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

  If I abstra ct from this, I become incapable of understanding any m or a l arg ument at all. You will onl y convince me by changing my readin g of m y mo ral experience, and in particular my reading o f my life story, of th e tra nsi tio ns I have lived through-or perhaps refused to live thr ough. B u t then the fo r ce of this bad, exte rnal model is incr ea sed by some t h i ng els e, which is the seco nd of the tw o main re asons which br eed suspicion s ab ou t hy p e rg oods. The se often make esse ntjaJ r e ference to beings o r r ea Htie s w hi ch tra nscend hu man lif e, as Pla t o doe s to the Idea of the Go od, or thei sti c vie ws do to God, and some Ro ma ntic-de riv ed views do t o Nature as a g re at so urce. The se ar e pr oblema tic in the mselves, and s ee n in the lig ht of the Pla t onic pr ece dent th ey seem doub ly so : f o r these bei ngs play no par t in our na tu ral science expl ana ti ons toda y. If we a re consi stent in our adhes i on to the B A princi ple, this f�ct shouldn 't dis tu rb us; b ut a worr y aris es from anoth er quar te r. It seems as though invo ki ng thes e re alit i es impl ies somet hing about the o rder of ar gu ment. If yo u'r e a Platonist yo u must be sa ying: first rea lize tha t t he world is or de red for the g ood, a nd th en deduce fr o m th is fact that you o ugh t to emb race ce rtain m oral reac ti on s, int erna l iz e ce rt ain · m or al int u itions.

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

  Now for the next step in our construction of real space: How are the various sense-spaces added together into a consolidated and unitary continuum? For they are, in man at all events, incoherent at the start. Here again the first fact that appears is that primitively our space-experiences form a chaos, out of which we have no immediate faculty for extricating them. Objects of different sense-organs, experienced together, do not in the first instance appear either inside or alongside or far outside of each other, neither spatially continuous nor discontinuous, in any definite sense of these words. The same thing is almost as true of objects felt by different parts of the same organ before discrimination has done its finished work. The most we can say is that all our space-experiences together form an objective total and that this objective total is vast. Even now the space inside our mouth, which is so intimately known and accurately measured by its inhabitant the tongue, can hardly be said to have its internal directions and dimensions known in any exact relation to those of the larger world outside. It forms almost a little world by itself. Again, when the dentist excavates a small cavity in one of our teeth, we feel the hard point of his instrument scraping, in distinctly differing directions, a surface which seems to our sensibility vaguely larger than the subsequent use of the mirror tells us it 'really' is. And though the directions of the scraping differ so completely inter se, not one of them can be identified with the particular direction in the outer world to which it corresponds. The space of the tooth-sensibility is thus really a little world by itself, which can only become congruent with the outer space world by farther experiences which shall alter its bulk, identify its directions, fuse its margins, and finally embed it as a definite part within a definite whole. And even though every joint's rotations should be felt to vary inter se as so many differences of direction in a common room; even though the same were true of diverse tracings on the skin, and of diverse tracings on the retina respectively, it would still not follow that feelings of direction, on these different surfaces, are intuitively comparable among each other, or with the other directions yielded by the feelings of the semi-circular canals. It would not follow that we should immediately judge the relations of them all to each other in one space-world.

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

  But the more philosophic student, whose business it is to discover difficulties quite as much as to get rid of them, will reflect that it is conceivable that the partial factors might fuse into a larger space, and yet not each be located within it any more than a voice is located in a chorus. He will wonder how, after combining into the line, the points can become severally alive again: the separate puffs of a, 'sirene' no longer strike the ear after they have fused into a certain pitch of sound. He will recall the fact that when, after looking at things with one eye closed, we double, by opening the other eye, the number of retinal points affected, the new retinal sensations do not as a rule appear alongside of the old ones and additional to them, but merely make the old ones seem larger and nearer. Why should the affection of new points on the same retina have so different a result? In fact, we will see no sort of logical connection between (l) the original separate local signs, (2) the line as a unit, (3) the line with the points discriminated in it, and (4) the various nerve-processes which subserve all these different things. We will suspect our local sign of being a very slippery and ambiguous sort of creature. Positionless at first, it no sooner appears in the midst of a gang of companions than it is found maintaining the strictest position of its own, and assigning place to each of its associates. How is this possible? Must we accept what we rejected a, while ago as absurd, and admit the points each to have position in se? Or must we suspect that our whole construction has been fallacious, and that we have tried to conjure up, out of association, qualities which the associates never contained? There is no doubt a real difficulty here; and the shortest way of dealing with it would be to confess it insoluble and ultimate. Even if position be not an intrinsic character of any one of those sensations we have called local signs, we must still admit that there is something about every one of them that stands for the potentiality of position, and is the ground why the local sign, when it gets placed at all, gets placed here rather than there.

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

  17). All this contribut es t o a c e ntral confusion which affects not on ly Locke b ut the whole traditio n o f t h e "theory of ideas'': these are sometim es treated as inert objects in the m i nd , and sometimes as propositional entiti e s. The idea is sometime s seen as a q u as i-object that can be moved around a n d sometimes as an entity wh ich co u l d only be adequatel y described in a ' tha t . . . ' clause. As has often been re m a rk ed, this lay behind the problem whi ch all the empi ricists had with " g e ne ra l ideas": was our idea of a triangle i n general itself t o be tho ug ht of as is os celes or scalene or equilateral? Locke tri ed to maintain t hat even the id ea s i n our minds which have genera l im port are themselve s particul ars ( 4 . 17 . 8). The deep muddle has its sourc e in the entire 'buildi ng bl ock' theory of th in king. Second, the atoms themselves come into existence b y a quasi-mechanical process, a kind of imprintin g on the mind through impact on the senses. Ideas " a re produced i n us . .. by the operation o f insensible particles on our senses" (2.8.13; in 4 .2..11, Locke s p eaks of "gl o b ule s"). And third, a good part of the assem bly of t he se a toms is accounted for b y a quasi-mechanical process of association (2.23). Th e aim of this disasse mbly i s t o reas se mble our pictur e of the world, this time on a so lid foundatio n , by following reliable rules of concatenation. Aside from the findings of mathematics or truths established by deduction, o ver the far greater extent of our k nowledge which is empir i cal, th e rules concerned are those of probable evidence, as Locke helped to defin e them, especially in Book IV. In effecting this double movement of suspension and ex amina tio n, we wrest the control of our t hink ing and outlook away from pa ssi on or custo m o r authority and as sume responsibility fo r it ourselv es. Lo ck e's theory generates and also reflects an idea l of inde p endence and s e lf - r es p ons i bil ity, a notion of reason a s f r ee from established custom and lo c a l l y do m inant authority .

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

  Much of th e ground will have to be fought for, and I will certainly not convince everybody. But besides our disagreements and our tem ptations to su p press , this articulation of moral ontology will be very difficul t for a third reason: the tentative, searching, uncertain nature of many of our moral beliefs. Many of our con t emporaries, while they remain q uite unattracted by the naturalist attempt to deny ontology altogethe r , and while on the contrary they recognize that their moral reactions show them to be committed to some adequate basis , are perplexed and uncertain when it comes to saying what this basis is. In our example above, many people, when faced with both the theistic and the secular ontolo g ies as the grounds for their reactions of respect, would not feel ready to make a final choice. They concur that thr o u gh their moral beliefs they acknowledge so me ground in human n a tur e or the human predicament which makes human beings fit objects of respect , but they confess that they cannot subscribe with complete conviction to any particular definition, at least not to any of the ones on offer. Something similar arises for many of them on the question of what makes human life worth living or what confers meaning on their individual lives. Most of us are still in the process of groping for answers here. This is an essentially modern predicament, as I shall try to argue below, Whe re this is so, the issue of articulation c an take another form. It is not merely formulating what people already implicitly but unproblematically acknowledge; n or is it showin g what people really rely on in the teeth of their ideological denials. Rather it coul d only b e carried forward by showing that one or another ontology is in fact the only adequate basis for our moral re s p onses, whether we recognize this or not. A thesis of this kind was invoked by Dostoyevsky and discussed by Leszek Kol akowski in a recent work : 6 " If God does not exist, then everythin g is permitted',_ But this level of argument, concerning what our commitments 'really amount to, is even more difficult than the previous one, which tries to show, in the face of naturalist suppression, what they alread y are . I will p roba bl y no t be ab le to venture ve ry far out on this terrain in the following.

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

  But since these no ti o ns a re the vehicles of all our tho ughts, w e find it hard to accept that they a re c a ll ed into question. V agu e and ins ignificant forms o f s peech, and abuse of lan gu age, hav e so l o n g pa s se d for my steries of scienc e ; a nd hard and misapplied words, with li t tl e or n o meaning, ha v e, b y pres c r iption, such a right to be mistaken for d e ep l earning and h e ig ht of s p e culation, t hat i t will not be easy to p er s u ade eithe r tho se who s peak o r th ose who hear them, that they are but t h e c ov er s o f ignor anc e , an d h i ndran ce of true knowledg e . (Essay, Epistle , p . 1 4 ) The c ru cial first task i s ther efore one of dem olition, and Locke speaks of his a rn b it ion as " to b e emp l o yed as an und er •l a b oure r in clearing the ground a 166 • INWARDNESS little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledg e '' (ibid.). Locke proposes to de molish and rebuild. This in itself is not new; it is ju s t what Descartes propou nded. M ore generally, the att ack on the err o r s inculcate d b y cus t om and ordinary education is at least a s old as Plato. Ev e n t h e p r o posal to reconstruct o n the basis of sense expe rience is not entir e l y new: the Aristotelian .; Thomistic tradition also makes sensation primary i n our knowledge of t he world. What is radical is the extent of the disen gag e ment he proposes. We do not reje ct custom like Plato in order to follow the inherent b ent i n us towar ds reason. N or do we make sense experience primary in ord er t o discern through this experience the forms of the things we encounter. N or do we accep t an y innate principles.

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

  These facts show the indeterminateness of the space-import of various retinal impressions. Take now the eye's movements, and we find a similar vacillation. When we follow a moving object with our gaze, the motion is 'voluntary'; when our eyes oscillate to and fro after we have made ourselves dizzy by spinning around, it is 'reflex'; and when the eyeball is pushed with the finger, it is 'passive.' Now, in all three of these cases we get a feeling from the movement as it effects itself. But the objective perceptions to which the feeling assists us are by no means the same. In the worst case we may see a stationary field of view with one moving object in it; in the second, the total held swimming more or less steadily in one direction in the third, a sudden lump or twist of the same total field. The feelings of convergence of the eyeballs permit of the same ambiguous interpretation. When objects are near we converge strongly upon them in order to see them; when far, we set our optic axes parallel. But the exact degree of convergence fails to be felt; or rather, being felt, fails to tell us the absolute distance of the object we are regarding. Wheatstone arranged his stereoscope in such a way that the size of the retinal images might change without the convergence altering; or conversely, the convergence might change without the retinal image altering. Under these circumstances, he says,[232] the object seemed to approach or recede in the first case, without altering its size; in the second, to change its size without altering its distance—just But the objective total same the reverse of what might have been expected. Wheatstone adds, however, that 'fixing the attention' converted each of these perceptions into its opposite. 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]

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

  It is easy to see why the phantom foot might continue to follow the position of the artificial one. But I confess that I cannot explain its half way-positions. [50] It is from this confused assumption that the time-honored riddle comes, of how, with an upside-down picture on the retina, we can see things right-side up. Our consciousness is naively supposed to inhabit the picture and to feel the picture's position as related to other objects of space. But the truth is that the picture is non-existent either as a habitat or as anything else, for immediate consciousness. Our notion of it is an enormously late conception. The outer object is given immediately with all those qualities which later are named and determined in relation to other sensations. The 'bottom' of this object is where we see what by touch we afterwards know as our feet, the 'top' is the place in which we see what we know as other people's heads, etc., etc. Berkeley long ago made this matter perfectly clear (see his Essay towards a new Theory of Vision, 93-98, 113-118). [51] For full justification the reader must see the next chapter. He may object, against the summary account given now, that in a babe's immediate field of vision the various things which appear are located relatively to each other from the outset. I admit that if discriminated, they would appear so located. But they are parts of the content of one sensation, not sensations separately experienced, such as the text is concerned with. The fully developed 'world,' in which all our sensations ultimately find location, is nothing but an imaginary object framed after the pattern of the field of vision, by the addition and continuation of one sensation upon another in an orderly and systematic way. In corroboration of my text I must refer to pp. 57-60 of Riehl's book quoted above on page 32, and to Uphues: Wahrnehmung und Empfindung (1888), especially the Einleitung and pp. 51-61. [52] Prof. Jastrow has ascertained by statistical inquiry among the blind that if their blindness have occurred before a period embraced between the fifth and seventh years the visual centres seem to decay, and visual dreams and images are gradually outgrown. If sight is lost after the seventh year, visual imagination seems to survive through life. See Prof. J.'s interesting article on the Dreams of the Blind, in the New Princeton Review for January 1888. [53] Impression means sensation for Hume. [54] Treatise on Human Nature, part i. §vii. [55] Huxley's Hume, pp. 92-94. [56] On Intelligence (N. Y.), vol. ii. p. 139. [57] Principles, Introd. §13. Compare also the passage quoted above, p. 469 [58] The differences noted by Fechner between after-images and images of imagination proper are as follows: [59] [I am myself a good draughtsman, and have a very lively interest in pictures, statues, architecture and decoration, and a keen sensibility to artistic effects.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  I’m absolutely convinced that if you take the time to understand erotic problems—even ones that don’t affect you personally—you’ll be surprised at how your appreciation of the erotic mind deepens. Eroticism is so intricately involved in the rough-and-tumble of living and loving that messy conflicts and difficulties are as unavoidable in the erotic realm as in life in general. As you know, those who expect life to be problem-free usually end up disappointed and demoralized. Healthy eroticism does not avoid problems; it works with and transforms them. The erotic problems we’ll be looking at are qualitatively different from those sex therapists have traditionally talked about. Ever since Masters and Johnson launched modern sex therapy in the late 1960s, the focus has been mostly on physiological function and dysfunction, especially two observable and measurable events: arousal (a man’s erection or a woman’s vaginal lubrication) and orgasm (reliably having one or more, but not “too fast” or “too slow”). As a result of this emphasis, most people assume that if the “equipment” is functioning properly everything else will pretty much take care of itself. Sex therapy has grown, and, as with all new fields, its range of inquiry has expanded. For example, many of today’s clients are concerned about a declining or absent urge for sex, traditionally called sex drive, libido, or horniness—now referred to simply as desire.1 Neither measurable nor directly observable, desire is a totally subjective state combining biochemical influences, memories of past sex, visualizations of future possibilities, and a predilection for attending to and interpreting everyday events in an erotic way. To study desire we must move beyond our preoccupation with sex organs and venture into more elusive territory where even the most sophisticated laboratory instruments become practically useless. In this chapter I want to call your attention to three types of erotic problems that frequently bring people into therapy. First, we’ll see how some of the same emotions that intensify arousal can also produce unwanted side effects that inhibit our desire or disrupt our capacities for arousal or orgasm. Second, we’ll consider how troublesome attractions can draw us toward partners who are destined to disappoint or hurt us. Third, we’ll discover how love-lust conflicts sometimes make it difficult or impossible to experience affection and passion with the same person. These problems all contain a similar paradox in which long-standing and compelling turn-ons turn out to be antithetical to satisfaction. As we’ve explored the dynamics of passion throughout Part I, I’ve given special attention to peak turn-ons anonymously described by The Group in the Sexual Excitement Survey, while encouraging you to examine your own. Although I’ve drawn extensively on my experience as a therapist, I believe it is crucial that our ideas about the erotic mind be based on a solid understanding of nonproblematic eroticism.

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

  The ordinary evolutionist answer to this question is exceedingly simple-minded. The idea of most speculators seems to be that, since it suffices now for us to become acquainted with a complex object, that it should be simply present to us often enough, so it must be fair to assume universally that, with time enough given, the mere presence of the various objects and relations to be known must end by bringing about the latter's cognition, and that in this way all mental structure was from first to last evolved. Any ordinary Spencerite will tell you that just as the experience of blue objects wrought into our mind the color blue, and hard objects got it to feel hardness, so the presence of large and small objects in the world gave it the notion of size, moving objects made it aware of motion, and objective successions taught it time. Similarly in a world with different impressing things, the mind had to acquire a sense of difference, whilst the like parts of the world as they fell upon it kindled in it the perception of similarity. Outward sequences which sometimes held good, and sometimes failed, naturally engendered in it doubtful and uncertain forms of expectation, and ultimately gave rise to the disjunctive forms of judgment; whilst the hypothetic form, 'if a, then b,' was sure to ensue from sequences that were invariable in the outer world. On this view, if the outer order suddenly were to change its elements and modes, we should have no faculties to cognize the new order by. At most we should feel a sort of frustration and confusion. But little by little the new presence would work on us as the old one did; and in course of time another set of psychic categories would arise, fitted to take cognizance of the altered world. This notion of the outer world inevitably building up a sort of mental duplicate of itself if we only give it time, is so easy and natural in its vagueness that one hardly knows how to start to criticise it. One thing, however, is obvious, namely that the manner in which we now become acquainted with complex objects need not in the least resemble the manner in which the original elements of our consciousness grew up. Now, it is true, a new sort of animal need only be present to me, to impress its image permanently on my mind; but this is because I am already in possession of categories for knowing each and all of its several attributes, and of a memory for retracing the order of their conjunction. I now have preformed categories for all possible objects.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  What does self-affirmation have to do with erotic transitions? Just about everything! With few exceptions, blockages and distortions of your deepest inclinations lie at the root of self-defeating turn-ons. The alternative is to listen carefully for the guidance that comes only from within. STEP 3:NAVIGATE THE GRAY ZONEOnce a significant transition is under way, it’s only a matter of time until you enter a period of awkward uncertainty when you’re no longer where you’ve been, but you haven’t arrived at where you’re going. Welcome to the gray zone, which, of course, is not a location but a state of mind distinguished by a distressing absence of clear pathways and landmarks. For a time you feel as though you’re wandering aimlessly, disoriented, lost without a clue about how to regain your bearings. The more important and challenging the changes you seek, the more prolonged will be your stay in the gray zone. For some, being in the gray zone feels like standing at the edge of an abyss. But if you can tolerate its ambiguities, the gray zone holds unparalleled opportunities for self-discovery. Gradually, you will notice that the gray zone is not at all the featureless desert it first appears to be. It’s more like a blank canvas on which you can experiment with new shapes and colors. STUMBLING INTO THE GRAY ZONESometimes the first hint that you are entering the gray zone is a realization that partners, situations, or fantasies that have reliably turned you on in the past are losing their allure. If you aren’t prepared for the surprises that await you in the gray zone you might misinterpret your waning interest as a sign of trouble rather than a harbinger of positive change. Men find it especially difficult to handle this temporary reduction in desire because it is usually reflected in less reliable, softer, or nonexistent erections. When old turn-ons begin to lose their effectiveness, some people embark on a search for more intense forms of stimulation to prove to themselves that everything still works. Unfortunately, their first impulse is often to repeat—with even more single-minded determination—the very patterns that are losing their grip. One man could no longer ignore the fact that he wasn’t responding to his porn collection featuring leather-clad dominatrixes. So he went on a frantic search for new porn with even more exaggerated images of dominance and submission. Only later did he realize that these purchases were completely useless because his eroticism was evolving away from the imagery of power and toward—well, he didn’t know yet. But once he accepted the fact that his old arousal patterns were crumbling to make room for something new, yet undefined, he was better able to accept the flux and uncertainty of the gray zone. Maggie Revisited: Turning away from longing

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

  For the affirmation of ordinary life, while necessarily denou n cin g certain distinctions, itself amounts to one; else it has no meanin g at all. The notion that there is a certain di gn ity a nd wor th in this life requires a contrast; no longer, indeed, between this life and s om e "h igh er" activity like eontemplation , war, active citizenship, or heroic a s ce tic i s m , bu t now ly i ng bet ween di ffer ent w a y s of li vin g the lif e of pr o du ctio n a nd r ep ro duc ti on. The no ti o n is never that whatever we do is a c cep ta ble . This would b e unint ell ig ibl e as the bas is for a notion of di g nit y. Ra t her the k e y po i nt is that the higher is to be foun d not outside of b ut a s a m an n er of living or din ary lif e. For the Reformers this manner was defined t h eo l o g ica ll y ; for cl as sical util it arians, in ter ms of (inst ru me nt al ) ration al i ty . Fo r M a rxis ts, the ex p ressivist element of free sel f-cre ation is add ed to En li gh ten men t rat ional it y. But in all cases, some di st inct i on is maintain ed b e tw een the hi gher, the ad mirab l e li fe and the lowe r lif e of s l oth, ir ration ality, s la v ery, or ali e nation. O nce one sets aside the n atu r alist illusion, however, what remains is an e x t rem el y important fact about modern moral consciousness: a tensio n b e tw een the affi r mat ion o f ordinar y life, to which we moderns are strongl y dr aw n, a nd so me of our mos t important moral distinctions. Indeed, it is too 24 · IDENTITY AND THE GOO D sim ple to speak of a tension. We are in conflict, even confusion, about wha t it means to affirm ordinary life. What for some is the highest affirmation is for others blanket denial.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Socrates replied that in fact all the terrible things we feared lay in the future, and were, therefore, unknown to us; it was impossible to separate the knowledge of future good or evil from our experience of good and evil in the present and the past. We say that courage was only one of the virtues, but anyone who was truly valiant must also have acquired the qualities of temperance, justice, wisdom, and goodness that were essential to valor. If you wanted to cultivate one virtue, you also needed to master the others. So at base, a single virtue, such as courage, must be identical with all the rest. By the end of the conversation, the three hoplites had to admit that, even though they had all endured the trauma of the battlefield and should be experts on the subject, they were quite unable to define courage. They had not discovered what it was, could not decide what distinguished it from the other virtues, and felt deeply perplexed. They were ignorant and, like children, needed to go back to school. 37 Socrates had invented dialectic, a rigorous dialogue designed to expose false beliefs and elicit truth. By asking questions and analyzing the implications of the answers, Socrates and his colleagues discovered the inherent flaws and inconsistencies of every single point of view. One definition after another would be rejected, and often the dialogue ended with the participants feeling as dizzy and stunned as Laches and Niceas. Socrates’ aim was not to come up with a clever or intellectually satisfying solution. The struggle usually led to the admission that there was no answer, and the discovery of this confusion was far more important than a neat conclusion, because once you had realized that you knew nothing, your philosophical quest could begin. Socrates’ dialectic was a Greek, rational version of the Indian brahmodya, the competition that attempted to formulate absolute truth but always ended in silence. For the Indian sages, the moment of insight came when they realized the inadequacy of their words, and thus intuited the ineffable. In that final moment of silence, they had sensed the brahman, even though they could not define it coherently. Socrates was also trying to elicit a moment of truth, when his interlocutors appreciated the creative profundity of human ignorance. The knowledge thus acquired was inseparable from virtue. Unlike the Sophists, Socrates did not believe that courage, justice, piety, and friendship were empty fictions, even though he could not define them. He was convinced that they pointed to something genuine and real that lay mysteriously just out of reach. As his dialogues demonstrated, you could never pin the truth down, but if you worked hard enough, you could make it a reality in your life.

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

  He told me he had met with Halligan and Shah when they first put the company together and were trying to raise money. “I went back and told my partners, ‘I wouldn’t put a penny into that place. They’re selling snake oil.’ Since then I’ve had to eat my words, because they’ve done pretty well.” Gordon had an engineering background. Before he became a venture capitalist he had built and sold a tech company. He asked me if I believed that HubSpot’s software did what the company claimed. “Do you really think some small-business owner, like a plumber, is going to come home at the end of the day and then write a blog? Do you think that happens?” “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Even if people use the software, do you think it actually works?” I had wondered the same thing. One of the consultants told me it was a mixed bag. Some customers buy the software but don’t use it, because they’re too busy to write a blog. They’re like people who sign up for a gym membership then never go to the gym. Among those who do use the software, results vary. There are some places where the stuff just doesn’t work very well, the consultant told me. “And then there are about 10 percent of customers where it’s absolutely magic,” he said. “It’s like you’ve given them a dowsing rod, they’ve found a well, the town is saved. It’s magic.” Gordon says Halligan and Shah are good at telling stories and generating hype, but he doesn’t think much of HubSpot’s engineering team, and he is particularly dismissive of Shah. “He’s not really an engineer anymore,” Gordon says. “He’s a blogger. He writes a blog. He makes PowerPoint decks.” Gordon was equally contemptuous of Cranium: “Everyone tells me he’s some kind of marketing genius, but I don’t see it. I’ve asked him several times to explain the product to me. He couldn’t do it. I still don’t understand what the product does. I’ve met a bunch of people at HubSpot and nobody there impresses me. None of them seems that smart.” After breakfast, we stood outside. It was a chilly Cambridge morning, with a cold wind blowing off the Charles River. Gordon told me I should stick around through the IPO, then find something better to do. “The place is a house of cards,” he told me. “I’m just hoping they can get to an IPO so the guys who invested can cash out before the whole thing collapses.” Those were pretty strong words, especially to use around a former business journalist. I don’t think Gordon meant that HubSpot was a flimflam operation. Obviously HubSpot had a real business, and was selling a real product, to real customers, and generating real revenue. I think what Gordon meant was that he didn’t think the business was sustainable, that sooner or later a strong wind would come along and blow the place down.

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

  Of course, this withdrawn sta n ce , although it can certainly alter ou r w a y of experiencing things, is not sim p ly another w a y of experiencing them. Ther e is a confusion about this in the w hole Cartesian-empiricist traditio n. D e s · cartes and his empiricist successor s sometimes talk as though the foc u s on "immediate" experience were brought about through a mor e exact awar e ne s s of our actual first-p erson experience. But there is no way I can experi e n c e m y toothache as a mere idea in the mind, c aused by decay in the toot h, se n d i n g signals up the nerves to the brain ( or through the anim al sp irits to the p i n e a l gl and). And since the very nature of diseng age ment is to withdraw f ro m t h e or dinary first-person experience, it would be s urprisin g if I could. Disen g a ge · ment involves our going outside the fi rst-perso n stance a nd tak ing o n b o a rd Locke 's Punctual Sel f · 163 s o m e theory, or at l east some supp osition, about h ow things work. This is wh at Descart e s does in this case, when he su pposes that pains and observed s e c o nd ary qualities are ideas in the mind which are caused b y various (pr i m a ry) properties of the organ or object. Once we disenga ge and no longer li v e i n our e xperience, then some s upposition ha s to be invoked to take up the i n t e rp retive slack, to supply an account in the place of the one we are fo r g o i ng. For Descartes and his empiricist successors, the suppositions are (na tu rally) mechanistic. I n v iew of its transposit ion of first-person experien ce into an objectified, i m p e rs onal mode, it might seem surprising to class the stance of disengaged c o n tr ol as a modified figure of Augustinian inwar d ness. But the paradox is m e re ly sup erficial. Radical reflexivity is central to this stance, because we hav e to fo cus on first-person experience in order so to transpose it.

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

  If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am . . . on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why-no, I’m sure that’s the reason why -- I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people, who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the ; advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like ;’ to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because jj when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside g out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank ----------------------- ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE. ----------------------- AFTERWORDOn the morning of August 4, 1944, sometime between ten and ten-thirty, a car pulled up at 263 Prinsengracht. Several figures emerged: an SS sergeant, Karl Josef Silberbauer, in full uniform, and at least three Dutch members of the Security Police, armed but in civilian clothes. Someone must have tipped them off.

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

  It cannot be denied that this interpretation is a possible one, but it seems to me far to transcend the limits of ordinary canine abstraction. The property in question was not one which had direct personal interest for the dog, such as that of belonging to his master is in the case of the coat or the basket. If the dog in the sponge story had returned to the boat with a dipper it would have been no more remarkable. It seems more probable, therefore, that this wood-cutter's dog had also been accustomed to carry the axe, and now, excited by the vain hunt for the wedge, had discharged his carrying powers upon the former instrument in a sort of confusion—just as a man may pick up a sieve to carry water in, in the excitement of putting out a fire.[352] Thus, then, the characters extracted by animals are very few, and always related to their immediate interests or emotions. That dissociation by varying concomitants, which in man is based so largely on association by similarity, hardly seems to take place at all in the mind of brutes. One total thought suggests to them another total thought, and they and themselves acting with propriety, they know not why. The great, the fundamental, defect of their minds seems to be the inability of their groups of ideas to break across in unaccustomed places. They are enslaved to routine, to cut-and-dried thinking; and if the most prosaic of human beings could be transported into his dog's mind, he would be appalled at the utter absence of fancy which reigns there.[353] Thoughts will not be found to call up their similars, but only their habitual successors. Sunsets will not suggest heroes' deaths, but supper-time. This is why man is the only metaphysical animal. To wonder why the universe should be as it is presupposes the notion of its being different, and a brute, which never reduces the actual to fluidity by breaking up its literal sequences in his imagination, can never form such a notion. He takes the world simply for granted, and never wonders at it at all. Professor Strümpell quotes a dog-story which is probably a type of many others. The feat performed looks like abstract reasoning; but an acquaintance with all the circumstances show it to have been a random trick learned by habit. The story is as follows:

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  28 It represented all the myriad patterns, forms, and potential that made nature the way it was. 29 The Way mysteriously ordered the shifting transformations of the qi, but it existed at a point where all the distinctions that characterize our normal modes of thought cease. Any attempt to pontificate about these ineffable matters simply led to unseemly, egotistic squabbling. We had to realize that we knew nothing. If we selected one theory and rejected another, we were distorting reality, trying to force the creative flow of life into a channel of our own making. The only valid assertion was a question that plunged us into doubt and a luminous sense of unknowing. We should not be dismayed to find that there was no such thing as certainty, because this confusion could lead us to the Way. Egotism was the greatest obstacle to enlightenment. It was an inflated sense of self that made us identify with one opinion rather than another; ego made us quarrelsome and officious, because we wanted to change other people to suit ourselves. Zhuangzi often mischievously used the figure of Confucius to express some of his own ideas. One day, he said, Yan Hui told Confucius that he was off to reform the king of Wei, a violent, reckless, and irresponsible young man. Marvelous, Confucius remarked wryly, but Yan Hui did not fully understand himself. How could he possibly change anybody else? All he could do was lay down the law and explain a few Confucian principles. How would these external directives affect the obscure subconscious impulses that were the source of the king’s cruelty? There was only one thing that Yan Hui could do. He must empty his mind, get rid of all this bustling self-importance, and find his inner core. “Centre your attention,” Confucius began. “Stop listening with your ears and listen with your mind. Then stop listening with your mind and listen with your primal spirit [qi]. Hearing is limited to the ear. Mind is limited to tallying things up. But the primal spirit’s empty: it’s simply that which awaits things. Tao is emptiness merged and emptiness is the mind’s fast.” 30 Instead of using every opportunity to feed the ego, we had to starve it. Even our best intentions could be grist to the mill of our selfishness. But qi had no agenda; it simply allowed itself to be shaped and transformed by the Way, and so everything turned out well. If Yan Hui stopped blocking the qi, deflecting it from its natural course, the Way could act through him. Only then could he become a force for good in the world. By the end of the conversation, however, Yan Hui seemed to have lost all interest in the project.

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

  This brought him, on the one hand, the peculiar favor of the emperor Constantine, but, on the other, from the leaders of the Nicene orthodoxy, the suspicion of a secret leaning to the Arian heresy.1898 It is certain that, before the council of Nicaea, he sympathized with Arius; that in the council he proposed an orthodox but indefinite compromise-creed; that after the council he was not friendly with Athanasius and other defenders of orthodoxy; and that, in the synod of Tyre, which deposed Athanasius in 335, he took a leading part, and, according to Epiphanius, presided. In keeping with these facts is his silence respecting the Arian controversy (which broke out in 318) in an Ecclesiastical History which comes down to 324, and was probably not completed till 326, when the council of Nicaea would have formed its most fitting close. He would rather close his history with the victory of Constantine over Licinius than with the Creed over which theological parties contended, and with which he himself was implicated. But, on the other hand, it is also a fact that he subscribed the Nicene Creed, though reluctantly, and reserving his own interpretation of the homoousion; that he publicly recommended it to the people of his diocese; and that he never formally rejected it. The only satisfactory solution of this apparent inconsistency is to be found in his own indecision and leaning to a doctrinal latitudinarianism, not unfrequent in historians who become familiar with a vast variety of opinions in different ages and countries. On the important point of the homoousion he never came to a firm and final conviction. He wavered between the older Origenistic subordinationism and the Nicene orthodoxy. He asserted clearly and strongly with Origen the eternity of the Son, and so far was decidedly opposed to Arianism, which made Christ a creature in time; but he recoiled from the homoousion, because it seemed to him to go beyond the Scriptures, and hence he made no use of the term, either in his book against Marcellus, or in his discourses against Sabellius. Religious sentiment compelled him to acknowledge the full deity of Christ; fear of Sabellianism restrained him. He avoided the strictly orthodox formulas, and moved rather in the less definite terms of former times. Theological acumen he constitutionally lacked. He was, in fact, not a man of controversy, but of moderation and peace. He stood upon the border between the ante-Nicene theology and the Nicene. His doctrine shows the color of each by turns, and reflects the unsettled problem of the church in the first stage of the Arian controversy.1899 With his theological indecision is connected his weakness of character. He was an amiable and pliant court-theologian, and suffered himself to be blinded and carried away by the splendor of the first Christian emperor, his patron and friend.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  It was, therefore, Hesiod implied—though he did not explicitly say so—time to abandon the old, self-destructive warrior ethos. The men of Iron could not behave as if they were Achilles or Odysseus; they were mere farmers, tillers of the soil, involved in a humbler kind of strife (eris), the struggle with the land. Instead of trying to emulate their rivals’ military prowess, they should be spurred on to healthy competition with a neighbor who had produced a good crop. This was the strife that made the farmer dear to the gods. This period of history was different from the Golden Age, when there had been no need to plow a field. In the Iron Age, Zeus had decreed that men could thrive only if they accomplished the hard, disciplined toil of husbandry, which was a form of sacrifice, a daily act of devotion to the gods. 52 Hesiod explored these ideas more fully in his Theogony, which described the triumph of the Olympian gods over their rivals. 53 It became a textbook of Greek religion. Many were confused about some details of the mythology that had emerged from the obscurity of the dark age. How exactly were the various chthonic powers related to one another? Why had the Titans revolted against Zeus? What had caused the separation of men and gods? Hesiod tied up these loose ends, making use of Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern mythology. He told the traditional story in a way that made the horrible struggle of the theogony—the emergence of the gods from primal formlessness—represent a striving for greater clarity, order, and definition. This had begun when the bottomless abyss of Chaos was replaced by the more solid realities of Gaia and Uranus; it ended with the victory of the Olympians over those Titans who had opposed the rule of law. Hesiod wanted these frightening stories of divine fathers and sons murdering and mutilating one another to warn the Greeks of the dangers of the current internecine strife in the poleis. In his hands, the just and regulated regime established by Zeus was in pointed contrast to the unnatural chaos that had gone before. Hesiod’s Theogony also raised questions that would later preoccupy the Greek philosophers: What were the origins of the cosmos? How did order come to prevail over chaos? How could the many derive from the one? How could the formless relate to what was defined? Hesiod also fixed the place of human beings in the divine scheme, by telling the story of the Titan Prometheus. 54 During the Golden Age, gods and human beings had lived on equal terms and had regularly feasted together. But at the end of the Golden Age, the gods began to recede from the world of men; now the only way for humans to maintain contact with the Olympians was the ritual of animal sacrifice, when gods and men consumed their allotted portions of the victim.