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.

Page 29 of 501 · 20 per page

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The elaborate escape plan involved ditching the Dodge for an orange Ford. In the meantime, Brousseau purchased another Dodge van for Hubbard, identical to the first. He then cut the original one into pieces and took them to the dump. The Ford was chopped up and dumped as well. Hubbard briefly settled in Newport Beach, California, in a one- bedroom apartment with a kitchenette. In the apartment next door were Pat and Annie Broeker, his two closest aides. Pat, a handsome former rock-and-roll guitar player, enthusiastically adopted the role of an undercover operative, running secret errands for Hubbard and going to any lengths to keep their location a secret. His wife, Annie, one of the original Commodore’s Messengers, was a shy blonde, totally devoted to Hubbard. Hubbard soon decided that the Newport Beach location was compromised, so the three of them hit the road. Pat drove a Chevrolet pickup with a forty-foot Country Aire trailer, which mainly contained Hubbard’s wardrobe, and Annie piloted a luxurious Blue Bird mobile home that John Brousseau had purchased for $120,000 in cash under a false name. The Blue Bird towed a Nissan pickup that Brousseau had converted into a mobile kitchen. For most of a year, this cumbersome caravan roamed the Sierras, lighting in parks along the way. At one point, Hubbard bought a small ranch with a gold mine, but he didn’t really settle down until 1983, on a horse farm in Creston, California, population 270, outside San Luis Obispo, near a spread owned by the country singer Kenny Rogers. He grew a beard and called himself “Jack Farnsworth.” Hubbard had been used to receiving regular shipments of money, but after he took flight, the entire structure of the church was reorganized, making such under-the-table transfers more difficult to disguise. Miscavige ordered that $1 million a week be transferred to the founder, but now it had to be done in a nominally legal manner. One scheme was to commission screenplays based on Hubbard’s innumerable movie ideas. That way, Hubbard could be paid for the “treatment”—about $100,000 for each idea. Fifty such treatments were prepared. Paul Haggis was one of the writers asked to participate. He received a message from the old man asking him to write a script called “Influencing the Planet.” The script was supposed to demonstrate the range of Hubbard’s efforts to improve civilization. Haggis co-wrote the script with another Scientologist, Steve Johnstone. “What they wanted was really quite dreadful,” Haggis admitted. Hubbard sent him notes on the draft, but apparently the film was never made. Meanwhile, Miscavige consolidated his position in the church as the essential conduit to the founder. Miscavige’s title was Special Project Ops, a mysterious post, and he reported only to Pat Broeker. Miscavige was twenty-three years old at the time and Broeker a decade older. As gatekeepers, they determined what information reached Hubbard’s ears.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  Finally, after all this time, and all the different ways to prevent them, unwanted pregnancies are still on the rise in this country. What this tells us is that as we become more sexual, we’re also becoming less responsible, and there is simply no excuse for this neglect. Regardless of the fact that we can and should enjoy sex for other reasons besides procreation, anything serving such an important function should command the utmost respect from all of us. Mother Nature could have just as easily had us become pregnant by eating a certain kind of fruit or taking a certain type of pill. But she chose the intimacy of sexual relations as the way to propagate the species, and that’s something we should never take for granted. The Facts About STDsSexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can be contracted by anyone having unprotected sex. As a thirty-four-year-old woman said, “Hey, even though I’ve only been with low mileage guys, there’s still a risk.” You are not immune by virtue of your age, ethnicity, education, profession, or socioeconomic status. In fact, one in every fifteen Americans will contract a sexually transmitted disease this year and one in four Americans already has one. What further complicates matters is the fact that it is often difficult to tell who has an STD; many people who are infected look and feel fine and can be blissfully unaware they are infected. For women especially, many STDs have no obvious symptoms until there is already irreparable damage (this is true of chlamydia, which I discuss below). Quite often women are not given the tragic news until they want to start a family and learn that an asymptomatic STD has robbed them of that right, unless they resort to assisted reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization. Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge about a disease does not prohibit one from passing it on to somebody else. If you have sex with someone who is carrying a sexually transmitted disease, you can get it, too. Remember, your eyes won’t keep you sexually safe, your mind will. STDs can be spread through vaginal, oral, and anal sex. Some can also be spread through any contact between the penis, vagina, mouth, or anus, even without intercourse. Sexually transmitted diseases can be spread from man to woman, woman to man, man to man, and woman to woman. Several STDs can be spread from mother to child at birth or through breast milk. And, as you probably are already aware, sharing needles can spread STDs, such as HIV.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He rehearsed for months, as much as four hours per day, with Rathbun and Rinder. He would prod them to ask him questions, then complain that they didn’t sound like Ted Koppel, the show’s courtly but incisive host. Miscavige would ask himself the questions in what he thought was Koppel’s voice, then respond with a hypothetical answer. He sorted through what seemed to his aides an endless number of wardrobe choices before settling on a blue suit with a purple tie and a handkerchief in his breast pocket. Finally, on Valentine’s Day 1992, he went to Washington, DC, where the show would be broadcast live. The interview was preceded by a fifteen-minute report by Forrest Sawyer about Scientology’s claims and controversies. “The church says it now has centers in over seventy countries, with more on the way,” Sawyer said. Heber Jentzsch, the president of the Church of Scientology International, was featured, claiming a membership of eight million people. Sawyer also interviewed defectors, who talked about their families being ripped apart, or being bilked of tens of thousands of dollars. Richard Behar, the Time reporter, recounted how Scientology’s private investigators had obtained his phone records. Vicki Aznaran, a former high official in the church, who was then suing the church, told Sawyer that Miscavige ordered attacks on those he considered troublemakers—“have them, their homes, broken into, have them beaten, have things stolen from them, slash their tires, break their car windows, whatever.” Koppel allowed Miscavige to respond to the Sawyer report. “Every single detractor on there is a part of a religious hate group called Cult Awareness Network and their sister group called American Family Foundation,” Miscavige said. “It’s the same as the KKK would be with blacks.” He seemed completely at ease. “You realize there’s a little bit of a problem getting people to talk critically about Scientology because, quite frankly, they’re scared,” Koppel observed. “Oh, no, no, no, no.” “I’m telling you, people are scared,” Koppel insisted. “Let’s not give the American public the wrong impression,” said Miscavige. “The person getting harassed is myself and the church.” Koppel then lobbed what seemed like an easy question for a man who had spent so much time preparing for this encounter. “See if you can explain to me why I would want to be a Scientologist.” “Because you care about yourself and life itself,” Miscavige said eagerly. He gave the example of communication skills. “This is something that major breakthroughs exist in Scientology, being able to communicate in the world around you,” he said. “There’s an actual formula for communication which can be understood. You can drill on this formula.” “So far in life, I haven’t had a whole lot of trouble communicating,” Koppel drolly noted. “What in your life do you feel is not right, that you would like to help?” Miscavige asked.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  What does self-affirmation have to do with erotic transitions? Just about everything! With few exceptions, blockages and distortions of your deepest inclinations lie at the root of self-defeating turn-ons. The alternative is to listen carefully for the guidance that comes only from within. STEP 3:NAVIGATE THE GRAY ZONEOnce a significant transition is under way, it’s only a matter of time until you enter a period of awkward uncertainty when you’re no longer where you’ve been, but you haven’t arrived at where you’re going. Welcome to the gray zone, which, of course, is not a location but a state of mind distinguished by a distressing absence of clear pathways and landmarks. For a time you feel as though you’re wandering aimlessly, disoriented, lost without a clue about how to regain your bearings. The more important and challenging the changes you seek, the more prolonged will be your stay in the gray zone. For some, being in the gray zone feels like standing at the edge of an abyss. But if you can tolerate its ambiguities, the gray zone holds unparalleled opportunities for self-discovery. Gradually, you will notice that the gray zone is not at all the featureless desert it first appears to be. It’s more like a blank canvas on which you can experiment with new shapes and colors. STUMBLING INTO THE GRAY ZONESometimes the first hint that you are entering the gray zone is a realization that partners, situations, or fantasies that have reliably turned you on in the past are losing their allure. If you aren’t prepared for the surprises that await you in the gray zone you might misinterpret your waning interest as a sign of trouble rather than a harbinger of positive change. Men find it especially difficult to handle this temporary reduction in desire because it is usually reflected in less reliable, softer, or nonexistent erections. When old turn-ons begin to lose their effectiveness, some people embark on a search for more intense forms of stimulation to prove to themselves that everything still works. Unfortunately, their first impulse is often to repeat—with even more single-minded determination—the very patterns that are losing their grip. One man could no longer ignore the fact that he wasn’t responding to his porn collection featuring leather-clad dominatrixes. So he went on a frantic search for new porn with even more exaggerated images of dominance and submission. Only later did he realize that these purchases were completely useless because his eroticism was evolving away from the imagery of power and toward—well, he didn’t know yet. But once he accepted the fact that his old arousal patterns were crumbling to make room for something new, yet undefined, he was better able to accept the flux and uncertainty of the gray zone. Maggie Revisited: Turning away from longing

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  A few days later I am driven to the police station in the back of a police car. It stinks of mold and sweat. I am wearing clothes that the hospital gave me: jeans, an ugly brown sweater and green chucks. The nurses tried to comb through my hair, but eventually they gave up. I asked for scissors and hacked through the rope of it. Now it barely touches my neck. I look stupid, but who cares? I’ve been locked in a house for over a year eating coffee grounds and trying not to die of hypothermia. When we reach the police station, they put me in a room with a cup of coffee and a bagel. Two detectives come in and try to take my statement. “Not until I can speak to Saphira,” I say. I don’t know why it’s so important for me to speak to her first. Maybe I think that they won’t hold true to the bargain, and they’ll keep me away from her. Finally, one of the detectives, a tall man who smells like cigarette smoke and says his s’s too softly leads me by the arm to the room where they are holding her. He tells me his name is Detective Garrison. He’s in charge of this case. I wonder if he’s ever seen action like this before. “Ten minutes,” he says. I nod. I wait until he closes the door before I look at her. She’s ruffled. Her lips are bare of their usual deep red, and her hair is pulling out of a low ponytail. She’s leaning her elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front of her. It’s her typical shrink pose. “What’s wrong, Saphira? You look like an experiment gone wrong.” She doesn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, she looks downright peaceful. She knew she’d get caught. She wanted to. Planned it, probably. The realization throws me off. I momentarily forget what I came here to do. I make my way over to the chair opposite her. It screeches against the floor as I pull it out. My heart is racing. This isn’t how I imagined this going. Her face blurs in and out of my vision. I hear screaming. No. It’s my imagination. We are in a quiet room, painted white, sitting at a metal table. The only sound is silence as we sit contemplating one another, so why do I want to reach up and cover my ears? “Saphira,” I breathe. She smiles at me. A dragon’s smile. “Why did you do this?” “Senna Richards. The great fiction writerrr,” she purrs, leaning forward on her elbows. “You don’t rememberrr Westwick.” Westwick. “What are you talking about?” “You were institutionalized, my dear. Three years ago. At Westwick Psychiatric Facility.” My skin prickles. “That’s a lie.” “Is it?”

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  REFINING THE ART OF EROTIC COMMUNICATIONSex therapists and educators are forever harping on the value of communication. To sustain satisfying sex lives, partners must exchange a tremendous amount of information, much of which changes with time and circumstance. Most couples rely primarily on nonverbal clues about how the other likes to be approached and touched. Yet even the best nonverbal communication is severely hampered because it depends on trial and error, with feedback limited to ambiguous groans and squirms. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t encounter a couple who discovers in therapy that long-held beliefs about the other’s likes and dislikes are completely inaccurate. Such mistaken convictions typically are solidified when subtle signs are either misinterpreted or never tested again. During one session Marty described with matter-of-fact certainty how Debbie, his wife, didn’t like him to pump vigorously during intercourse. “Where did you get that idea?” Debbie asked with a look of utter disbelief. “A couple of times you’ve pushed me away and you sure looked unhappy,” he retorted. “I was,” said Debbie with exasperation, “but that’s because I wasn’t wet enough. When I’m hot and lubricating I love it when you get rough!” Marty and Debbie had a genuine desire to please each other. But you can see how only words could describe the specific conditions under which Debbie welcomed vigorous intercourse. No matter how sophisticated we think we are, the fact is that talking about sex is difficult for everyone, even those of us who comfortably bring up sexual matters professionally. Not only are sexual desires, worries, or frustrations hard to articulate, but your partner holds special powers to hurt you by poking fun at you, ignoring you, or acting as if you’re weird. No wonder productive discussions about sex are so difficult to initiate. Sexual communication has a dual function. Besides passing along crucial facts about what you like, don’t like, or might like to try, it’s also important to bolster—or at least not undermine—your partner’s sexual self-esteem. There’s no question that we’re at our best when our partners make us feel as if we have a special knack for turning them on. Conversely, we’re our unsexiest when we’re convinced we can’t do anything right. Don’ts and dos of sexual communication Most couples know when communication is necessary but aren’t sure how to proceed. To that end I offer some suggestions. Because some errors are virtually guaranteed to turn a discussion into a disaster, I’m going to start by violating a truism of marriage counselors that absolute words such as “always” or “never” be judiciously avoided. No matter how tempted you may be, never do these three things:

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  High authorities have doubted this power of imagination to falsify present impressions of sense.[108] Yet it unquestionably exists. Within the past fortnight I have been annoyed by a smell, faint but unpleasant, in my library. My annoyance began by an escape of gas from the furnace below stairs. This seemed to get lodged in my imagination as a sort of standard of perception; for, several days after the furnace had been rectified, I perceived the 'same smell' again. It was traced this time to a new pair of India rubber shoes which had been brought in from the shop and laid on a table. It persisted in coming to me for several days, however, in spite of the fact that no other member of the family or visitor noticed anything unpleasant. My impression during part of this time was one of uncertainty whether the smell was imaginary or real; and at last it faded out. Everyone must be able to give instances like this from the smell-sense. When we have paid the faithless plumber pretending to mend our drains, the intellect inhibits nose from perceiving the same unaltered odor, until perhaps several days go by. As regards the ventilation heating of rooms, we are apt to feel for some time as we think we ought to feel. If we believe the ventilator is shut, we feel the room close. On discovering it open, the oppression disappears. An extreme instance is given in the following extract: "A patient called at my office one day in a state of great excitement from the effects of an offensive odor in the horse-car she had come and which she declared had probably emanated from some very sick person who must have been just carried in it. There could be no doubt that something had affected her seriously, for she was very pale, with nausea, difficulty in breathing, and other evidences of bodily and mental distress. I succeeded after some difficulty and time, in quieting her, and she left, protesting that the smell was unlike anything she had before experienced and was something dreadful. Leaving my office soon after, it so happened that I found her at the street-corner, waiting for a car: we thus entered the car together. She immediately cal attention to the same sickening odor which she had experienced other car, and began to be affected the same as before, when I pointed out to her that the smell was simply that which always emanates from the straw which has been in stables. She quickly recognized it as the same, when the unpleasant effects which arose while she was possessed with another perception of its character at once passed away."[109]

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

  They could not close their eyes to the fact that the power was fast passing from Jerusalem to Antioch, and from the Jews to the Gentiles, but instead of yielding to the course of Providence, they determined to resist it in the name of order and orthodoxy, and to keep the regulation of missionary operations and the settlement of the terms of church membership in their own hands at Jerusalem, the holy centre of Christendom and the expected residence of the Messiah on his return. Whoever has studied the twenty-third chapter of Matthew and the pages of church history, and knows human nature, will understand perfectly this class of extra-pious and extra-orthodox fanatics, whose race is not dead yet and not likely to die out. They serve, however, the good purpose of involuntarily promoting the cause of evangelical liberty. The agitation of these Judaizing partisans and zealots brought the Christian church, twenty years after its founding, to the brink of a split which would have seriously impeded its progress and endangered its final success. The Conferences in Jerusalem. To avert this calamity and to settle this irrepressible conflict, the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch resolved to hold a private and a public conference at Jerusalem. Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas as commissioners to represent the Gentile converts. Paul, fully aware of the gravity of the crisis, obeyed at the same time an inner and higher impulse.437 He also took with him Titus, a native Greek, as a living specimen of what the Spirit of God could accomplish without circumcision. The conference was held A.D. 50 or 51 (fourteen years after Paul’s conversion). It was the first and in some respects the most important council or synod held in the history of Christendom, though differing widely from the councils of later times. It is placed in the middle of the book of Acts as the connecting link between the two sections of the apostolic church and the two epochs of its missionary history. The object of the Jerusalem consultation was twofold: first, to settle the personal relation between the Jewish and Gentile apostles, and to divide their field of labor; secondly, to decide the question of circumcision, and to define the relation between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. On the first point (as we learn from Paul) it effected a complete and final, on the second point (as we learn from Luke) a partial and temporary settlement. In the nature of the case the public conference in which the whole church took part, was preceded and accompanied by private consultations of the apostles.438 1. Apostolic Recognition. The pillars of the Jewish Church, James, Peter, and John439—whatever their views may have been before—were fully convinced by the logic of events in which they recognized the hand of Providence that Paul as well as Barnabas by the extraordinary success of his labors had proven himself to be divinely called to the apostolate of the Gentiles.

• From A Sexplanation (2021)

  And if we don't give young people information about relationships, but also about the actual mechanics of all different types of sexual behavior, they are going to seek it out and they're going to consume it without us framing it. -The reason I think it's crucial to start discussing this with kids is because first of all, they're going to encounter it, right? It's impossible to go online and not come across pornography. They're gonna start to base their assumptions of what sex is like, what bodies look like, how bodies function, what pleasure is, based on what they're seeing because they don't know otherwise. They just don't have that porn literacy to understand that this is just about fantasy. But as soon as parents hear the word porn, no go. We don't even want to talk about this. It's the stick the head in the sand approach to pornography. -You know, what are people missing out on if they only see porn as an instruction manual? -So things like consent. I mean, when's the last time you watched a porn clip and at the beginning they were like, we're gonna have a negotiation about what we're gonna do. Is that okay with you? It just doesn't happen. -People need to know that when you see anal sex on screen, those are professionals. The truth is that in real life anal sex won't look like that. Lube is important. Can't be done without lube. You wouldn't see that in the porn. And also, there's probably going to be poop. And I think that's really important to say. -Yeah. -Because young, especially young, straight men, they're like, wait what do you mean? There's going to be, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh yeah, it's a bum, my friend. That's gonna happen, but it's edited out of that porn that you've watched 50 times on Pornhub, right? So having that discussion about what anal sex really looks like in real life, being gentle, being consensual, using lots of lube, taking your time. There's probably going to be like, sounds that you didn't expect. It's not gonna look like what you expect. So porn literacy is what we should be teaching. Not telling them that porn will hurt them or ruin them, or I don't know, make them into sex fiends or that they're not allowed, right? We should be telling them, that's fantasy. -But wouldn't it be better that we basically have better porn literacy? That we can, you know, that in schools that we spend resources figuring out like, what is the best way that parents can help kids understand, like, if you see this in porn, you have to understand this is a fantasy. -Yeah. -This is meant for adults. -I don't know that we need to teach porn. I do think it's important to teach people, to respect their bodies and consent and media choices.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  For these and other reasons it is all too easy to mistrust or reject your CET. However, if you go to the trouble of uncovering it only to criticize what you discover, you’ll do yourself a terrible disservice. CETs hide from the light of full consciousness to protect themselves from such judgments. If you choose to see your CET, your erotic well-being requires that you honor it. Even scenarios that appear depraved and without redeeming qualities are engaged in important emotional work and deserve your respect. However, as we shall see in Part II, not all CETs bring joyous results. Some troublesome turn-ons prompt us to continue acting out unfulfilling or destructive patterns that may preclude intimacy or undermine self-esteem. The healing impulses of the CET can go haywire and end up hurting us in exactly the areas in which they are trying to help. One thing you should always remember: CETs speak the primal language of the erotic mind. Learn this language, and you will know the sources of passion. Part IITROUBLESOME TURN-ONS6WHEN TURN-ONS TURN AGAINST YOUErotic scripts can wreak havoc by drawing you into unworkable repetitions. The more you understand the erotic mind, the more obvious it becomes that the same depth and complexity that makes eroticism so fascinating and rewarding also guarantees that a great deal can go wrong. You know this fundamental principle of erotic life: anything that intensifies passion can also disrupt it. From the erotic equation you know that the opposite is equally true: anything that inhibits arousal can also enhance it. This means that virtually any thought, feeling, or set of circumstances can be either an aphrodisiac or an antiaphrodisiac. In Part I you used peak experiences and fantasies as tools of self-discovery. Now in Part II you can apply your discoveries to the recognition and understanding of a variety of common erotic problems, some of which you may not have considered before. Like a lot of people, you might be reluctant to think very much about these unwelcome annoyances. They are deeply unsettling, and many people are superstitious that focusing attention on these problems will somehow make them worse. Some people are uneasy because they have a vague awareness that their erotic patterns are troubling them but are hesitant to look too closely, especially if they’re not sure what’s wrong. If you sense such a reluctance within yourself, I assure you that grappling with erotic concerns directly—naming them, exploring their shape and texture, even when it’s disturbing to do so—is the only effective way to resolve them. Long-term improvements are the rewards for short-term discomfort.

• From A Sexplanation (2021)

  I think what it is now is I'm realizing how much I purposely disconnected from my parents. And not necessarily because they were bad parents but just because I was so terrified. When I think about how much time left I have with my parents -Yeah. -I don't want there to be moments of disconnection. -I love that as your start. I am looking for a connection with you. -Yeah. -And I want it to be about my whole self. [car engine humming] [Alex] How are you guys feeling right now? -Good, good. -A little apprehensive. -[laughs] Yeah, me, too. [laughing] So just, there are some things now that I'm thinking back on and I'm wondering, I built up a lot as like a shameful, scary moment or not knowing and so I'm wondering if I can ask you now and just kind of see where you were at at that time. So, how old was I when you first started suspecting that I might be gay? -[chuckles] I didn't suspect at all. -I thought about it in 1992, I remember specifically because that was the Winter Olympics. And you were like, loved ice skating. You really loved it so hmm, wonder if he's gay. I mean, that seems so stereotypical, I feel bad about that. -That's okay, I fit that stereotype. Did you ever find the porn that I was watching in the house? -I found a couple. [laughs] -Yeah. So then did you think that was, did that make you uncomfortable knowing that I was probably watching porn and masturbating in the house? -No. -No? [laughs] -I figured, every kid does it. -Yeah, did you ever find evidence that I was masturbating in the house? -[vocalizing no] -I did 'cause he doesn't clean. [laughs] Of course he doesn't. [laughs] -Oh, I thought I was being so careful. -No, you weren't. You're very sloppy. [laughs] -So when you guys met were both of you virgins then? -I was, yeah. -I was extra-extra-virgin. -Oh God, no he wasn't. [laughs] That's olive oil, okay? That does not even apply to yo. [laughter] -That means nobody touched me below my neck except my hands. -Oh, get out of here. That is such a lie. He tells me that all the time, it's such a lie. [laughs] -So how old were you when you first had sex, Dad? -Probably college. I don't remember, but probably college, maybe 20. -Do you remember her name? -Yeah, yeah. [Alex laughing] It was not- -He was engaged. -What, I didn't know that! You were engaged? -It was not a memorable experience, I mean, it's not. -Wait, wait, you were engaged? -Sort of, it was kind of just for fun. It was not serious. -What do you mean? I had no idea. -It's not serious. -What are you talking about? -Oh, it was just for fun. -Wait, so do you feel okay with that? -I feel less okay with him saying that he's extra-extra-virgin.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  She couldn’t even lie down because the pressure from the pillow was unbearable. The vibration of footsteps in the hall outside her room made the pain excruciating. She thought if she could only discover the body thetans that she must be harboring she could ease her misery. Every day, hour after hour, she audited herself on the E-Meter, probing for some stirring or a sign of recognition. Hubbard himself was her case supervisor, which made her anxiety all the greater. Despite her rank, she, too, worried about being beached or punished. Even worse, according to Hubbard’s dictates, she alone was responsible for her pain. So why was she doing this to herself? Then, one day in her auditing, she felt something. A kind of “flicker.” Was it a BT? She decided that it must be. An immense feeling of relief washed over her. Soon after that, she discovered more BTs—eventually, hundreds, thousands. Sometimes there was a feeling of lightness or of floating when the BT was expelled. Other times, Eltringham exteriorized from her body. But the headaches remained. Then something new arrived: quarrelsome voices inside her head. At first the voices were faint, but they grew louder and more insistent. Eltringham worried that she was going insane. When she returned to the Apollo, she was shocked by the hellish changes that had taken place. In January 1974, Hubbard issued Flag Order 3434RB, creating the Rehabilitation Project Force. The stated goal was to rehabilitate Sea Org members whose statistics were down or who might be harboring subversive thoughts against Hubbard or his technology. Because the RPF provided a second chance for those who might otherwise be fired, Hubbard saw it as an enlightened management technique, the sole purpose of which was “redemption.” When Eltringham came aboard, she found dozens of crew members housed in the old cattle hold belowdecks, illuminated by a single lightbulb, sleeping on stained mattresses on the floor. They were dressed in black overalls, called boiler suits, and forbidden to speak to anyone outside their group. They ate using their hands from a bucket of table scraps, shoveling the food into their mouths as if they were starving. Despite the confusion and the harsh punishment, there were many Sea Org members who experienced their days on the Apollo as a time of incomparable adventure, filled with a sense of mission and an esprit de corps they would never again recapture.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  He grew up in a small, traditional Midwestern town where most people knew what everyone else was doing. As a young boy he was extremely curious about girls’ bodies and was always coming up with games that allowed him to see and touch the “nasty places” that intrigued him so much. He never knew if a girl would be willing to play along, would get upset, or, worse yet, would tell on him. Worry was always a component of his sexy adventures. Later, when a friend showed him how to masturbate, he became an enthusiast and soon also discovered the thrill of fantasies, most of which had a similar flavor of risky excitement. Meanwhile, opportunities to ‘explore his burgeoning sexual curiosity with real live girls were few and far between. One older girl who lived on a nearby farm was a welcome exception. He fondly remembered many hours of kissing and caressing in the hayloft. With the exception of this one older girl, all his other encounters involved long, drawn-out seductions that were both exciting and totally nerve-wracking. His strongest recollections were of trying to conceal his trembling knees and clammy hands. In short, anxiety had always been intricately interwoven with his eroticism; to be aroused was to be anxious. When he left for college in a larger city, sexual opportunities were more plentiful, yet he continued to gravitate toward women who seemed reticent. With each new partner he devised clever ways to reenact the anxious anticipations that so consistently stimulated him, such as initiating sex in semipublic places or convincing his partners to try things they hadn’t done before—anal sex or three-ways with other women, for example. When he wasn’t proposing something risky or kinky, he got his sexual juices flowing by fantasizing about one or more of his favorite anxious seductions. He recalled several instances beginning as an adolescent when he had lost his hard-on because he was so nervous. But it would always come back—something he could no longer count on. One day Brian cut to the heart of his dilemma: “My body can’t handle the danger anymore, but I’m not turned on without it.” He had actually known this for quite some time but had never been able to articulate it so clearly. Now he had a way to understand why the comfort-building agenda of his previous therapy had made him so resistant. As is always the case in therapy, his resistance contained an unspoken message: “How can you expect me to solve my erection problems by relaxing when it’s anxiety that turns me on?” Vetoing the therapy was a subconscious attempt to preserve the eroticism he had always known.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  The battle is never ending because new infectious agents appear on the scene or because old ones change so much—often as a result of antibiotic therapy—that they come to behave as badly as if they were new. The saga of new corrections never ends, however. Nature is properly defensive and evasive, but medical science does not lack ingenuity or persistence. For example, when the cause of disease is a dangerous virus that is normally carried by a certain insect species, it is now possible to change the insect’s genome such that its carrier status is blocked. This is bold and new and freshly possible due to the discovery of a technique, CRISPR-Cas9, that permits successful modifications within a genome. 1 Nothing guarantees, of course, that the thwarted viruses will not mutate in response to the genetic dissuader and defy the new barrier they face by increasing their malignancy. And so it goes. Homeostasis knows how to play games of cat and mouse, and sometimes so do we. Using the same novel techniques, we will be able to produce modifications of the human genome aimed at eliminating certain hereditary diseases. This is another laudable and potentially valuable endeavor, but there is nothing easy about it because most hereditary diseases that plague humanity are caused not by only one troublesome gene but by several, sometimes many. Genes often operate in bundled fashion, a bit like toxic mortgages. Guaranteeing that the result of an intervention does not produce dangerous and unwanted effects is easier said than done. Far more problematic are some medically unconventional developments, for example, inducing genetic modifications aimed at guaranteeing favorable intellectual and physical traits or retarding and eliminating death. Here, too, the target of the intervention is the human germ line, and the interventions are also enabled by the bold new technique I mentioned earlier. There are serious issues to be considered in the implementation of the latter projects. At a practical level, there are important risks involved in the manipulation of genetic material that, to date, do not appear to have been properly addressed. More fundamentally, tinkering with the natural process of evolution has unforeseen consequences for the future of humanity, in strict biological terms and in sociocultural, political, and economic terms. If the aim is eliminating a disease that produces suffering and is not associated with any benefit, there is ample justification to proceed. Medicine’s classical injunction is “first do no harm,” and provided the injunction is carefully observed, one should applaud the tinkering. But what if there is no disease to begin with? On what grounds is it justifiable to try to improve one’s memory capacity or intellectual caliber by genetic means rather than by practicing intellectual puzzles? And what about physical traits—eye color, skin color, facial design, height? And what about the manipulation of gender ratios? It can be argued that these are “cosmetic” changes and that cosmetic surgery has been practiced for decades with little harm and plenty of satisfied customers.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  They were not so constrained by traditional ideas, and were likely to support any radical policy that gave them a higher profile in the assembly. There was new friction between the classes, and Athens was becoming a divided city. All these anxieties surfaced in Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes, which was presented in 467 and told the story of the apparently futile war between Oedipus’s two sons, Polynices and Eteocles. This grim story of fraternal rivalry may have recalled the recent tragedy of Naxos, when Greek had attacked Greek. Polynices, who had invaded his native polis, was guilty of hubris, while Eteocles seemed to embody the restraint and self-control that should characterize a true citizen: he loathes the ancient, irrational religion of the chorus of frightened women, who rush periodically onto the stage in ones and twos, asking disconnected questions and uttering witless and incomprehensible ritual cries. Yet Eteocles himself, the man of logos, falls prey to the pollution that his father, Oedipus, had unleashed, and that had contaminated the whole family. 96 At the end of the play, this miasma finally drove the two brothers to kill each other outside the walls of Thebes. Aeschylus had depicted a torn society, painfully caught between two irreconcilable worlds. Like Eteocles and the philosophers, some citizens looked down on the old religion, but could not entirely shake it off. It still held sway in the deeper, less rational regions of their minds. At the end of the play, the Erinyes, the ancient chthonian Furies, triumphed over the modern forces of logos. Athenians might regard themselves as rational men of the polis, in charge of their own destiny, but they still felt that they could be overtaken by a divinely inspired pollution that had a life of its own. Would Athenian hubris in Naxos produce fresh miasma and bring their city to ruin? The Greek mind was straining in two directions, and Aeschylus did not propose an easy solution. In their final lament, the chorus was split, half siding with Polynices, the others attending the funeral of Eteocles. In 461 a group of young Athenians led by Ephialtes and his friend Pericles mounted a concerted attack on the elders in the Assembly, which then deprived the Areopagus Council of all its powers. Their slogan was demokratia (“government by the people”). The coup completely overturned the political order. The Areopagus was replaced by the Council of Five Hundred and decisions were henceforth made by all citizens in the Popular Assembly. But the new democracy was not entirely benign. Debates were often rude and aggressive. The courts were made up of citizens, who were both judge and jury. There was no rule of law, and a trial was essentially a battle between the accused and his accusers. The Oresteia, a trilogy written by Aeschylus shortly afterward, shows how deeply Athens had been shaken by this revolution.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Gorgias, for example, wrote several handbooks on public speaking, and taught his pupils that it was possible to argue any case. He once wrote a famous defense of the indefensible Helen of Troy, and was himself an electrifying lecturer. When he arrived in Athens as an ambassador for Leontinum in 427, Gorgias became an overnight sensation, and young Athenians crowded into his classes. One of his students was Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles, who once soundly defeated his uncle in an argument about democracy, using Sophistic methods. Alcibiades became a brilliant speaker in the assembly, and as we shall see, this had terrible consequences for Athens. Some of the Sophists’ pupils certainly abused the skills that they had learned, but this was not the Sophists’ fault. Gorgias believed that effective oratory kept freedom alive. Somebody who truly understood how to marshal an argument could defend the innocent and advance his polis. In a democracy, the Attic orator Antiphon once observed, “Victory goes to him who speaks best.” 20 This was not necessarily a cynical observation, but a statement of fact about the way democracy worked. If victory did indeed go to the person who argued most convincingly in the assembly, the Sophists’ skills could indeed ensure that the right prevailed. Not all Sophists concentrated on public speaking. The most prominent Sophist was Protagoras of Abdera, who had little interest in rhetoric. His specialty was law and government, but he also wrote about language and grammar, and produced a philosophical treatise on the nature of truth. He arrived in Athens during the 430s, and became a friend of Pericles, who commissioned him to write the constitution for the new settlement at Thurii in Italy. Protagoras taught his students to question everything. They must accept nothing on hearsay or at second hand, but test all truth against their own judgment and experience. There must be no more self-indulgent speculation about the cosmos, unsupported by hard evidence. Naïve reliance on traditional mythology was also unacceptable, if it contradicted the laws of common sense. The Sophists taught systematic doubt at a time of deepening anxiety. They had traveled widely. They knew that other cultures had different customs that worked perfectly well and concluded that there were no absolute verities. Where Parmenides and Democritus had castigated subjective conviction, Protagoras embraced it. One person’s truth would be different from his neighbor’s, but that did not mean that it should be dismissed as false. Every man’s perception was valid for him. Instead of seeing truth as a remote reality that was inaccessible to ordinary mortals, Protagoras claimed that everybody had a share. He simply needed to look into his own mind. “The measure of all things is man,” he wrote in his epistemological treatise, “for things that are, that they are; for things that are not, that they are not.” 21 An individual must rely on his own human judgments; there was no transcendent authority, and no Supreme God who could impose his view upon humanity.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It’s dark in the kitchen. I don’t want to put the light on and risk Isaac knowing I was in here. If he is trying to avoid me, I’ll help him. But when I look up he’s standing in the doorway watching me. We stare at each other for the longest time. I feel anxious. It looks like he has something to say. I think he’s come to fight some more, but then I see something else in his eyes. He takes the steps to reach me. One … two … three … four. He’s standing in front of my knees. My hair is wild and unruly. I can’t remember the last time I brushed it. It’s grown past where my breasts used to be. Now it’s sort of a shawl across my upper body, so that even when I’m naked I don’t have to see myself. I don’t even bother to hide my white streak behind my ear like I usually do when Isaac is around. It curls in front of my eye, partly obscuring my vision. Isaac pushes my hair over my shoulder and I flinch involuntarily. Then he puts his hands on my knees. Their warmth stings. He pushes outward, spreading my legs, then he takes a step forward until he’s standing between them. He bends his head until our mouths are almost touching. Almost. The fingers on both of my hands are splayed on the tabletop behind me, balancing myself. I can feel the grooves of my carvings. The carvings Isaac helped me make. He doesn’t kiss me. We have never spoken about the kiss we shared when we thought we were dying. He breathes into my mouth as his hands run up the length of my thighs. His hands feel like warm water running across my skin. I cold shiver. My robe is hiked up to the top of my thighs. When his palms leave my legs, I want to cry out, No! I want more of the warmth, but he reaches up and grabs both lapels of my robe, pulling it open and exposing my chest. I’m frozen. Numb. He touches my scars. My barren womanhood. Frozen … frozen … frozen … and then I break open. I gasp and grab his hands, pushing them away. “What are you doing?” He doesn’t answer me. He lifts his hands to my neck. Wherever he touches me there is heat. I roll my head back and his thumbs graze my jaw. “What I want,” he says. I roll my head to the left to try to pull away from him, but he pushes his hand into my hair at the back of my head, and kisses the side of my neck until I’m shivering. He has me at a disadvantage; I’m trying to keep myself upright with one hand and push him away with the other. Eventually, my hand slips out from under me and we collapse on the table.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  Sometimes the conflict may even result from the application of an affect-motivated solution to a prior problem. The blatant exceptions to the rules that govern the homeostasis of a natural, individual organism are grave situations such as malignant cancers and autoimmune diseases; unchecked, they not only fight other parts of the organism to which they belong but can actually achieve organism destruction. Human groups have made the most sophisticated discoveries of cultural life regulation in different geographic environments and at different points in their respective histories. Diversity of ethnicity and of cultural identity, a fundamental feature of humanity, is the natural outcome of such variety, and it tends to enrich all participants. Diversity, however, contains the germ of conflict. It deepens in-group and out-group fault lines, fosters hostility, and makes general governance solutions more difficult to reach and implement, all the more so in an age of globalization and cross-fertilization of cultures. The solution to this problem is unlikely to be a forced homogenization of cultures, which in practice is unattainable and undesirable. The idea that homogeneity alone would make societies more governable ignores a biological fact: within the same ethnic group, individuals will differ in terms of affect and temperament. In part, it is likely that such differences are aligned with distinct preferences for certain types of governance and distinct profiles of moral values, as I believe Jonathan Haidt’s work implies. 7 The only reasonable and hopefully viable solution for the problem consists of major civilizational efforts through which, by means of education, societies manage to cooperate around fundamental requirements of governance, in spite of differences, large and small. — Nothing short of a massive and enlightened negotiation between affect and reason could ever succeed. But are we guaranteed success if such an extraordinary effort is ever undertaken? I would say the answer is no. There are other sources of disharmony, besides the conflicts generated by the difficulties of reconciling individual interests with the interests of small and large groups. I am referring to conflicts that originate within each individual, in the inner clash between positive, loving impulses and negative, hetero and self-destructive impulses. In the last years of his life, Sigmund Freud saw the bestiality of Nazism as confirming his doubts that culture could ever tame the nefarious death wish that he believed was present within each of us. Freud had earlier begun to articulate his reasons in the collection of texts known as Civilization and Its Discontents (published in 1930 and revised in 1931), 8 but nowhere are his arguments better expressed than in his correspondence with Albert Einstein.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Indeed, he needed conversation, yet he was also capable of profound abstraction. During a military campaign, he once astonished his fellow hoplites by standing motionless all night long, wrestling with an intellectual problem. On another occasion, on his way to a dinner party, he fell into deep study, lagged behind his companions, and finally spent the evening lost in thought, on a neighbor’s porch. “It’s quite a habit of his, you know,” one of his friends explained; “off he goes and there he stands, no matter where he is.” 35 But his thought was deeply practical: Socrates was convinced that he had a mission to bring his fellow Athenians to a better understanding of themselves. Conversation with Socrates was a disturbing experience. Anyone with whom he felt an intellectual affinity “is liable to be drawn into an argument with him; and whatever subject he starts, he will be continually carried round and round by him,” said his friend Niceas, “until at last he finds that he has to give an account of his past and present life; and when he is once entangled, Socrates will not let him go until he has completely and thoroughly sifted him.” 36 Socrates’ purpose was not to impart information, but to deconstruct people’s preconceptions and make them realize that in fact they knew nothing at all. The experience was a milder version of the kenosis endured by Oedipus. You did not receive true knowledge at second hand. It was something that you found only after an agonizing struggle that involved your whole self. It was a heroic achievement, a discipline that was not simply a matter of assenting to a few facts or ideas, but that required the student to examine his past and present life to find the truth within. Socrates described himself as a midwife: he was bringing the truth to birth within his interlocutors. They usually began a conversation with clear, fixed ideas about the topic under discussion. Laches, an army general, for example, was convinced that courage was a noble quality. And yet, Socrates pointed out, relentlessly piling up one example after another, a courageous act was often foolhardy and stupid—qualities that they both knew were “base and hurtful to us.” Niceas, another general, entered the conversation and suggested that courage required the intelligence to appreciate terror, so that animals and children, who were too inexperienced to understand the danger of a situation, were not truly brave.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  This was clearly highly unconventional, but the marriage recalled the ancient ritual of the Asmavedya, the horse sacrifice, which bestowed sovereignty on the king: during the rite, the queen had some form of simulated sex with the sacrificial stallion, and was thus able to transmit the dominion it represented to her husband. In the epic, Draupadi represented royal authority, which she passed on to her brothers. But the Mahabharata also reflects the terror inspired by the sacrificial contests, before they had been reformed by the ritualists. At the beginning of the story, Yudishthira, the oldest Pandava brother, having won the kingdom by force of arms, summoned the chieftains to his royal consecration (rajasuya). He had to prove that he possessed the brahman by submitting to the challenge and ordeal of the ritual. He was duly consecrated and anointed king, but the rajasuya had a disastrous outcome. Overcome with envy, Duryodhana challenged Yudishthira to the dice game that was mandatory during the rites, but the gods loaded the dice against Yudishthira, who lost his wife, his property, and his kingdom. The Pandavas were forced into exile for twelve years, and the war that would almost result in the destruction of the world became inevitable. The story’s catastrophic view of the sacrificial contest gives us some insight into the anxiety that inspired the ritual reform of the Brahmanas. The plight of Yudishthira shows that the Mahabharata was not, after all, untouched by the Axial Age. He seems to have been profoundly affected by the new ideals. He was—to the frequent exasperation of his brothers—gentle, tolerant, and singularly lacking in the warrior ethos. He not only had no desire to assert himself and trumpet his ego in the conventional way, but appeared to find it well-nigh impossible to do so and regarded war as evil, savage, and cruel. 63 Yudishthira was a man of the Axial Age, and this proved to be an almost intolerable handicap. He could not go off to the forest and practice ahimsa. He was the son of the god Dharma, a manifestation of Varuna, who upheld the order that made life possible. As his earthly representative, it was Yudishthira’s inescapable duty to achieve the sovereignty that alone could bring order to the world. As the son of Dharma, he was also obliged to practice the traditional virtues of absolute truthfulness and fidelity to his sworn word, without which the social order could not be maintained. Yet during the war, Yudishthira was forced—quite disgracefully—to lie. In the course of the eighteen-day battle, the Pandavas had to kill two of the generals fighting on the Kaurava side.