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

  The primacy was forced upon Anselm in spite of his remonstrance. He foresaw a hard struggle. He compared himself to an old and feeble sheep, and the king to a young, wild bull. Thus yoked, he was to draw the plough of the Church of England, with the prospect of being torn to pieces by the ferocity of the bull.106 He was received with intense enthusiasm at Canterbury by the clergy, the monks, and the people, and was consecrated on the second Sunday of Advent, 1093. He began at once to restore discipline according to the principles of Hildebrand, though with more moderation and gentleness. A short time elapsed before the relations between the king and the prelate became strained. Anselm supported Urban II.; William leaned to the anti-pope Clement III. The question of investiture with the pallium at once became a matter of dispute. The king at first insisted upon Anselm’s receiving it from Clement and then claimed the right to confer it himself. Anselm refused to yield and received it, 1095, from Urban’s legate, who brought the sacred vestment to England in a silver casket. The archbishop gave further offence to the king by the mean way, as was said, in which he performed his feudal obligations.107 William decided to try him in his court. To this indignity Anselm would, of course, not submit. It was the old question whether an English ecclesiastic owed primary allegiance to the pope or to the crown.108 The archbishop secured the king’s reluctant permission, 1097, to go to Rome. But William’s petty spirit pursued the departing prelate by ordering Anselm’s baggage searched at Dover. He seized the revenues of Canterbury, and Anselm’s absence was equivalent to exile. Eadmer reports a remarkable scene before Anselm’s departure.109 At his last interview with William he refused to leave the king’s presence until he had given him his blessing. "As a spiritual father to his son, as Archbishop of Canterbury to the king of England," he said, "I would fain before I go give you God’s blessing." To these words the king made reply that he did not decline the priestly blessing. It was the last time they met. Anselm was most honorably received by the pope, who threatened the king with excommunication, and pronounced an anathema on all laymen who exercised the right of investiture and on all clergymen who submitted to lay-investiture.110

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

  The danger was very strong, and the warning of the Epistle fearfully solemn. Similar dangers have occurred again and again in critical periods of history. Time and Place of Composition. The Epistle hails and sends greetings from some place in Italy, at a time when Timothy, Paul’s disciple, was set at liberty, and the writer was on the point of paying, with Timothy, a visit to his readers (13:23, 24). The passage, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them" (13:3), does not necessarily imply that he himself was in prison, indeed 13:23 seems to imply his freedom. These notices naturally suggest the close of Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, in the spring of the year 63, or soon after; for Timothy and Luke were with him there, and the writer himself evidently belonged to the circle of his friends and fellow-workers. There is further internal evidence that the letter was written before the destruction of Jerusalem (70), before the outbreak of the Jewish war (66), before the Neronian persecution (in July, 64), and before Paul’s martyrdom. None of these important events are even alluded to;1224 on the contrary, as already remarked, the Temple was still standing, with its daily sacrifices regularly going on, and the doom of the theocracy was still in the future, though "nigh unto a curse," "becoming old and ready to vanish away;" it was "shaken" and about to be removed; the day of the fearful judgment was drawing nigh.1225 The place of composition was either Rome or some place in Southern Italy, if we assume that the writer had already started on his journey to the East.1226 Others assign it to Alexandria, or Antioch, or Ephesus.1227 Authorship. This is still a matter of dispute, and will probably never be decided with absolute certainty. The obscurity of its origin is the reason why the Epistle to the Hebrews was ranked among the seven Antilegomena of the ante-Nicene church. The controversy ceased after the adoption of the traditional canon in 397, but revived again at the time of the Reformation. The different theories may be arranged under three heads: (1) sole authorship of Paul; (2) sole authorship of one of his pupils; (3) joint authorship of Paul and one of his pupils. Among the pupils again the views are subdivided between Luke, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Silvanus, and Apollos.1228

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  He considers this measure to be sufficient. Mr. van D. takes his bath upstairs, figuring that the safety of his own room outweighs the difficulty of having to carry the hot water up all see which is the best place. Father bathes in the private office and Mother in the kitchen behind a fire screen, while Margot and I have declared the front office to be our bathing grounds. Since the curtains are drawn on Saturday afternoon, we scrub ourselves in the dark, while the one who isn’t in the bath looks out the window through a chink in the curtains and gazes in wonder at the endlessly amusing people. A week ago I decided I didn’t like this spot and have been on the lookout for more comfortable bathing quarters. It was Peter who gave me the idea of setting my washtub in the spacious office bathroom. I can sit down, turn on the light, lock the door, pour out the water without anyone’s help, and all without the fear of being seen. I used my lovely bathroom for the first time on Sunday and, strange as it may seem, I like it better than any other place. The plumber was at work downstairs on Wednesday, moving the water pipes and drains from the office bathroom to the hallway so the pipes won’t freeze during a cold winter. The plumber’s visit was far from pleasant. Not only were we not allowed to run water during the day, but the bathroom was also off-limits. I’ll tell you how we handled this problem; you may find it unseemly of me to bring it up, but I’m not so prudish about matters of this kind. On the day of our arrival, Father and I improvised a chamber pot, sacrificing a canning jar for this purpose. For the duration of the plumber’s visit, canning jars were put into service during the daytime to hold our calls of nature. As far as I was concerned, this wasn’t half as difficult as having to sit still all day and not say a word. You can imagine how hard that was for Miss Quack, Quack, Quack. On ordinary days we have to speak in a whisper; not being able to talk or move at all is ten times worse. After three days of constant sitting, my backside was stiff and sore. Nightly calisthenics helped. Yours, Anne THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1942 Dear Kitty, Yesterday I had a horrible fright. At eight o’clock the doorbell suddenly rang. All I could think of was that someone was coming to get us, you know who I mean. But I calmed down when everybody swore it must have been either pranksters or the mailman. The days here are very quiet. Mr. Levinsohn, a little Jewish pharmacist and chemist, is working for Mr. Kugler in the kitchen.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  went on. It was terrifying. My family stood holding its breath at the bottom of the stairs, in case it might be necessary to drag them apart. All the bickering, tears and nervous tension have become such a stress and strain that I fall into my bed at night crying and thanking my lucky stars that I have half an hour to myself. I’m doing fine, except I’ve got no appetite. I keep hearing: “Goodness, you look awful!” I must admit they’re doing their best to keep me in condition: they’re plying me with dextrose, cod-liver oil, brewer’s yeast and calcium. My nerves often get the better of me, especially on Sundays; that’s when I really feel miserable. The atmosphere is stifling, sluggish, leaden. Outside, you don’t hear a single bird, and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over the house and clings to me as if it were going to drag me into the deepest regions of the underworld. At times like these, Father, Mother and Margot don’t matter to me in the least. I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage. “Let me out, where there’s fresh air and laughter!” a voice within me cries. I don’t even bother to reply anymore, but lie down on the divan. Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly, helps pass the time, since it’s impossible to kill it. Yours, Anne WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1943 Dearest Kitty, To take our minds off matters as well as to develop them, Father ordered a catalog from a correspondence school. Margot pored through the thick brochure three times without finding anything to her liking and within her budget. Father was easier to satisfy and decided to write and ask for a trial lesson in “Elementary Latin.” No sooner said than done. The lesson arrived, Margot set to work enthusiastically and decided to take the course, despite the expense. It’s much too hard for me, though I’d really like to learn Latin. To give me a new project as well, Father asked Mr. Kleiman for a children’s Bible so I could finally learn something about the New Testament.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The national integrity of the exiles had been violated by a ruthless display of imperial power. The great achievement of the exilic priests and prophets had been the avoidance of a religion based on resentment and revenge, and the creation of a spirituality that affirmed the holiness of all life. At the beginning of the sixth century, the social crisis that had disrupted many of the poleis in the Greek world finally hit Athens. The farmers in the rural areas of Attica complained of exploitation and banded together against the aristocrats. Civil war seemed inevitable. The noblemen were vulnerable: they were not united, had no army or police force at their disposal, and many of the farmers were trained hoplites, and therefore armed and dangerous. The only way out of the impasse was to find an impartial mediator who could arbitrate fairly between the contending parties. Athens chose Solon, and in 594 appointed him city magistrate, with a mandate to reform the constitution. Solon belonged to the circle of independent intellectuals who gave advice to various poleis during crises. At first they had been consulted on purely practical matters: the economy, unemployment, or bad harvests. But increasingly, the “wise men” had started to consider more abstract, political issues. Solon had traveled widely in Greece, and in his discussions with other members of the circle had considered the besetting problems of the polis. He told Athenians that they were living in dysnomia (“disorder”) and heading for disaster. Their only hope was to create eunomia (“right order”) by returning to the norms that had originally governed Greek society. Farmers were essential to the polis, both as hoplites and as producers of wealth. By attempting to suppress them, the aristocrats had created an unhealthy imbalance in society that could only be self-destructive. Solon was not content simply to pass a few laws. He wanted to make farmers and aristocrats alike aware of the problems of government and the principles that lay at the heart of any well-ordered society. All citizens must accept a measure of responsibility for the state of dysnomia. It was not a divine punishment but the result of human selfishness, and only a concerted political effort could restore peace and security. The gods did not intervene in human affairs and would not reveal a divine law to rectify the situation. This was an Axial breakthrough. At a stroke, Solon had secularized politics. In the holistic vision of antiquity, justice was part of a cosmic order that ruled even the gods; a bad government, which flouted these sacred principles, could disrupt the course of nature.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  In the dietary laws that forbade the consumption of “unclean” animals, P came very close to the Indian ideal of ahimsa. Like other ancient peoples, Israelites did not regard the ritualized sacrifice of animals as killing. It transformed the victim into a more airy, spiritual substance, 60 and it was forbidden to kill and eat an animal that had not been consecrated in this way. P forbade the “secular slaughter” that had been permitted by the Deuteronomists, and ruled that Israelites could sacrifice and eat only the domestic animals from their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. These were the “clean” or “pure” animals that were part of the community and, therefore, shared in God’s covenant with Israel; they were his possessions and nobody could harm them. The “clean” animals must be allowed to rest on the Sabbath, and they could be eaten only if they were given some kind of posthumous life. 61 But the “unclean” animals, such as dogs, deer, and other creatures that lived in the wild, must not be killed at all. It was forbidden to trap, slaughter, exploit, or eat them, under any circumstances. They were not dirty or disgusting. Israelites were not forbidden to touch them while they were alive. They became unclean only after their death. 62 The law that forbade any contact with the corpse of an unclean animal protected it, because it meant that the carcass could not be skinned or dismembered. It was, therefore, not worthwhile to hunt or trap them. Similarly the animals classed as “abominations” (sheqqets) were not abhorrent during their lifetime. The Israelites must simply avoid them when they were dead, for the same reason. These “swarming creatures” of sea and air were vulnerable and should inspire compassion. Quails, for example, were tiny and easily blown off course. And because they were prolific and “teemed,” they were blessed by God and belonged to him. 63 All God’s animals were his beautiful creation. 64 P made it clear that God had blessed clean and unclean animals on the day he created them, and had saved pure and impure animals alike at the time of the flood. Harming any one of them was an affront to his holiness. There was, however, an undercurrent of anxiety in P. The legislation surrounding leprosy, discharge, and menstruation, inspired by a fear of the body’s walls being breached, revealed the displaced community’s concern to establish clear boundaries. P’s evocation of a world in which everything had its place sprang from the trauma of dislocation.

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

  The nation’s suspense, however, was taxed almost beyond the point of endurance. The king’s arbitrary taxes and his amours with the wives and daughters of the barons aroused their determined hatred. Pressed from different sides, John suddenly had a meeting at Dover with the pope’s special envoy, the subdeacon Pandulf.207 The hermit, Peter of Wakefield, had predicted that within three days of Ascension Day the king would cease to reign. Perhaps not without dread of the prediction, and not without irony to checkmate the plans of the French monarch, John gave in his submission, and on May 15, 1213, on bended knee, delivered up to Pandulf his kingdom and consented to receive it back again as a papal fief. Five months later the act was renewed in the presence of Nicolas, cardinal-archbishop of Tusculum, who had been sent to England with legatine authority. In the document which John signed and swore to keep, he blasphemously represented himself as imitating him "who humbled himself for us even unto death." This notorious paper ran as follows: — "We do freely offer and grant to God and the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and the holy Roman Church, our mother, and to our Lord the pope Innocent and his Catholic successors, the whole realm of England and the whole realm of Ireland with all their rights and appurtenances for the remission of our sins and those of all our race, as well quick as dead; and from now receiving back and holding these, as a feudal dependent, from God and the Roman Church, do and swear fealty for them to our Lord the pope Innocent and his Catholic successors and the Roman Church."208 John bound himself and England for all time to pay, in addition to the usual Peter’s pence, 1000 marks annually to the Apostolic see, 700 for England and 300 for Ireland. The king’s signature was witnessed by the archbishop of Dublin, the bishop of Norwich, and eleven noblemen. John also promised to reimburse the outlawed bishops, the amount finally settled upon being 40,000 marks. Rightly does Matthew Paris call this the "detestable and lamentable charter."209 But although national abasement could scarcely further go, it is probable that the sense of shame with which after generations have regarded John’s act was only imperfectly felt by that generation of Englishmen.210 As a political measure it succeeded, bringing as it did keen disappointment to the warlike king of France. The interdict was revoked in 1214, after having been in force more than six years.

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

  revolutionary. They boldly told his Gentile converts that the, must submit to circumcision and keep the ceremonial law; in other words, that they must be Jews as well as Christians in order to insure salvation, or at all events to occupy a position of pre-eminence over and above mere proselytes of the gate in the outer court. They appealed, without foundation, to James and Peter and to Christ himself, and abused their name and authority for their narrow sectarian purposes, just as the Bible itself is made responsible for all sorts of heresies and vagaries. They seduced many of the impulsive and changeable Galatians, who had all the characteristics of the Keltic race. They split the congregation in Corinth into several parties and caused the apostle the deepest anxiety. In Colossae, and the churches of Phrygia and Asia, legalism assumed the milder form of Essenic mysticism and asceticism. In the Roman church the legalists were weak brethren rather than false brethren, and no personal enemies of Paul, who treats them much more mildly than the Galatian errorists. This bigoted and most persistent Judaizing reaction was overruled for good. It drew out from the master mind of Paul the most complete and most profound vindication and exposition of the doctrines of sin and grace. Without the intrigues and machinations of these legalists and ritualists we should not have the invaluable Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. Where error abounded, truth has still more abounded. At last the victory was won. The terrible persecution under Nero, and the still more terrible destruction of Jerusalem, buried the circumcision controversy in the Christian church. The ceremonial law, which before Christ was "alive but not life-giving," and which from Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem was "dying but not deadly," became after that destruction "dead and deadly."480 The Judaizing heresy was indeed continued outside of the Catholic church by the sect of the Ebionites during the second century; and in the church itself the spirit of formalism and bigotry assumed new shapes by substituting Christian rites and ceremonies for the typical shadows of the Mosaic dispensation. But whenever and wherever this tendency manifests itself we have the best antidote in the Epistles of Paul. § 36. Christianity in Rome. I. On the general, social, and moral condition of Rome under the Emperors: Ludwig Friedländer: Sittengeschichte Roms. Leipzig, 1862, 5th ed. revised and enlarged, 1881, 3 vols. Rod. Lanciani: Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries. Boston, 1889 (with 100 illustrations). II. On the Jews in Rome and the allusions of Roman Writers to Them: Renan: Les Apôtres, 287–293; Merivale: History of the Romans, VI., 203 sqq.; Friedländer: l.c. III., 505 sqq.; Hausrath: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, III., 383–392 (2d ed.); Schürer: Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte, pp. 624 sq., and Die Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, Leipz., 1879; Huidekoper: Judaism at Rome, 1876. Also John Gill: Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic Writers of Antiquity. 2d ed. London, 1872.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Yahweh was going to make Ezekiel as defiant and obstinate as the rest of the people, “his resolution as hard as a diamond and diamond is harder than flint.” Finally Ezekiel was lifted up amidst tumultuous shouting. He felt the hand of Yahweh lying “heavy” upon him; his heart overflowed “with bitterness and anger,” and he lay in Tel Aviv for a week, “like a man stunned.” 22 And yet there was consolation. When Ezekiel ate the scroll and accepted its overwhelming sorrow and fear, he found that “it tasted as sweet as honey.” 23 And even though Yahweh had brought no comfort, the fact remained that he had come to his people in exile. The temple was still standing, yet Yahweh had left his shrine in Jerusalem and thrown in his lot with the exiles. In later visions, Ezekiel would see that Yahweh had been driven out of his city by the idolatry and immorality of the Judeans who had remained behind. 24 But the exiles must realize that they bore some responsibility for the catastrophe. Ezekiel’s mission was to bring this home to the deportees of 597. There were to be no fantasies of restoration; their job was to repent and—somehow—to build a rightly ordered life in Babylon. But they could not do this unless they allowed themselves to experience the full weight of their sorrow. Ezekiel’s personal dislocation was, perhaps, revealed in his strange, distorted actions—the weird mimes he felt compelled to perform to bring the people’s predicament home to them. When Ezekiel’s wife died, Yahweh forbade him to mourn; another time, Yahweh commanded Ezekiel to lie on one side for 390 days and on the other for 40. Yahweh tied him up, shut him in his house, and stuck Ezekiel’s tongue to the roof of his mouth, so that he could not speak. Once Yahweh forced him to pack his bags and walk around Tel Aviv like a refugee. He was afflicted with such acute anxiety that he could not stop trembling, could not sit still, and had to keep moving about restlessly. This—he seemed to be telling his fellow exiles—was what happened to displaced people: they no longer had normal responses, because their world had been turned upside down. They could not relax or feel at ease anywhere at all. Unless the exiles appreciated this to the full—saw things as they were—they would not be able to heal. It was no good looking on the bright side or telling themselves that they would soon be home, because this was simply not true. They must strip themselves of these delusions. Ezekiel was a priest, and he interpreted the crisis in terms of the temple rituals, but used traditional liturgical categories to diagnose the moral failings of his people. Sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586, Ezekiel had a vision that showed him why Yahweh had been driven out of Jerusalem.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Time to put up the blackout screen and say good-night. For the next fifteen minutes, at least, the house is filled with the creaking of beds and the sigh of broken springs, and then, provided our upstairs neighbors aren’t having a marital spat in bed, all is quiet. Eleven-thirty. The bathroom door creaks. A narrow strip of light falls into the room. Squeaking shoes, a large coat, even larger than the man inside it . . . Dussel is returning from his nightly work in Mr. Kugler’s office. I hear him shuffiing back and forth for ten whole minutes, the rustle of paper (from the food he’s tucking away in his cupboard) and the bed being made up. Then the figure disappears again, and the only sound is the occasional suspicious noise from the bathroom. Approximately three o’clock. I have to get up to use the tin can under my bed, which, to be on the safe side, has a rubber mat underneath in case of leaks. I always hold my breath while I go, since it clatters into the can like a brook down a mountainside. The potty is returned to its place, and the figure in the white nightgown (the one that causes Margot to exclaim every evening, “Oh, that indecent nighty!”) climbs back into bed. A certain somebody lies awake for about fifteen minutes, listening to the sounds of the night. In the first place, to hear whether there are any burglars downstairs, and then to the various beds -- upstairs, next door and in my room -- to tell whether the others are asleep or half awake. This is no fun, especially when it concerns a member of the family named Dr. Dussel. First, there’s the sound of a fish gasping for air, and this is repeated nine or ten times. Then, the lips are moistened profusely. This is alternated with little smacking sounds, followed by a long period of tossing and turning and rearranging the pillows. After five minutes of perfect quiet, the same sequence repeats itself three more times, after which he’s presumably lulled himself back to sleep for a while. Sometimes the guns go off during the night, between one and four. I’m never aware of it before it happens, but all of a sudden I find myself standing beside my bed, out of sheer habit. Occasionally I’m dreaming so deeply (of irregular French verbs or a quarrel upstairs) that I realize only when my dream is over that the shooting has stopped and that I’ve remained quietly in my room. But usually I wake up. Then I grab a pillow and a handkerchief, throw on my robe and slippers and dash next door to Father, just the way Margot described in this birthday poem: When shots rino out in the dark of night, The door creaks open and into sight Come a hanky, a pillow, a figure in white. . .

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  same three undershorts the entire winter, and mine are so small they don’t even cover my stomach. These are all things that can be overcome, but I sometimes wonder: how can we, whose every possession, from my underpants to Father’s shaving brush, is so old and worn, ever hope to regain the position we had before the war? SUNDAY, MAY 2, 1943 The Attitude of the Annex Residents Toward the War Mr. van Daan. In the opinion of us all, this revered gentleman has great insight into politics. Nevertheless, he predicts we’ll have to stay here until the end of ‘43. That’s a very long time, and yet it’s possible to hold out until then. But who can assure us that this war, which has caused nothing but pain and sorrow, will then be over? And that nothing will have happened to us and our helpers long before that time? No one! That’s why each and every day is filled with tension. Expectation and hope generate tension, as does fear -- for example, when we hear a noise inside or outside the house, when the guns go off or when we read new “proclamations” in the paper, since we’re afraid our helpers might be forced to go into hiding themselves sometime. These days everyone is talking about having to hide. We don’t know how many people are actually in hiding; of course, the number is relatively small compared to the general population, but later on we’ll no doubt be astonished at how many good people in Holland were willing to take Jews and Christians, with or without money, into their homes. There’re also an unbelievable number of people with false identity papers. Mrs. van Daan. When this beautiful damsel (by her own account) heard that it was getting easier these days to obtain false IDs, she immediately proposed that we each have one made. As if there were nothing to it, as if Father and Mr. Van Daan were made of money. Mrs. van Daan is always sating the most ridiculous things, and her Putti is often exasperated. But that’s not surprising, because one day Kerli announces, “When this is allover, I’m going to have myself baptized”; and the next, “As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to go to Jerusalem. I only feel at home with other jews!” Pim is a big optimist, but he always has his reasons.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  As we come into Perpignan, Jacques parks the car on a brightly lit, empty car park at the foot of a tower block. In order to get close to me and because of the gap between the seats, he has to throw his chest forward like a gargoyle. His head comes into my field of vision and eclipses everything. He bring me off with three or four vigorous fingers. I like hearing the smacking sound of my wet labia; the frankness of this noise wakes me from my fantasies. I never stretch out my body to offer it up to these caresses straight away or that easily. Before I give in and spread my thighs wide, before I throw my head back and open up my arms to offer up my breasts, I need a little time. Time, perhaps, to uncoil from the curled position I automatically assumed, a position imprinted on my body when, as a child, I had to hide my masturbating; time to accept – as usual and once again (and even after manoeuvring in front of a camera for hours) – to show my body all at one in its entirety. It is not nudity that I am afraid of – quite the contrary – it is the snapshot moment of revelation. And it is even less because I hesitate to abandon myself to others – absolutely the contrary! – it is that I don’t know how to move from my introspective vision to seeing myself. In fact, to achieve it I need the other’s gaze. I can’t say: ‘There, look!’ I would rather wait till they say, not without caution: ‘Look how I look at you…’ I let Jacques get on with it. But as I really do seem to have taken refuge somewhere deep inside me, in order to return to reality I have to pass through a sort of foetal state. I curl to grab the hardened member so that my lips can feel the soft envelope which slides over its axis. I can mobilise myself into this act so utterly that I feel full up to the brim, my entire body has been put on and filled out like a glove.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  72 Di was the guardian of towns and cities. He ruled the rains and the winds, and gave orders to the nature gods in the same way as the Shang king gave directions to his officials and soldiers. But Di was unpredictable. He often sent drought, flooding, and disaster. Even the ancestors were unreliable. The Shang believed that the spirits of the dead could be dangerous, so relatives buried the deceased in thick wooden coffins, treated their bodies with jade, and stuffed their orifices, lest the spirit escape and prey upon the living. Rituals were devised to turn a potentially troublesome ghost into a helpful, benevolent presence. The deceased was given a new name and assigned a special day for worship in the hope that he would now be kindly disposed toward the community. With the passing of time, an ancestor became more powerful, so rituals were designed to persuade the newly deceased to plead their cause with the more exalted ancestors, who might, in their turn, intercede with Di. Most of our information about the Shang comes from the animal bones and turtle shells on which the royal diviners inscribed questions for Di, the nature gods, and the ancestors. 73 Archaeologists have unearthed 150,000 of these inscribed oracle bones. They show that the kings submitted all their activities to the scrutiny of these powers, asking their advice about a hunt, a harvest, or even a toothache. The procedure was simple. The king or his diviner addressed a charge to a specially prepared turtle shell or cattle bone, while applying a hot poker. “We will receive millet harvest,” he might say, or, “To Father Jia [the seventeenth Shang king] we pray for good harvest.” 74 He would then study the cracks that developed in the shell and announce whether or not the oracle was auspicious. Afterward the royal engravers carved the charge. Sometimes they also noted the prediction that came from the god or ancestor concerned and—very occasionally—included the result. It was obviously not a rational process, but the diviners were clearly trying to keep genuine records. Some of them, for example, noted that the king had foretold that his wife’s childbearing would be “good” (that is, that she would bear a boy), even though she gave birth to a girl and the king had got the day wrong. 75 The Shang kings’ attempt to control the spiritual world often failed. The ancestors frequently sent bad harvests and ill luck. Di sometimes sent propitious rain, but, the oracle also observed, “It is Di who is harming our harvests.” 76 Di was an unreliable military ally. He could “confer assistance” on the Shang, or inspire their enemies. “The Fang are harming and attacking us,” mourned the oracle. “It is Di who orders [them] to make disaster for us.”

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Trotsky had insisted otherwise, but that message had felt like a not very subtle clue that he wanted me to leave. Maybe he was hoping I would write back and say, Hey, you’re right, this isn’t working, and I’m not going to return from my leave of absence . Instead I called and told him that I wanted to keep working at HubSpot. It’s true that I have been losing heart, and I have decided to start looking for a different job, but in the meantime I’d like to keep getting a paycheck. Now we have gone to the next level: Trotsky is using his manager voice and running through a list of things I have done wrong. Really I’ve done just one thing, and it’s just a small comment, and for that matter whatever slight or insult Spinner is claiming to have suffered, it’s nothing compared to the open battle that Trotsky and Spinner engaged in on Facebook a few months before, when he was ranting about elephants and she was accusing him of being a woman hater. That argument didn’t lead to anyone getting threatened with firing. Yet somehow my little comment, with no names mentioned, constitutes a firing offense, something that we need to spend a whole day going back and forth about, and which has put me into a hole so deep that I might never dig out. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it. When Trotsky finishes working through his list, I say, “Okay. So what do you want me to do?” He doesn’t know. We’ll have to keep talking. “Do you have any questions for me?” he says. “Well,” I say, “the one thing that puzzles me is I kind of think you’re blowing this out of proportion. I guess the only question I would have is why you guys are making such a big deal out of this. I understand there’s extra sensitivity today because of the IPO announcement. Obviously I didn’t know that was happening. I’m sorry about the timing. But it all seems like such a small thing and I’m taken aback by the response.” I ask him if the HR department is going to get involved. He says he doesn’t know. They might be. “Are you filing an official report about this to HR?” I say. “Is all of this going to be documented somewhere, in my employee file?” “I don’t know,” he says. “Well I’m concerned because the way you’re handling this feels like you’re starting to build some documentation that can be used to support a case for firing me. Is that what HubSpot is doing? Are you starting a file on me, a sort of paper trail that you can use later if you want to fire me?” That’s when Trotsky delivers a line I will never forget: “The company,” he says, “doesn’t need a reason to fire you.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Mr. Broks was in Beverwijk and managed to get hold of strawberries at the produce auction. They arrived here dusty and full of sand, but in large quantities. No less than twenty-four crates for the office and us. That very same evening we canned the first six jars and made eight jars of jam. The next morning Miep started making jam for the office. At twelve-thirty the outside door was locked, crates were lugged into the kitchen, with Peter, Father and Mr. van Daan stumbling up the stairs. Anne got hot water from the water heater, Margot””,went for a bucket, all hands on deck! With a funny feeling in my stomach, I entered the overcrowded office kitchen. Miep, Bep, Mr. Kleiman, Jan, Father, Peter: the Annex contingent and the Supply Corps all mixed up together, and that in the middle of the day! Curtains and windows open, loud voices, banging doors -- I was trembling with excitement. I kept thinking, “Are we really in hiding?” This must be how it feels when you can finally go out into the world again. The pan was full, so I dashed upstairs, where the rest of the family was hulling strawberries around the kitchen table. At least that’s what they were supposed to be doing, but more was going into their mouths than into the buckets. They were bound to need another bucket soon. Peter went back downstairs, but then the doorbell rang twice. Leaving the bucket where it was, Peter raced upstairs and shut the bookcase behind him. We sat kicking our heels impatiently; the strawberries were waiting to be rinsed, but we stuck to the house rule: “No running water when strangers are downstairs -- they might hear the drains.” Jan came up at one to tell us it had been the mail- man. Peter hurried downstairs again. Ding-dong .. . the doorbell, about-face. I listened to hear if anyone was coming, standing first at the bookcase, then at the top of the stairs. Finally Peter and I leaned over the banister, straining our ears like a couple of burglars to hear the sounds from downstairs. No unfamthar voices. Peter tiptoed halfway down the stairs and called out, “Bep!” Once more: “Bep!” His voice was drowned out by the racket in the kitchen. So he ran down to the kitchen while I nervously kept watch from above. “Go upstairs at once, Peter, the accountant’s here, you’ve got to leave!” It was Mr. Kugler’s voice. Sighing, Peter came upstairs and closed the bookcase. Mr. Kugler finally came up at one-thirty. “My gosh, the whole world’s turned to strawberries. I had strawber- ries for breakfast, Jan’s having diem for lunch, Kleiman’s eating them as a snack, Miep’s bothng them, Bep’s hulling them, and

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  If your plumber or pool installer or local appliance store uses HubSpot software, HubSpot may be holding information about you, without you even knowing it. This is a company where top executives allegedly engaged in a scheme to invade the privacy of a former employee and did something so serious that the FBI investigated. Despite that, those marketers cheering for Halligan at the Inbound conference somehow believe they can trust his company with their data. The thing is, we all do this. We share our information with companies all the time. We send email through Google or Microsoft. We store files on Dropbox. We shop on Amazon. We buy apps and music from Apple. We hire drivers through Uber, and rent apartments through Airbnb. Companies use Workday for HR, Zendesk for customer service, Salesforce.com for customer tracking, Slack for messaging, and on and on. Most of these companies don’t operate their own data centers. Instead, they rent server and storage space from a hosting company like Amazon. Our information gets distributed around the globe, zipped between data centers at the speed of light, stashed on hard drives, backed up, duplicated, replicated, sliced and diced, sold and shared. Even the people who supposedly manage our data have no idea where all of it resides or who has access to it. Yet we go along. We convince ourselves that nothing bad will happen. We tell ourselves that we’re not important enough for anyone to spy on us, or that even if someone did want to spy us, there must be safeguards in place that prevent bad people from snooping. We hear the people who run these online services present themselves as idealistic do-gooders who want to make the world a better place. Even if we don’t believe that do-gooder hoo-ha, we may at least understand that these people have a financial incentive not to spy on us. They don’t have to be good people, or honest people, or law-abiding citizens. They just have to realize that it’s in their own best interest not to snoop on customers. Their business relies on people trusting them. Their own greed will keep them honest—that’s the theory, anyway. So we figure we’re safe. We assume that the people who run online services won’t spy on us. I used to believe that. I don’t anymore. Halligan, Volpe, and Chernov were not random nerds going rogue in some data center. They were top executives of a publicly traded company. They’re the ones who were supposed to be keeping an eye on the others. During my time at HubSpot, I was shocked to see how badly managed the company was and how packs of inexperienced twenty-something employees were being turned loose and given huge responsibility with little or no oversight. In the world of start-ups, that is now the norm, not the exception. The consequences are just what you would expect.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The old covenant festivals had focused on Israelite history, but the royal cult returned to the ancient mythology. The temple psalms of the tenth century described Yahweh striding across the sea, like Baal, his thunder and lightning flickering over the world, as he hastened to the aid of Jerusalem. 124 At the new year festival, perhaps, a great procession reenacted Yahweh’s triumphal march to Zion, his holy mountain, and carried the Ark into the temple built by King Solomon. Choirs chanted antiphonally: “Yahweh, the strong and valiant, Yahweh valiant in battle!” The other “sons of El,” divine patrons of rival nations, must pay tribute to Yahweh, who shattered the cedars of Lebanon and sharpened the shafts of lightning, as he entered his sacred courts. 125 The voice of Yahweh shook the desert, and stripped the forest bare. “Yahweh sits enthroned upon the sea; Yahweh sits enthroned forever!” 126 Yahweh was still a warrior god, but he was not the only deity worshiped in Israel. Other gods and goddesses were gentler; they symbolized harmony and concord, and made the land fertile. After he had defeated Mot and was reunited with Anat, even the fierce Baal had declared that his victory had inaugurated a profound concord between heaven and the very depths of the earth: “A word of tree and a whisper of stone, converse of heaven with earth, of Deeps to the Stars.” 127 Israelites needed the support of their divine warrior, and were proud of Yahweh, but most wanted other forms of holiness too. This would eventually lead to conflict with a small minority who wanted to worship Yahweh alone. The Axial Age had not yet begun. All these traditions were characterized by a high level of anxiety. Before life on the steppes had been transformed by the violence of the cattle rustlers, Aryan religion had been peaceful and kindly, but the shock of this unprecedented aggression had impelled Zoroaster to evolve a polarized, agonistic vision. In Israel and India too, insecurity and the difficulties of maintaining a society in new, hostile territory introduced violence and aggressive imagery into the cult. But people cannot live indefinitely with this degree of tension. Ritual taught them to look into the abyss, and realize that it was possible to face up to the impossible and survive. In the ninth century, the Greeks, the fourth of our Axial peoples, were starting to emerge from their dark age; their experience showed how the dramas of ritual helped the people of the ancient world to deal creatively with historical catastrophe and despair. 6 EMPATHY (c. 530 to 450 BCE ) T oward the end of the sixth century, Lu was on the verge of total anarchy, as the three baronial families who had usurped the power of the legitimate duke battled against one another for supremacy.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  And as each builder worked, he wore his sword on his side.” 4 It is very difficult to date this period. Our chief sources are the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which consist of a number of unrelated documents that an editor later attempted to string together. He assumed that Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries, and made Ezra arrive in Jerusalem first. But in fact there are good reasons for dating Ezra’s mission much later, during the reign of Artaxerxes II. 5 Nehemiah did a great deal to revive the fortunes of the city. He managed to increase the population to about ten thousand citizens, and tried to prevent the suppression of the poor by the nobility. But it is significant that his first act in Jerusalem was to build a wall. In his second term of office, which began in about 432, Nehemiah made new legislation to prevent members of the Golah from marrying into the families of the local population, even those Israelites who had not been taken into exile. He expelled the chief priest, Eliashib, because he was married to Sanballat’s daughter. In exile, some of the priests had warned against assimilation with foreigners. Now the Golah was forbidden to marry people who had once been members of the Israelite family, but were now regarded as strangers and enemies. During the exile, the laity had been encouraged to adopt the purity laws of the priests, and this meant that ordinary Jews had to be instructed in the intricacies of the ritual law by experts. One of these was Ezra, who had “devoted himself to the study of the law of Yahweh, to practising it, and to teaching Israel its laws and customs.” 6 He may also have been the minister for Jewish affairs at the Persian court. At this time, the Persians were reviewing the laws of the subject peoples, to make sure that they were compatible with the security of the empire. As a legal expert in Babylonia, Ezra could have worked out a satisfactory modus vivendi between the Torah and the Persian legal system. His mission was to promulgate the Torah in Jerusalem and make it the official law of the land. 7 The biblical writer saw Ezra’s mission as a turning point in the history of his people: he described his journey to Judah as a new exodus and presented Ezra as a new Moses. When he arrived in Jerusalem, Ezra was appalled at what he found.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The Axial Age had insisted on the personal responsibility of the individual, but in the epic the main characters had no choice at all, and were often compelled by the gods to act against their better judgment. The archaic spirit of the Mahabharata is particularly evident in its preoccupation with the ancient sacrificial lore. The five Pandava brothers, for example, were all married to their sister, Draupadi. 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.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Nine o’clock, Sunday evening. The teapot, under its cozy, is on the table, and the guests enter the room. Dussel sits to the left of the radio, Mr. van D. in front of it and Peter to the side. Mother is next to Mr. van D., willi Mrs. van D. behind them. Margot and I are sitting in the last row and Pim at the table. I realize this isn’t a very clear description of our seating arrangements, but it doesn’t matter. The men smoke, Peter’s eyes close from the strain of listening, Mama is dressed in her long, dark negligee, Mrs. van D. is trembling because of the planes, which take no notice of the speech but fly blithely on toward Essen, Father is slurping his tea, and Margot and I are united in a sisterly way by the sleeping Mouschi, who has taken possession of both our knees. Margot’s hair is in curlers and my nightgown is too small, too tight and too short. It all looks so intimate, cozy and peaceful, and for once it really is. Yet I await the end of the speech willi dread. They’re impatient, straining at the leash to start another argument! Pst, pst, like a cat luring a mouse from its hole, they goad each other into quarrels and dissent. Yours, Anne TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 1944 My dearest Kitty, As much as I’d like to write more on politics, I have lots of other news to report today. First, Mother has virtually forbidden me to go up to Peter’s, since, according to her, Mrs. van Daan is jealous. Second, Peter’s invited Margot to join us upstairs. Whether he really means it or is just saying it out of politeness, I don’t know. Third, I asked Father if he thought I should take any notice of Mrs. van Daan’s jealousy and he said I didn’t have to. What should I do now? Mother’s angry, doesn’t want me going upstairs, wants me to go back to doing my homework in the room I share willi Dussel. She may be jealous herself. Father doesn’t begrudge us those few hours and thinks it’s nice we get along so well. Margot likes Peter too, but feels that three people can’t talk about the same things as two. Furthermore, Mother thinks Peter’s in love with me. To tell you the truth, I wish he were. Then we’d be even, and it’d be a lot easier to get to know each other.