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 Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  In my city of Rochester, N.Y., with a population of 162,608, the census of 1900 showed 25,219 men between the age of 25 and 44, the years during which a man ought to be enjoying a home and rearing children, and 7355 of them were still unmarried. There were 28,218 women of the same years, relatively further along in marriageable age than the men, and 8109 were still unmarrried. Now the attraction between men and women is just as fundamental a fact in social life as the attraction of the earth is in physics, and the only way in which that tremendous force of desire can be prevented from wrecking lives is to make it build lives by home contentment. The existence of a large class of involuntary celibates in society is a more threatening fact even than the increase of divorces. The slums are aggregations of single men and women. If the monastic celibates of the Middle Ages, who had the powerful incentive of religious enthusiasm and all the preventives of isolation and supervision, could not keep chaste, is it likely that the unmarried thousands in the freedom of modern life will maintain their own purity and respect the purity of others? They are thrust into the lonely life through no wise resolve of their own, but mainly through the fear that they will not be able to maintain a family in the standard of comfort which they deem necessary for their life. If a man and woman do marry, they do not yet constitute a true family. The little hand of a child, more than the blessing of a priest, consecrates the family. France has long been held up as furnishing the terrible example of a declining birth-rate, but the older portions of our country are saved from the same situation only by the fertility of the immigrants. The native population of New England would not reproduce itself. The chief cause for this profoundly important fact is economic fear. Whenever the economic condition of any class is hopeful and improving, there is an increase in the birth-rate Whenever there is economic disaster or increasing pressure, there is a decline. In the West, where land is still abundant, families are large. The immigrants, who feel the relative easement of pressure, multiply. The natives, who suffer by the competition of the immigrants and who feel the tightening grip of our industrial development, refuse to bring children into a world which threatens them with poverty.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  3 [image file=image_rsrc2B8.jpg] Risks and DangersThe regimen of the aphrodisia, with the need to moderate their practice, did not operate on the assumption that sexual acts in themselves and by nature were bad. They were not the object of any disqualification based on principle. The question that was raised concerning them had to do with use, a use that was to be modulated according to the condition of the body and external circumstances. However, the need to have recourse to a careful regimen and to bring vigilant attention to bear on sexual practice was justified by two sets of reasons that reveal a certain anxiety about the effects of this activity. 1. The first set of reasons concerns the effects of the sexual act on the individual’s body. Granted there were constitutions for which sexual activity was beneficial on the whole: this was the case for those suffering from an abundance of phlegm—for intercourse facilitated the elimination of fluids which would otherwise become corrupt, giving rise to that humor—or for those whose digestion was bad, whose body consumed itself, and whose belly was cold and dry.1 But for others, whose bodies and heads were congested with humors, its effects were largely detrimental.2 Yet, despite this neutral valuation, this contextual ambivalence, sexual activity was the object of a rather constant suspicion. Diogenes Laertius reports a phrase by Pythagoras in which the general requirements of a seasonal regimen are directly associated with a need for continuous rarefaction and a conviction that the aphrodisia are intrinsically harmful: “Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain; they are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health.” And he goes on to cite this response from Pythagoras to the person who asked him when the best time was for making love: “When you want to lose what strength you have.”3 But the Pythagoreans were not the only ones by any means to manifest this sort of apprehension; the rule of “as little as possible” and the pursuit of the “lesser evil” are also invoked in texts whose aims are purely medical or hygienic: Diodes’ Regimen proposes to establish the conditions in which the use of pleasures would cause “the least harm” (hēkista enochlei); and the Aristotelian Problems, where the effects of the sexual act are compared to those of pulling a plant from the ground, which always damages the roots, advises one to have relations only in case of a pressing need.4 In this dietetics, whose business it was to determine when it was beneficial and when it was harmful to practice the pleasures, one perceives the emergence of a general tendency toward a restrictive economy.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  3. Political activity and personal destiny. The precariousness of good fortune—too much success provokes the jealousy of the gods, or the people are fond of withdrawing favors they once granted—was clearly a traditional theme of meditation. In reflection on political activity, during the first centuries of the Empire, this precariousness inherent in the exercise of power is associated with two other themes. First, it is perceived as being linked to the dependence that one experiences in relation to others. It is not so much the particular cycle of good and bad fortune that explains this fragility, but the fact that one is placed under what Seneca calls the potentia aliena or the vis potentioris.28 In the complex network of power, one is never alone facing one’s enemies. One is exposed on all sides to influences, intrigues, conspiracies, losses of favor. To be secure, one will have to be careful not to “give offence. It is sometimes the people that we ought to fear; or sometimes a body of influential oligarchs in the Senate … and sometimes individuals equipped with power by the people and against the people. It is burdensome to keep the friendship of all such persons; it is enough not to make enemies of them.” Between the prince, the Senate, and the populace giving and taking away their favors according to circumstances, the exercise of power depends on an unstable conjuncture: “You have held the highest offices; but have you held any as great, as unlooked for, as comprehensive as those of Sejanus? Yet on the day on which the Senate played the escort, the people tore him to pieces! Of the man who had heaped upon him all that gods and men were able to bestow, nothing was left for the executioner to drag to the river!”29 For these reversals and for the anxiety that they cause, one must prepare oneself by setting a prior limit on the ambitions that one entertains: “Nothing can free us from these mental waverings so effectively as always to establish some limit to advancement and not leave to Fortune the decision of when it shall end, but halt of our own accord.”30 And if the occasion presents itself, it is good to withdraw from these activities when they become disturbing and prevent one from attending to oneself. If misfortune suddenly strikes, if one falls from favor and is exiled, one ought to tell oneself—this is the advice Plutarch addresses no doubt to the same Menemachus whom he had encouraged, several years before, to enter politics “by free choice”*—that one is finally free from obedience to governors, from liturgies that are too costly, from services to render, from ambassadorial missions to accomplish, and from taxes to pay.31 And to Lucilius, who is not under any threat, however, Seneca gives the advice to disengage himself from his duties, gradually and at the right time, just as Epicurus counseled, so as to be able to place himself at his own disposal.32

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Thankfully, you don’t need to be as thorough as Brandon or Albert. You don’t need to approach 130 attractive women, much less ten thousand strangers. The first approaches are the hardest: the first conversation, the first book club, the first softball practice. But don’t stop at one. At your next opportunity, do it again. And again. Each time, both the intensity and duration of your anxiety will lessen. Your mountain of anxiety will erode into a molehill. And your confidence will grow into a mountain. 10 Putting It All Together: Your Challenge List My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened. —MONTAIGNE Look in the dictionary for the “American Dream” and you might find a smiling picture of Jia Jiang. At the age of sixteen, Jia came to the United States from China with big ambitions: he wanted no less than to be the next Bill Gates. But as often happens, time passed quickly. High school, college, a first job, business school, marriage. Before he knew it, Jia was thirty, with a mortgage, a wife, and a baby on the way. Jia knew if he didn’t take the leap soon middle age and middle management would calcify around him. So with his wife’s blessing, he took a chance, quit his six-figure corporate job, and chased his lifelong dream: he founded a startup. Jia was in heaven. It was exactly as he had hoped: creative, social, fast-paced. He was brimming with energy and hope. But four months in, just as major funding was about to make Jia’s dream a reality, the funder bailed, leaving Jia with four employees, a family to support, and exactly zero income. Jia was crushed. He knew he had to find a new backer fast but was flooded by doubt. The investor is an entrepreneurial veteran, he thought. If he thinks my company is not worth investing in, there must be some truth to it. Jia’s doubts snowballed. You’re a wannabe, his Inner Critic sneered. He was paralyzed by the idea of casting around for more funding—the prospect of rejection was too frightening. Jia realized his anxiety was getting in the way of fulfilling his startup dream, so he decided to crush it with a boot camp–style project he called 100 Days of Rejection that, to his great surprise, resulted in a book, Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. Each day, he tried his hardest to get rejected. He made ridiculous requests to complete strangers: “Wanna have a staring contest?” “Can I take a nap in this mattress store?” “Can you ship this package to Santa Claus?” “Can I slide down the fire station’s pole?” “Can I be a live mannequin at this Abercrombie store?” A lot of people said no, but given that he was trying to get rejected, getting a no made Jia’s project a success.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  AREALLY GOOD METAPHOR deserves more than one outing—as Jesus himself seems to have found, using and reusing ideas and scenes in his kaleidoscopic display of parables. Let’s have another go at the perfect storm, then, but now set in the first century. This time, the forces converging on a spot off the Massachusetts coast stand not for today’s particular cultural pressures, but for the pressures that were building up in Jesus’s own day. And the place where they are converging is Jerusalem. We smile at those medieval maps that placed Jerusalem at the center of the earth, with everything else radiating out from that point. How quaint, we think. But maybe there’s a truth there, buried under the rubble of successive social, cultural, political, and religious earthquakes. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the reason Jerusalem was seen as the center of the world was because that’s where all the pressure was concentrated. That’s where the fault lines all came together, where the tectonic plates ground relentlessly into one another, as indeed they still do. And it is to Jerusalem that we have to go to understand Jesus of Nazareth. That’s where the real perfect storm took place. That’s where all the dark forces converged, one spring day in, most likely, the year we call AD 30 (or, less likely, 33). How can we tell the story of Jesus in a simple way, when so many elemental forces came rushing together at that point in space and time? So much history, so many bad memories, such high expectations and aspirations, such a tangled web of faith and fear and hatred and hope. And so many memorable characters crowding onto the stage, catching our eye and firing our imagination: Mary Magdalene, Peter, Pontius Pilate, Judas . . . the list goes on. And then we catch a glimpse—or was it just our imagination?—of Jesus himself, towering over them but without ever appearing aloof. Who was he? What was he about? What was he trying to do? Why should we care, two thousand years later?

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Gandhi’s message of nonviolence indeed reached every nook and corner of the land, from Ahmedabad to Alabama to Washington, D.C. But he hadn’t always wished to be heard and seen by thousands. Remember Moe from the beginning of the chapter? “Moe” is short for “Mohandas,” as in “Mohandas Gandhi.” In his autobiography, Gandhi devotes an entire chapter to his social anxiety, my adaptation of which you read at the beginning of this book. He wrote that as a young man, “I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could.” And his anxiety wasn’t limited to public speaking: “Even when I paid a social call, the presence of half a dozen or more people would strike me dumb.” Gandhi, who earlier in life couldn’t even give a toast, would, in 1947, give a speech to a live audience of more than twenty thousand people. Looking back on his life, Gandhi wrote: “I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure.” Social anxiety a pleasure? At first there may seem to be no redeeming value in caring what others think of us. But let’s think about it. Gandhi is right. There is true power in holding on to just enough social anxiety to give weight and regard to the beliefs and perspectives of others. Call it empathy, respect, or equality—whatever you call it, especially at this point in history, it’s never-more-crucial care and concern for our fellow human travelers. In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote of his social anxiety, “It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of the truth.” I hope this book will help you in your discernment of truth. The truth is already in you. You are enough. Together, let’s rise above social anxiety and discover the power of being yourself. PART 1 I Thought It Was Just Me! Introducing Social Anxiety 1 The Root of It All: How Social Anxiety Takes Hold Jim never missed Sunday night at the dance studio. Outside, a few late-fall leaves still clung to the trees, blazing orange and trembling in the New England wind. Inside, the vast hall looked like a wedding reception, but in inverted proportions. Off to the side stood a few round banquet tables covered with linen tablecloths and scattered with half-finished glasses of water, but most of the room was given over to the expansive, gleaming hardwood dance floor. Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is” rang out from the sound system.

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

  The dilemma of even the most benign state was that it was obliged to maintain at its heart an institution committed to treachery and violence. The cult of the “extraordinary” was not new but was widespread among the population, especially among the lower classes, and might even date back to the Neolithic period. It had strong connections with the mystical school that we call Daoism (or Taoism) in the West, which was far more popular among the masses than the elite.91 Daoists opposed any form of government and were convinced that when rulers interfered in their subjects’ lives, they invariably made matters worse—an attitude similar to the strategists’ preference for “doing nothing” and refraining from rushing into action. Forcing people to obey man-made laws and perform unnatural rituals was simply perverse, argued the ebullient hermit Zhuangzi (c. 369–286). It was better to “do nothing,” practicing “action by inaction [wu wei].” It was deep within yourself, at a level far below the reasoning powers, that you would encounter the Way (dao) things really were.92 In the West we tend to read the mid-third-century treatise known as the Daodejingb (“Classic of the Way and Its Potency”) as a devotional text for a personal spirituality, but it was actually a manual of statecraft, written for the prince of one of the vulnerable principalities.93 Its anonymous author wrote under the pseudonym Laozi, or Lao-Tzu—“Old Master.” Rulers should imitate Heaven, he taught, which did not interfere with the Ways of men; so if they abandoned their meddlesome policies, political “potency” (de) would emerge spontaneously: “If I cease to desire and remain still, the empire will be at peace of its own accord.”94 The Daoist king should practice meditative techniques that rid his mind of busy theorizing so that it became “empty” and “still.” Then the Dao of Heaven could act through him, and “to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger.”95 Laozi offered the beleaguered principalities a stratagem for survival. Statesmen usually preferred frenzied activity and shows of strength when they should be doing the exact opposite. Instead of posturing aggressively, they should present themselves as weak and small. Like the military strategists, Laozi used the analogy of water, which seemed “submissive and weak” yet could be far more powerful than “that which is hard and strong.”96 The Daoist ruler should abandon masculine self-assertion and embrace the softness of the “mysterious female.”97 What goes up must come down, so when you strengthened your enemy by appearing to submit, you were actually hastening his decline. Laozi agreed with the strategists that military action should always be the last resort: weapons were “ill-omened instruments,” he argued, which a sage king used only “when he cannot do otherwise.”98 The good leader is not warlike The good fighter is not impetuous The best conqueror of the enemy is he who never takes the offensive.99

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

  38. Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak. 39. And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. 40. And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him. 41. And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand. GLOSS. (non occ.) After that the Lord had foretold the offence of His disciples, the Evangelist gives an account of His prayer, in which He is supposed to have prayed for His disciples; and first describing the place of prayer, he says, And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane. BEDE. (ubi sup.) The place Gethsemane, in which the Lord prayed, is shewn up to this day at the foot of the Mount of Olives. The meaning of Gethsemane is, the valley of the fat, or of fatness. Now when our Lord prays on a mountain, He teaches us that we should when we pray ask for lofty things; but by praying in the valley of fatness, He implies that in our prayer humility and the fatness of interior love must be kept. He also by the valley of humility and the fatness of charity underwent death for us. PSEUDO-JEROME. In the valley of fatness also, the fat bulls beset Him. There follows, And he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray; they are separated from Him in prayer, who are separated in His Passion; for He prays, they sleep, overcome by the sloth of their heart. THEOPHYLACT. It was also His custom always to pray by Himself, in order to give us an example, to seek for silence and solitude in our prayers. There follows: And he taketh with him Peter, and James, and John. He takes only those who had been witnesses of His glory on Mount Tabor, that they who had seen His glory might also see His sufferings, and learn that He is really man, in that He is sorrowful. Wherefore there follows: And began to be sore amazed, and very heavy. For since He had taken on Himself the whole of human nature, He took also those natural things which belong to man, amazement, heaviness, and sorrow; for men are naturally unwilling to die. Wherefore it goes on: And he saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.

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

  ORIGEN. The holy Virgin knew that He was not the Son of Joseph, and yet calls her husband His father according to the belief of the Jews, who thought that He was conceived in the common way. Now to speak generally we may say, that the Holy Spirit honoured Joseph by the name of father, because he brought up the Child Jesus; but more technically, that it might not seem superfluous in St. Luke, bringing down the genealogy from David to Joseph. But why sought they Him sorrowing? Was it that he might have perished or been lost? It could not be. For what should cause them to dread the loss of Him whom they knew to be the Lord? But as whenever you read the Scriptures you search out their meaning with pains, not that you suppose them to have erred or to contain anything incorrect, but that the truth which they have inherent in them you are anxious to find out; so they sought Jesus, lest perchance leaving them he should have returned to heaven, thither to descend when He would. He then who seeks Jesus must go about it not carelessly and idly, as many seek Him who never find Him, but with labour and sorrow. GLOSS. (ordin.) Or they feared lest Herod who sought Him in His infancy, now that He was advanced to boyhood might find an opportunity of putting Him to death. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Metaphrastes et Geometer.) But the Lord Himself sets every thing at rest, and correcting as it were her saying concerning him who was His reputed father, manifests His true Father, teaching us not to walk on the ground, but to raise ourselves on high, as it follows, And he says unto them, What is it that you ask of me? BEDE. He blames them not that they seek Him as their son, but compels them to raise the eyes of their mind to what was rather due to Him whose eternal Son He was. Hence it follows, Knew ye not? &c. AMBROSE. There are two generations in Christ, one from His Father, the other from His mother; the Father’s more divine, the mother’s that which has come down for our use and advantage. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. He says this then by way of shewing that He surpasses all human standards, and hinting that the Holy Virgin was made the handmaid of the work in bringing His flesh unto the world, but that He Himself was by nature and in truth God, and the Son of the Father most high. Now from this let the followers of Valentinus, hearing that the temple was of God, be ashamed to say that the Creator, and the God of the law and of the temple, is not also the Father of Christ.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  We may note that these three great themes of preoccupation are not peculiar to ancient culture: indications of this anxiety, which identify the sexual act with the “virile” form of semen and associate it with violence, exhaustion, and death, could doubtless be found frequently elsewhere. For example, the documents assembled by Van Gulik, pertaining to ancient Chinese culture, seem to show the presence of this same thematic complex: fear of the irrepressible and costly act, dread of its harmful consequences for the body and health, representation of the man-woman relationship in the form of a contest, preoccupation with obtaining descendants of good quality by means of a well-regulated sexual activity.30 But the ancient Chinese “bedroom” treatises responded to that anxiety in a manner completely different from what one finds in classical Greece. The dread one felt when faced with the violence of the act and the fear of losing one’s semen were answered by methods of willful retention; the encounter with the other sex was perceived as a way to come into contact with the vital principle the latter held in her possession and, by absorbing it, to internalize it for one’s own benefit. So that a well-managed sexual activity not only precluded any danger, it could also result in a strengthening of one’s existence and it could be a means of restoring one’s youthfulness. Elaboration and exercise in this case concerned the act itself, its unfolding, the play of forces that sustained it, and of course the pleasure with which it was associated; the nullification or indefinite postponement of its completion enabled one both to carry it to its highest degree in the realm of pleasure and to turn it to one’s greatest advantage in life. In this “erotic art,” which sought, with pronounced ethical concerns, to intensify insofar as possible the positive effects of a controlled, deliberate, multifarious, and prolonged sexual activity, time—a time that terminated the act, aged the body, and brought death—was exorcised.

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  bad things happen? Where does evil come from? Who is responsible? In a world where many gods existed, you could pin horrid events on some erratic divine being. Sure, one of the gods was at the head of the table and ultimately responsible, but they couldn’t always be relied on to stay on top of everything. But once you believe that your God is the one and only God, accounting for the presence of evil in the world gets tricky, which philosophers and theologians dutifully call the “problem of evil.” It’s a real problem. If God is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing and yet bad things happen, might it be that God is none of those things? Blaming human misery on a very powerful divine archenemy keeps God from having to take the blame—though you’d still need to ask why God allows that dark figure to exist, but let’s not get sidetracked. The descriptive title “the satan” of the Old Testament became Satan, the name of this powerful evil being (known also by other names in early Judaism like Mastema and Belial). We see here an adjustment to Jewish thinking that wouldn’t have occurred if the need hadn’t presented itself. This figure shows up, of course, in the New Testament, as Satan and also the “devil” (from the Greek diabolos , meaning “accuser”). That stands to reason, given the fact that the New Testament was written after this development took place. The Satan we take for granted is a new addition to the ancient tradition. Satan, actually, is a great example of a New Testament “given” that wouldn’t exist were it not for the Jewish reimagining of God that went before. Not Your Father’s Judaism Jewish thinking about God was deeply affected by Greek culture, and we’re really just seeing the proverbial tip of the proverbial iceberg. Christians have said rather freely for almost two millennia that God is all- powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere at once (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent). We do not always realize how completely dependent these ideas are on the ways Greek thought influenced Judaism before Christianity and how ill-fitting these descriptions of God are, biblically speaking. In the Old Testament, God is not everywhere at once, but moves from place to place, even if one of those places is high above the created order on his heavenly throne. And rather than all-knowing, God clearly sometimes has to find things out. * An all-powerful God is consistent with the Old Testament, where God moves nations and puts the heavenly bodies in their place, but the pressing

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  We may speak of pathologization in two senses. First, because the disturbing effects are attributed not only to the great excesses in the practice of sex but also to the very nature of the process—to the expenditures, tremors, perturbations, that it provokes in the organism; but, above all, because these medical analyses tend to overturn the representations of the sexual act as an activity, as an energy whose violence is the only thing to be feared. They describe it rather as a process in which the individual is passively overcome by the mechanisms of the body and the movements of the soul, so that he must reestablish his mastery by means of a precise adjustment to the needs of nature alone. It is important to understand that this medicine of the chrēsis aphrodisiōn did not aim to delimit the “pathological” forms of sexual behavior: rather, it uncovered, at the root of sexual acts, an element of passivity that was also a source of illness, according to the double meaning of the word pathos. The sexual act is not an evil; it manifests a permanent focus of possible ills. 3. A medical science of this sort requires an extreme vigilance toward sexual activity. But this attention does not lead to a decipherment of that activity in its origin and unfolding; it is not a matter of the subject’s knowing precisely how things are with his own desire, with the movements that lead him to the sexual act, with the choices he makes, with the forms of acts he commits or the modes of pleasure he experiences. The attention he must give is that which keeps him mindful of the rules to which he must refer his sexual activity. He is not expected to rediscover the obscure processes of desire working within him; he needs to recognize the numerous complex conditions that must be jointly present if one is to perform the acts of pleasure in an appropriate manner, without danger or harm. He must address a discourse of “truth” to himself. But this discourse does not have the function of telling the subject the truth about himself; it should teach him, given what sexual acts are by nature, how to resort to them in a way that conforms as closely, as strictly as possible to that nature. Georges Canguilhem said that “the cause of the cure” for Aristotle “was the form of health in one’s medical activity”; that it was not the physician but rather “health that cured the patient”; and that, broadly speaking, “the responsibility for a technical production did not belong to the artisan but to the art …; the Art, which is to say, the nondeliberative finality of a natural logos.”21 Similarly, one might say that the regimen of the aphrodisia, the regimen of their distribution, as proposed by medicine, needed to be nothing more nor less than the form of their nature present to thought, their truth dwelling in conduct as its constant prescription.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  4. Individual temperaments. Rufus posits as a general principle that the natures most suited for coition are those which are “more or less hot and moist”; in return, sexual activity is rather unfavorable for constitutions that are cold and dry. Thus, in order to maintain or restore the warm moisture needed in the aphrodisia, it is good to adopt an entire complex and continuous regimen of suitable exercise and proper nourishment. Around sexual activity, and in order to preserve the balance it risks upsetting, one must keep to a whole mode of living. It is helpful to drink pale red wine, to eat oven bread made from bran (its moisture is useful for preparation and regulation); to consume, in the meat category, young goat, lamb, hen, grouse, partridge, goose, duck; in the seafood category, octopus and mollusks—together with turnips, broad beans, green beans, chick peas (for their heat), and grapes (for their moisture). As for the activities to which one should resort, they include excursions, on foot or horseback, and running, but neither too fast nor too slow; but no violent exercises, no gesticulation as in javelin throwing (which diverts the nutritive material to other parts of the body), no excessively hot baths, no heating and cooling off; no strenuous work. One should also avoid anything that would contribute to tiring the body—anger, joy that is too great, and pain.30 * Rufus also notes that the standing position is tiring. † Note, however, in Celsus, a moderate judgment: “Coition is neither to be desired overmuch, nor overmuch to be feared.”4 * It may be added that for Celsus, night is preferable “but care should be taken that by day it not be immediately followed by a meal, and at night not immediately followed by work and wakefulness.”29 4 [image file=image_51.jpg] The Work of the SoulThe regimen recommended for the sexual pleasures seems to be centered entirely on the body. Its condition, its balances, its ailments, the general or transitory dispositions in which it finds itself, function as the principal variables that ought to determine behavior. It is as if the body dictated to the body. And yet the soul has its part to play as well, and the physicians bring it into the scheme of things. For it is the soul that constantly risks carrying the body beyond its own mechanics and its elementary needs; it is the soul that prompts one to choose the times that are not suitable, to act in questionable circumstances, to contravene natural dispositions. If humans need a regimen that takes into account, with such meticulousness, all the elements of physiology, this is because they always tend to be led astray by their imaginings, their passions, and their loves. Even the proper age for beginning sexual intercourse gets confused in girls and boys alike; education and habits can cause desire to appear at the wrong time.1

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  The problem for girls is a little different. The practice of early marriage doubtless caused people to concede that the first sexual relations and childbearing could occur as soon as menstruation was regularly established.20 This is the opinion of Soranus, who advises reliance on organic criteria in setting the age for marriage and not on the desires of the girls themselves. Depending on education, these desires can awaken before the body is ready; “since the female conceives seed into the substance of a living being,” there is a danger when the body of the woman has not reached the maturity necessary to this function; so it is good that she remain a virgin until menstruation has been established spontaneously.21 Other physicians envisage a much later date. Thus Rufus of Ephesus considers that a pregnancy before the age of eighteen risks being unfavorable to mother and child alike. He recalls that this is the age recommended long ago by Hesiod; and he points out that this age—quite late in the eyes of some—did not have, in a former time, the drawbacks that it may have subsequently assumed. In those days, women led a life just as active as men; it is overeating and idleness that cause problems in unmarried girls, making it desirable for them to have sexual relations, which may facilitate the menstrual flow. The solution Rufus suggests, then, is a relatively late marriage (at about eighteen), but a marriage prepared for by a whole regimen that ought to accompany the life of the young girl even before puberty. During childhood let girls be mixed with boys; then when the age comes for separating them from boys, place them under a very careful regimen: no meat, no overly rich dishes, no or very little wine, long walks, exercises. It must be kept in mind that idleness “is for them the most harmful thing of all,” and that it is “advantageous to have the exercises be a means of putting warmth into movement and of reheating the habit of the body, but in such a manner that they remain women and do not take on a masculine character.” Participation in choruses in which one sings and dances seems to be Rufus’ idea of the best form of exercise: “Choruses were not invented just for honoring the deity, but also in view of health.”22

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984)

  2 [image file=image_51.jpg] The Political GameThe decline of city-states as autonomous entities starting in the third century B.C. is a well-known fact. It is often seen as evidence of a general withdrawal from political life in a place where civic activities had constituted for citizens a true vocation. It is given as the reason for the decadence of the traditionally dominant classes. And its consequences are sought in a movement of retreat into the self by which the representatives of these privileged groups would have transformed this real loss of authority into a voluntary retirement, attributing in this way more and more value to personal existence and private life. “The collapse of the city-state was inescapable. On the whole, people felt themselves in the grip of world powers which they could not control or even affect.… Chance ruled.… The philosophies of the Hellenistic Age, for all their nobility, were essentially philosophies of escape, and the principal means of escape lay in the cultivation of autarky.”1 While the city-states—where they existed—did lose, from the third century on, a portion of their autonomy, it would clearly be questionable to reduce the structural transformations that took place in the political domain, during the Hellenistic and Roman epochs, essentially to that phenomenon. It would also be inadequate to search there for the main explanatory principle behind the changes that occurred in moral reflection and in the practice of the self. In actual fact—and on this point one must refer to the work of historians who have gone a long way toward dismantling the great nostalgic figure of the city-state that the nineteenth century took pains to construct—the organization of the Hellenistic monarchies, then that of the Roman Empire, cannot be analyzed simply in the negative terms of a decline of civic life and a confiscation of power by state authorities operating from further and further away. It needs to be emphasized, on the contrary, that local political activity was not stifled by the establishment and strengthening of those great overarching structures. City life, with its institutional rules, its interests at stake, its struggles, did not disappear as a result of the widening of the context in which it was inscribed, nor as a consequence of the development of a monarchical type of power. Apprehension before a universe become too vast and having lost its constituent communities could well be a feeling that has been imputed retrospectively to the people of the Greco-Roman world. The Greeks of the Hellenistic period did not have to flee from “the cityless world of the great empires” for the very good reason that “Hellenism was a world of cities.” Furthermore, criticizing the idea that philosophy constituted, after the collapse of the system of cities, “a shelter from the storm,” F. H. Sandbach observes that, in the first place, “the city-state had never given security,” and second, “it remained the standard primary form of social organization even after military power had passed into the hands of the great monarchies.”2

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  And I’m not the only one. I know many people of faith who struggle regularly with the God of the Bible, because this God seems so locked in a world we don’t recognize, a world that is so distant from ours—a world we have worked hard to get over. I know others who say this God isn’t worth the trouble and therefore choose to believe in no God at all. No one should underestimate the force of this dilemma or the stress and pain it creates for people trying to believe. Those who have a hard time with the God of the Bible can’t be dismissed as faithless rebels against God’s word. Some want to have faith—but they also want to have integrity. They live here and now, not there and then, yet they have this ancient Bible and a Christian faith bound fast to it, and the way forward feels like walking on a razor’s edge between two options—belief in the absurd God or belief that the idea of God is absurd. The Wisdom Question for All of Us So what do we do about this? We could try not thinking about it. If that works for some, I don’t feel it’s my place to interfere, but it doesn’t help me or others I know. If faith in God means having to keep the universe and the Bible under an invisibility cloak, that’s much more stressful for me than trying to work it through. What kind of God would give us minds with which to ponder our existence and then expect us to clamp down the lid when we actually ponder? I just don’t think that we are meant to isolate ourselves from our time and place as we think about God—in fact, we can’t . And with that we are getting to the point of all this. We are who we are and when we are, and rather than avoid these facts of life, we should look this challenge square in the face and (stop me if you’ve heard this already) embrace the sacred responsibility of asking a question that I feel is at least as important as any other we can ask, if not more so: What is God like? That question isn’t just for children in Sunday school, so they learn to check off the right box. It’s a wisdom question. In fact, “What is God like?” is the wisdom question around which all others revolve, the question that is ever before us, as each successive generation tries to pass on the faith of the past, which comes to us from an ancient time and in an ancient book, to the next generation that occupies its own unique moment in time and space. Having faith in God does not mean having to keep our distance from our own humanity. We should be fully connected to it and honest about what we are

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Ana Steele, I’m Jack Hyde, an acquisitions editor here at SIP, and I’m very pleased to meet you.” We shake hands, and his dark expression is unreadable, though friendly enough, I think. “Have you traveled far?” he asks pleasantly. “No, I’ve recently moved to the Pike Street Market area.” “Oh, not far at all, then. Please, take a seat.” I sit, and Elizabeth takes a seat beside him. “So why would you like to intern for us at SIP, Ana?” he asks. He says my name softly and cocks his head to one side, like someone I know—it’s unnerving. Doing my best to ignore the irrational wariness he inspires, I launch into my carefully prepared speech, conscious that a rosy flush is spreading across my cheeks. I look at both of them, remembering the Katherine Kavanagh Successful Interviewing Technique lecture: Maintain eye contact, Ana! Boy, that woman can be bossy, too, sometimes. Jack and Elizabeth both listen attentively. “You have a very impressive GPA,” Jack says. “What extracurricular activities did you indulge in at WSU?” Indulge? What an odd choice of word. I launch into details of my librarianship at the campus central library and my one experience of interviewing an obscenely rich despot for the student newspaper. I gloss over the fact that I didn’t actually write the article. I mention the two literary societies that I belonged to and conclude with working at Clayton’s and all the useless knowledge I now possess about hardware and DIY. They both laugh, which is the response I’d hoped for. Slowly, I relax and begin to enjoy myself. Jack Hyde asks sharp, intelligent questions, but I’m not thrown—I keep up, and when we discuss my reading preferences and my favorite books, I think I hold my own. Jack, on the other hand, appears to only favor American literature written after 1950. Nothing else. No classics—not even Henry James or Upton Sinclair or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Elizabeth says nothing, just nods occasionally and takes notes. Jack, though argumentative, is charming in his way, and my initial wariness dissipates the longer we talk. “And where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” he asks. With Christian Grey comes involuntarily into my head. My errant mind makes me frown. “Copyediting, perhaps? Maybe a literary agent. I’m not sure. I’m open to opportunities.” He grins. “Very good, Ana. I don’t have any further questions. Do you?” He directs his question at me. “When would you like someone to start?” I ask. “As soon as possible,” Elizabeth pipes up. “When could you start?” “I’m available from next week.” “That’s good to know,” Jack says. “If that’s all everyone has to say”—Elizabeth glances at the two of us—“I think that concludes the interview.” She smiles kindly. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Ana,” Jack says as he takes my hand. He squeezes it gently as I say goodbye.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I hope you and your sense of irony have a safe flight. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Kate and I pull up outside the drop-off area at Sea-Tac Airport departure terminal. Leaning across, she hugs me. “Enjoy Barbados, Kate. Have a wonderful vacation.” “I’ll see you when I get back. Don’t let Mr. Moneybags grind you down.” “I won’t.” We hug again—and then I’m on my own. I head over to check-in and stand in line, waiting with my carry-on luggage. I haven’t bothered with a suitcase, just a smart rucksack that Ray gave me for my last birthday. “Ticket, please?” The bored young man behind the desk holds up his hand without looking at me. Mirroring his boredom, I hand over my ticket and my driver’s license as ID. I am hoping for a window seat if at all possible. “Okay, Miss Steele. You’ve been upgraded to first class.” “What?” “Ma’am, if you’d like to go through to the first-class lounge and wait for your flight there…” He seems to have woken up and is beaming at me like I’m Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny rolled into one. “Surely there’s some mistake.” “No, no.” He checks his computer screen again. “Anastasia Steele—upgrade.” He simpers. Ugh. I narrow my eyes. He hands me my boarding pass, and I head toward the first-class lounge muttering under my breath. Damn Christian Grey, interfering control freak—he just can’t leave well enough alone. Chapter Twenty-TwoI am manicured, massaged, and I’ve had two glasses of champagne. The first-class lounge has many redeeming features. With each sip of Moet, I feel slightly more inclined to forgive Christian and his intervention. I open my MacBook, hoping to test the theory that it works anywhere on the planet. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Over-Extravagant Gestures Date: May 30 2011 21:53 To: Christian Grey Dear Mr. Grey, What really alarms me is how you knew which flight I was on. Your stalking knows no bounds. Let’s hope that Dr. Flynn is back from vacation. I have had a manicure, a back massage, and two glasses of champagne—a very nice start to my vacation. Thank you. Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: You’re Most Welcome Date: May 30 2011 21:59 To: Anastasia Steele Dear Miss Steele, Dr. Flynn is back, and I have an appointment next week. Who was massaging your back? Christian Grey CEO with Friends in the Right Places, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Aha! Payback time. Our flight has been called, so I shall email him from the plane. It will be safer. I almost hug myself with mischievous glee. There is so much room in first class. Champagne cocktail in hand, I settle myself into the sumptuous leather window seat as the cabin slowly fills. I call Ray to tell him where I am—a mercifully brief call, as it’s so late for him. “Love you, Dad,” I murmur. “You, too, Annie. Say hi to your mom. Good night.” “Good night.” I hang up.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I know what you’re trying to do—and trust me, you’ve succeeded. Next time you’ll be in the cargo hold, bound and gagged in a crate. Believe me when I say that attending to you in that state will give me so much more pleasure than merely upgrading your ticket. I look forward to your return. Christian Grey Palm-Twitching CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Holy crap. That’s the problem with Christian’s humor—I can never be sure if he’s joking or if he’s seriously angry. I suspect on this occasion he’s seriously angry. Surreptitiously, so the flight attendant can’t see, I type a reply under the blanket. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Joking? Date: May 30 2011 22:30 To: Christian Grey You see, I have no idea if you’re joking—and if you’re not, then I think I’ll stay in Georgia. Crates are a hard limit for me. Sorry I made you mad. Tell me you forgive me. A From: Christian Grey Subject: Joking Date: May 30 2011 22:31 To: Anastasia Steele How can you be emailing? Are you risking the life of everyone on board, including yourself, by using your BlackBerry? I think that contravenes one of the rules. Christian Grey Two Palms Twitching CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Two palms! I put my BlackBerry away, sit back while the plane taxis to the runway, and pull out my tattered copy of Tess—some light reading for the journey. Once we’re airborne, I tip my seat back, and soon I’m drifting off to sleep. The flight attendant wakes me as we start our descent into Atlanta. Local time is 5:45 a.m., but I’ve only had four hours’ sleep or so. I feel groggy but grateful for the glass of orange juice she hands me. I glance nervously at my BlackBerry. There are no further emails from Christian. Well, it’s nearly three in the morning in Seattle, and he probably wants to discourage me from screwing up the avionics system or whatever prevents planes from flying if mobile phones are switched on. The wait in Atlanta is only an hour. And again I’m luxuriating in the confines of the first-class lounge. I am tempted to curl up and go to sleep on one of the plush, inviting couches that sink softly under my weight. But it will just not be long enough. To keep myself awake, I start a long stream-of-consciousness email to Christian on my laptop. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Do you like to scare me? Date: May 31 2011 06:52 ET To: Christian Grey

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  because good must have its opposite derives from Stoic philosophy. The Stoic Chrysippus, who lived a little earlier than Ben Sira, wrote that there is nothing more foolish than those who think that good can exist without evil. Nothing exists without its matching opposite. This idea, however, does not sit easily with Ben Sira’s insistence on human free will. Ben Sira also borrows from the Stoics the idea of teleology: everything is created for a purpose, to meet some need. Everything is good in its appointed time. Storms and natural disasters are created to give vent to God’s anger. Ben Sira rather blithely claims that “all these are good for the godly, but for sinners they turn into evils” (39:27). This idea is certainly in line with the claims of Genesis that God’s creation is good, but it can hardly withstand serious reflection. The book of Job had already shown that disasters can strike the good and the bad without distinction. The problem of evil was acute for Ben Sira because he resolutely resisted the idea of reward or punishment after death. Death is simply the Lord’s decree for all flesh. Whether life is for ten or a hundred or a thousand years, there is no inquiry about it in Hades (41:1-4). In this respect, his view of life resembles that of Qoheleth. “Hard work was created for everyone, and a heavy yoke is laid on the children of Adam, from the day they come forth from their mother’s womb until they return to the mother of all the living. Perplexities and fear of heart are theirs, and anxious thought of the day of their death” (40:1-2). Unlike Qoheleth, however, Ben Sira still wants to insist that there is justice in the world. So he suggests that while all creatures are troubled by anxiety, this affects sinners seven times more. Death and destruction were created for the wicked. He does not find a satisfactory explanation, however, for the fact that these things also befall the just. Unlike Qoheleth, Ben Sira remains convinced that the world is in the power of a benevolent and all-powerful Deity. At the end of the great hymn to the Creator in chapter 43, he declares: “He is the all” (43:27). Taken at face value, the phrase sounds pantheistic. The Stoics believed that the world ( cosmos ) was the body of God and was animated by a Spirit or Logos. Ben Sira, however, hardly meant this rhetorical flourish to be taken literally. He clearly maintains a distinction