Confusion

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 Going Clear (2013)

  Prince now sees those episodes of body paralysis as severe anxiety attacks, but they prepared him to accept the truthfulness of the paranormal powers that Scientology claimed to provide. Brainwashing theory, on the other hand, proposes that strenuous influence techniques can overwhelm and actually convert an individual to a wholly different perspective, regardless of his background or pre- existing character traits, almost like an addiction to a powerful drug can create an overpowering dependency that can transform an otherwise stable personality. Stripping away a person’s prior convictions leaves him hungry for new ones. Through endless rounds of confession and the constant, disarmingly unpredictable fluctuations between leniency and assault, love and castigation, the individual is broken loose from his previous identity and made into a valued and trusted member of the group. To keep alienated members in the fold, “exit costs”—such as financial penalties, physical threats, and the loss of community—make the prospect of leaving more painful than staying. Whether Prince was brainwashed, as he believes, or spiritually enlightened, as the church would have it, his thinking did change over the year and a half he spent in the RPF. In order to move out of the RPF, a member has to have a “cognition” that he is a Suppressive Person; only then can he begin to deal with the “crimes” that he committed that caused him to be confined in the RPF in the first place. During his many hours of auditing, Prince later related, “You just kinda get sprinkles of little things that seem interesting, sprinkles of something that’s insightful. And then you’re constantly audited and in a highly suggestible state ... like being pulled along very slightly to the point where now I might as well just be here and see what this is about now. Maybe it’s not so bad, you know?” ONE OF JESSE PRINCE’S COMPANIONS in RPF was Spanky Taylor, an old friend of Paul Haggis’s from his early days in Scientology. She had become close to Paul and Diane soon after they arrived in Los Angeles. She called him Paulie, and had helped him market some of his early scripts when he was still trying to break out of cartoons. From the beginning, she had seen his talent; her own talent was helping others realize theirs. Spanky was a schoolyard nickname for Sylvia, but it had such a teasing twist that she could never escape it. She was the child of Mexican American laborers in San Jose. When she was fourteen, she became a fan of a local cover band called People!, which included several Scientologists. She began helping the group with concert promotion, and soon she was working with some of the other great bands coming out of the Bay Area, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Scientology was just another expression of the political and cultural upheaval of the times. Even members of the Grateful Dead were drawn into Scientology, which promised mystical experiences without hallucinogens.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Those were qualities that Haggis shared to a marked degree, and they inspired trust in the man he had come to accept as his spiritual guide. Still, Haggis felt a little stranded by the lack of irony among his fellow Scientologists. Their inability to laugh at themselves seemed at odds with the character of Hubbard himself. He didn’t seem self-important or pious; he was like the dashing, wisecracking hero of a B movie who had seen everything and somehow had it all figured out. When Haggis experienced doubts about the religion, he reflected on the 16 mm films of Hubbard’s lectures from the 1950s and 1960s, which were part of the church’s indoctrination process. Hubbard was always chuckling to himself, marveling over some random observation that had just occurred to him, with a little wink to the audience suggesting that they not take him too seriously. He would just open his mouth and a mob of new thoughts would burst forth, elbowing one another in the race to make themselves known to the world. They were often trivial and disjointed but also full of obscure, learned references and charged with a sense of originality and purpose. “You walked in one day and you said, ‘I’m a seneschal,’ ” Hubbard observed in a characteristic aside, and this knight with eight-inch spurs, standing there—humph—and say, “I’m supposed to open the doors to this castle, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m a very trusted retainer.”...He’s insisting he’s the seneschal but nobody will pay him his wages, and so forth.... He was somebody before he became the seneschal. Now, as a seneschal, he became nobody—until he finally went out and got a begging pan on the highway and began to hold it out for fish and chips as people came along, you know.... Now he says, “I am something, I am a beggar,” but that’s still something. Then the New York state police come along, or somebody, and they say to him—I’m a little mixed up in my periods here, but they say to him—“Do you realize you cannot beg upon the public road without license Number 603- F?”...So he starves to death and kicks the bucket and there he lies.... Now he’s somebody, he’s a corpse, but he’s not dead, he’s merely a corpse.... Got the idea? But he goes through sequences of becoming nobody, somebody, nobody, somebody, nobody, somebody, nobody, not necessarily on a dwindling spiral. Some people get up to the point of being a happy man.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  But the metaphysical or "scientific" argument only est ab lished the weaker, de facto one a nd, indeed, trumpets the inability of reason to establish anything stronger. Here r es ides the confus i on and t ens io n . Thus it has often been remarked that th e p sychology of utilitarianism is som ewh at at odds wi th its ethic. According to the first, we are all "under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure". 35 Th i s means presumably that we ar e determined to act for our ow n pleasure, and to avoid pain to ourselves. But in the moral th eo ry, p ai n and pleasure are the criteria of right action, not as they affect u s, but as they touch everyone. We a re to seek the greatest happiness o f the greatest number. Of course, we can be conditioned to find our happiness in the general well-being. Bentham wanted t o foster in society a "culture of benevo)ence" 3 6 in w hich this wou)d generally be the case. Or it can work out that there is an underlying "harmony of in terests". (Although they might protest to the cont ra ry, utilitarian thin k ers assumed a great deal of convergence of interests; most n otably in accepting so methin g like the Smithian view, that egocentric activity when productively oriented redounds to the general good.) And undoubtedly i n thes e case s th ings would work out better for society as a w hole. But this doesn ' t ans w er the question, Why ought I to seek it? Theories of Enlightenment materialist utilitarianism are hard to bring i n t o f oc us. They have two sides-a reductive ontology and a moral impetus w hic h are hard to combine. This helps explain the paradoxical fact which I i n v oke d above: the rooting of these theories in the ethic of ordinary life and be nev o)ence is from one point of view terrib)y obvious; while from another i t h as to be articulated and defended against the grain of these theories t he ms elves. It is the reductive ontol o gy which makes th e difficulty.

• From A Sexplanation (2021)

  How would you guide me to think about and what kind of questions would you say you would want me to ask? -I would say, not a question to ask, but think about who's giving you what information and why they're giving it to you. Someone who's telling you something about how the body works or how all women do this thing might have an agenda. And you want to think about what that agenda is. -Well-meaning people may leave out pieces of information hoping to steer you to what they think is the most ethical answer. And they may mean very well, but there aren't many places where you really get to go and ask questions about sex and get information that's filtered for accuracy, not filtered for, I would like to lead you to a conclusion, -How do you come to the truth when it comes to sex? -We try to come to the truth in two big ways. Big way number one is through research. In many places around sexuality there is unfortunately not as much good research as we would like. And way number two is an introspective process of learning to recognize what judgments we have and recognize where our biases are and then be able to hold those. [Alex] Lisa Medoff also warned us about the agendas we've internalized. -If your immediate reaction to anything having to do with sexuality, the way somebody looks, hearing about somebody else's relationships, hearing about certain behavior. If your immediate reaction is, ew or, that's not okay, it's to always just take a beat and say, where does that come from? Does that come from family? Does that come from religion? Does that come from media or invisibility in media? Does that come from things that I learned in school, formal, informal education? Does that come from what we diagnose as a medical problem or something that needs therapy? You know, a simple little checklist to run through your mind. [laughter] But to always ask, where does that reaction come from? And it's not to try to change that reaction. It's not to ever to try to get them to say like, ew, I thought that was gross but now I'm cool with anything, it's to just think about, do I want to continue with it? Is that an idea that still works for me or was that just an automatic reaction from some of my conditioning? -When it comes to sex, there are two competing agendas that play tug of war in my brain, those of American conservatives and liberals. And because I am pro-life- -I will defend women's rights to make their own healthcare decisions. -When we have programs that say, we're gonna teach abstinence in schools, the liberals go crazy. -Provide comprehensive sex education in our schools. -Sure would be nice if mother and father were involved in this rather than the schools having to tell kids about contraception.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  We note immediately that the argumentation is so tortuous that there is no scholarly consensus on either the problem submitted to Paul by the Corinthians or the solution returned by Paul to the Corinthians. That makes this 1 Corinthians 11 very different from the preceding 1 Corinthians 7 on both those counts. On the one hand, if you focus only on the women, it is plausible to argue that Paul is subordinating them to men (based on scriptural text, social dress, and church custom). On the other, if you focus only on the men and realize that Roman males normally covered their heads for worship, as with the statue of Augustus as a priest at sacrifice ; and recall Aeneas, Augustus, and Agrippa on the Ara Pacis Augustae above, it is plausible to argue that Paul is opposing pagan religious practice. If, however, you notice how the text oscillates constantly between women and men, men and women, you would have to take both sexes into any correct explanation. Paul takes for granted that both women and men pray and prophesy in liturgical assembly. That is not the problem of this text. Its problem concerns the proper head covering for each of them in that situation. But why was that so important an issue? At Corinth, presumably as a defiant challenge to inequality and a dramatic statement of equality, men and women had reversed modes of head covering in prayer, so that men worshiped with covered heads and women with uncovered heads. In other words, Paul was confronted with a negation not just of gender hierarchy, but of gender difference, and he stutters almost incoherently in trying to argue against it. Of course, women and men were equal “in the Lord” and “from God,” but there should be no denial of ordinary dress codes or standard head coverings. The difference between women and men, however that was customarily and socially signified, must be maintained, even while hierarchy or subordination was negated. The passage in 1 Corinthians 11:3–16 is the best Paul can do on that subject. But the text is emphatically not about hierarchical inequality, but about differential equality. Paul presumes equality between women and men in the assembly, but absolutely demands that they follow the socially accepted dress codes of their time and place. Difference, yes. Hierarchy, no. That interpretation of a very difficult passage is strongly confirmed by the next section for, if women are silenced in the assembly, how can they be prominent in the apostolate? Equal (and More) in the Apostolate

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

  The same perplexity occurs in looking through prismatic glasses, which alter the eyes' convergence. He cannot decide whether the object has come nearer, or grown larger, or both, or neither; and our judgment vacillates in the most surprising way. We may even make our eyes diverge, and the object will none the less appear at a definite distance. When we look through the stereoscope, the picture seems at no determinate distance. These and other facts have led Helmholtz to deny that the feeling of convergence has any very exact value as a distance-measurer. [233] With the feelings of accommodation it is very much the same. Donders has shown [234] that the apparent magnifying power of spectacles of moderate convexity hardly depends at all upon their enlargement of the retinal image, but rather on the relaxation they permit of the muscle of accommodation. This suggests an object farther off, and consequently a much larger one, since its retinal size rather increases than diminishes. But in this case the same vacillation of judgment as in the previously mentioned case of convergence takes place. The recession made the object seem larger, but the apparent growth in size of the object now makes it look as if it came nearer instead of receding. The effect thus contradicts its own cause. Everyone is conscious, on first putting on a pair of spectacles, of a doubt whether the field of view draws near or retreats. [235] There is still another deception, occurring in persons who have had one eye-muscle suddenly paralyzed has led Wundt to affirm that the eyeball-feeling proper, the incoming sensation of effected rotation, tells us only of the direction of our eye-movements, but not of their whole extent. [236] For this reason, and because not only Wundt, but many other authors, think the phenomena in these partial paralyses demonstrate the existence of a feeling of innervation, a feeling of the outgoing nervous current, opposed to every different sensation whatever, it seems proper to note the facts with a certain degree of detail. Suppose a man wakes up some morning with the external rectus muscle of his right eye half paralyzed, what will be the result? He will be enabled only with great effort to rotate the eye so as to look at objects lying far off to the right. Something in the effort he makes will make him feel as if the object lay much farther to the right than it really is. If the left and sound eye be closed, and he be asked to touch rapidly with his finger an object situated towards his right, he will point the finger to the right of it. The current explanation of the 'something' in the effort which causes this deception is that it is the sensation of the outgoing discharge from the nervous centres, the 'feeling of innervation,' to use Wundt's expression, requisite for bringing the open eye with its weakened muscle to bear upon the object to be touched.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Think of th e utilitarian attack on orthodox Christianity; th en of Dostoyevsky ' s attack on utilitarian utopian engineering. For th o se who are not firmly aligned on one side or the other of an ideological battle, this is the source of a deep uncertainty. We are as ambivalent about heroism as we are about the value of the workaday goals that it sacrifices. We struggle to hold on to a vision of the incomparably higher, while being true to the central modem insights about the valu e of ordinary lif e. We sympathize with both the hero and the anti-hero; and w e dream of a world in which one could be in the same act both. This is the confusion in which naturalism takes r oot. 2 THE SELF IN MORAL SPACE 2.1 I said at the beginning of section I. 5 that the naturalist reduction which would exclude frameworks altogether from consideration cannot be carried through, and that to see why this is so is to understand something important about the place of frameworks in our lives. Having seen a little better w hat these frameworks consist in, I w an t now to pursue this point. In sections r.4 and r. 5 I have been talking about these qualitative distinctions in their relation to the issue of the meaning of life. But it is plain that distinctions of this kind play a role in all three dimensions of moral assessment that I identified above. The sense that human beings are capable of some kind of higher life forms part of the background for our belief that they are fit o bjects of res p ect, that their life and integrity is sacred or enjoys i m munity, an d is not to be attacked. As a consequence, we can see our conception of what this immunity consists in evolving with the development of new frameworks. Thus the fact that we now place such importance on expressive power means that our contemporary notions of what it is to r espect people's integrity includes that of protecting their expressive freedom to express and develop their own opinions, to define their own life concep tions, to dra w up their own life-plans. At t he same time, the third dimension too involves distinctions of this k in d.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  It is hard for us simply to list souls or minds al o ngside whatever else there is. This is the source of a continuing philos ophical discom f ort in modern times for which there is naturally no a nalogue among the ancients. Various solutions have been tried redu ctionism, 'transcendental' theories, returns to duali sm-but the problem c o ntinues to nag us as unsolved. I will not tackle this problem here. My point is rather that this ungr o unded ' extra-worldly' stat us o f the objectifying subject accentuates the existing motivatio n to describe it as a se l f. All other app ellations seem to place it somewhere in the roster of things, as one among ot he rs . The punctual ag ent seems to be nothing else but a 'self', an 'I'. He re we see the origin of one of the great paradoxes of modern p h ilo s ophy. The p hiloso phy of diseng ageme nt and objectification has helped t o cre ate a picture of the h u man being, at its most ext reme in certain forms o f ma terialis m , from which the l ast vestiges of sub j ectiv ity seem to h ave been 176 • INWARDNESS e xpelled. It is a picture of the human being from a completely thir d -per so n per spective. The paradox is that this severe outlook is connected with, indeed , based on, according a central place to the first-person stance. Radi ca l obje ctivity is onl y intelligible and accessible through radical subjectivi ty. Thi s p aradox has, of course, been much commented on by Heidegger, for instance , in his critique o f subjectivism, and by Merleau-Ponty. Modern n a turalism ca n never be the same once one sees this connection, as both these philoso phe rs argu e. But for those who haven't seen it, the problem of the 'I ' returns, lik e a repressed thought, a s a seemingly insoluble p uzzle. 2 2 For us the subject is a self in a way he or she couldn't be f o r the ancien ts . A ncient moralists frequently formulated the injunction 'Take care of your se lf', as Foucault has r ecently reminded us. 2 3 A nd Epictetus persuades us tha t al l that really matters to us is the state of our own hegemonikon, or ruli ng part, s ometimes translated 'mind' , o r 'will'. They can sometimes sound like our contemporaries. But in reality, there is a gulf between us and them .

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  26 Like the salt, the brahman could not be seen, but it could be experienced. It was manifest in every single living thing. It was the subtle essence in the banyan seed, from which a great tree grows, yet when Shvetaketu dissected the seed, he could not see anything. The brahman, Uddalaka explained, was the sap that was in every part of the tree and gave it life. 27 It was, therefore, the atman of the tree, as it was the atman of every single human being; all things shared the same essence. But most people did not understand this. They imagined that they were special and unique, different from every other being on the face of the earth. Instead of appreciating the deepest truth about themselves, they clung to those particularities that, they thought, made them so precious and interesting. But in reality, these distinguishing characteristics were no more durable or significant than rivers that flowed into the same sea. Once they had merged, they became “just the ocean” and did not stridently assert their individuality, crying, “I am that river,” “I am this river.” “In exactly the same way, son,” Uddalaka persisted, “when all these creatures reach the existent, they are not aware that ‘we are reaching the existent.’ ” They no longer cling to their individuality. Whether they were tigers, wolves, lions, or gnats, “they all merge into that,” because that is what they have always been, and they can only ever be that. To cling to the mundane self was, therefore, a delusion that would lead inescapably to pain and confusion. People could escape this only by acquiring the deep, liberating knowledge that the brahman was their atman, the truest thing about them. 28 But this knowledge was not easy to acquire. How could you find the unknowable atman? The atman was not what Western people call the “soul” or the psyche. 29 The Upanishads did not separate body from spirit, but saw human beings as a composite whole. Uddalaka made his son fast for fifteen days, allowing him to drink as much water as he liked. At the end of this, Shvetaketu was so weak and malnourished that he could no longer recite the Vedic texts that he had mastered so competently with his guru. He had learned that the mind was not pure intellect but was also “made up of food, of breath, of water, and speech, and heat.” 30 The atman was physical and spiritual; it was immanent in the heart and in the body, the ultimate, immutable, inner core of all things, material and ephemeral. It could not be identified with or compared to any single phenomenon. It was “no thing,” and yet it was the deepest truth of everything. 31 It could be discovered only within the human being, after a long, disciplined effort.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  • Even though I know something’s wrong erotically I can’t seem to define what the problem is. • In spite of my best intentions I’m unable to initiate a change—even though I know what I’d like to accomplish. • The attempts at change I do make don’t seem to lead me anywhere. • I’m uncovering disturbing memories or feelings that I don’t know how to handle. • I sense an inner conflict is sapping my energy but don’t know how to call a truce. • I continue to engage in certain sexual behaviors despite potentially damaging consequences. It’s not easy to find a therapist with whom you can work effectively. Believe it or not, many therapists, including some sex therapists, are uneasy about discussing the nitty-gritty details of eroticism. Interview several therapists and ask them to explain how they work with erotic problems such as yours. Be wary of therapists who seem to hold dogmatic beliefs about what healthy eroticism should be. Trust yourself and speak up if something doesn’t feel right. If you’re already in therapy for other concerns, you may be reluctant to initiate discussions of erotic issues even if you suspect they are related to what you’re working on. Therapists often don’t inquire about your sexuality, so you might have to bring it up yourself. If certain parts of this book feel particularly relevant, discuss them with your therapist as a way of raising the subject. Part IIIPOSITIVELY EROTIC9LONG-TERM EROTIC COUPLESThe creative use of learnable skills helps keep passion alive as intimacy deepens. Nowhere are the paradoxes of the erotic mind played out more delicately, boisterously, and sometimes tragically, than in the crucible of committed, enduring relationships. One paradox, surely the cruelest, is that those couples who achieve the close, emotional connection that virtually all of us crave inevitably end up softening if not eliminating the obstacles necessary for passionate sex. Dr. Tripp describes this unwelcome reality: As the partners make the necessary compromises to achieve a high contact with each other, they win intimacy and a genuine closeness, benefits which contribute to the comforts of daily living and to their ability to get along with each other. For a time, their sexual compatibility soars as well…. But all this blending and complementation not only does not contribute to the lastingness of sexual attraction, it soon begins to dissolve it. Thus, in well-balanced ongoing relationships, the compatibility of the partners tends to progressively improve while their erotic zest for each other markedly declines. Conversely, a genuine closeness is notable by its absence in the most intense forms of erotic interest, including the high romance that can so disconsolingly occur between utterly mismatched partners. Thus it is in new relationships and in marriages torn by fights and clashes—that is, where complementations and details of compatibility have not been worked out—that the highest erotic excitements flourish.1

• From Going Clear (2013)

  She got intensive tutoring to help her overcome her educational deficits; however, she also began to come up against some of the constraints of her church. While she was at Delphian, Lauren decided to write a paper about religious intolerance. In particular, she felt that Scientology was under attack and she couldn’t understand why. When she went online to see what the opposition was saying, a fellow student turned her in to Ethics. Lauren was told that Scientologists shouldn’t look at negative stories about their religion. She was supposed to be saving the planet, so why was she wasting her time reading lies? Because of her isolation, and the censorship imposed on her education, when Lauren finally graduated from high school, at the age of twenty, she had never heard anyone speak ill of Scientology, nor did she question the ban on research about her religion. She thought, “I guess I’m not supposed to do these things. I will stay away.” Like her father, she learned it was easier not to look. Alissa had a different issue. She didn’t really date in high school, and by the time she got to junior college it began to dawn on her that she was gay. She actually wasn’t sure what that meant. She had two uncles who were gay, but for the longest time she didn’t know what a lesbian was. Then her sister Katy, who is five years younger, and had grown up in the Internet-savvy culture, came out to her parents. Paul told Katy that there was no way that he would ever love her less. That made it easier for Alissa to talk about what she was discovering about herself. The vow never to speak to her father again began to lose its hold on her. All the girls had grown up hearing prejudiced remarks from people in the church who saw homosexuality as an “aberration” that undermined the survival of the species; gays themselves were seen as sinister perverts. These attitudes were informed by Hubbard’s writings on the subject. But it wasn’t just Scientology, Alissa realized; the entire society was biased against homosexuals. In her early twenties, Alissa finally found the courage to come out to her father. “Oh, yeah, I already knew that,” he told her. He said he wondered why she had ever dated boys in the first place. “You knew?” she said. “I didn’t know! How did you know? Why didn’t you tell me? You could have clued me in. It would have made it easier for me.” That was so typical of her father.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Many find it discomforting to tolerate the ambiguity of the erotic experience, to accept its mixed motivations, or to observe how the erotic mind has a habit of transforming one idea or emotion into another. And yet if we fail to come to terms with the fundamentally paradoxical nature of eroticism, we set the stage for its negative aspects to appear more frighteningly destructive. At the same time, the positive aspects of erotic life become increasingly elusive and difficult to celebrate, almost as if they are canceled out by a recognition of the danger or uncertainty inherent in them. The paradoxical perspective is the best alternative to the exaggerated shifts in sexual attitudes we’ve seen during the last few decades. According to the ethos of the 1960s and 1970s, sexual experimentation and freedom were valued. For millions it was a time to throw off old restraints, to push boundaries, and sometimes to overindulge recklessly. Within a single decade the pendulum lurched back in the opposite direction. In response to fear of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as the atmosphere of conservative politics, social attitudes about sex flipped from celebration to dread. Reflecting and abetting this radical shift, the popular media turned its attention to the most disturbing manifestations of the erotic impulse, including sexual abuse and harassment, teen pregnancies, disease, and even satanic cults. In record time the popular perception of sex went from “good” to “bad.” No wonder so many of us are confused and a bit dazed: We live in an era of both promise and great danger. The danger is that negativity will drive eroticism into the shadows where it is most likely to assume the very shapes we fear. But those who find the courage to survey the entire panoply of the erotic experience—joyful as well as dangerous, life-giving as well as trouble-some—stand on the brink of a new consciousness of eros. As our perspective enlarges we can see that, in the final analysis, eroticism can never be either pathological or neat-and-clean—for it is as vast and multifaceted as human nature itself. The paradoxical perspective is the only point of view large enough to encompass this truth. WHAT THIS BOOK CAN DO FOR YOUThe Erotic Mind is an invitation to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the role of eroticism in your life. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, “Realms of Passion,” focuses primarily on peak erotic experiences as rich sources of information about the inner workings of the erotic mind. Particularly memorable real-life encounters as well as compelling fantasies offer us glimpses of eroticism thriving—as opposed to malfunctioning or causing trouble. In addition, during moments of peak arousal, the dynamics of eroticism are accentuated and thus easier to observe.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  A religious idea could all too easily become a mental idol, one more thing to cling to, while the purpose of the dhamma was to help people to let go. Even his own teachings must be jettisoned, once they had done their job. He liked to tell the story of a traveler who came to a great expanse of water and desperately needed to get across. But there was no bridge or ferry, so he cobbled together a raft and paddled over. But then, the Buddha would ask his audience, what should the traveler do with the raft? Should he decide that because it had been so helpful to him, he must load it onto his back and lug it around with him wherever he went? Or should he simply moor it and continue his journey? The answer was obvious. “In just the same way, monks, my teachings are like a raft, to be used to cross the river and not to be held on to,” the Buddha concluded. 100 His task was not to issue infallible statements or satisfy intellectual curiosity, but to enable people to cross the river of pain and arrive at the “further shore.” Anything that did not serve that end was irrelevant. The Buddha had, therefore, no theories about the creation of the world or the existence of God. These topics were, of course, extremely fascinating, but he refused to discuss them. Why? “Because, my disciples, they will not help you, they are not useful in the quest for holiness; they do not lead to peace and to the direct knowledge of nibbana.” 101 He told one monk who kept pestering him about cosmology to the detriment of his yoga and ethical practice that he was like a wounded man who refused medical treatment until he learned the name of the person who had shot the arrow, and what village he came from. He would die before he got this useless information. What difference did it make to learn that a God had created the world? Grief, suffering, and pain would still exist. “I am preaching a cure for these unhappy conditions here and now,” the Buddha explained to his metaphysically inclined monk, “so always remember what I have not explained to you and the reason I have refused to explain it.” 102 The Buddha liked to keep explanations to a minimum. Like Socrates, he wanted the disciple to discover the truth within himself. This also applied to the laity. On one occasion, the Kalamans, a tribal people who lived on the northern bank of the Ganges, sent a delegation to the Buddha. One renouncer after another had descended upon them, they explained, but each one belittled the others’ doctrines. How could they tell who was right? The Buddha replied that he could see why the Kalamans were so confused.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  In China, the Axial Age had started late but was now in full flower. In the other regions, it was either running down or in the process of becoming something different. We see this clearly in the Mahabharata, the great epic of India.62 The story is set in the Kuru-Panchala region during the period of the Brahmanas, before the rise of the state systems, but the oral transmission of the epic started in about 500; it was not committed to writing until the first centuries of the common era, when it achieved its final form. The Mahabharata is, therefore, a complex, multilayered text, an anthology of many strands of tradition. The general outline of the story, however, had probably been established by the end of the fourth century. Unlike the defining texts of the Axial Age, which were composed in priestly and renouncer circles, the epic reflects the ethos of the kshatriya warrior class. The religious revolution of the Axial Age left them with a perplexing dilemma. How could a king or warrior who admired the ideal of ahimsa become reconciled with his vocation, which demanded that he fight and kill in order to defend his community? The duties of each class were sacred. Each had its own inviolable dharma, a divinely ordained way of life. A Brahmin’s duty was to become expert in Vedic lore; the kshatriya was responsible for law, order, and defense; and the vaishya had to devote his energies to the production of wealth. The renouncers depended on the support of the warriors and merchants, who gave them the alms, food, and security that enabled them to dedicate themselves full-time to the religious quest. Yet in order to carry out their duties successfully, kings, warriors, and merchants were compelled to behave in ways that were—in Buddhist parlance—“unskillful” or even downright sinful. To perform successfully in the marketplace, vaishyas had to be ambitious, to want worldly goods, and to compete aggressively with their rivals, and this “desire” bound them inexorably to the cycle of death and rebirth. But the kshatriya’s vocation was especially problematic. During a military campaign, he was sometimes forced to be economical with the truth or even to tell lies. He might have to betray former friends and allies, and to kill innocent people. None of these activities was compatible with the yogic ethos, which demanded nonviolence and a strict adherence to truth at all times. The kshatriya could only hope to become a monk in his next life, but given the nature of his daily karma, it seemed unlikely that he could achieve even this limited goal. Was there no hope? The Mahabharata agonized over these questions, but could find no satisfactory solution.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Rath er there seem s t o us to be a fragmentation: some t hings happen in th e 'thumos', others in t h e 'pb,enes', others again in the 'kradie', 'etor', or 'ker', still others in the 'noos·. Some of these sites can be loosely identified with bodily locations; fo r instance, 'kradie', 'etor', and 'ker' seem to be identified with the hear t, a n d 'phrenes' with the lungs. Ri c hard Onians 4 also makes a strong case fo r 'tbumos' b eing originally sited in the lungs. In pa r allel to the multiplicity of 'mind' locations, bodily references are also usuall y to what we would think o f as pans. The term 'soma', S n ell argues, refers to the corpse. References to th e living body are to, e.g ., t h e 'limbs', 'skin', etc., varying as a ppropriate with the context. Snell also noted that the Homeri c hero was frequently carri ed to t he greatest heights of action by a surge of power infused into him by a god. An d indee d, t he same could be said for some of his great mistakes. Agamemnon excuse s his unfair and unwise treatment of Achilles by referring to the 'madness' (menos) visited on him by the g od. But contrary to our mo dern i ntuitions, this doesn't seem to lessen the merit or demeri t attaching t o the agent. A great hero remains great, though his impressive deeds are powere d by the god's infusion of energy. Indeed , there is no concession here; it is not that the hero remains grea t despite the divin e help. It is an inseparable par t o f his gr eatn e ss that he is such a locus of div in e action. As Adkins puts it, Homeric man is revealed "as a being whose part s are mor e in e vid e nce than the whole, and one very conscious o f sudden unexpected accesses of energy". 5 To the modern, this fragmentat i on, and th e seeming confusion about merit and responsibility, are very puzzling. S o me 6 hav e been tempted to make light of Snell's thesis, and to deny that Ho m er i c man was all that different from us in his w a y of understanding decisio n a n d responsibility.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Cartesian dualis m was taken up b y m any of the Jansenists, for instance by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, as a framework for their moral and theological views. But what couldn't be assimilated was the Cartesia n confidence in man's own powers to achieve the good, the sense that the muddle and confusion of embodied thinking, which Arnauld and Nicol e s ee as a consequence of the Fall, 2 could be overcome just by our own intellec tu al efforts. With this goes a shift in self-interpretation. The muddle and confusion ar e no longer seen as simply the result of negligence and bad habits, something which a little resolution and proper understanding can clear up. Indeed, th e Cartesia n idea that we are in principle transparent to ourselves, and only f a i l to know ourselves through confusion, is ab andoned. The Jansenist writers , i n fully A ugustinian fashion, insist that we don't know the depths of o ur o w n hearts. We are constantly giving ourselv es spiritual marks which we may n o t de s e rve. No one knows if his inclination to pray really comes from grace , o r perha ps from some self-serving end. We have "une inclination naturell e d e l'amour propre ... ", says Nicole, "a croire que nous avons dans le coe u r Nature as Source · 3 5 7 to ut ce qui nage sur la surface de no stre esprit. ' ' But "ii y a toujours en nous u n certain fond, et une certain r acin e qui nous demeure inconnu et im p e n etr able toute nostre vie" ("a natural inclination of pride ... to believe that w e have in our hearts all that is floati ng on the surface of our minds ... but . . . there are always certain depths within, certain roots that remain u nknown and impenetrable to us all of our lives"). 3 For Pascal, I am a "monstre incomprehensible". We are full of contra d ictions. Far from b eing self-transparent, our self is a mystery to us. "Ou est d one ce moi?" he asks. 4 W hat alone can bring some order in this, can give s ome (relative) self-understanding, is grace, which transforms the terms of our inner conflicts. This denial of self-transparency will be taken up again and will be crucial t o the express ivist followers of Rousseau. But what is more relevant to my immediate purpose is the way that Rousseau transposes this way of thinking to integrate it int o Deism. In the orthodox theory, the source of the higher love is grace; it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For Rousseau (without entirely ceasing to be God, at least of the philosophers), it has become the voice of nature.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Rather the claim is that living within such strongly qualified horizons is constitutive o f hum an agency, that stepping outside these limits would be tantamount to stepping outside what we would recognize as integral, that is, undamaged human p ersonhood. Per haps the best way to see this is to focus on the issue that we usually describ e today as the question of identi ty. We speak of it in these terms because the que�tion is often spontaneously phrased by people in the form: Who a m I? But this can't necessarily be answered by giving name and genealog y . What does answer this question for us is an understanding of what is of crucial importance to us. To know who I am is a species of knowing whe r e I stand. My identit y is defined by the commitments and identifications wh ich provide the frame or horizon within which I can t ry to d et ermine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, o r w hat I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand. Pe o p le may see their identity as defined partly by some moral or spiritual com mitment, say as a Catholic, or an anarchist. Or they may define it i n part by the nation or tradition they belong to, as an Armeni an, s ay, or a Queb e cois. What they are saying b y this is not just that the y are str ongly attached to this spiritual view or background; rather it is that this provides the frame within which they c an determine-where they stand on questions of wh at is goo d, or wo rthwhile, or a dmirable, or of value. Put counterfact ually, t he y are say ing that were they to lose this commitment or identification, they w o u ld be at s ea, as it were; they wouldn't know anymore, for an impo rtant ran g e of quest ions, what the significance of things was for t hem. A nd thi s situat ion does, of cour se, arise for some people. It' s what we call a n 'ide ntity crisis', an acute form of disorientation, which people often e x p re ss i n terms of not knowing w ho they a r e, but which can also be seen as a r a dic al unce rtainty of whe r e they stand. They lack a fr ame or horizon w i th i n wh ich things can ta k e on a s t able significanc e , within which some l ife 28 • IDENTITY AND THE GOOD possibiliti es can be seen as good or meaningful, others as bad or trivial. The meaning of all t h ese p ossibilities is unfixed, labile, or undetermined.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The gospel of John says that the earliest disciples came from the circle of the Baptist, and this at a time when Jesus’s early, simple teaching was strongly reflective of the Baptist’s, at least according to Mark’s account of it. Our authorities give a very confusing picture of Jesus’s following, both during his ministry and afterwards, when the personnel seem to have changed radically. The synoptics agree that twelve men were constituted, in Mark’s words, ‘to be with him, and to send them to preach and to have authority to cast out demons’. Both John and Paul refer to the figure twelve. But were the twelve the same as the apostles? The synoptics and Acts provide lists, but only agree on the first eight. John gives only half. Most of them are just names, if we leave aside later traditions. ‘The Twelve’ seem to relate to the ‘true people’ of the twelve tribes; but apostle in Greek implies an expedition across the sea and must refer primarily to the gentile or diaspora mission. Luke, in the Acts, does not tell us what rights or duties or privileges were enjoyed by ‘the twelve’ or by ‘the apostles’. Indeed, when he gets to Paul’s work he forgets all about them, and thenceforth refers to him as ‘the apostle’. Only with Peter can we trace any activity; with John it is barely possible, though we can assume it since he was martyred. And it is quite impossible with the rest. James, Jesus’s brother, is an identifiable personality, indeed an important one. But he is not an ‘apostle’, nor one of ‘the twelve’. It is thus misleading to speak of an ‘apostolic age’, and equally misleading to speak of a primitive pentecostal Church and faith. The last point is important, because it implies Jesus left a norm, in terms of doctrine, message, and organization, from which the Church subsequently departed. There was never a norm. Jesus held his following together because he was, in effect, its only spokesman. After Pentecost, there were many; a Babel of voices. If the famous Petrine text in Matthew is genuine and means what it is alleged to mean, Peter was a very unsteady rock on which to found a Church. He did not exercise powers of leadership and seems to have allowed himself to be dispossessed by James and other members of Jesus’s family, who had played no part in the original mission. Finally, Peter went on foreign mission and left the Jerusalem circle altogether. The impression we get is that the Jerusalem Church was unstable, and had a tendency to drift back into Judaism completely. Indeed, it was not really a separate Church at all, but part of the Jewish cult. It had no sacrifices of its own, no holy places and times, no priests. It met for meals, like the Essene groups, and had readings, preaching, prayers and hymns; its ecclesiastical personality was expressed solely in verbal terms.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Even though emotional transformations find their most dramatic expression in fantasy, peak encounters are also common settings for amazing emotional switch-overs. Once you recognize the changeability and fluidity of feelings, you will begin to notice that emotional transformations permeate erotic life. Here are the most common ways in which emotions redirect themselves during fulfilling sex: Emotional Transformations Anxiety [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Security Weakness [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Strength Guilt [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Freedom Anger [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Appreciation Emotional transformations play an important role in most of The Group’s stories. Remember how Glynis overcame her persistent fear about having sex with another woman and found a sense of celebration? Or how Denise transformed the guilt she felt about having sex with her boss into defiant liberation? Emotional aphrodisiacs follow their own rules, the first of which is that they refuse to be restricted by rationality. Whether for good or ill, feelings exist to be felt. To resist or deny our emotions is to strengthen them. True, the unpredictability of the emotional aphrodisiacs makes them potentially dangerous and bewildering. Trust your erotic mind, however, and even your least loving feelings may pull you circuitously toward pleasure and connection. 5YOUR CORE EROTIC THEMEAn internal blueprint for arousal transforms old wounds and conflicts into excitation. When you contemplate the assortment of images and encounters that have aroused you, what do you see? There are those who perceive merely a random collection of events, each the result of a unique set of circumstances, separate and unrelated. Considering the effort you’ve invested in exploring your peak turn-ons, I suspect you’ve glimpsed recurring patterns among varied erotic experiences. But like most people, you’re probably confused about what these patterns mean—or even what to call them. Borrowing a term from the dramatic arts that everybody understands, sociologists William Simon and John Gagnon have proposed that we name these patterns “sexual scripts.” Furthermore, they insist that our sexual fantasies and activities are influenced by these scripts to a far greater degree than most of us realize. They divide them into three basic types: (1) cultural scripts, (2) interpersonal scripts, and (3) intrapsychic (within the mind) scripts.1 All of us absorb an array of customs and traditions from our cultures, many having to do with sexuality. Invariably included are strong expectations for each gender along with deep-seated ideas about when, where, with whom, how, and how much sex is appropriate. Because cultural scripts are pervasive and begin impinging upon us from our first breaths, they become as much a part of who we are as our native language. Accordingly, they function automatically and are rarely questioned. Even sexual rebels are products of their cultures. They may violate society’s norms and ideals, but they can only stake out their positions in relation to the very standards they’re rejecting.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  But for a quite d i f f er e n t reason. I don't think there is such a thing as our real epistemic predica m en t in relation to God, just san:; phrase. Our sense of the certainty o r pro ble m aticity of G od is relative to our sense of moral sources. Our forebears we r e gen erally unruffled in their belief, because the sources t h e y could envi sa g e Fractured Horizons · 3 I 3 m a de unbelief incredible. The big thing that has ha pp ened since is the o p eni n g of oth er p ossible sources. In a p redicament where these are p lural, a lot of thin g s lo ok p roblematic that didn ' t before-and not just the existence of G od, but als o such "unquestionabl e" eth i ca l p rinci p les as that reason ought to govern the p assions. Who kn o ws whether further transformations in the available moral sources may no t a lter all these issues again out of all re c ognition? I w ant to argue that our p resent p redicament re p resents an e p i stemic gain, because I think that the alternative moral sources which have o p e ned for us in the pas t-two centuries re p resent real and im p ortant huma n p ote n tialities. It is p ossible to argue, as many have done, that they are largely based on illusion. But ev e n if I am right and we are in a better e p istemic p redicament as a consequence, this still doesn't authorize us to tal k of "the real" e p istemic p redicament. What this means for the ex p lanation of seculari z ation is that the issue shifts fro m the removal of blinkers to the question how these new sources became available . This is the cultural shift which we have to understand. Secularizat i on d oesn't just arise because p eo p le get a lo t more ed uc ated, and science p rogres ses. This has some effect , but it isn't decisive. What matters is that mass es of p e o p le can s ense moral sources of a quite different kind, ones that don't nece ssarily su pp ose a God. The limited effect of "Enlig h tenment" on its own becomes clear when we try to see what it is for new sources to become 'ava ilable'.