrysantius and St Darius. There were plenty more where they came from. High dignitaries of Church and State not only bought and sold relics but countenanced open theft and piracy. There were professional relic-thiefs, such as Alfred, Canon of Durham, who piously visited Jarrow every year until he succeeded in pinching the body of Bede, which he placed alongside St Cuthbert’s at Durham. Durham, in turn, was robbed of relics by its own bishops – Æthelric and Æthelwine, bishops in turn, transferred some of the cathedral treasures to their native abbey of Peterborough. Kings, bishops and abbots might employ professional criminals, or they might venture into crime themselves, using whatever power was available or necessary. Men did not make a distinction between political and military force, and the spiritual force generated by holy bones. An ambitious man like King Cnut, for instance, took risks in this field, just as he staked his kingdoms and his life in battle: the potential rewards were worth it. In 1020, Abbot Æthelstan of Romsey, instigated by the Bishop of Dorchester and with the consent of Cnut, sent a naval expedition to Sohan to steal the body of St Felix: there was nearly a naval battle with the monks of Ely. Three years later, Archbishop Æthelnoth, with Cnut’s help, opened the sarcophagus of St Ælfeah in St Paul’s, using crowbars, while the king’s housecarles stood guard against the angry citizens. Cnut hurried half-clad from his bath to take part in the raid, and himself took the tiller of the boat which carried the corpse, on a plank, across the Thames, to travel under armed escort to reinterment in Canterbury. Cnut also abetted the theft of St Mildred, pinched from Thanet and taken, again, to

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  37 meaning is the tangible expression of honor in the form of gifts, spoils, or a particular prize (or geras). Kleos, usually translated “glory” or “fame,” means what is spoken aloud about one. Agamemnon dishonors Achilles because of a loss of timē he himself suffered when he had to return his concubine Chryseis to her father. Agamemnon thus tries to restore his own lost timē by taking Achilles’s geras, Briseis. Achilles responds by declaring that he will no longer fi ght and threatening to return home. Given the assumptions of Achilles’s culture, his reaction is not excessive; Agamemnon has removed Achilles’s motivation for fi ghting. In Homeric society, a warrior’s sense of worth is largely determined by how others perceive him. Agamemnon has done more than dishonor Achilles; he has called Achilles’s whole worth into question. These concepts— timē, kleos , and the warrior’s motivation for fi ghting— resonate throughout the rest of the epic. From Books II through XVIII, Achilles refrains from battle; the Greeks are ever harder pressed by the Trojans, led by their greatest warrior, Hector. The Greek leaders realize that they must do something to change their situation. Agamemnon selects three men to ask Achilles to accept Agamemnon’s apology and lavish gifts and to return to battle. The three go to Achilles’s tent, but he rejects their pleas forcefully. Achilles’s mother, Thetis, a goddess, has informed him he has two possible fates: to win kleos by dying at Troy or to return home and live a long, inglorious life. Achilles says that he will sail home and counsels others to do so. He fi nally agrees not to leave but says that he will not fi ght until the Trojans reach the Greeks’ ships. In Book XVI, Achilles’s dearest friend, Patroclus, goes into battle in Achilles’s place. Patroclus goes into battle wearing Achilles’s armor and is slain by Hector. His death is the crucial turning point of the Iliad. After Patroclus’s death in Book XVI and the fi ght over his body in Book XVII, the focus of the narrative and of Achilles’s character both change. The question of whether the Iliad and the Odyssey are unifi ed wholes created by one supreme poetic genius is often called the Homeric Question.

• From Chasing Beauty

  Isabella was outraged. Muck had done nothing wrong, in her view. In solidarity with him, and with the principle of artistic freedom, she made a show of walking out of that performance at Symphony Hall. The papers gleefully reported this as a betrayal of her country. Now she was suspect too. At one point, an acquaintance of Isabella’s began questioning her: “You live so near him that you must be able to see his signals.” “I can,” Isabella answered without fear. “And what do you do when you see them?” Again, she was stalwart: “I answer him.” Not long after, Muck was arrested and put in a prison in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Isabella went to visit him in his cell, bringing what she could to cheer him up, which generated yet more criticism and alarmed her family. Her nephew J. R. Coolidge Jr. spoke with her, asking her to be more careful to avoid attention and trouble. Henry Sleeper agreed with Coolidge, wanting to protect her, but Isabella persisted. She made a point of visiting Anita Muck, now alone and terrified, as often as she could. When Muck was transferred to prison barracks in Georgia for the duration of the war, he sent Isabella a fulsome letter of thanks: “You can never know . . . what it has meant to me to realize that of all our many friends in Boston at least one has stood by my poor haunted wife.” He marveled: “Courage and independence always seemed to me to be an integral part of you.” She knew too well what it felt like to be rejected and ostracized, and she was not going to let that happen to a friend, no matter the risk. As she explained to Henry Sleeper: “You and I are very good friends, Harry. We don’t see each other often but you know that if you were in any kind of trouble, I would be on your doorstep every day.” *** BRIGHT COLORS CATCH THE EYE FIRST—BLAZING REDS, GRASSY YELLOWS and greens, Chartres blues. The rectangular panel, made up of 105 pieces of gleaming glass, is set in a dark wood frame placed against an exterior wall of clear glass. A garden is in view beyond. The panel, located in the Chinese Loggia on the museum’s first floor, is not very large, measuring just 21½ by 13½ inches. It seems bigger, though, when the sun pours in from the east, spreading rays of intense color over the dove-gray stone floor. A close look reveals faces in two pieces of glass. In the first fragment on the lower right, one eye peers back, like that of a cyclops. The second, larger face is above the first, more in the center and in three-quarter profile. Its outline is traced, like that of the first, in a brownish line over a dull background. Its half-quizzical expression, eyes looking up, seems to say: “What’s this, where did I come from, how did I get here?”

• From Jesus to Constantine (Great Courses) (2004)

  Galatia, that to worship the Jewish God one had to become Jewish, but it made no sense to Paul. Paul argued that, in fact, this was completely wrong, and he wrote his letter to the Galatians in white-hot anger that these people were adopting the practices of circumcision for themselves. Galatians is the one letter of Paul that does not begin with thanksgiving toward the congregation. He was really angry in that one. What I want to emphasize, though, is that the opponents of Paul who thought that they were right, and Paul was wrong, they probably also wrote books. They also wrote letters. All of their writings are lost. Take another instance, Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Corinth, the city in what is now modern-day Greece, was a large city, a port city, where Paul had visited and established a congregation of Christians in it. He left after he had established the community, and he heard that there were problems that had arisen in the community (numerous problems if we can gauge them from his letter to the Corinthians). We have two letters that he wrote to this congregation. There were all sorts of problems that had arisen. There was disunity in the church, where people were fighting over what the right way to run the church was. The disunity was evident in lots of ways, one of them being that some people were so much at odds that they were taking each other to secular court over their differences. The church was split, some following one leader, some following another, some following another. There were instances of crass immorality in the church. There were instances of men visiting prostitutes and then bragging about it in church. One fellow was shacking up with his stepmother. There were instances within the church of all sorts of immorality and disunity. Sometimes these were evident in their congregational meetings together, where chaos would erupt as people would try to take over the worship services in order to show their superior spirituality. During their communion meals, which were kind of a once-a-week-bring- your-own potluck supper affair, some people were coming early, gorging themselves, and getting drunk. Other people were coming late, and having nothing. This was one messed up church. These problems, though, were rooted in one big problem that Paul saw, which was that there were people in the church supporting the view that they had already experienced a resurrection with Christ, that they had died with Christ by participating in his death, by being baptized, but that they had also already been raised with Christ. Just as Christ had been raised to the heavenly place, so, too, had they. They were apparently thinking that since they had already begun to 234

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

  There was a second wave of terrorist incidents, directed by the “second generation” of al-Qaeda, which included the failed plot of British “shoe bomber” Richard Reid (December 2001), the Djerba bombing in Tunisia (April 2002), and the Bali nightclub attack (October 2002), which killed over two hundred people. After Iyman Faris’s foiled plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, however, most of the al-Qaeda central command had either been killed or captured, and there were no more major incidents.85 But just as the situation seemed to be improving, in March 2003, the United States, Britain, and their allies invaded Iraq, despite considerable opposition from the international community and strong protests throughout the Muslim world. The reasons for this invasion were allegations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had furnished support for al-Qaeda, both of which eventually proved to be groundless. Again, the United States presented itself as the bearer of freedom. “If we must use force,” Bush had promised the American people, “the United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated Iraq.”86 “We don’t seek an empire,” he insisted on another occasion. “Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others.”87 Cheered on by such neoimperialist intellectuals as Niall Ferguson, the Bush regime believed that it could use the colonial methods of invasion and occupation for purposes of liberation.88 America would force Iraq into the free global economy and change the politics of the Middle East by creating a liberal, democratic, and pro-Western Arab state, one that would also support Israel, embrace market capitalism, and at the same time provide the United States with a military base and access to vast oil reserves. On May 1, 2003, Bush’s Viking jet swooped onto the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln, where the president announced a victorious end to the Iraq War.89 “We have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world,” he told the assembled troops. “Because of you, the tyrant is fallen and Iraq is free.” In this political message too were the overtones of a holy war. This war of the American nation was directed by God himself. “All of you—all in this generation of our military—have taken up the highest calling of history,” he proclaimed, quoting the Prophet Isaiah: “And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope—a message that is ancient and ever new. To the captives, ‘come out’—and to those in darkness ‘be free.’ ”90 Use of this biblical verse, which Jesus had quoted to describe his own mission,91 revealed the messianic streak of the Bush administration.

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

  Adam had two sons: Cain, the farmer, and Abel, the herdsman—the traditional enemy of the agrarian state. Both dutifully brought offerings to Yahweh, who somewhat perversely rejected Cain’s sacrifice but accepted Abel’s. Baffled and furious, Cain lured his brother into the family plot and killed him, his arable land becoming a field of blood that cried out to Yahweh for vengeance. “Damned be you from the soil, which opened up its mouth to receive your brother’s blood!”3 Yahweh cried. Henceforth Cain would wander in the land of Nod as an outcast and fugitive. From the start, the Hebrew Bible condemns the violence at the heart of the agrarian state. It is Cain, the first murderer, who builds the world’s first city, and one of his descendants is Tubal the Smith (Kayin), “ancestor of all metal-workers in bronze and iron,” who crafts its weapons.4 Immediately after the murder, when Yahweh asks Cain, “Where is your brother, Abel?” he replies, “Am I my brother’s guardian?”5 Urban civilization denied that relationship with and responsibility for all other human beings that is embedded in human nature. The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, did not reach its final form until about the fourth century BCE. For the historians, poets, prophets, priests, and lawyers of Israel, it became the organizing narrative around which they constructed their worldview. Over the centuries, they would change that story and embroider it, adding or reinterpreting events in order to address the particular challenges of their own time. This story began in about 1750 BCE, when Yahweh commanded Abraham, Israel’s ancestor, to turn his back on the agrarian society and culture of Mesopotamia and settle in Canaan, where he, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob would live as simple herdsmen. Yahweh promised that their descendants would one day possess this land and become a nation as numerous as the sands on the seashore.6 But Jacob and his twelve sons (founders of the tribes of Israel) were forced by famine to leave Canaan and migrate to Egypt. At first they prospered, but eventually the Egyptians enslaved them, and they languished in serfdom until about 1250 BCE, when Yahweh brought them out of Egypt under Moses’s leadership. For forty years the Israelites wandered in the Sinai wilderness before reaching the Canaanite border, where Moses died, but his lieutenant, Joshua, led the Israelites to victory in the Promised Land, destroying all the Canaanite cities and killing their inhabitants.

• From Between Us

  87 ​the complete condemnation of anger: Owen Flanagan, “Introduction: The Moral Psychology of Anger,” in The Moral Psychology of Anger, ed. Myisha Cherry and Owen Flanagan (London: Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd., 2018), vii–xxxi; Flanagan, How to Do Things with Emotions; see also B. H. Rosenwein, Anger. The Conflicted History of an Emotion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020). 88 ​U.S. American college students have more anger: Boiger et al., “Condoned or Condemned: The Situational Affordance of Anger and Shame in the United States and Japan”; Shinobu Kitayama, Batja Mesquita, and Mayumi Karasawa, “Cultural Affordances and Emotional Experience,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, no. 5 (2006): 890–903. 88 ​so do middle-aged American: Park et al., “Social Status and Anger Expression”; no evidence was reported that the cultural differences only held for one of the gender. 88 ​more readily angered . . . in similar situations: Kitayama, Mesquita, and Karasawa, “Cultural Affordances and Emotional Experience,” Study 2. 88 ​Anger as nonacceptance is woven into a general view on life: The argument was also (and first) made by Robert C. Solomon in “Getting Angry: The Jamesian Theory of Emotion in Anthropology,” 1984, 249. In his view, legitimacy, blame, and responsibility, and therefore “anger,” are culture-bound concepts. 88 ​sales team whose mission failed: L. Z. Tiedens, P. C. Ellsworth, and B. Mesquita, “Sentimental Stereotypes: Emotional Expectations for High- and Low-Status Group Members,” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 26, no. 5 (2000): 560–74. 88 ​song (“justifiable anger”): Lutz, Unnatural Emotions. 88 ​report angry behaviors: Park et al., “Social Status and Anger Expression.” 89 ​anger . . . in Japan is . . . healthy: Shinobu Kitayama et al., “Expression of Anger and Ill Health in Two Cultures: An Examination of Inflammation and Cardiovascular Risk,” Psychological Science 26, no. 2 (2015): 211–20. Expressing anger was associated with less biological health risk in Japan, whereas it was associated with more biological health risk in the U.S. Participants were subsamples of representative studies of middle-aged Japanese and U.S. Americans. Biological health risk was measured by two inflammatory measures and two measures of cardiovascular malfunction. The authors suggest that the different meanings of anger, as an index of power or dominance in Japan and as an index of frustration in the U.S., may be responsible for the culturally different association. It is a good hypothesis (which I have adopted in the main text) that deserves follow-up study. 89 ​anger as a power move may pay off: Larissa Z. Tiedens, “Anger and Advancement versus Sadness and Subjugation: The Effect of Negative Emotion Expression on Social Status Conferral,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 1 (2001): 86–94. 90 ​“showed bad character, pure and simple”: Quoted come from Stearns, American Cool, 25. Anger was condemned in men too, but “an angry woman was worse than an angry man” (also on p. 25).

• From Between Us

  Similarly, the reason that bill collectors get angry is that anger is a pretty effective interpersonal tool for making people back down and do what you (the angry person) want them to do. Dutch psychologist Gerben van Kleef has shown that at the negotiating table, anger gets you the better business deal—certainly much better than showing happiness. Do not get me wrong: people are not always aware that their anger has this effect—they may not knowingly seek anger for its effect—but, more often than not, we are angry in situations where we feel that we are entitled to more than we get, and often, anger makes other people agree with us, or at the very least, submit to our wishes or entitlement. (A personal confession: my husband had the science on his side when he addressed our mortgage banker with irritation; I was acting completely against our financial interests when I smiled at her encouragingly.) The idea that emotions exist between people is not as outlandish as it may seem at first—and it may in fact help each of us to consider what our emotions (want to) achieve in our relationships. What is their effect on other people, or what do we want it to be? Take Martin’s example at the beginning of the chapter. He had just met the last requirement for his master’s in civil engineering: a presentation of his master’s project. Center stage in Martin’s account of his emotion are his own astonishment, relief, and “the good feeling” he had when telling others about his accomplishment. But does the emotion not also live between people? Surely, he makes mention of friends and relatives who were present during his presentation. He told as many as seven people that he had passed his important exam. While none of these people claimed a change in their reputation based on Martin’s success, they acknowledged his social transition by their presence and celebration. Is it possible that these other people felt proud of him? Sure. Is it possible that Martin’s status changed, and that his success opened up new opportunities? Yes, of course. Is it possible that Martin’s inner feelings are strongly related to his changed status in the world? It is not only possible, but likely. Very clearly, then, the social aspects of emotions are downplayed and under-recognized in the MINE model of emotions.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Rather than mollifying him, Serralonga had only tempered Luther’s steely spine. Luther was now the more determined to have his say with the cardinal, come what may. And if the cardinal wished to use the threat of papal power, Luther had an ecclesiastical card up his monk’s sleeve: he would call for a church council. That ought to blow them out of their cassocks. Whether Luther knew that Cajetan had been the one to put forward the decree claiming the pope’s power was superior to that of any council is another story. But he knew that the pope and Rome indeed claimed that the pope had more authority than any council, so Luther’s calling for a church council would have been intentionally incendiary. But Luther knew how to throw bombs when bombs were called for, and if he should throw this one, the explosion would singe the very mane of Leo himself. So on October 12, Luther traveled to the Fuggers’ fabulous palatial residence, accompanied by three monks from the Carmelite monastery and by Wenceslas Linck. To look a bit more presentable than his usual academic, monkish self, he had borrowed Linck’s more elegant cowl for the occasion. Luther had been carefully instructed by Serralonga to abase himself in the cardinal’s presence—literally to first prostrate himself, and then to rise to his knees, which he did. The cardinal graciously asked him to stand and then spoke. He said that he hoped to keep things short and simple. Of course this was not to be, and far from it. Cajetan was fourteen years Luther’s senior, and in this meeting he intended to come across as fatherly and calm. He repeatedly called Luther “dear son,” which probably only irked Luther. After Luther rose, the cardinal made his opening statement, doubtless delivered as though speaking to a wayward child. “You shook Germany with your theses on indulgences,” he said. “If you wish to be an obedient son and please the pope, then recant. Nothing bad will happen to you, for I hear that you are a doctor of theology with many disciples.”5