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 The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  but get a little heated and angry and exaggerate any negative qualities. If others in the group are feeling anxious or outraged by something, we often get swept up in the group mood. All of these are subtle indications that we are under the influence of the group. If we are experiencing the above transformations, we can be sure the same is going on with our colleagues. Now imagine some outside threat to our group’s well-being or stability, a crisis of sorts. All of the above reactions would be intensified by the stress, and our apparently civilized, sophisticated group could become quite volatile. We would feel greater pressure to prove our loyalty and go along with anything the group advocated. Our thinking about the rival/enemy would become even more simplistic and heated. We would be subject to more powerful waves of viral emotions, including panic or hatred or grandiosity. Our group could split up into factions with tribal dynamics. Charismatic leaders could easily emerge to exploit this volatility. If pushed far enough, the potential for aggression lies under the surface of almost any group. But even if we hold back from overt violence, the primitive dynamic that takes over can have grave consequences, as the group overreacts and makes decisions based on exaggerated fears or uncontrollable excitement. To resist this downward pull that groups inevitably exert on us, we must conduct a very different experiment in human nature from Mao’s, with a simple goal in mind—to develop the ability to detach ourselves from the group and create some mental space for true independent thinking. We begin this experiment by accepting the reality of the powerful effect that the group has on us. We are brutally honest with ourselves, aware of how our need to fit in can shape and warp our thinking. Does that anxiety or sense of outrage that we feel come completely from within, or is it inspired by the group? We must observe our tendency to demonize the enemy and control it. We must train ourselves to not blindly venerate our leaders; we respect them for their accomplishments without feeling the need to deify them. We must be especially careful around those who have charismatic appeal, and try to demystify and pull them down to earth. With such awareness, we can begin to resist and detach. As part of this experiment we must not only accept human nature but work with what we have to make it productive. We inevitably feel the need for status and recognition, so let’s not deny it. Instead, let’s cultivate such status and recognition through our excellent work. We must accept our need to belong to the group and prove our loyalty, but let’s do it in more positive ways—by questioning group decisions that will harm it in the long run, by supplying divergent opinions, by steering the group in a more rational direction, gently and strategically. Let’s use the viral nature of emotions in the group but

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Well,” I started slowly, “it sounds like it takes a little practice, but I get the general idea. I mean that noon and midnight stuff sounds, well, like you got to practice it to get it right.” Jacqueline looked confused. Then she laughed till tears streamed down her cheeks. “Honey,” she’d start, but she was laughing too hard to continue. “Honey. You can’t learn to fuck from reading Popular Mechanics. That isn’t what makes a butch a good lover.” This was exactly what I needed to know! “Well, what does make a butch a good lover?” I asked, trying to sound like the answer didn’t mean all that much to me. Her face softened. “That’s kinda hard to explain. I guess being a good lover means respecting a femme. It means listening to her body. And even if the sex gets a little rough, or whatever, that it’s what she wants too, and inside you're still coming from a gentle place. Does that make sense?” It did not. It was less information than I wanted. It turned out, however, to be the information I needed. It just took thinking about it for the rest of my life. Jacqueline took the rubber cock from my hands. Had I been holding it all this time? She placed it carefully on my thigh. My body temperature rose. She began to touch it gently, like it was something really beautiful. “You know, you could make a woman feel real good with this thing. Maybe better than she ever felt in her life.” She stopped stroking the dildo. “Or you could really hurt her, and remind her of all the ways she’s ever been hurt in her life. You got to think about that every time you strap this on. Then you'll be a good lover.” I waited, hoping there was more. There was not. Jackie got up and puttered around the kitchen. I went to bed. I tried to memorize every word that had been said to me before I fell asleep. When Monique began to flirt with me, everyone at the bar was watching. Monique scared me to death. Jacqueline once said that Monique used sex like a weapon. Did Monique really want me? The butches said it was true, so it must be. Somehow everyone knew at once that I would lose my butch virginity with Monique. On Friday night the butches punched my shoulders, clapped me on the back, adjusted my tie, and sent me over to her table. As Monique and I left together I noticed none of the other femmes were encouraging me. Why wouldn’t Jacqueline look at me? She just tapped her long painted nails on that whiskey glass and stared at it like it was the only thing in the room. Did she sense the impending tragedy before I did?

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  A young man with a ponytail shook my hand. “Tm Pat.” Ernie laughed. “You haven’t met Patty yet?” Pat made a face at Ernie. “Shut up. I'll tell you before they do: I was a conscientious objector. If you got a problem with that, keep it to yourself.” Skids thrust his chest out. “I was in "Nam. Hey, Jesse. Did you get drafted or did you join up?” All the blood rushed to my head. I wished I was back in the molding department where the noise level protected me from idle questions. “T didn’t go,” I mumbled. Stone Butch Blues 215 Ernie groaned. “Another one. What'd you do, tell them a fairy taler”’ I thought hard. “I was exempt. Medical.” Walter interrupted. “Leave the kid alone. You got a locker? Here, use this one.” “Hey,” Ernie said. “You need to spice up that locker a little.” I knew what he meant. All the other guys had pin-up posters on their locker doors. “Get yourself a calendar from the restaurant on the corner. We all go there together on payday. Miss August will cook your balls. Hey, Walter, you better get one, too.” Walter shook his head slowly. “Some guys need pictures, some guys got the real thing. Right, Jesse?” I smiled. “I brought my pin-up over from my old locker.” Ernie handed me two bandaids from the first-aid kit on the wall. I used them to tape up a color magazine ad of my old Norton. Pat whistled. “Pd rather ride Jesse’s than yours, Ernie.” The lunch whistle blew. I looked around for Scotty, but he was gone. “Hey, Walter, where’s Scotty?” Walter shrugged and pantomimed lifting a bottle to his lips. “He’s having a rough go of it. His wife’s dying of cancer. He don’t stick around when the guys start talking about pussy.” 216 = Leslie Feinberg By the end of the summer I was considered one of the guys. I actually looked forward to coming to work most mornings because it was my only human contact. Friday at lunchtime we were headed to the Italian restaurant on the corner when Bolt stopped me. “You know somebody named Frankie?” I felt the blood rush up into my face. “What’s he look like?” Bolt shook his head. “It’s not a he. It’s a bulldagger. She used to work with you at a bindery— said you two were on strike together. She told me you did a lot of work with the union.” Frankie told Bolt about me. She must have. I wondered if I should quit now. Just walk out on the dock, hop down onto the driveway, and keep on walking to my bike. “Where did you meet Frankie?” I asked Bolt. “She was on second shift. Starting Monday she’s moving onto day side. She’s an operator. She said you're a good guy.” I blinked in disbelief. “She said that?” Bolt nodded. “She said you’re a good union a3 man.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  victim, it is hard to doubt me. We tend to take extra conviction for truth. In fact, when people try to explain their ideas with so much exaggerated energy, or defend themselves with an intense level of denial, that is precisely when you should raise your antennae. In both cases—the cover-up and the soft sell—the deceiver is striving to distract you from the truth. Although an animated face and gestures might come from sheer exuberance and genuine friendliness, when they come from someone you don’t know well, or from someone who just might have something to hide, you must be on your guard. Now you are looking for nonverbal signs to confirm your suspicions. With such deceivers you will often notice that one part of the face or the body is more expressive to attract your attention. This will often be the area around the mouth, with large smiles and changing expressions. This is the easiest area of the body for people to manipulate and create an animated effect. But it could also be exaggerated gestures with the hands and arms. The key is that you will detect tension and anxiety in other parts of the body, because it is impossible for them to control all of the muscles. When they flash a big smile, the eyes are tense with little movement or the rest of the body is unusually still, or if the eyes are trying to fool you with looks to garner your sympathy, the mouth quivers slightly. These are signs of contrived behavior, of trying too hard to control one part of the body. Sometimes really clever deceivers will attempt to create the opposite impression. If they are covering up a misdeed, they will hide their guilt behind an extremely serious and competent exterior, the face becoming unusually still. Instead of loud denials, they will offer a highly plausible explanation of the chain of events, even going through the “evidence” that confirms this. Their picture of reality is nearly seamless. If they are trying to gain your money or support, they will pose as the highly competent professional, to the point of being somewhat boring, even hitting you with a lot of numbers and statistics. Con artists often employ this front. The great con artist Victor Lustig would lull his victims to sleep with a professional patter, making himself come off as a bureaucrat or the dull expert in bonds and securities. Bernie Madoff seemed so bland nobody could possibly suspect him of such an audacious con game as the one he pulled off. This form of deception is harder to see through because there is less to notice. But once again you are looking for contrived impressions. Reality is never so pat and seamless. Real events involve sudden random intrusions and accidents. Reality is messy and the pieces rarely fit so perfectly. That was what was wrong with the Watergate cover-up and raised suspicions. When the

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  The summer I turned fourteen I got my first job working tobacco on a farm outside Hartford. Most people don’t realize tobacco can grow this far north—but put anything near water and it’ll green itself to the height of a small army. Still, it’s strange how some things come into practice. First cultivated by the Agawam, broadleaf tobacco was soon planted by white settlers as a cash crop after they drove the Natives off the land. And now it’s harvested mostly by undocumented immigrants. I knew you wouldn’t let me ride my bike the eight and a half miles out into the country, so I told you I was doing yard work for a church garden on the city outskirts. According to the flyer outside the local YMCA, the job paid nine dollars an hour, which was almost two dollars above minimum wage at the time. And because I was still too young to be legally employed, I was paid under the table, in cash. It was the summer of 2003, which meant Bush had already declared war on Iraq, citing weapons of mass destruction that never materialized, when the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is the Love?” played on every radio station but especially on PWR 98.6, and you could hear the song from nearly every car on the block if you slept with the windows open, its beats punctuated by the sound of beer bottles bursting on the basketball court across the street, the crackheads lobbing the empties up in the sky, just to see how the streetlights make broken things seem touched by magic, glass sprinkled like glitter on the pavement come morning. It was the summer Tiger Woods would go on to receive the PGA Player of the Year for the fifth time in a row and the Marlins would upset the Yankees (not that I cared or understood), it was two years before Facebook and four before the first iPhone, Steve Jobs was still alive, and your nightmares had just started getting worse, and I’d find you at the kitchen table at some god-awful hour, butt naked, sweating, and counting your tips in order to buy “a secret bunker” just in case, you said, a terrorist attack happened in Hartford. It was the year the Pioneer 10 spacecraft sent its last signal to NASA before losing contact forever 7.6 billion miles from Earth.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Developed over so much time, before the invention of language, that is how the human face became so expressive, and gestures so elaborate. This is bred deep within us. We have a continual desire to communicate our feelings and yet at the same time the need to conceal them for proper social functioning. With these counterforces battling inside us, we cannot completely control what we communicate. Our real feelings continually leak out in the form of gestures, tones of voice, facial expressions, and posture. We are not trained, however, to pay attention to people’s nonverbal cues. By sheer habit, we fixate on the words people say, while also thinking about what we’ll say next. What this means is that we are using only a small percentage of the potential social skills we all possess. Imagine, for instance, conversations with people you’ve recently met. By paying extra-close attention to the nonverbal cues they emit, you can pick up their moods and mirror these moods back to them, getting them to unconsciously relax in your presence. As the conversation progresses, you can pick up signs that they are responding to your gestures and mirroring, which gives you license to go further and deepen the spell. In this way, you can build up rapport and win over a valuable ally. Conversely, imagine people who almost immediately reveal signs of hostility toward you. You are able to see through their fake, tight smiles, to pick up the flashes of irritation that cross their face and the signs of subtle discomfort in your presence. Registering all this as it happens, you can then politely disengage from the interaction and remain wary of them, looking for further signs of hostile intentions. You have probably saved yourself from an unnecessary battle or an ugly act of sabotage. Your task as a student of human nature is twofold: First, you must understand and accept the theatrical quality of life. You do not moralize and rail against the role-playing and the wearing of masks so essential to smooth social functioning. In fact, your goal is to play your part on the stage of life with consummate skill, attracting attention, dominating the limelight, and making yourself into a sympathetic hero or heroine. Second, you must not be naive and mistake people’s appearances for reality. You are not blinded by people’s acting skills. You transform yourself into a master decoder of their true feelings, working on your observation skills and practicing them as much as you can in daily life. And so, for these purposes, there are three aspects to this particular law: understanding how to observe people; learning some basic keys for decoding nonverbal communication; and mastering the art of what is known as impression management , playing your role to maximum effect. Observational Skills When we were children, we were almost all great observers of people.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  ideas that you never attempt to execute, because that would cause you to confront the reality of your actual skill level. Without being aware of it, you might become ever so slightly passive—you expect other people to understand you, give you what you want, treat you well. Instead of earning their praise, you feel entitled to it. In all of these cases, your low-grade grandiosity will prevent you from learning from your mistakes and developing yourself, because you begin with the assumption that you are already large and great, and it is too difficult to admit otherwise. Your task as a student of human nature is threefold: First, you must understand the phenomenon of grandiosity itself, why it is so embedded in human nature, and why you will find many more grandiose people in the world today than ever before. Second, you need to recognize the signs of grandiosity and know how to manage the people who display them. And third and most important, you must see the signs of the disease in yourself and learn not only how to control your grandiose tendencies but also how to channel this energy into something productive (see “Practical Grandiosity,” on this page , for more on this). According to the renowned psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1913– 1981), grandiosity has its roots in the earliest years of our life. In our first months, most of us bonded completely with our mother. We had no sense of a separate identity. She met our every need. We came to believe that the breast that gave us food was actually a part of ourselves. We were omnipotent—all we had to do was feel hungry or feel any need, and the mother was there to meet it, as if we had magical powers to control her. But then, slowly, we had to go through a second phase of life in which we were forced to confront the reality —our mother was a separate being who had other people to attend to. We were not omnipotent but rather weak, quite small, and dependent. This realization was painful and the source of much of our acting out—we had a deep need to assert ourselves, to show we were not so helpless, and to fantasize about powers we did not possess. (Children will often imagine the ability to see through walls, to fly, or to read people’s minds, and that is why they are drawn to stories of superheroes.) As we get older, we may not be physically small anymore, but our sense of insignificance only gets worse. We come to realize we are one person not just in a larger family, school, or city but in an entire globe filled with billions of people. Our lives are relatively short. We have limited skills and brainpower. There is so much we cannot control, particularly with our careers and global trends. The idea that we will die and be quickly forgotten, swallowed up in eternity, is quite

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  accepting some of the blame for the problem, if that seems right. Realize that it is very difficult to get such types to reflect on their behavior and change it; they are too hypersensitive for this. What you want is to have the requisite distance to see through them and to disengage. To help in this, you must learn to trust your past feelings. In the moments they are irritating you, write down what they are doing and memorialize their behavior. Perhaps in doing so, you will realize that you are in fact overreacting. But if not, you can return to these notes to convince yourself that you are not crazy and to stop the blame-shifting mechanism in its tracks. If you don’t allow the shifting to occur, they might be discouraged from using this strategy. If not, it is best to lessen your involvement with such a passive aggressor. The Passive-Tyrant Strategy: The person you are working for seems to be bubbling with energy, ideas, and charisma. They are a bit disorganized, but that is normal—they have so much to do, so much responsibility and so many plans, they can’t keep on top of it all. They need your help, and you strain every fiber of your being to provide it. You listen extra hard to their instructions and try to execute them. Occasionally they praise you, and this keeps you going, but sometimes they rail at you for letting them down, and this sticks in your mind more than the praise. You can never feel comfortable or take your position for granted. You have to try harder to avoid these nasty temperamental rants. They’re such perfectionists, with such high standards, and you’re not measuring up. You rack your brain to anticipate their needs and live in terror of displeasing them. If they were actively ordering you around, you would simply do what they asked. But by being somewhat passive and moody, they force you to work doubly hard to please them. This strategy is generally used by those in power on their underlings, but it could be applied by people in relationships, one partner tyrannizing the other by simply being impossible to please. The strategy is based on the following logic: If people know what it is that you want and how to get it for you, they have some power over you. If they follow your instructions and do your bidding, you cannot criticize them. If they are consistent, you can even grow dependent on their work, and they can squeeze concessions out of you by threatening to leave. But if they have no idea what actually works, if they can’t exactly discern what kind of behavior draws praise and what draws punishment, they have no power, no independence, and can be made to do anything. As with a dog, an occasional pat on their shoulder will deepen their submission. This was how Michael Eisner exercised dictatorial control over everyone around him,

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  Not only to take her out, but to find a home for her on land. In subsequent years I’ll know to haul her earlier, by the end of September at the latest, before the season of nor’easters and emptiness. I’ll know to enlist the help of friends, people who know these waters, know boats. But this first time I’m green, naïve, dumb. I’ve waited too long. I need someone to tow my boat to shore, where a truck will meet her at the ramp, back a forked trailer around the hull and lift her into the air on hydraulic pads. The man who operates this trailer is named Steve, able to thread the beamiest boat down the narrowest street, between telephone pole and stray parked car. But I haven’t yet met Steve, or seen what he can do. I first need to meet Crowbar, who perhaps owns the only boat still in the water so late in the season. I get his name from someone at the Old Colony Tap, who swears he’s due back any minute. After a fruitless hour and a couple Rolling Rocks (“rock ’n rolls,” he calls them) this friend of Crowbar’s offers that he might just know where he’s hiding, if I want to take a drive. I have nothing to lose. I get in his station wagon, and we set out slowly, his muffler grumbling, our exhaust stitching together the couple dozen streets that connect Bradford with Commercial. We stop at a house on Mechanic Street, two other guys pile in. We circle a joint silently. Then we stop at Perry’s, where it seems clear I should buy beer for everyone in exchange for this favor I’m being offered. Crowbar isn’t at the next house we stop at, or the next. The driver pulls up, tells us to watch the car and disappears for what feels like a long time. He comes out shaking his head, passes around some valium. The sun’s low by now, the shadows cold and long, the car moving slower and slower, and with each house Crowbar’s farther and farther away. At one a woman comes out to the car and tells us he just left, but we forget to ask her where he was headed. While waiting outside a house on Nickerson some sort of argument breaks out and the two guys in the back kick open their doors, storm off in different directions. Dark now, darkness falling suddenly this time of year, and I become aware that the car is parked, and I’m alone in it, and I’m not sure which house the driver has disappeared into this time, or how long he’s been gone. Dead-low tide, the boat still chained through the salty ink to the sand. I’ll row out later, check the lines, the pump, maybe even spend one more night.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  237Lecture 24—Apocalyptic Faith in the 1800s and Beyond õ Darby said that after the rapture, the Antichrist will appear. This is a religious tyrant who’s backed by churches that have fallen away from the true Christian message. Darby also said to look out for the rise of an evil political leader, the Beast of Revelation. õ Darby also thought that the Bible predicts the return of Jews to Palestine, where he said they will suffer intense persecution; some will convert and accept Jesus as the Messiah. And Darby predicted the personal return of Christ with his army of saints to defeat the forces of evil and to establish his earthly reign of 1,000 years. THE END TIMES õ Darby’s ideas got a big boost because he was able to convince some of the most prominent evangelists of the day that it was true. Darby’s theory also had intellectual appeal, and there seem to be three main reasons for this. ✳ First, it was scientific and supernatural at the same time. Darby taught that the Bible is a divinely inspired science and history textbook, as long as you learn to crack the code. ✳ Second, Darby’s theory was accessible to the uneducated layperson. That’s because Darby argued that anyone could understand even the most complicated, ambiguous parts of the Bible. ✳ Third, this view of the end times provided a reassuring explanation for a period of change. During the late 19 th and early 20th centuries, a lot of conservative Protestants felt they were losing control of America because of cultural and social changes. World war brought unprecedented death and devastation. Darby’s version of premillennialism explained this chaos. Here was a theory that said things are going from bad to worse, but this is God’s plan. 238 The History of Christianity II õ The year 1945 triggered a flood of new prophecy. Up to that point, prophecy writers had envisioned the apocalypse in terms of terrible natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that all changed. The atomic bomb had to be proof of the end times.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ Darby said that after the rapture, the Antichrist will appear. This is a religious tyrant who’s backed by churches that have fallen away from the true Christian message. Darby also said to look out for the rise of an evil political leader, the Beast of Revelation. õ Darby also thought that the Bible predicts the return of Jews to Palestine, where he said they will suffer intense persecution; some will convert and accept Jesus as the Messiah. And Darby predicted the personal return of Christ with his army of saints to defeat the forces of evil and to establish his earthly reign of 1,000 years. THE END TIMES õ Darby’s ideas got a big boost because he was able to convince some of the most prominent evangelists of the day that it was true. Darby’s theory also had intellectual appeal, and there seem to be three main reasons for this. ✳ First, it was scientific and supernatural at the same time. Darby taught that the Bible is a divinely inspired science and history textbook, as long as you learn to crack the code. ✳ Second, Darby’s theory was accessible to the uneducated layperson. That’s because Darby argued that anyone could understand even the most complicated, ambiguous parts of the Bible. ✳ Third, this view of the end times provided a reassuring explanation for a period of change. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a lot of conservative Protestants felt they were losing control of America because of cultural and social changes. World war brought unprecedented death and devastation. Darby’s version of premillennialism explained this chaos. Here was a theory that said things are going from bad to worse, but this is God’s plan. Lecture 24—Apocalyptic Faith in the 1800s and Beyond 237 õ The year 1945 triggered a flood of new prophecy. Up to that point, prophecy writers had envisioned the apocalypse in terms of terrible natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that all changed. The atomic bomb had to be proof of the end times. 238 The History of Christianity II

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Similarly, if people are trying to cover something up, they tend to become extra vehement, righteous, and chatty. They are playing on the conviction bias (see chapter 1)— if I deny or say something with so much gusto, with an air of being a victim, it is hard to doubt me. We tend to take extra conviction for truth. In fact, when people try to explain their ideas with so much exaggerated energy, or defend themselves with an intense level of denial, that is precisely when you should raise your antennae. In both cases—the cover-up and the soft sell—the deceiver is striving to distract you from the truth. Although an animated face and gestures might come from sheer exuberance and genuine friendliness, when they come from someone you don’t know well, or from someone who just might have something to hide, you must be on your guard. Now you are looking for nonverbal signs to confirm your suspicions. With such deceivers you will often notice that one part of the face or the body is more expressive to attract your attention. This will often be the area around the mouth, with large smiles and changing expressions. This is the easiest area of the body for people to manipulate and create an animated effect. But it could also be exaggerated gestures with the hands and arms. The key is that you will detect tension and anxiety in other parts of the body, because it is impossible for them to control all of the muscles. When they flash a big smile, the eyes are tense with little movement or the rest of the body is unusually still, or if the eyes are trying to fool you with looks to garner your sympathy, the mouth quivers slightly. These are signs of contrived behavior, of trying too hard to control one part of the body. Sometimes really clever deceivers will attempt to create the opposite impression. If they are covering up a misdeed, they will hide their guilt behind an extremely serious and competent exterior, the face becoming unusually still. Instead of loud denials, they will offer a highly plausible explanation of the chain of events, even going through the “evidence” that confirms this. Their picture of reality is nearly seamless. If they are trying to gain your money or support, they will pose as the highly competent professional, to the point of being somewhat boring, even hitting you with a lot of numbers and statistics. Con artists often employ this front. The great con artist Victor Lustig would lull his victims to sleep with a professional patter, making himself come off as a bureaucrat or the dull expert in bonds and securities. Bernie Madoff seemed so bland nobody could possibly suspect him of such an audacious con game as the one he pulled off. This form of deception is harder to see through because there is less to notice. But once again you are looking for contrived impressions.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  aspects. It could not eliminate the anxiety of separating from loved ones or lessen the physical pain involved, but it offered a profound psychological compensation for the anxieties we seemingly cannot shake. This effect was fortified by all of the elaborate and pleasing rituals that surrounded the passage to death. In the world today, our growing reasoning powers and knowledge of science have only made our awkwardness worse. Many of us can no longer believe in the concept of the afterlife with any conviction, but we are left with no compensations, with only the stark reality confronting us. We might try to put a brave face on this, to pretend we can accept this reality as adults, but we cannot erase our elemental fears so easily. In the course of a few hundred years of this change in our awareness, we cannot suddenly transform one of the deepest parts of our nature, our fear of death. And so what we do instead of creating belief systems such as an afterlife is to rely on denial, repressing the awareness of death as much as possible. We do so in several ways. In the past, death was a daily and visceral presence in cities and towns, something hard to escape. By a certain age, most people had seen firsthand the deaths of others. Today, in many parts of the world, we have made death largely invisible, something that occurs only in hospitals. (We have done something similar to the animals that we eat.) We can pass through most of life without ever physically witnessing what happens. This gives a rather unreal aspect to what is so profoundly a part of life. This unreality is enhanced in the entertainment we consume, in which death is made to seem rather cartoonish, with dozens of people dying violent deaths without any attendant emotion except excitement at the imagery on the screen. This reveals how deep the need is to repress the awareness and desensitize ourselves to the fear. Furthermore, we have recently come to venerate youth, to create a virtual cult around it. Objects that have aged, films from the past unconsciously remind us of the shortness of life and the fate that awaits us. We find ways to avoid them, to surround ourselves with what is new, fresh, and trending. Some people have even come to entertain the idea that through technology we can somehow overcome death itself, the ultimate in human denial. In general, technology gives us the feeling that we have such godlike powers that we can prolong life and ignore the reality for quite a long time. In this sense, we are no stronger than our most primitive ancestors. We have simply found new ways to delude ourselves. As a corollary to all this, we find hardly anyone willing to discuss the subject as a personal reality we all face, and how we might manage it in a healthier manner. The subject is simply taboo. And by

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  We know who we are, and this self-awareness becomes our anchor in life. With this guidance system in place, we can turn anxiety and stress into productive emotions. In trying to reach our goals—a book, a business, winning a political campaign—we have to manage a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty, making daily decisions on what to do. In the process, we learn to control our levels of anxiety—if we think too much about how far we have to go, we might feel overwhelmed. Instead we learn to focus on smaller goals along the way, while also retaining a degree of urgency. We develop the ability to regulate our anxiety—enough to keep us going and keep improving the work, but not so much as to paralyze us. This is an important life skill. We develop a high tolerance for stress as well, and even feed off of it. We humans are actually built to handle stress. Our restless and energetic minds thrive best when we are mentally and physically active, our adrenaline pumping. It is a known phenomenon that people tend to age more quickly and deteriorate more rapidly right after they retire. Their minds have nothing to feed on. Anxious thoughts return. They become less active. Maintaining some stress and tension, and knowing how to handle it, can improve our health. And finally, with a sense of purpose we are less prone to depression . Yes, low moments are inevitable, even welcome. They make us withdraw and reassess ourselves, as they did for King. But more often we feel excited and lifted above the pettiness that so often marks daily life in the modern world. We are on a mission. We are realizing our life’s work. We are contributing to something much larger than ourselves, and this ennobles us. We have moments of great fulfillment that sustain us. Even death can lose its sting. What we have accomplished will outlive us, and we do not have that debilitating feeling of having wasted our potential. Think of it this way: In military history, we can identify two types of armies—those that fight for a cause or an idea, and those that fight largely for money, as part of a job. Those that go to war for a cause, such as the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte fighting to spread the French Revolution, fight with greater intensity. They tie their individual fate to that of the cause and the nation. They are more willing to die in battle for the cause. Those in the army who are less enthusiastic get swept up in the group spirit. The general can ask more of his soldiers. The battalions are more unified, and the various battalion leaders are more creative.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  silver key The guy in number 5 left just yesterday, flaked out, disappeared. Talk he had family in Florida, a brother maybe, left his door open and just kept walking, left the key in the lock. Never even got his key deposit back, probably kicking himself now, twenty bucks, pissed away. The key to my father’s room on Beacon Hill is still in his pocket, but the sheriff’s stopped by, handed him his walking papers. February, not a great time to be out on the street, but he cannot go back to his room, not easily, not without a hassle. A few weeks ago he threatened the new landlords ( goddamn queers ) and now they want him out. I sat on the edge of my bed, stared at the closed door. Pondered it. Waited for the knob to turn. Beyond that door were the queers and the city. One toilet in the hall, they come up behind you while you’re pissing. One toilet for five rooms. The queers always knew, the knock always came, the doorknob jiggled. I knew Victor, the room next door, had him in for a drink. The only oldtimer left, here when I got here, held the door like a gentleman. Brought him his papers when he couldn’t get up. The queers didn’t own it then, it was the old woman, Malloy, then the queers. I never asked for anything, paid my rent every week, kept to myself. You knew they could hear everything. I’d see Victor in the hall and we’d just nod. Even the walls seemed thinner, like I could push my fingers right through them, like they were just paper, nothing beyond. How could I know? Outside was so close—passing sirens, footfalls. Some nights he sneaks in after midnight. The next day he can’t leave until the hallway’s silent. More and more lately he doesn’t even bother, just drives all night. While piloting his taxi he scans the city for places he can sleep out rough, if it comes to that. An experience, grist for the mill. Early in the morning I come back, after my shift, the city still dreaming. First the four steps up, then the gold key in the heavy door, then the hallway, past Victor’s, past the toilet, then the silver key to my door. Some mornings I’d be so worn out I’d just pass right through the doors and be in bed. Some days I’d wake up and not know if it was morning or night. The clock read seven— A.M . or P.M ., it didn’t say. Over the years my father’s spent a night or two at the Salvation Army. Slept in the Greyhound station on more than one night, upright in a plastic chair, feeding coins into a tiny television bolted to the armrest. Between places, was all, scoping out the next thing. He still has friends, he can make a few calls. Twenty years earlier he finessed a suite at the Ritz for six months. He’d been selling encyclopedias door-to-door without much luck ( Broads’d answer the door in their nightgowns and say, “No, my husband ain’t here, come on in for a drink” ), sleeping on a friend’s roof on Beacon Hill, and one night in a downpour he ducked into the lobby of the Ritz. Encyclopedia Americana’s relocating to Boston , he told the desk clerk. Room service, the works , he boasts. Light filtering through the leaves outside, shadows of leaves on the shade, a murmur somewhere in the walls. It made more sense to unscrew the doors and lay them on their side, to park the taxi beside my bed, to fill the tub with ice, to close my ears with newspaper. I called my son from the payphone in the hall, told him to bring his truck, he could have whatever he wanted, that the queers wouldn’t get their paws on a thing. He’d never seen the inside of his father’s room, never saw the picture of his mother beside my bed, me holding him in my arms at the door on Pinkney Street. He’ll come with his truck and we’ll move somewhere, another room, or maybe to Maine, with a barn.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  CONTROVERSY õ Church authorities liked the Ptolemaic system for a few reasons, including that it had the enormous advantage of jibing with a literal interpretation of scripture—like the part where Joshua asks the Lord to make the sun stand still so the Israelites can finish massacring the Amorites. õ The truly controversial issue was that Copernicus and Galileo overturned Aristotle. The Catholic Church needed Aristotle. Theologians had built centuries of doctrine on the ideas of that pagan Greek. Take the doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea that the bread and wine of the Eucharist literally become the body and blood of Christ. õ To explain how in the world this could be when the stuff still looked like bread and wine, the church relied on Aristotle’s ideas of substance— the essence of something—and accidents, the outward appearance. The accidents of the bread and wine remained the same, but the unseen essence, the substance, became the Lord’s flesh and blood. õ The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas relied on this explanation of accidents and substance, as well as Aristotle’s theories of causation and a host of other things, in order to explain everything from God’s work in the world to the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. õ Copernicus seems to have grasped the huge implications of dethroning Aristotle, and he proceeded very carefully. When he finally published his findings, he dedicated the book to Pope Paul III, whom he knew had an interest in the stars. And he emphasized in the dedication that his main audience was fellow astronomers, so theologians should not perceive his work as a threat. Lecture 12—The Church and the Scientific Revolution 115

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

  They’re known for being brutally violent—maiming, torturing, raping, cutting off people’s heads—not for the sake of making money but just to prove how ruthless and savage they are, like Mexican drug cartels. In fact a lot of these gangs base their thing on those Mexican gangs. They have the same look: the Converse All Stars with the Dickies pants and the open shirt buttoned only at the top. By the time I was a teenager, anytime I was profiled by cops or security guards, it usually wasn’t because I was black but because I looked colored. I went to a club once with my cousin and his friend. The bouncer searched Mlungisi, waved him in. He searched our friend, waved him in. Then he searched me and got up in my face. “Where’s your knife?” “I don’t have a knife.” “I know you have a knife somewhere. Where is it?” He searched and searched and finally gave up and let me in, looking me over like I was trouble. “No shit from you! Okay?” I figured that if I was in jail people were going to assume I was the kind of colored person who ends up in jail, a violent criminal. So I played it up. I put on this character; I played the stereotype. Anytime the cops asked me questions I started speaking in broken Afrikaans with a thick colored accent. Imagine a white guy in America, just dark enough to pass for Latino, walking around jail doing bad Mexican-gangster dialogue from the movies. “Shit’s about to get loco, ese.” That’s basically what I was doing—the South African version of that. This was my brilliant plan to survive incarceration. But it worked. The guys in the cell with me, they were there for drunk driving, for domestic abuse, for petty theft. They had no idea what real colored gangsters were like. Everyone left me alone. We were all playing a game, only nobody knew we were playing it. When I walked in that first night, everyone was giving me this look: “I’m dangerous. Don’t fuck with me.” So I went, “Shit, these people are hardened criminals. I shouldn’t be here, because I am not a criminal.” Then the next day everything turned over quickly. One by one, guys left to go to their hearings, I stayed to wait for my lawyer, and new people started to pitch up. Now I was the veteran, doing my colored-gangster routine, giving the new guys the same look: “I’m dangerous. Don’t fuck with me.” And they looked at me and went, “Shit, he’s a hardened criminal. I shouldn’t be here, because I am not like him.” And round and round we went. At a certain point it occurred to me that every single person in that cell might be faking it. We were all decent guys from nice neighborhoods and good families, picked up for unpaid parking tickets and other infractions.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  the thought of feeling good in my body once again. I wished Theresa could have come this far with me. Why couldn’t I have had one night to make love with her while I felt comfortable in my body? Theresa. Once I'd thought of her it was too late to put her memory away. I tossed and turned. Wherever I was going, I knew I was headed there alone. The next morning I arrived at the hospital before my scheduled appointment to fill out the necessary forms. “Who are you here to see?” the admissions nurse smiled. “Dr. Costanza.” Her expression cooled. “Just a moment, please.” She returned five minutes later. The doctor wasn’t in. No arrangements seemed to have been made. But she told me to go to the nurses’ desk on the sixth floor. There were three nurses at the sixth floor desk. “I have an appointment for surgery with Dr. Costanza.” The nurses glanced at each other. One sighed. “There’s no room ready for you right now. You'll have to prep yourself in the bathroom.” I hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Just a minute,” she said. She came back with a hospital gown, razor, and Betadine. “Shave your Stone Butch Blues 189 underarms, chest hair, and pubic hair with this and then put on the gown.” “Pubic hair?” She frowned. “That’s the procedure.” I hoped they didn’t do the wrong surgery on me. I figured I'd have time to consult with someone before the operation began. “Don’t go in there,” one of the nurses cried out as I neared the men’s room. I turned toward the women’s bathroom. “No, not there either,’ another called out. I stood stock-still. They found a room for me. I washed myself with Betadine and shaved my armpits for the first time in many years. When my underarm hair had first grown my mother insisted I shave regularly. This would be my last time. As I shaved my beard I promised to take good cate of myself. And I swore that no matter what happened I would never allow madness to consume me. I sat down on a chair in the room to await surgery. Two nurses talked loudly at the desk outside the room. They said there would be hell to pay when healthy tissue was sent down to the pathology lab. They said sooner or later this would blow up and there’d be trouble. A nurse came in the room, smiled, and dipped 190 = Leslie Feinberg her head shyly. She pointed to a gurney in the hall. “Can't I walk?” I asked her. She shook her head. I lay on the gurney as she rolled it down the hall. All I could see were ceilings. Huge lights appeared over me. I was in surgery. Masked faces above me. I hoped they weren’t too hostile. “Which one of you is Dr. Costanza?” I asked.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The rich neural connections in your brain, your creative powers, are something you develop to the degree that you open yourself up to new experiences and ideas. View problems and failures as means to learn and toughen yourself up. You can get through anything with persistence. View the way people treat you as largely flowing from your own attitude, something you can control. Do not be afraid to exaggerate the role of willpower. It is an exaggeration with a purpose. It leads to a positive self-fulfilling dynamic, and that is all you care about. See this shaping of your attitude as your most important creation in life, and never leave it to chance. The Constricted (Negative) Attitude Life is inherently chaotic and unpredictable. The human animal, however, does not react well to uncertainty. People who feel particularly weak and vulnerable tend to adopt an attitude toward life that narrows what they experience so that they can reduce the possibility of unexpected events. This negative, narrowing attitude often has its origins in early childhood. Some children have little comfort or support in facing a frightening world. They develop various psychological strategies to constrict what they have to see and experience. They build up elaborate defenses to keep out other viewpoints. They become increasingly self-absorbed. In most situations they come to expect bad things to happen, and their goals in life revolve around anticipating and neutralizing bad experiences to better control them. As they get older, this attitude becomes more entrenched and narrower, making any kind of psychological growth nearly impossible. These attitudes have a self-sabotaging dynamic. Such people make others feel the same negative emotion that dominates their attitude, which helps confirm them in their beliefs about people. They do not see the role that their own actions play, how they often are the instigators of the negative response. They only see people persecuting them, or bad luck overwhelming them. By pushing people away, they make it doubly hard to have any success in life, and in their isolation their attitude gets worse. They are caught in a vicious cycle. The following are the five most common forms of the constricted attitude. Negative emotions have a binding power—a person who is angry is more prone to also feel suspicion, deep insecurities, resentment, et cetera. And so we often find combinations of these various negative attitudes, each one feeding and accentuating the other. Your goal is to recognize the various signs of such attitudes that exist in you in latent and weakened forms, and to root them out; to see how they operate in a stronger version in other people, better understanding their perspective on life; and to learn how to handle people with such attitudes. The Hostile Attitude. Some children exhibit a hostile attitude at a very early age. They interpret weaning and the natural separation from parents as hostile actions. Other children must deal with a parent who likes to punish and inflict hurt.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Accomplishing this, he would take his place among the presidents he revered—Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. And he would will this into existence, as he always had done. In his first months he moved quickly. He assembled a top-notch cabinet, including the brilliant Henry Kissinger as his national security adviser. For his personal staff he preferred clean-cut young men who would be fiercely loyal to him and serve as tools to realize his great ambitions for America. This would include Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff; John Ehrlichman, in charge of domestic policy; John Dean, the White House counsel; and Charles Colson, a White House aide. He didn’t want intellectuals around him; he wanted go-getters. But Nixon was not naive. He understood that in politics loyalty was ephemeral. And so early on in his administration he installed a secret voice-activated taping system throughout the White House that only a select few would know about. In this way he could keep discreet tabs on his staff and preemptively discover any possible turncoats or leakers among them. It would provide evidence he could use later on if anyone tried to misrepresent any conversations with him. And best of all, once his presidency was over, the edited tapes could be used to demonstrate his greatness as a leader, the clear and rational way he came to his decisions. The tapes would secure his legacy. As the first few years went by, Nixon worked to execute his plan. He was an active president. He signed bills to protect the environment, the health of workers, and the rights of consumers. On the foreign front, he struggled to wind down the war in Vietnam, with limited success. But soon he laid the groundwork for his first visit to the Soviet Union and his celebrated trip to China and signed into law an agreement with the Soviets to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This was just the start of what he would bring about. And yet despite the relative smoothness of these first years, something strange began to stir within Richard Nixon. He could not shake these feelings of anxiety, something he had been prone to his entire life. It started to come out in his closed-door meetings with his personal staff, late at night over some drinks. Nixon would begin to share with them stories from his colorful past, and in the process he would go over some of his old political wounds, and bitterness would rise up from deep within. He was particularly obsessed with the Alger Hiss case. Alger Hiss was an important staffer in the State Department who in 1948 had been accused of being a communist spy. Hiss denied the charges. Dapper and elegant, he was the darling of the liberals. Nixon, at the time a junior congressman from California, smelled a phony. While other congressmen decided to leave Hiss alone, Nixon, representing the House Un-American Activities Committee, kept investigating. In