Anxiety

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 From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  In the early second century, a Roman prefect of Egypt, a member of the most genteel social circles in the empire, was himself undone after seducing the seventeen- year- old scion of a respectable Alexandrian family; the scandal became a cause célèbre in a culture with a ready taste for judicial drama, and stylized transcripts of the trial, before what judge we do not know, still remain.  What ever the law commanded, sex with freeborn boys went on. Fathers were endlessly anxious about the sexual dangers that lurked in the schools. Th e “lover of boys,” it was conventional to believe, only had to bribe the pedagogue or attendant and entice his beloved with a little gift. Phi los o- phers, whose position gave them opportunity, were regularly accused of taking improper liberties with their charges; “in sum all their doctrines are mere words and they are enslaved to plea sure, some cavorting with concu- bines, others with prostitutes, most of them with boys.” One sign that older patterns endured is the intense refl ection on the protocols of consent. Th e ideal partner was one who knew “the art of assenting and refusing at the same time.” Poets, anyway, could profess to believe that the life cycle still aff orded a brief window of indeterminacy: it was wrong to lure a boy into sin in the years before his moral reason was developed, and twice as shame- ful once the young man was too old, “but between not yet and nevermore you and I have the now.”  Th e impossibility of honorable consent is at the heart of Plutarch’s Ero- tikos, by any mea sure a crucial document of sexual life in the high empire.  FROM SHAME TO SIN Th e Erotikos is a dialogue set within the frame story of a young widow’s ef- forts to lure a handsome young man into marriage. Th e backdrop is essen- tial, for Plutarch construes the woman as a sort of female lover pursuing her beloved according to the rules of classical pederasty. Th e story occasions an extended discussion of the relative merits of marriage and the love of boys. Th e defenders of pederasty give an apology as dramatic as any classical antecedent. True eros, claim its defenders, has nothing to do with women. Marriage is a domestic arrangement, more about keeping accounts and enjoying enervating pleasures between daily squabbling than the soul’s as- cent; bonding between males, they argue, is the true way to nurture virtue.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Cassian outlined six degrees of chastity through which the monk might, with the infusion of divine grace, seek perfection: fi rst, not to be struck down by car- nal sin; second, not to let his mind dilate on thoughts of plea sure; third, not to let the sight of a woman move him to lust; fourth, not to suff er a “little movement of the fl esh” while awake; fi fth, when some occasion for thought of human generation occurred, such as a suggestive passage of the reading, not to give the “slightest assent” to sensual thoughts; and fi nally, not to be tormented by seductive visions of women while sleeping. For Cassian, a con- cern with nocturnal emissions that had quietly percolated in ecclesiastical and monastic circles for centuries suddenly lurches into the foreground, as the supreme test of having transcended physical desire. For Cassian, invol- untary discharges were not a matter of purity and pollution, in any physical sense. Rather, they were a sign of the monk’s interior state, a privileged win- dow into the murkiness of the self in an intense system of self- scrutiny.  What captivated Foucault was not simply the repressive agenda of this monastic found er but the sense in which sexuality has become a deep and only semiconscious source of the self, something that must be sought and controlled through an elaborate technology of surveillance. Cassian pre- scribed an encompassing regime of transformation, physical and spiritual. It entailed diet and meditation. It specifi ed grids of evaluation that seem extraordinarily detailed: three emissions a year was a modest goal for the monk earnestly in pursuit of chastity. It required forceful modes of intro- spection that could be achieved in dialogue between the monk and his su- perior. Here Cassian’s model of chastity foreshadows the confessional, a place where the deepest recesses of the self were to be searched with the sure guidance of an experienced master. Th e goals of this spiritual exercise were tranquility and transparency. Th e healed patient could hope to reach a state where “he is found to be the same in the night as in the day, whether read- CONCLUSION  ing or praying, when solitary or surrounded by the crowd, so that he never sees himself in secret in such a way that he would blush to be seen by others, and fi nally so that the eye from which there is no fl ight will never catch him in anything which he would wish to be hidden from human sight.” Here the notion of the sexual being, constantly before the face of God, receives its purest expression.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I’ve been thinking about that little affair now for quite some time. I have a hunch as to who took that money, but I’m not absolutely sure. . . . And then he’ll probably give you a beady eye and abruptly change the conversation to something else. He’ll probably tell you a little story about a crook he knew who thought he was very smart and getting away with it. He’ll draw that story out for you until you feel as though you were sitting on hot coals. By that time you’ll be wanting to beat it, but just when you’re ready to go he’ll suddenly be reminded of another very interesting little case and hell ask you to wait just a little longer while he orders another dessert. And hell go on like that for three or four hours at a stretch, never making the least overt insinuation, but studying you closely all the time, and finally, when you think you’re free, just when you’re shaking hands with him and breathing a sigh of relief, he’ll step in front of you and, planting his big square feet between your legs, he’ll grab you by the lapel and, looking straight through you, he’ll say in a soft, winsome voice—now look here, my lad, don’t you think you had better come clean? And if you think he’s only trying to browbeat you and that you can pretend innocence and walk away, you’re mistaken. Because at that point, when he asks you to come clean, he means business and nothing on earth is going to stop him. When it gets to that point I’d recommend you to make a clean sweep of it, down to the last penny. He won’t ask me to fire you and he won’t threaten you with jail—hell just quietly suggest that you put aside a little bit each week and turn it over to him. Nobody will be the wiser. He probably won’t even tell me. No, he’s very delicate about these things, you’ll see. “And supposing,” says Curley suddenly, “that I tell him I stole the money in order to help you out? What then?” He began to laugh hysterically. “I don’t think O’Rourke would believe that,” I said calmly. “You can try it, of course, if you think it will help you to clear your own skirts. But I rather think it will have a bad effect. O’Rourke knows me . . . he knows I wouldn’t let you do a thing like that.” “But you did let me do it!” “I didn’t tell you to do it. You did it without my knowledge. That’s quite different. Besides, can you prove that I accepted money from you? Won’t it seem a little ridiculous to accuse me, the one who befriended you, of putting you up to a job like that? Who’s going to believe you? Not O’Rourke. Besides, he hasn’t trapped you yet. Why worry about it in advance?

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Those who unsuccessfully attempt suicide are typically given a psychiatric evaluation. Many are incorrectly diagnosed as having schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. Of course, some people do have these disorders, but my experience is that cults avoid recruiting people who cannot be controlled and rendered dependent and obedient, so most are suffering acute psychosis brought on by mind control. Uninformed mental health professionals can hardly be blamed for this. How else could they diagnose a person who screams for Satan to come out of them? How could they know, unless they investigate, that the person had been doing silent, high-speed chanting for hours, and that it was causing them to be so spaced out that they appeared catatonic? One occult group ex-member I worked with was convinced that her spiritual body was disintegrating and that she was dying. She suffered tremendous anxiety attacks, particularly in the middle of the night, and felt pains in her chest. Doctors had tested her for every conceivable problem, and it was determined that the difficulty was all “in her mind.” The group had programmed her to self-destruct if she ever left it. Once she was out, that was exactly what started to happen—until she began to learn about cults and mind control. When people who have walked out or been kicked out cannot receive specialized counseling, their suffering is usually prolonged. Still, with the help of family and friends, many manage to pick up the pieces and move forward with their lives. However, if these people never come to understand mind control and how it was used to recruit and indoctrinate them, in my opinion, they will never be able to live as full a life as they might. These people may have temporarily put their cult experience on a shelf and tried to forget about it. At some point, though, it could burst back into their lives. Rick was one of these people. After a six-year complete involvement, he walked out of the Children of God with his wife and three kids. Five years later, a piece of cult literature turned up in his mailbox. All his cult indoctrination was triggered by this one letter from the leader. His mind started racing out of control. A voice in his head told him to go upstairs and choke his children. Fortunately, Rick got help and was able to keep his children safe. Today, he is a successful computer consultant.

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

  “Sir, you don’t understand. Your mother has been shot. In her brain. She’ll be in ICU. One night in ICU could cost you fifteen, twenty thousand rand.” “Lady, are you not listening to me? This is my mother’s life. This is her life. Take the money. Take all of it. I don’t care.” “Sir! You don’t understand. I’ve seen this happen. Your mother could be in the ICU for weeks. This could cost you five hundred thousand, six hundred thousand. Maybe even millions. You’ll be in debt for the rest of your life.” I’m not going to lie to you: I paused. I paused hard. In that moment, what I heard the nurse saying was, “All of your money will be gone,” and then I started to think, Well…what is she, fifty? That’s pretty good, right? She’s lived a good life. I genuinely did not know what to do. I stared at the nurse as the shock of what she’d said sunk in. My mind raced through a dozen different scenarios. What if I spend that money and then she dies anyway? Do I get a refund? I actually imagined my mother, as frugal as she was, waking up from a coma and saying, “You spent how much? You idiot. You should have saved that money to look after your brothers.” And what about my brothers? They would be my responsibility now. I would have to raise the family, which I couldn’t do if I was millions in debt, and it was always my mother’s solemn vow that raising my brothers was the one thing I would never have to do. Even as my career took off, she’d refused any help I offered. “I don’t want you paying for your mother the same way I had to pay for mine,” she’d say. “I don’t want you raising your brothers the same way Abel had to raise his.” My mother’s greatest fear was that I would end up paying the black tax, that I would get trapped by the cycle of poverty and violence that came before me. She had always promised me that I would be the one to break that cycle. I would be the one to move forward and not back. And as I looked at that nurse outside the emergency room, I was petrified that the moment I handed her my credit card, the cycle would just continue and I’d get sucked right back in. People say all the time that they’d do anything for the people they love. But would you really? Would you do anything? Would you give everything? I don’t know that a child knows that kind of selfless love. A mother, yes. A mother will clutch her children and jump from a moving car to keep them from harm. She will do it without thinking. But I don’t think the child knows how to do that, not instinctively. It’s something the child has to learn.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: He who renounces all his possessions for Christ’s sake exposes himself to no danger, neither spiritual nor corporal. For spiritual danger ensues from poverty when the latter is not voluntary; because those who are unwillingly poor, through the desire of money-getting, fall into many sins, according to 1 Tim. 6:9, “They that will become rich, fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil.” This attachment is put away by those who embrace voluntary poverty, but it gathers strength in those who have wealth, as stated above. Again bodily danger does not threaten those who, intent on following Christ, renounce all their possessions and entrust themselves to divine providence. Hence Augustine says (De Serm. Dom. in Monte ii, 17): “Those who seek first the kingdom of God and His justice are not weighed down by anxiety lest they lack what is necessary.” Reply to Objection 3: According to the Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 6), the mean of virtue is taken according to right reason, not according to the quantity of a thing. Consequently whatever may be done in accordance with right reason is not rendered sinful by the greatness of the quantity, but all the more virtuous. It would, however, be against right reason to throw away all one’s possessions through intemperance, or without any useful purpose; whereas it is in accordance with right reason to renounce wealth in order to devote oneself to the contemplation of wisdom. Even certain philosophers are said to have done this; for Jerome says (Ep. xlviii ad Paulin.): “The famous Theban, Crates, once a very wealthy man, when he was going to Athens to study philosophy, cast away a large amount of gold; for he considered that he could not possess both gold and virtue at the same time.” Much more therefore is it according to right reason for a man to renounce all he has, in order perfectly to follow Christ. Wherefore Jerome says (Ep. cxxv ad Rust. Monach.): “Poor thyself, follow Christ poor.”

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  proposing to solve through myth some of the most impossible theological conundrums of late antiquity. It is telling that the Manichean threat called forth Augustine’s tract On the Free Choice of the Will, a work whose principal agenda is to exonerate God by assigning the origins of evil to human will, which Augustine already in this early work, more clearly than any of his pre de ces sors, construes as a faculty rather than a condition of being. It is equally telling that within a few years the Pelagians will attempt to throw Augustine’s own arguments back in his face and accuse him of being, under the bishop’s cloak, still a Manichean. Th e primitive embrace of free will would crumble in the generations on either side of AD 400, in the period of rapid Christianization. Two blows were to bring the edifi ce tumbling to the ground. Th ough in very diff erent ways, both arose from the expansion of the church and the need to reconcile the religion with mainstream society. Th e fi rst was the debate between Augustine and the Pelagians, a theological controversy that unraveled with astonishing force in the 410s. Th e polemics over original sin had little pur- chase in the Greek- speaking east, though Augustinian pessimism would be offi cially ratifi ed as orthodox doctrine at the Council of Ephesus. But the triumph of original sin over Pelagian optimism undercut the ancient models of free will, ultimately providing a new model of “the will” as a faculty lodged in the fl esh and disobedient to reason. Th e stakes of the debate were so high, not least because “Pelagius and Augustine were both religious geniuses. Both made unambiguous sense of a conglomerate of ideas and attitudes which men of a previous age had been content to leave undefi ned. Both men were revolutionaries, and the controversy which followed their disagreement, far from being a purely academic wrangle, was a crisis in which the spiritual landscape of Western Christendom can be clearly seen for the fi rst time.” In the course of the Pelagian debate, human sexuality, which had for centuries of Christian apologetics been a paradigm of human freedom, rapidly becomes, in the hands of Augustine, the paradigm of human bondage to the fl esh. Th at Augustine was capable of rebuilding entrenched Christian assumptions out of the elements of Christian orthodoxy in so short a space of time is testimony not only to his individual genius but also to the subtly rearranged position of the church in the world. Th e Pelagian debates erupted unexpectedly, and at fi rst murkily, out of a brew of unsettled questions, which guaranteed that the storm was to be a multidimensional aff air. Th e Origenist controversy continued to reverber-

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  The phenomenology I used when writing about ideological totalism in the past still seems useful to me, even though I wrote that book in 1960. The first characteristic is “milieu control,” which is essentially the control of communication within an environment. If the control is extremely intense, it becomes an internalized control—an attempt to manage an individual’s inner communication. This can never be fully achieved, but it can go rather far. It is what sometimes has been called a “God’s-eye view”—a conviction that reality is the group’s exclusive possession. Clearly this kind of process creates conflicts in respect to individual autonomy: if sought or realized in such an environment, autonomy becomes a threat to milieu control. Milieu control within cults tends to be maintained and expressed in several ways: group process, isolation from other people, psychological pressure, geographical distance or unavailability of transportation, and sometimes physical pressure. There is often a sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures, and group encounters, which becomes increasingly intense and increasingly isolated, making it extremely difficult—both physically and psychologically—for one to leave. These cults differ from patterns of totalism in other societies. For instance, the centers that were used for reform in China were more or less in keeping with the ethos of the society as it was evolving at the time; and therefore when one was leaving them or moving in and out of them, one would still find reinforcement from without. Cults, in contrast, tend to become islands of totalism within a larger society that is on the whole antagonistic to these islands. This situation can create a dynamic of its own; and insofar as milieu control is to be maintained, the requirements are magnified by that structural situation. Cult leaders must often deepen their control and manage the environment more systematically, and sometimes with greater intensity, in order to maintain that island of totalism within the antagonistic outer world.

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

  It was like a game, like I was trying to hide and a blind woman was trying to find me using sonar. Every time she called out, I froze. There would be complete silence. “Who’s there?! Hallo?!” I’d pause, wait for her to settle back in her chair, and then I’d start up again. Finally, after what felt like forever, I finished. I stood up, took the newspaper—which is not the quietest thing—and I slowwwwwly folded it over. It crinkled. “Who’s there?” Again I paused, waited. Then I folded it over some more, walked over to the rubbish bin, placed my sin at the bottom, and gingerly covered it with the rest of the trash. Then I tiptoed back to the other room, curled up on the mattress on the floor, and pretended to be asleep. The shit was done, no outhouse involved, and Koko was none the wiser. Mission accomplished. — An hour later the rain had stopped. My grandmother came home. The second she walked in, Koko called out to her. “Frances! Thank God you’re here. There’s something in the house.” “What was it?” “I don’t know, but I could hear it, and there was a smell.” My gran started sniffing the air. “Dear Lord! Yes, I can smell it, too. Is it a rat? Did something die? It’s definitely in the house.” They went back and forth about it, quite concerned, and then, as it was getting dark, my mother came home from work. The second she walked in, my gran called out to her. “Oh, Nombuyiselo! Nombuyiselo! There’s something in the house!” “What?! What do you mean?” Koko told her the story, the sounds, the smells. Then my mom, who has a keen sense of smell, started going around the kitchen, sniffing. “Yes, I can smell it. I can find it…I can find it…” She went to the rubbish bin. “It’s in here.” She lifted out the rubbish, pulled out the folded newspaper underneath, and opened it up, and there was my little turd. She showed it to gran. “Look!” “What?! How did it get there?!” Koko, still blind, still stuck in her chair, was dying to know what was happening. “What’s going on?!” she cried. “What’s going on?! Did you find it?!” “It’s shit,” Mom said. “There’s shit in the bottom of the dustbin.” “But how?!” Koko said. “There was no one here!” “Are you sure there was no one here?” “Yes. I called out to everyone. Nobody came.” My mother gasped. “We’ve been bewitched! It’s a demon!” For my mother, this was the logical conclusion. Because that’s how witchcraft works. If someone has put a curse on you or your home, there is always the talisman or totem, a tuft of hair or the head of a cat, the physical manifestation of the spiritual thing, proof of the demon’s presence. Once my mom found the turd, all hell broke loose. This was serious. They had evidence. She came into the bedroom.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  There would be more distrust, more animosity, and more injustice. Walter’s family and most poor black people in his community were similarly burdened by Walter’s conviction. Even if they hadn’t been at his house the day of the crime, most black people in Monroeville knew someone who had been with Walter that day. The pain in that trailer was tangible—I could feel it. The community seemed desperate for some hope of justice. The realization left me anxious but determined. — I’d gotten used to taking calls from lots of people concerning Walter’s case. Most were poor and black, and they offered encouragement and support, and my visit with the family generated even more of those calls. And occasionally, a white person for whom Walter had worked would call to offer support, like Sam Crook. When Sam called, he insisted that I come and see him the next time I was back in town. “I’m a rebel,” he said toward the end of our call. “Part of the 117th division of the Confederate Army.” “Sir?” “My people were heroes of the Confederacy. I’ve inherited their land, their title, and their pride. I love this county, but I know what happened to Walter McMillian ain’t right.” “Well, I appreciate your call.” “You’re going to need some backup, someone who knows some of these people you’re going against, and I’m going to help you.” “I’d be very grateful for your help.” “I’ll tell you something else.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think your phone is being tapped?” “No, sir, I think my phone is clear.” Sam’s voice rose in volume again. “Well, I’ve decided I ain’t going to let them string him up. I’ll get some boys, and we’ll go cut him down before we let them take him. I’m just not going to stand for them putting a good man down for something I know he didn’t do.” Sam Crook spoke in grand proclamations. I hesitated over how to respond. “Well…thank you,” was all I could manage. When I later asked Walter about Sam Crook, he just smiled. “I’ve done a lot of work for him. He’s been good to me. He’s a very interesting guy.” I saw Walter just about every other week for those first few months, and I learned some of his habits. “Interesting” was Walter’s euphemism for odd people, and having worked for hundreds of people throughout the county over the years, he’d encountered no shortage of “interesting” people. The more unusual or bizarre the person was, the more “interesting” they would become in Walter’s parlance. “Very interesting” and “real interesting” and finally “Now, he’s reeeeaaaalll interesting” were the markers for strange and stranger characters. Walter seemed reluctant to say anything bad about anyone. He’d just chuckle if he thought someone was odd.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Th e Christian ideal is not to experi- ence desire at all. Th e aim is not for one to prove as strong as one’s desires, but rather somehow to be continent from desire. Th ere is no way to achieve this continence except through the grace of God.” Th is is as lucid a self- perception as might be hoped for.  Clement’s sexual ideology is closer to the monastic desert than we might suppose. “Our antagonists are Olympian in stature and sting, as is said, more sharply than a wasp. Above all plea sure, which not only by day but also by night, in our dreams, bites us and aims to deceive us with its sor- cery.” But Clement’s asceticism is lodged within marriage, within the city. Th e endless stream of minute directives for Christian living proff ered by Clement amount to a monastic rule for the Christian house hold. Clement clasped enthusiastically to the Paul of the pastoral letters, who had off ered “so many thousands of commands about marriage, procreation, and the arts of house craft.” Paul’s commands are exuberantly expanded into a punctilious rubric for the Christian life. Time, place, and manner restric- tions are unmercifully imposed on the sexual act. Sex was not for the day- time, but neither was the darkness of night to be a veil for hidden excess. Immemorial patterns of sociability are wrapped in new rules of Christian modesty: Clement could prescribe which sorts of dinners to attend and how to behave. If women had to attend social gatherings, they should be entirely covered; the “gravest calumny” that could be leveled against an unmarried THE WILL AND THE WORLD  woman was that she was present at a symposium. If young men were pres- ent, they were to sit motionless, look down, and keep their legs uncrossed. Men were to eat and drink moderately, but also slowly, with a cultivated air of self- control, pausing frequently, never reaching for food, sharing gener- ously, and departing early. For Clement, the Christian sage could pass through life amid the city, but exposure to so many temptations required unfailing vigilance and supreme control of the will.  Clement has what might seem an embarrassing amount of advice on the proper consumption of food and drink. His interest in dietetics and medi- cal lore places him in the mainstream of imperial culture. Clement admired those who abstained from wine completely in the name of chastity and “thought it best if boys and girls are kept apart from this drug completely. It is not advisable to pour liquid heat on smouldering youth. . . . Ramped up by its infl uence, their privates expand and their breasts swell, so that their genitals are an omen, the image of fornication.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  How was it possible, when I sat down in the parlor at my prehistoric desk, to use this code language of rape and murder? I was alone in this great hemisphere of violence, but I was not alone as far as the human race was concerned. I was lonely amidst a world of things lit up by phosphorescent flashes of cruelty. I was delirious with an energy which could not be unleashed except in the service of death and futility. I could not begin with a full statement—it would have meant the strait jacket or the electric chair. I was like a man who had been too long incarcerated in a dungeon—I had to feel my way slowly, falteringly, lest I stumble and be run over. I had to accustom myself gradually to the penalties which freedom involves. I had to grow a new epidermis which would protect me from this burning light in the sky. The ovarian world is the product of a life rhythm. The moment a child is born it becomes part of a world in which there is not only the life rhythm but the death rhythm. The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm. There is not only no need to keep alive at any price, but, if life is undesirable, it is absolutely wrong. This keeping oneself alive, out of a blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. To make the simplest gesture with the hand can convey the utmost sense of life; a word spoken with the whole being can give life. Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. By simple external pressure, by force of surroundings and example, by the very climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death machine, such as America, for example. What does a dynamo know of life, of peace, of reality? What does any individual American dynamo know of the wisdom and energy, of the life abundant and eternal possessed by a ragged beggar sitting under a tree in the act of meditation? What is energy? What is life? One has only to read the stupid twaddle of the scientific and philosophic textbooks to realize how less than nothing is the wisdom of these energetic Americans. Listen, they had me on the run, these crazy horsepower fiends; in order to break their insane rhythm, their death rhythm, I had to resort to a wave length which, until I found the proper sustenance in my own bowels, would at least nullify the rhythm they had set up.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Walter and I traveled to legal conferences and spoke about his experience and about the death penalty. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled hearings on innocence and the death penalty a few months after Walter’s release, and we both testified. Pete Earley’s book Circumstantial Evidence was published a few months after Walter was freed, and it provided a detailed account of the case. Walter enjoyed the travel and the attention, even though he didn’t much like speaking in public. Politicians would sometimes say provocative things—such as that his exoneration just proved the system works—which irritated and angered me. My own speaking would sometimes take on an edge of combativeness. But Walter remained calm, jovial, and earnest, and it was very effective—watching Walter tell his story with such good humor, intelligence, and sincerity heightened the horror our audiences felt, that the State had been determined to execute this man in all of our names. It was a compelling presentation. We spent a good bit of time together, and Walter would occasionally share with me that he was still troubled by the cases of the men he’d left behind on death row. He thought of the guys on the row as his friends. Behind his gentle presentations, Walter had become fiercely opposed to capital punishment, an issue he readily admitted he had never thought about until his own experience confronting it. A few months after winning his freedom, I was still nervous about Walter’s return to Monroe County. The big feast immediately following his release had brought hundreds of people to his home to celebrate his freedom, but I knew that not everyone in the community was overjoyed. I didn’t tell Walter about the death threats and bomb threats we’d received until he was free, and then I told him that we needed to be careful. He spent his first week out of prison in Montgomery. He then moved to Florida to live with his sister for a couple of months. We still talked almost every day. He’d accepted that Minnie wanted to move forward without him and seemed mostly happy and hopeful. But that didn’t mean there were no aftereffects from his time in prison. He started telling me more and more about how unbearable it had been to live under the constant threat of execution on death row. He admitted fears and doubts he hadn’t told me about when he was incarcerated. He had witnessed six men leave for execution while he was on the row. At the time of the executions, he coped as the other prisoners did—through symbolic protests and private moments of anguish. But he told me that he didn’t realize how much the experience had terrified him until he left prison. He was confused about why that would bother him now that he was free. “Why do I keep thinking about this?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The next place was a tax information office in a slab of building with green trim. They gave me an intelligence test that was mostly spelling and “What’s wrong with this sentence?” The woman came out of her office holding my test and smiling. “You scored higher than anyone else I’ve interviewed,” she said. “You’re really overqualified for this job. There’s no challenge. You’d be bored to death.” “I want to be bored,” I said. She laughed. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” We had a nice talk about what people want out of their jobs and then I left. “Well, I hope you weren’t surprised that you had the highest score,” said my mother. We went to the French bakery on Eight-Mile Road and got cookies called elephant ears. We ate them out of a bag as we drove. I felt so comfortable, I could have driven around in the car all day. Then we went to a lawyer’s office on Telegraph Road. It was a receding building made of orange brick. There were no other houses or stores around it, just a parking lot and some taut fir trees that looked like they had been brushed. My mother waited for me in the car. She smiled, took out a crossword puzzle and focused her eyes on it, the smile still gripping her face. The lawyer was a short man with dark, shiny eyes and dense immobile shoulders. He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go. “Come into my office,” he said. We sat down and he fixed his eyes on me. “It’s not much of a job,” he said. “I have a paralegal who does research and leg-work, and the proofreading gets done at an agency. All I need is a presentable typist who can get to work on time and answer the phone.” “I can do that,” I said. “It’s very dull work,” he said. “I like dull work.” He stared at me, his eyes becoming hooded in thought. “There’s something about you,” he said. “You’re closed up, you’re tight. You’re like a wall.” “I know.” My answer surprised him and his eyes lost their hoods. He tilted his head back and looked at me, his shiny eyes bared again. “Do you ever loosen up?” The corners of my mouth jerked, smilelike. “I don’t know.” My palms sweated. — His secretary, who was leaving, called me the next day and said that he wanted to hire me. Her voice was serene, flat and utterly devoid of inflection. “That typing course really paid off,” said my father. “You made a good investment.” He wandered in and out of the dining room in pleased agitation, holding his glass of beer. “A law office could be a fascinating place.” He arched his chin and scratched his throat.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he felt an irritating combination of guilt and anxiety. He thought of his wife, making breakfast with her delicate, methodical movements, or in the bathroom, painstakingly applying kohl under her huge eyes, flicking away the excess with pretty, birdlike finger gestures, her thin elbows raised, her eyes blank with concentration. He thought of Beth, naked and bound, blindfolded and spread-eagled on the floor of her cluttered apartment. Her cartoon characters grinned as he beat her with a whip. Welts rose on her breasts, thighs, stomach and arms. She screamed and twisted, wrenching her neck from side to side. She was going to be scarred for life. He had another picture of her sitting across from him at a restaurant, very erect, one arm on the table, her face serious and intent. Her large glasses drew her face down, made it look somber and elegant. She was smoking a cigarette with slow, mournful intakes of breath. These images lay on top of one another, forming a hideously confusing grid. How was he going to sort them out? He managed to separate the picture of his wife and the original picture of blindfolded Beth and hold them apart. He imagined himself traveling happily between the two. Perhaps, as time went on, he could bring Beth home and have his wife beat her too. She would do the dishes and serve them dinner. The grid closed up again and his stomach went into a moil. The thing was complicated and potentially exhausting. He looked at the anxious girl on the corner. She had said that she wanted to be hurt, but he suspected that she didn’t understand what that meant. He should probably just stay in the pizza place and watch her until she went away. It might be entertaining to see how long she waited. He felt a certain pity for her. He also felt, from his glassed-in vantage point, as though he were torturing an insect. He gloated as he ate his pizza. At the height of her anxiety she saw him through the glass wall of the pizza stand. She immediately noticed his gloating countenance. She recognized the coldly scornful element in his watching and waiting as opposed to greeting her. She suffered, but only for an instant; she was then smitten by love. She smiled and crossed the street with a senseless confidence in the power of her smile. “I was about to come over,” he said. “I had to eat first. I was starving.” He folded the last of his pizza in half and stuck it in his mouth. She noticed a piece of bright orange pizza stuck between his teeth, and it endeared him to her.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Sandra rapidly crossed and recrossed the floor, darting in and out of conversations with apparent pleasure and animation. “Nobody’s here ,” she hissed finally, near the hors d’oeuvres, even though there were dozens of people present. Stephanie wandered from conversation to conversation, having an almost panicky feeling that although there were nice, interesting people in the room, the situation, for all its seeming friendliness and ease, precluded her from connecting with the nice and interesting aspects of them. She tried to figure out why this was and could not, beyond the sense that the conversations around her were opening and closing according to the subtle but definite rules that no one had told her about. Then she saw Dara, Sandra’s other non-artist friend, standing regally alone. Dara was trying to become a fashion designer, and she looked unusually beautiful that night in a strapless satin dress that was dramatically faded in the middle where someone had probably spilled something on it a long time ago. Stephanie had always admired Dara, even though she was not friendly and had once been very rude to Stephanie on the phone. But Dara seemed pleased to see her and hung on to her presence throughout a shockingly dull conversation that stumbled awkwardly through Sandra’s work, Sandra’s husband’s work, a writer Stephanie liked and a movie. Still, Stephanie resolutely held on to her idea of Dara as an interesting person. She said, “You seem like someone who is at home in the world.” A startled look flared in Dara’s eyes; she glanced at Stephanie with disappointment. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said shortly. “I doubt you know anyone less at home than me.” They stood silently, Stephanie’s silence a disheartened one. She had thought she was making a penetrating remark that would impress Dara with her perceptiveness; instead she had revealed herself to be a person living in a dreamworld. This was always happening. — The next day at Christine’s, she felt like a person in a dreamworld, specifically a Playboy cartoon dreamworld inhabited by beautiful, moronic prostitutes in short pink negligees lolling about on cushions with white cats while large men in suits smiled at them. It was a strangely pleasant sensation. It had been a slow afternoon, and the women lounged on the couch with their high heels off and their feet up, watching TV and eating heavily salted french fries from damp carry-out containers. Stephanie was talking to Brett, an alert Chinese girl with waist-length hair.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It’s a lot like yours, you know.” “Yes. That’s true, I have to admit.” She drank her liqueur. “Do you think you could improve your attitude about this whole thing? You might try being a little more positive.” Coming from him, this question was preposterous. He must be so pathologically insecure that his perception of his own behavior was thoroughly distorted. He saw rejection everywhere, she decided; she must reassure him. “But I do feel positive about being here,” she said. She paused, searching for the best way to express the extremity of her positive feelings. She invisibly implored him to see and mount their blue puffball bed. “It would be impossible for you to disappoint me. The whole idea of you makes me happy. Anything you do will be all right.” Her generosity unnerved him. He wondered if she realized what she was saying. “Does anybody know you’re here?” he asked. “Did you tell anyone where you were going?” “No.” She had in fact told several people. “That wasn’t very smart.” “Why not?” “You don’t know me at all. Anything could happen to you.” She put her glass on the coffee table, crossed the floor and dropped to her knees between his legs. She threw her arms around his thighs. She nuzzled his groin with her nose. He tightened. She unzipped his pants. “Stop,” he said. “Wait.” She took his shoulders—she had a surprisingly strong grip—and pulled him to the carpet. His hovering brood of images and plans was suddenly upended, as though it had been sitting on a table that a rampaging crazy person had flipped over. He felt assaulted and invaded. This was not what he had in mind, but to refuse would make him seem somehow less virile than she. Queasily, he stripped off her clothes and put their bodies in a viable position. He fastened his teeth on her breast and bit her. She made a surprised noise and her body stiffened. He bit her again, harder. She screamed. He wanted to draw blood. Her screams were short and stifled. He could tell that she was trying to like being bitten, but that she did not. He gnawed her breast. She screamed sharply. They screwed. They broke apart and regarded each other warily. She put her hand on his tentatively. He realized what had been disturbing him about her. With other women whom he had been with in similar situations, he had experienced a relaxing sense of emptiness within them that had made it easy for him to get inside them and, once there, smear himself all over their innermost territory until it was no longer theirs but his. His wife did not have this empty quality, yet the gracious way in which she emptied herself for him made her submission, as far as it went, all the more poignant.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Some cults simply fade away or disband. The Democratic Worker’s Party of California decided to disband after its members became extremely disillusioned with their leader.151 The Center for Feeling Therapy disbanded when its leaders simply walked away one day, leaving hundreds of confused and disoriented members.152 Another issue is whether a particular destructive group is uniformly dangerous at every one of its locations throughout the world. This may or may not be the case. Despite the fact that many groups try to present an image of being large, powerful, and monolithic, they are usually not totally uniform. There can be major differences, depending on the local leader’s personality, strictness, and style. During my days in the Moonies, the lifestyles on the east and west coasts differed significantly. In the east—primarily because Moon lived there and oversaw operations personally—militaristic discipline and control were extreme. Men and women were not permitted to hug, kiss or hold hands unless they were married and given permission. On the west coast, where things were much looser, people did all these things. However, recruiters on the west coast were more deceptive in their tactics. Because many destructive cults offer meditation or other possibly therapeutic techniques that are claimed to have universally beneficial results, another legitimate question is whether cults affect some people more adversely than others? The answer is yes. For example, a significant proportion of people simply do not respond well to passive relaxation techniques, and suffer from “relaxation induced anxiety.” Such a person recruited into an organization like Transcendental Meditation (TM) might suffer headaches, insomnia, increased anxiety and so forth. Since TM members believe that their form of meditation is good for everybody, a person who complains of negative effects may be told that they are simply “unstressing” and should continue meditating. Unfortunately, ignoring such problems may lead to serious health problems, nervous breakdowns and even suicidal tendencies.153 Former TMers have complained of tunnel vision and, after the “yogic flying” course, at least one practitioner suffered a fractured coccyx. Large group awareness training programs such as est (changed in the 1980s to The Forum and later Landmark Education) and Lifespring have been strongly criticized for their lack of professional screening. As a result, several of these organizations have been the subject of lawsuits by damaged participants.154 Lastly, there is the consideration of a group’s size. Is a cult’s destructiveness related to its size? Not at all. I have seen one-on-one mind control relationships that have been as destructive as some of the world’s most powerful and toxic cults. In researching battered-person syndrome, I have found many similarities and parallels with members of mind control cults.155

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  When I was deprogrammed from the Moonies in 1976, there was no Internet. Since then, life on planet Earth, especially our relationship to information and people around the world, has changed radically. I used to carry with me pounds of books and photocopies of information when doing my work. There was no Wikipedia. No Google. No Facebook. There were no cell phones, no text messaging, and no tracking GPS chips. Before the Internet, no one knew where to go for help. Perhaps they would talk with friends, relatives, doctors, or clergy. Or they would use the card catalog at their local library to look for a book. People felt helpless, afraid, alone, and confused as they watched a loved one undergo a radical personality change. Similarly, people recruited into a cult had few resources to reality-test what they were told while in the group. When people leave cults they are confused, ashamed, lonely, depressed, and often suicidal, but there were few places to turn to for helpful information or guidance. The advent of the World Wide Web created a new era, as it was a fast and effective way to network and share information. In 1992, computer genius, Bob Penny, built factnet.org, the first dedicated counter-cult website, which was then launched by his fellow ex-Scientologists Lawrence Wollersheim, Gerry Armstrong, and Jon Atack. I had my website in 1995. The Internet provided light on the dark deeds of megalomaniac cult leaders and their unethical, often criminal behavior. In those early days of the Internet, the information control of destructive groups was temporarily broken, and cults scrambled to cope with that fact. Unfortunately, just as diseases evolve to resist or avoid new medical treatments, many organizations now use the Internet to mislead and misinform the world. Some examples: • Unfortunately, Wikipedia is constantly patrolled by agents of destructive groups. Critical information is removed or confusing information is added. These wealthy groups with free labor have the advantage when it comes to information control and currently, Wikipedia has not found a way to protect the public and mitigate their power. Perhaps they are substantial donors? Members continuously try to remove accurate information about their organizations and replace it with falsehoods. Some of the larger organizations have staff whose sole job is to erase truth from the web and upload propaganda. Valuable sites, such as factnet.org, are hacked and driven out of operation. Thankfully, there is the Wayback Machine Internet archive. If you know the critical site URL, there is a chance the useful information has been saved and archived.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  An American in his late twenties, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, Mr. Miller exuded the charm and confidence of a family doctor. He began to talk, and talk, and talk. As he lectured for hour after hour, I became very uncomfortable. The workshop was just too weird. I liked almost everyone there: they were bright, goodhearted college students like myself. But I disliked the overly structured environment, the childishly religious atmosphere, and having been misled about the nature of this weekend retreat. Whenever I started to object, which I did several times, I was told to save my questions until after the lecture. In the small group, I was always told, “That is a very good question. Hold onto it because it will be answered in the next lecture.” Again and again, I was told not to judge what I was hearing until I had heard it all. Meanwhile, I was listening to an enormous amount of material about humankind, history, the purpose of creation, the spiritual world versus the physical world, and so forth, much of which presumed an acceptance of what had been said earlier. The entire weekend was structured from morning until night. There was no free time. There was no possibility of being alone. Members outnumbered newcomers three to one and kept us surrounded. We newcomers were never permitted to talk among ourselves unchaperoned. Day one came and went, leaving my sense of reality more or less intact. Before we went to bed we were asked to fill out “reflection” sheets to reveal all we were thinking and feeling. Naively, I filled them out. I had another restless night but was so exhausted emotionally and physically that I did manage to get a few hours’ sleep. Day two, Sunday, began in exactly the same way. But now we had all been in this crazy, intense environment for 36 hours, which felt more like a week. I started asking myself, “Is something wrong with me? Why do I seem to be the only person questioning this stuff? Is it more profound than I’m able to grasp? Am I not spiritual enough to understand what they’re teaching?” I started listening to Mr. Miller more seriously and began to take notes. By Sunday evening I was more than ready for the ride back home. But it grew later and later, and nobody made any move to depart. Finally I spoke up and said I had to leave now. “Oh, please don’t go!” several people pleaded. “Tomorrow is the most important day!” “Tomorrow? It’s Monday and I have classes!” I explained that it was impossible for me to stay another day. The workshop director took me aside and told me that everybody else had decided to stay for the third day. “No one told you this was a three-day workshop?” he asked. “No,” I responded. “I never would have come if I’d known it would make me miss a day of school.”