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 Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I sighed. “I don’t know. There’s never been many other women in the world I could identify with. But I sure as hell don’t feel like a guy, either. I don’t know what I am. It makes me feel crazy.” Edna nestled against my shoulder. “I know, honey, I really do. I don’t think ve ever had a butch lover who hasn’t felt torn up in the same way.” “Yeah,” I shrugged, “but it’s different for me because I’m living as a man. I don’t even know if ?’m still butch anymore.” She nodded. “It’s true that you and Rocco have a tough time figuring out how to be yourselves and still live. But believe me, honey, you’re not alone in the feeling that you’re not a man of a woman.” 236 = Leslie Feinberg I sighed. “T don’t like being neither.” Edna moved her face close to mine. “You’re more than just neither, honey. There’s other ways to be than either-or. It’s not so simple. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people who don’t fit. You’re beautiful, Jess, but I don’t have words to help people see that.” “T wish everything could go back to the way it was,” I told her. Edna looked off into the distance. “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to the bars and the fights. I just want a place to be with the people I love. I want to be accepted for who I am, and not just in the gay world.” I felt left out of the fantasy. “What about me? Can I be accepted too?” Edna lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed my fingers. “I’m not accepted till you are.” I smiled. “It’s a nice dream. How do we make it happen?” “T don’t know,” she said. ““That’s the problem.” Edna stretched her thigh across my hip. Her lips rested on my T-shirt. “I wish I could save you,” she whispered. “I wish I could be everything that’s been taken from you.” I laughed. “Just be my lover.” Edna leaned on one elbow and looked me in the eye. “You wish I could save you, don’t your” “No,” I lied, afraid of losing her. She sat up. “I don’t know how you couldn’t. It terrifies me when I think how little you have, how much you must need. I don’t have that much to give you.” I rolled over and wrapped my arms around her waist. “Then I’ll try to need less.” She grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head back until I looked her in the eyes. “Oh, Jess. I’m so sorry ?m hurting you. Don’t you think I know how much it’s hurt you when I couldn’t let you touch me after that first time? And I don’t know how to tell you that it has nothing to do with you.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The client may perceive this breakdown as a devastating confirmation of his or her inadequacy, adding to a lifetime of (many perceived) failures. Therapists may also feel confused, helpless, inadequate and self- reproaching. Such situations, where the two partners are locked against one another, can readily become intractable Gordian knots. These therapeutic cul-de-sacs may eventually result in termination of treatment. A Way Out Shut-down and dissociated people are not “in their bodies,” being, as we have seen, nearly unable to make real here-and-now contact no matter how hard they try. It is only when they can first engage their arousal systems (enough to begin to pull them up, out of immobility and dissociation), and then discharge that activation, that it becomes physiologically possible to make contact and receive support. Fortunately, there is a way to escape the immobilization system’s domination of the two less primitive systems—a way that healing practitioners must learn to exercise. This therapeutic solution is supported by Lanius and Hopper’s fMRI work mentioned earlier. 71 This compelling research, recording activity in the part of the brain associated with the awareness of bodily states and emotions, makes a clear differentiation between sympathetic arousal and dissociation in traumatized subjects. The brain area associated with awareness of bodily states and emotions is called the right anterior insula and is located in the frontal part of the limbic (emotional) brain, squeezed in directly under the prefrontal cortex—the locus of our most refined consciousness. The research showed that the insula j is strongly inhibited during shutdown and dissociation, and it confirmed that these traumatized individuals are unable to feel their bodies, to differentiate their emotions, or even to know who they (or another person) really are. 72 On the other hand, when subjects are in a state of sympathetic hyperarousal, this same area is highly activated. This dramatic increase in the activity of the right anterior insula strongly suggests a clear differentiation of little or no body awareness (in immobility/shutdown and dissociation) to a kind of “hyper-sensation” in sympathetic arousal. In addition, the sympathetic state, at least, provides the possibility of coherent awareness, processing and resolution. These data support the crucial steps to trauma resolution outlined in Chapter 5 (Step 5) and further clarify the strategy of helping clients move from shutdown to mobilization while learning to manage their physical (bodily) sensations as they shift into sympathetic arousal. A related, and seminal, research study was carried out by Bessel van der Kolk.

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

  Maylene was cool. She was good at tennis, smart, cute. I liked her. I didn’t have a crush on her; I wasn’t even thinking about girls that way yet. I just liked hanging out with her. Maylene was also the only colored girl in school. I was the only mixed kid in school. We were the only two people who looked like each other. The white girls were insistent about me asking Maylene to be my valentine. They were like, “Trevor, you have to ask her. You’re the only two. It’s your responsibility.” It was like our species was going to die out if we didn’t mate and carry on. Which I’ve learned in life is something that white people do without even realizing it. “You two look the same, therefore we must arrange for you to have sex.” I honestly hadn’t thought of asking Maylene, but when the girls brought it up, that thing happened where someone plants the idea in your head and it changes your perception. “Maylene’s totally got a thing for you.” “Does she?” “Yeah, you guys are great together!” “Are we?” “Totally.” “Well, okay. If you say so.” I liked Maylene as much as I liked anyone, I suppose. Mostly I think I liked the idea of being liked. I decided I’d ask her to be my valentine, but I had no idea how to do it. I didn’t know the first thing about having a girlfriend. I had to be taught the whole love bureaucracy of the school. There was the thing where you don’t actually talk straight to the person. You have your group of friends and she has her group of friends, and your group of friends has to go to her group of friends and say, “Okay, Trevor likes Maylene. He wants her to be his valentine. We’re in favor. We’re ready to sign off with your approval.” Her friends say, “Okay. Sounds good. We have to run it by Maylene.” They go to Maylene. They consult. They tell her what they think. “Trevor says he likes you. We’re in favor. We think you’d be good together. What do you say?” Maylene says, “I like Trevor.” They say, “Okay. Let’s move forward.” They come back to us. “Maylene says she approves and she’s waiting for Trevor’s Valentine’s Day advance.” The girls told me this process was what needed to happen. I said, “Cool. Let’s do it.” The friends sorted it out, Maylene got on board, and I was all set.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Jess?” The voice startled me. I turned and faced a woman who looked familiar. One child wound around her legs. The other held her hand and stared at me. “It’s me—Gloria. Remember? We worked together at the print shop. You used to work there after school.” I nodded, but my mind felt swaddled in gauze. I tried to follow her words as they shot past me: Gloria was divorced, the foreman put the moves on her, she quit. What was happening with me? Her last question startled me. I shrugged. “Pm looking for a place to stay so I can try to find some work and get an apartment. By the way,” I told her, “T’ve always wanted to thank you for giving me the names of those bars. It changed my life.” Gloria glanced nervously at her children. “This is Scotty and this is Kim. Say hello to Jess. Jess and Mommy used to work together.” Scotty hid behind Gloria’s legs. Kim maintained her slack-jaw stare. Her gaze unnerved me, but there wasn’t the slightest hostility in it. Kim’s face was filled with wonder, as though I was a shower of fireworks exploding in a dark sky. “You can stay with us tonight, if you have no place to go. On the couch, I mean.” Gloria gave me her address. “After 7:30,” she said, “after I put the kids to bed.” That left a long time to kill. I stopped for gas. The line of cars snaked down the block. Newspaper headlines blaring about a gas shortage had panicked everyone. “You must be 168 Leslie Feinberg joking.” I complained to the attendant when I saw how much a tankful cost. “Don’t blame me,” he said. “Blame the Arabs. They got us by the balls.” “Oh, c’mon,” I told him, pointing to the river. “There’s tankers full of oil anchored out there just waiting for the prices to shoot sky high.” I knew—I’d tried to get the temp agency to send me out there to clean the ballast holds, but the agency said it was a man’s job. Once I got on I-190 headed north I really opened up the throttle, hearing everything I was feeling in the engine’s growl. Late in the afternoon I headed back to the city. I stopped at a West Side pizzeria for chicken wings. I stood at the counter growing impatient, but the man behind it wouldn’t wait on me. I turned around to see what he was looking at. I saw a table filled with jocks staring at me. I rapped on the counter. “Excuse me.” “What do we have here?” I heard a man’s voice behind me say. It was time to leave. One of the guys blocked the only exit. I pushed past him real hard and ran outside to the parking lot. I jumped on my bike, but it was too late. They were almost on top of me. My bike toppled as I leaped

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

  CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. This also He did purposely for our sakes, that we may learn that at the commencement of a feast when we are going to break bread, we ought to offer thanks for it to God, and to draw forth the heavenly blessing upon it. As it follows, And he blessed, and brake. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) He distributes to them by the hands of His disciples, so honouring them that they might not forget it when the miracle was past. Now He did not create food for the multitude out of what did not exist, that He might stop the mouth of the Manichæans, who say that the creatures are independent (ἀλλοτριούντων. κτίσιν.) of Him; shewing that He Himself is both the Giver of food, and the same who said, Let the earth bring forth, &c.He makes also the fishes to increase, to signify that He has dominion over the seas, as well as the dry land. But well did He perform a special miracle for the weak, at the same time that He gives also a general blessing in feeding all the strong as well as the weak. And they did all eat, and were filled. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (Orat. Catech. Mag. c. 23.) For whom neither the heaven rained manna, nor the earth brought forth corn according to its nature, but from the unspeakable garner of divine power the blessing was poured forth. The bread is supplied in the hands of those who serve, it is even increased through the fulness of those who eat. The sea supplied not their wants with the food of fishes, but He who placed in the sea the race of fishes. AMBROSE. It is clear that the multitude were filled not by a scanty meal, but by a constant and increasing supply of food. You might see in an incomprehensible manner amid the hands of those who distributed, the particles multiplying which they broke not; the fragments too, untouched by the fingers of the breakers, spontaneously mounting up. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Nor was this all that the miracle came to; but it follows, And there was taken up of the fragments that remained, twelve baskets, that this might be a manifest proof that a work of love to our neighbour will claim a rich reward from God. THEOPHYLACT. And that we might learn the value of hospitality, and how much our own store is increased when we help those that need. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) But He caused not loaves to remain over, but fragments, that He might shew them to be the remnants of the loaves, and these were made to be of that number, that there might be as many baskets as disciples.

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

  Then, just as you think you’re closing in on the finish line, some fucking guy named Nelson Mandela comes along and flips the country on its head. Now the finish line is back where the starting line was, and the benchmark is black. Black is in charge. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. For centuries colored people were told: Blacks are monkeys. Don’t swing from the trees like them. Learn to walk upright like the white man. Then all of a sudden it’s Planet of the Apes, and the monkeys have taken over. — So you can imagine how weird it was for me. I was mixed but not colored—colored by complexion but not by culture. Because of that I was seen as a colored person who didn’t want to be colored. In Eden Park, I encountered two types of colored people. Some colored people hated me because of my blackness. My hair was curly and I was proud of my Afro. I spoke African languages and loved speaking them. People would hear me speaking Xhosa or Zulu and they’d say, “Wat is jy? ’n Boesman?” “What are you, a Bushman?” Why are you trying to be black? Why do you speak that click-click language? Look at your light skin. You’re almost there and you’re throwing it away. Other colored people hated me because of my whiteness. Even though I identified as being black, I had a white father. I went to an English private school. I’d learned to get along with white people at church. I could speak perfect English, and I barely spoke Afrikaans, the language colored people were supposed to speak. So colored people thought that I thought I was better than them. They would mock my accent, like I was putting on airs. “Dink jy, jy is grênd?” “You think you’re high class?”—uppity, people would say in America. Even when I thought I was liked, I wasn’t. One year I got a brand-new bike during the summer holidays. My cousin Mlungisi and I were taking turns riding around the block. I was riding up our street when this cute colored girl came out to the road and stopped me. She smiled and waved to me sweetly. “Hey,” she said, “can I ride your bike?” I was completely shocked. Oh, wow, I thought, I made a friend. “Yeah, of course,” I said. I got off and she got on and rode about twenty or thirty feet. Some random older kid came running up to the street, she stopped and got off, and he climbed on and rode away. I was so happy that a girl had spoken to me that it didn’t fully sink in that they’d stolen my bicycle. I ran back home, smiling and skipping along. My cousin asked where the bicycle was. I told him. “Trevor, you’ve been robbed,” he said. “Why didn’t you chase them?” “I thought they were being nice.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  The wry twist of Dave’s face made her mad. She looked out the right side of the cab until she could lasso her uncomely grin. Sarah pumped her fist as she found a radio station. “Got one!” Johnny Cash sang “Folsom Prison Blues.” She patted Dave’s knee. “Bet you like this one.” Dave stared out front and bit his lip. “Want me to change it?” “No, leave it. I do like this one.” She leaned closer, chin on her fingers with a close-lipped smile. “You got something to say, Sarah?” “You’re passionate about deserts and country music.” “Passionate? I like ’em.” “And yet you don’t care about the war?” “Pardon, darlin’. What I said was, ‘I don’t give it much thought.’” “My brother’s in Canada.” A long pause. “I hear it’s nice this time of year.” “He’s a draft dodger, Dave.” “I kinda got that, Sarah.” “Honestly I don’t know when you’re being serious.” She took an errant hair from his shoulder. His eyes turned just enough to watch her make contact. “Is that so?” The radio signal faded. The cab fell silent again but for the throaty hum of the diesel engine. The horizon to the east started to glow. “If I were a man and got drafted, I’d go to Canada. What do you say to that?” Sarah turned to face him like a confrontation. “Well, I’d say, ‘Tell your brother I said hey.’” Sarah covered her mouth as she laughed. “Why you do that?” “What?” “You cover your smile.” “Nothing.” A long pause. “It’s my teeth.” “You got fine teeth.” “The lowers are uneven.” “Yeah. Ain’t they grand?” “Now you’re teasing me.” “Nope.” Sarah smoothed the edges of her dress from her plump waist down her full hips. Another long silence. Dave continued. “When I was a boy, I fought all the time. Drove my ma and pa nuts. One day Mama says, ‘Davey, what you fightin’ about now?’ I say, ‘Well Ma, Johnny say some bad things ’bout you.’ Ma says, ‘Like what?’ I say, ‘Like you fat.’ ‘I am fat. You stupid, boy? Fight for telling o’ the truth?’ But Dad didn’t give me a talkin’ to. He just walloped me good. Johnny beat me, Dad beat me, Mama was mad at me.” Dave nodded to signal the end of his story. “So, the point is you should choose your battles.” “Listen. A few days later, Johnny calls Mama fatty again. That time I’d figured out how he beat me, and I walloped him but good. That day on, two times my size and big ol’ Johnny crossed the street when he saw me a-comin’.” “I don’t get you, Dave.” “I got no more points to make. My fightin’ days are over.” She eyed his body language, the way he looked at her in scant periphery. “I bet you were in Vietnam. Bet you weren’t even drafted.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  as he moved on this intuition at least several months in advance of the public, giving his enemies and rivals an opening to get rid of him. Understand: You might see King Louis XVI as an extreme example of someone out of tune with the times, not particularly relevant to your own life, but in fact he is much closer to you than you think. Like him, you are probably looking at the present through the lens of the past. When you look at the world around you, it seems pretty much as it appeared a day or a week or a month or even a year ago. People act more or less the same. The institutions that hold power remain in place and are not going anywhere. People’s ways of thinking have not really changed; the conventions that govern behavior in your field are still followed religiously. Yes, there might be some new styles and trends in culture, but they are not critical factors or signs of deep change. Lulled by these appearances, it seems to you that life simply goes on as it always has. Below the surface, however, the tide is moving; nothing in human culture stands still. Those who are younger than you no longer have the same level of respect for certain values or institutions that you have. Power dynamics—among classes, regions, industries—are in a state of flux. People are beginning to socialize and interact in new ways. New symbols and myths are being formed, and old ones are fading. All of these things can seem rather disconnected until there is some crisis or clash and people must confront what was once seemingly invisible or separate, in the form of some sort of revolution or cry for change. When this occurs, some people will feel, like the king, profoundly uncomfortable and will hold on even more fervently to the past. They will band together to try to stop the tide from advancing, a futile task. Leaders will feel threatened and cling more tightly to their conventional ideas. Others will be carried along without really understanding where it is all headed or why things are changing. What you want and need is the power that Danton possessed to make sense of it all and act accordingly. And this power is a function of vision, of looking at events from a different angle, through a fresh framework. You ignore the clichéd interpretations that others will inevitably spout when facing changes. You drop the mental habits and past ways of looking at things that can cloud your vision. You stop the tendency to moralize, to judge what is happening. You simply want to see things as they are. You look for the undercurrents of discontent and disharmony with the status quo, which are always there below the surface. You see commonalities and connections among all these signs. Slowly the flow, the tide itself, comes into focus, indicating a course, a direction that is hidden to so many others.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  patterns of behavior that we cannot seem to control. It is as if we harbor a stranger within us, a little demon who operates independently of our willpower and pushes us into doing the wrong things. And this stranger within us is rather weird, or at least weirder than how we imagine ourselves. What we can say about these two things—people’s ugly actions and our own occasionally surprising behavior—is that we usually have no clue as to what causes them. We might latch onto some simple explanations: “That person is evil, a sociopath” or “Something came over me; I wasn’t myself.” But such pat descriptions do not lead to any understanding or prevent the same patterns from recurring. The truth is that we humans live on the surface, reacting emotionally to what people say and do. We form opinions of others and ourselves that are rather simplified. We settle for the easiest and most convenient story to tell ourselves. What if, however, we could dive below the surface and see deep within, getting closer to the actual roots of what causes human behavior? What if we could understand why some people turn envious and try to sabotage our work, or why their misplaced confidence causes them to imagine themselves as godlike and infallible? What if we could truly fathom why people suddenly behave irrationally and reveal a much darker side to their character, or why they are always ready to provide a rationalization for their behavior, or why we continually turn to leaders who appeal to the worst in us? What if we could look deep inside and judge people’s character, avoiding the bad hires and personal relationships that cause us so much emotional damage? If we really understood the roots of human behavior, it would be much harder for the more destructive types to continually get away with their actions. We would not be so easily charmed and misled. We would be able to anticipate their nasty and manipulative maneuvers and see through their cover stories. We would not allow ourselves to get dragged into their dramas, knowing in advance that our interest is what they depend on for their control. We would finally rob them of their power through our ability to look into the depths of their character. Similarly, with ourselves, what if we could look within and see the source of our more troubling emotions and why they drive our behavior, often against our own wishes? What if we could understand why we are so compelled to desire what other people have, or to identify so strongly with a group that we feel contempt for those who are on the outside? What if we could find out what causes us to lie about who we are, or to inadvertently push people away? Being able to understand more clearly that stranger within us would help us to realize that it is not a stranger at all but very much a

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  through the same process of assimilating this strange new world we were cast into at birth. Although we are encountering the same reality as everyone else alive at the time, we are doing so from a peculiar angle—that of being a child, physically smaller, more helpless, and dependent on adults. From this point of view, the world of the adults can seem rather alien, as we do not understand so well what motivates them, or their adult cares or concerns. What our parents might take as serious we can often see as comical or odd. We may watch the same forms of entertainment as they do, but we see them from the angle of a child, with little life experience. We don’t have the power yet to affect this world, but we start to interpret it in our own way, and we share this with our peers. Then, when we reach our teen years or perhaps earlier, we become aware that we are part of a generation of young people (focusing more on those around our age) with whom we can identify. We bond over our particular way of seeing things and the similar sense of humor we have developed; we also tend to form common ideals about success and coolness, among other values. In these years, we inevitably go through a period of rebellion, struggling to find our own identity, separate from our parents. This makes us deeply attuned to appearances—to styles and fashions. We want to show that we belong to our generational tribe, with its own look and manner. Often a decisive event or trend will occur during these youthful years—this could be a major war, a political scandal, a financial crisis or economic boom. It could also be the invention of some new form of technology that has a profound impact on social relations. Because we are so young and impressionable, such events have a decisive influence on the generational personality that is forming, making us cautious (if it is a war or crash in the economy) or hungry for adventure (if it is something that sparks prosperity or stability). Naturally, we view such decisive events very differently from our parents and are affected more deeply. As we become more aware of what is going on in the world, we often come to see the ideas and values of our parents as not fitting very well our own experience of reality. What they have told or taught us does not seem so relevant, and we hunger for ideas that are more related to our youthful experience. In this first phase of life, we shape a generational perspective. It is a kind of collective mind-set, as we absorb the prevailing culture at the same time as our peers, from the point of view of childhood and youth. And because we are too young to understand or analyze this perspective, we are generally ignorant of its formation and how it

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  and you could not stop them even if you wanted to, because they are so automatic and unconscious. Without them, you would not find yourself paying deep attention to a person, becoming fascinated with him or her, idealizing, and falling in love. But once the relationship develops, you need to have the power and awareness to withdraw the projections, so that you can begin to see women and men as they really are. In doing so, perhaps you will realize how truly incompatible you are, or the opposite. Once connected to the real person, you can continue to idealize him or her, but this will be based on actual positive qualities he or she possesses. Perhaps you can find his or her faults charming. You can accomplish all of this by becoming aware of your own patterns and the types of qualities you tend to project onto others. This also has relevance to relationships with the opposite sex that are not intimate. Imagine that in an office situation a colleague criticizes your work or postpones a meeting you asked for. If that person happens to be of the opposite sex, all kinds of emotions— resentments, fears, disappointments, hostility—will be stirred up, along with various projections, whereas with someone of your own gender there would be much less of a reaction. Seeing this dynamic in everyday life, you will be better able to control it and have smoother relationships with those of the opposite sex. Your third task is to look inward, to see those feminine or masculine qualities that are repressed and undeveloped within you. You will catch glimpses of your anima or animus in your relationships with the opposite sex. That assertiveness you desire to see in a man, or empathy in a woman, is something you need to develop within yourself, bringing out that feminine or masculine undertone. What you are doing in essence is integrating into your everyday personality the traits that are within you but are repressed. They will no longer operate independently and automatically, in the form of possession. They will become part of your everyday self, and people will be drawn to the authenticity they sense in you. (For more on this, see the final section of this chapter.) — Finally, when it comes to gender roles, we like to imagine a continual line of progress leading to perfect equality, and to believe that we are not far from reaching this ideal. But this is hardly the truth. Although on one level we can see definite progress, on another level, one that is deeper, we can see increasing tension and polarization between the sexes, as if the old patterns of inequality between men and women exert an unconscious influence upon us. This tension can sometimes feel like a war, and it stems from a growing psychological distance between the genders, in which people of the opposite sex seem like alien creatures, with habits and

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  If China was being infiltrated by all kinds of counterrevolutionaries, that meant that they had also probably infiltrated the school itself, and the only logical place for the students to look for such class enemies was among their teachers and school officials. They began to scrutinize their lectures and lessons for hidden messages, much as the intellectuals had done with the work of famous writers. The geography teacher Liu always talked about the beautiful landscapes of China but hardly ever mentioned the inspiring words of Mao. Could that mean something? The physics teacher Feng had an American father who had served in the U.S. Navy; was he secretly an imperialist? Li, the teacher of Chinese, had fought initially on the side of the nationalists against the communists during the revolution, but in the last year had switched sides. The students had always trusted his version of events, and he was Jianhua’s favorite teacher because he had such a flair for telling stories. But in retrospect he seemed a bit old-fashioned and bourgeois. Could he still be a counterrevolutionary nationalist at heart? Soon a few posters appeared that questioned the fervor of some of these teachers. Secretary Ding found this a trivial application of the debate, and he ordered a ban on all posters attacking teachers. By June the movement sweeping Beijing, and soon all of China, had acquired a name—the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution. It was indeed Mao himself who had instigated it all by setting up the newspaper articles, and he was to be the ongoing leader of the new movement. He feared that China had been slipping back into its feudal past. Old ways of thinking and acting had returned. Bureaucracies had become breeding grounds for a new type of elite. Peasants remained relatively powerless. He wanted a wake-up call to revive the revolutionary spirit. He wanted the younger generation to experience revolution firsthand by making it themselves. He proclaimed to young people that it was “right to rebel,” but the word he used in Chinese for this was zao fan , which literally means to turn everything upside down. It was young people’s duty, he said, to question authority. Those who secretly worked to pull China back into its past he called “revisionists,” and he implored students to help him uncover the revisionists and root them out of the new revolutionary China. Taking these pronouncements of Mao as a call to action, Fangpu created the most audacious poster anyone had yet seen—it was a direct attack on Secretary Ding himself. Ding was not only the school’s party secretary but also a veteran of the revolution and a highly respected figure. According to Fangpu, however, his prohibition on criticizing teachers proved he was a revisionist, bent on suppressing the questioning spirit Mao had encouraged. This created quite a stir. The students had been reared to unquestioningly obey those in authority, particularly respected party members.

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

  All three of Babiki’s older sisters spoke English, and her younger sister Lerato spoke a little. So whenever we hung out with Babiki and her sisters and their friends, a lot of the conversation was in English. The rest of it was going right by me in Pedi or in Sotho, but that’s completely normal in South Africa so it never bothered me; I got enough of the gist of the conversation from everyone’s English to know what was going on. And the way my mind works with language, even when I’m hearing other languages, they get filtered into English as I’m hearing them. My mind stores them in English. When my grandmother and great-grandmother were hysterically praying to God to destroy the demon that had shit on their kitchen floor, all of that transpired in Xhosa, but it’s stored in English. I remember it as English. So whenever I lay in bed at night dreaming about Babiki and the moments we’d spent together, I felt like it had transpired in English because that’s how I remembered it. And Tom had never said anything about what language she spoke or didn’t speak, because why would he care? He just wanted to get his free CDs and get with the sister. Which is how I’d been dating a girl for over a month—the girl I very much believed was my first girlfriend—without ever having had a single conversation with her. Now the whole night came rushing back and I saw it from her point of view, and it was perfectly obvious to me why she didn’t want to get out of the car. She probably hadn’t wanted to go to the dance with me in the first place; she probably owed Tom a favor, and Tom can talk anyone into anything. Then I’d left her sitting and waiting for me for an hour and she was pissed off. Then she got into the car and it was the first time we had ever been alone, and she realized I couldn’t even hold a conversation with her. I’d driven her around and gotten lost in the dark—a young girl alone in a car in the middle of nowhere with some strange guy, no idea where I was taking her. She was probably terrified. Then we got to the dance and she didn’t speak anyone’s language. She didn’t know anyone. She didn’t even know me. Bongani and I stood outside the car, staring at each other. I didn’t know what to do. I tried talking to her in every language I knew. Nothing worked. She only spoke Pedi. I got so desperate that I started trying to talk to her using hand signals. “Please. You. Me. Inside. Dance. Yes?” “No.” “Inside. Dance. Please?” “No.”

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

  I didn’t know what to do. I tried talking to her in every language I knew. Nothing worked. She only spoke Pedi. I got so desperate that I started trying to talk to her using hand signals. “Please. You. Me. Inside. Dance. Yes?” “No.” “Inside. Dance. Please?” “No.” I asked Bongani if he spoke Pedi. He didn’t. I ran inside to the dance and ran around looking for someone who spoke Pedi to help me to convince her to come in. “Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi?” Nobody spoke Pedi. So I never got to go to my matric dance. Other than the three minutes I spent running through it looking for someone who spoke Pedi, I spent the whole night in the parking lot. When the dance ended, I climbed back into the shitty red Mazda and drove Babiki home. We sat in total awkward silence the whole way. I pulled up in front of her block of flats in Hillbrow, stopped the car, and sat for a moment as I tried to figure out the polite and gentlemanly way to end the evening. Then, out of nowhere, she leaned over and gave me a kiss. Like, a real kiss, a proper kiss. The kind of kiss that made me forget that the whole disaster had just happened. I was so confused. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She pulled back and I looked deep into her eyes and thought, I have no idea how girls work. I got out of the car, walked around to her side, and opened her door. She gathered up her dress and stepped out and headed toward her flat, and as she turned to go I gave her one last little wave. “Bye.” “Bye.” In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it—what it means. As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing. “Well, that was shameful, now wasn’t it?” In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren’t taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it’s taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: “There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.” It was the same for us. “Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let’s move on.” Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  knew, but in Yizhen this seemed rather distant. If China was being infiltrated by all kinds of counterrevolutionaries, that meant that they had also probably infiltrated the school itself, and the only logical place for the students to look for such class enemies was among their teachers and school officials. They began to scrutinize their lectures and lessons for hidden messages, much as the intellectuals had done with the work of famous writers. The geography teacher Liu always talked about the beautiful landscapes of China but hardly ever mentioned the inspiring words of Mao. Could that mean something? The physics teacher Feng had an American father who had served in the U.S. Navy; was he secretly an imperialist? Li, the teacher of Chinese, had fought initially on the side of the nationalists against the communists during the revolution, but in the last year had switched sides. The students had always trusted his version of events, and he was Jianhua’s favorite teacher because he had such a flair for telling stories. But in retrospect he seemed a bit old-fashioned and bourgeois. Could he still be a counterrevolutionary nationalist at heart? Soon a few posters appeared that questioned the fervor of some of these teachers. Secretary Ding found this a trivial application of the debate, and he ordered a ban on all posters attacking teachers. By June the movement sweeping Beijing, and soon all of China, had acquired a name—the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution. It was indeed Mao himself who had instigated it all by setting up the newspaper articles, and he was to be the ongoing leader of the new movement. He feared that China had been slipping back into its feudal past. Old ways of thinking and acting had returned. Bureaucracies had become breeding grounds for a new type of elite. Peasants remained relatively powerless. He wanted a wake-up call to revive the revolutionary spirit. He wanted the younger generation to experience revolution firsthand by making it themselves. He proclaimed to young people that it was “right to rebel,” but the word he used in Chinese for this was zao fan , which literally means to turn everything upside down. It was young people’s duty, he said, to question authority. Those who secretly worked to pull China back into its past he called “revisionists,” and he implored students to help him uncover the revisionists and root them out of the new revolutionary China. Taking these pronouncements of Mao as a call to action, Fangpu created the most audacious poster anyone had yet seen—it was a direct attack on Secretary Ding himself. Ding was not only the school’s party secretary but also a veteran of the revolution and a highly respected figure. According to Fangpu, however, his prohibition on criticizing teachers proved he was a revisionist, bent on suppressing the questioning spirit Mao had encouraged. This created quite a stir. The students had been reared to unquestioningly obey those in authority, particularly respected party members.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  is sent that creates the effect we desire. We are never quite as passive as we seem in this. In the back of our minds, we are aware that we are taking an extra long time to get back to someone or putting a dig in a comment, but at the same time we can also pretend to ourselves and to others that we are innocent. (We humans are capable of holding such conflicting thoughts at the same time.) In general, we must consider this everyday version of passive aggression to be merely an irritating part of social life, something we are all guilty of. We should be as tolerant as possible of this low-grade passive aggression that thrives in polite society. Some people, however, are chronic passive aggressors. Like the more active aggressors, they generally have a high degree of energy and need for control but at the same time a fear of outright confrontation. They often had domineering or neglectful parents; passive aggression became their way of getting attention or asserting their will while avoiding punishment. Such behavior becomes a pattern for them as adults, as they often repeat the same types of strategies that worked in childhood. (If we observe the passive aggressor closely enough, we can often see the manipulative child peeking through the adult mask.) These chronic types operate in a personal or work relationship, in which their drip-drip passive-aggressive strategies can take effect on an individual over time. They are masters at being ambiguous and elusive—we can never quite be sure that they are attacking us; perhaps we are imagining things and are paranoid. If they were directly aggressive, we would get angry and resist them, but by being indirect they sow confusion, and exploit such confusion for power and control. If they are truly good at this and get their hooks into our emotions, they can make our lives miserable. Keep in mind that actively aggressive types can generally be quite passive-aggressive at times, as Rockefeller certainly was. Passive aggression is simply an additional weapon for them in their attempts at control. In any event, the key to defending ourselves against passive aggressors is to recognize what they are up to as early as possible. The following are the most common strategies employed by such aggressors, and ways to counter them. The Subtle-Superiority Strategy: A friend, colleague, or employee is chronically late, but he or she always has a ready excuse that is logical, along with an apology that seems sincere. Or similarly, such individuals forget about meetings, important dates, and deadlines, always with impeccable excuses at hand. If this behavior repeats often enough, your irritation will increase, but if you try to confront them, they very well might try to turn the tables by making you seem uptight and unsympathetic. It is not their fault, they say—they have too much on their mind, people are pressuring them, they are temperamental artists who can’t keep on top of so many

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  of the people for Queen Elizabeth, every minute detail about the country’s finances and shoreline defenses. Based on years of such study, in 1588 he decided to launch his armada against England, feeling certain that, having made the armada large enough, Spain would prevail. But he failed to pay enough attention to weather reports, the most critical factor of all—for storms at sea would spell the destruction of the armada. He also failed to realize that by the time he had compiled and assimilated enough information on the Turks or on England, the situation had actually changed. So while he seemed extremely detail oriented, he was never quite on top of anything. Over the years Philip strained his mind with so much reading that he had frequent headaches and dizzy spells. His thinking was definitely impaired, and he made decisions that ended up leading directly to the irreversible decline of the Spanish empire. In some ways you are probably more like King Philip II than you would like to imagine. In your life you are more than likely paying attention to some details that seem immediately important to you, while ignoring the weather reports that will doom your project. Like Philip, you tend to take in information without considering your priorities, what really matters in the end. But the brain has its limits. Assimilating too much information leads to mental fatigue, confusion, and feelings of helplessness. Everything begins to seem equally important—the placement of toilets and a possible war with the Turks. What you need is a mental filtering system based on a scale of priorities and your long-term goals. Knowing what you want to accomplish in the end will help you weed out the essential from the nonessential. You do not have to know all the details. Sometimes you need to delegate—let your subordinates handle the information gathering. Remember that greater control over events will come from realistic assessments of the situation, precisely what is made most difficult by a brain submerged in trivia. The Farsighted Human Most of us live within a relatively narrow time frame. We generally associate the passage of time with something negative—aging and moving closer to death. Instinctively we recoil from thinking too deeply about the future and the past, for this reminds us of the passage of time. In relation to the future we may try to think about our plans a year or two from now, but our thinking is more like a daydream, a wish, than deep analysis. In relation to the past we may have a few fond or painful memories from childhood and later years, but in general the past baffles us. We change so much with each passing year that who we were five, ten, twenty years ago might seem like a stranger to us. We don’t really have a cohesive sense of who we are, a feeling of connection between the five-year-old and thirty-five-year-old versions of ourselves.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The Source of Human Aggression Passive Aggression—Its Strategies and How to Counter Them Control ed Aggression 17 Seize the Historical Moment The Law of Generational Myopia The Rising Tide The Generational Phenomenon Generational Patterns Strategies for Exploiting the Spirit of the Times The Human Beyond Time and Death 18 Meditate on Our Common Mortality The Law of Death Denial The Bul et in the Side A Philosophy of Life Through Death Acknowledgments Selected Bibliography Index About the Author Introduction If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity . . . you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it wil be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral. —Arthur Schopenhauer Throughout the course of our lives, we inevitably have to deal with a variety of individuals who stir up trouble and make our lives difficult and unpleasant. Some of these individuals are leaders or bosses, some are colleagues, and some are friends. They can be aggressive or passive-aggressive, but they are generally masters at playing on our emotions. They often appear charming and refreshingly confident, brimming with ideas and enthusiasm, and we fall under their spell. Only when it is too late do we discover that their confidence is irrational and their ideas ill-conceived. Among colleagues, they can be those who sabotage our work or careers out of secret envy, excited to bring us down. Or they could be colleagues or hires who reveal, to our dismay, that they are completely out for themselves, using us as stepping-stones. What inevitably happens in these situations is that we are caught off guard, not expecting such behavior. Often these types will hit us with elaborate cover stories to justify their actions, or blame handy scapegoats. They know how to confuse us and draw us into a drama they control. We might protest or become angry, but in the end we feel rather helpless—the damage is done. Then another such type enters our life, and the same story repeats itself. We often notice a similar sensation of confusion and helplessness when it comes to ourselves and our own behavior. For instance, we suddenly say something that offends our boss or colleague or friend —we are not quite sure where it came from, but we are frustrated to find that some anger and tension from within has leaked out in a way that we regret. Or perhaps we enthusiastically throw our weight into some project or scheme, only to realize it was quite foolish and a terrible waste of time. Or perhaps we fall in love with a person who is precisely the wrong type for us and we know it, but we cannot help ourselves. What has come over us, we wonder? In these situations, we catch ourselves falling into self-destructive

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This time she holds them out for several seconds, almost at arm’s length. “It’s the same problem ... at work and with my husband, too.” She now places her hands gently on her thighs. “It’s so hard for me, I don’t know why but ... I don’t feel like I have a right to do this ... like I don’t have a right to my own space.” I ask her if it’s more of a feeling or a thought. She pauses, giggles and replies, “Hah, I guess it’s really a thought.” Now there’s a deeper laughter. By contacting her nonverbal bodily expression, Miriam is able to go beneath the veneer of her ruminative thoughts about Henry and her work, to explore freely the story her body is beginning to tell. With this emergent kinesthetic and proprioceptive awareness, she has begun to sense into the neuromuscular attitude that underlies her internal conflicts. After settling into her bodily experience, Miriam starts to get wound up again. I observe her carotid pulse and notice an increase in her heart rate, along with pressured, rapid, shallow breathing. I ask her to put her questionings aside for a moment and place her focus back on her body. Relieved by this suggestion, she closes her eyes. “I feel more solid now ... like there’s more of me.” When I ask her to try and identify where in her body she feels the solidity, she says, “I don’t know; I just feel that way.” “Just take your time,” I suggest. “Don’t try too hard. Just settle inside your body and see what you begin to notice.” Miriam closes her eyes. She seems a little confused and doesn’t speak for a minute or two. “Its mostly in my arms and legs ... They feel like they have more substance ... They feel more solid ... I feel that way.” At this point, Miriam initiates further, this time self-directed, exploration by closing her eyes without my suggestion. After a minute or two, her jaw begins to tremble almost imperceptibly. I wait to see if she will notice this on her own. “I feel strange,” Miriam says, “kind of shaky inside ... I don’t like this ... It makes me feel kinda weird inside ... like I’m getting out of control, like I’m not myself, like it’s not me.” I reassure her by explaining that new sensations often feel uncomfortable and alien at first, and encourage her to “just let it happen ... try to suspend labeling or judging sensations for a bit.” Miriam tells me that she’s feeling worse, even more uncomfortable. I acknowledge this but gently and firmly encourage her “to hang in a little bit longer,” to shift her attention to her arms and legs for a while —to the places in her body where she had been feeling rooted a short time ago. “Huh, they don’t feel shaky ... actually they feel strong ... I feel my jaw shaking ...

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

  You pick a special person and you tell them that you love them, and they love you back.” Wow, I thought, that seems intense. But I hadn’t been shot by Cupid’s arrow, and I didn’t know of anyone getting shot on my behalf. I had no clue what was going on. All week, the girls in school kept saying, “Who’s your valentine? Who’s your valentine?” I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Finally one of the girls, a white girl, said, “You should ask Maylene.” The other kids agreed. “Yes, Maylene. You should definitely ask Maylene. You have to ask Maylene. You guys are perfect for each other.” Maylene was a girl I used to walk home from school with. We lived in the city now, me, my mom and Abel, who was now my stepfather, and my new baby brother, Andrew. We’d sold our house in Eden Park to invest in Abel’s new garage. Then that fell apart, and we ended up moving to a neighborhood called Highlands North, a thirty-minute walk from H. A. Jack. A group of us would leave school together every afternoon, each kid peeling off and going their separate way when we reached their house. Maylene and I lived the farthest, so we’d always be the last two. We’d walk together until we got where we needed to go, and then we’d part ways. Maylene was cool. She was good at tennis, smart, cute. I liked her. I didn’t have a crush on her; I wasn’t even thinking about girls that way yet. I just liked hanging out with her. Maylene was also the only colored girl in school. I was the only mixed kid in school. We were the only two people who looked like each other. The white girls were insistent about me asking Maylene to be my valentine. They were like, “Trevor, you have to ask her. You’re the only two. It’s your responsibility.” It was like our species was going to die out if we didn’t mate and carry on. Which I’ve learned in life is something that white people do without even realizing it. “You two look the same, therefore we must arrange for you to have sex.” I honestly hadn’t thought of asking Maylene, but when the girls brought it up, that thing happened where someone plants the idea in your head and it changes your perception. “Maylene’s totally got a thing for you.” “Does she?” “Yeah, you guys are great together!” “Are we?” “Totally.” “Well, okay. If you say so.” I liked Maylene as much as I liked anyone, I suppose. Mostly I think I liked the idea of being liked. I decided I’d ask her to be my valentine, but I had no idea how to do it.