Contempt

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.

Page 224 of 253 · 20 per page

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  This was a great opportunity. Qin had a large barbarian population, which knew next to nothing about Zhou traditions, and the nobility was too weak and impoverished to put up any effective opposition to Shang’s revolutionary program. His reform, which flouted many of the major principles of the Axial Age, made the backward, isolated kingdom of Qin the most powerful and advanced state in China. At the end of the third century, as a result of Shang’s far-reaching measures, Qin would conquer all the other states, and in 221 its ruler would become the first historical emperor of China. Lord Shang felt no loyalty to past tradition. “When the guiding principles of the people become unsuited to their circumstances,” he argued, “their standard [fa] of value must change. As conditions in the world change, different principles are practised.” 4 It was no use dreaming of a golden age of compassionate sage kings. If people were more generous in the past, this was not because they had practiced ren, but because the population was smaller and there was enough food to go round. Similarly, the corruption and conflict of the Warring States period was not the result of dishonesty, but occurred simply because resources were scarce. 5 Instead of promoting nonviolence, Lord Shang wanted the people of Qin to be as eager for war and bloodshed as a hungry wolf. He had only one objective: “the enrichment of the state and the strengthening of its military capacity.” 6 To meet its targets, governments had to exploit the fear and greed of the population. Very few people wanted to expose themselves to the perils of modern warfare, but Shang devised such dire punishments for deserters that death on the battlefield seemed preferable. He also rewarded the outstanding military service of peasants and noblemen alike with a grant of agricultural land. Lord Shang’s methodical, rational reform completely transformed daily life in Qin, which under his tutelage became a deadly efficient fighting machine. Conscription in the army and the corvée was compulsory, and the harsh discipline of army life was imposed on the whole country. Lord Shang’s most important innovation was to link agricultural production with the military. Successful peasant-soldiers became landowners and were given titles and pensions, while the old nobility was dismantled. Aristocrats who did not perform well on the battlefield were demoted and became commoners; those who did not participate efficiently in Shang’s ambitious land-clearance schemes were sold into slavery. Everybody was subject to the same laws: even the crown prince was executed when found guilty of a minor offense.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The propaganda operation was, at the time, the most expensive and sophisticated public relations campaign ever run in the United States by a foreign government. Gray had also worked closely with the Reagan campaign. He regaled the Scientologists with his ability to take a “mindless actor” and turn him into the “Teflon President.” Hill & Knowlton went to work for the church, putting out phony news stories, often in the form of video news releases made to look like actual reports rather than advertisements. The church began supporting high-profile causes, such as Ted Turner’s Goodwill Games, thereby associating itself with other well-known corporate sponsors, such as Sony and Pepsi. There were full-page ads in newsmagazines touting the church’s philosophy and cable television ads promoting Scientology books and Dianetics seminars. Then, in May 1991, came one of the greatest public relations catastrophes in the church’s history. Time magazine published a scathing cover story titled “Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power,” by investigative reporter Richard Behar. The exposé revealed that just one of the religion’s many entities, the Church of Spiritual Technology, had taken in half a billion dollars in 1987 alone. Hundreds of millions of dollars from the parent organization were buried in secret accounts in Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and Cyprus. Many of the personalities linked with the church were savaged in the article. Hubbard himself was described as “part storyteller, part flimflam man.” The Feshbach brothers were the “terrors of the stock exchanges,” who spread false information about companies in order to drive down their valuations. Behar quoted a former church executive as saying that John Travolta stayed in the church only because he was worried that details of his sex life would be made public if he left. The article asserted that Miscavige made frequent jokes about Travolta’s “allegedly promiscuous homosexual behavior.” When Behar queried Travolta’s attorney for the star’s comment, he was told that such questions were “bizarre.” “Two weeks later, Travolta announced that he was getting married to actress Kelly Preston, a fellow Scientologist,” Behar wrote. “Those who criticize the church—journalists, doctors, lawyers, and even judges—often find themselves engulfed in litigation, stalked by private eyes, framed for fictional crimes, beaten up, or threatened by death,” Behar noted. He accused the Justice Department of failing to back the IRS and the FBI in bringing a racketeering suit against the church because it was unwilling to spend the money required to take the organization on. He quoted Cynthia Kisser, head of the Cult Awareness Network in Chicago: “Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen.” After the Time article appeared, Miscavige was invited to appear on ABC’s Nightline, a highly prestigious news show, to defend the image of the church. He had never been interviewed in his life.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He has a tanning bed, and a high-end gym that few people other than Cruise are permitted to use. Although he is short in stature, Miscavige exudes physical power. He favors tight-fitting T-shirts that show off his chiseled biceps. He collects guns, maintains at least six motorcycles, and has a number of automobiles, including an armor-plated GMC Safari van with bulletproof windows and satellite television, and a souped-up Saleen Mustang that Cruise gave him to match his own. His uniforms and business suits are fashioned by Richard Lim, a Los Angeles tailor whose clients include Cruise, Will Smith, and Martin Sheen. Miscavige’s shoes are custom-made in London by John Lobb, bootmaker to the royal family. His wardrobe fills an entire room. Two full-time stewards are responsible for his cleaning and laundry. Cruise admired the housecleaning so much—even Miscavige’s lightbulbs are polished once a month—that the church leader sent a Sea Org team to Cruise’s Telluride retreat to train the star’s staff. Until 2007, when he traveled, Miscavige would often rent Cruise’s Gulfstream jet, but he has since upgraded to a roomier Boeing business jet, at a cost of thirty to fifty thousand dollars per trip. He brings along his personal hairdresser and chiropractor. He loves underwater photography, and when he returns from his annual trip on the Freewinds, he has the photography staff put the photos into slides so they can be appreciated by the entire Gold Base staff. The contrast with the other Sea Org members is stark. They eat in a mess hall, which features a meat-and-potatoes diet and a salad bar, except for occasional extended periods of rice and beans for those who are being punished. The average cost per meal as of 2005 (according to Marc Headley, who participated in the financial planning each week) was about seventy-five cents a head—significantly less than what is spent per inmate in the California prison system. When members join the Sea Org, they are issued two sets of pants, two shirts, and a pair of shoes, which is their lifetime clothing allotment; anything else, they purchase themselves. Although the nominal pay for Sea Org members is fifty dollars a week, many are fined for various infractions, so it’s not unusual to be paid as little as thirteen or fourteen dollars. Married couples at Gold Base share a two-bedroom apartment with two other couples, meaning that one pair sleeps on the couch. In any case, few get more than five or six hours of sleep a night. There are lavish exercise facilities at the base—an Olympic pool, a golf course, basketball courts— but they are rarely used. Few are permitted to have access to computers. Every personal phone call is listened to; every letter is inspected. Bank records are opened and records kept of how much money people have. Cultural touchstones common to most Americans are often lost on Sea Org members at Gold Base.

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

  All this, in a context of historical ignorance, helps to accredit the oversimple and almost caricatural readings of one or another strand of modernity. Such readings make various fac e t s of modernity seem easy t o re pudiate. Narrow p roponents of disengaged reason point to the irrational a nd an ti-s c i en t ific facets of Romanticism and dismiss it out of hand, blithely u naware of how m uch th e y d ra w o n a post-Romantic interpretation of l i fe as 504 · CONCLUSIO N they seek 'fulfilment' and 'expression' in th e ir emotional and cultural lives. On the other hand, those who condemn the f ru its o f disengaged reason in technolo gical society o r political atomism make the world simpler than i t is when they see their opponents as motivated by a drive to "dominate natur e" or to deny all dependence on others, and in fact conveniently occlude the complex connections in the modern understanding of the sel f betwee n disen gagement and self-responsible f reedom and individual rights, or th o se between instrumental reason and th e affirmation of ordinary life. Those wh o flaunt the most radical denials and repudiations of selective facets of th e modern identity generally go on living by variants of what they deny. Th e re is a large component of delusion in their outlook. Thus, to take other examples, defenders of the most antiseptic procedural ethic a r e unavowedly i nspired by visi o ns of the good, and neo-Nietzscheans make semi surreptitious appeal to a universal freedom from domination. A proof of these charges would have to consi d er them case b y case. 11 B u t an exploration of the modern identity like th at I have attempted here should p repare us to see their validi ty by taking us beyon d car i ca tural, one-si ded readings and giving us a sense of how pervasive this id e ntity is, and ho w implicated we are in all its facets. I think it is important to make this point, because these various repudiations and denials are not just intellectual errors. They are also modes of self-stultific ation, if an acknowledgement of the good can empower. The retrieval of suppresse d goods is not only valuable on the Socratic grounds t hat i f we are going to live by the mod em identity, it better be by an ex amined version of it.

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

  Charlemagne, with the aid of his chaplains, especially Alcuin, prepared and published, three years after the Nicene Council, an important work on image-worship under the title Quatuor Libri Carolini (790).556 He dissents both from the iconoclastic synod of 754 and the anti-iconoclastic synod of 787, but more from the latter, which he treats very disrespectfully.557 He decidedly rejects image-worship, but allows the use of images for ornament and devotion, and supports his view with Scripture passages and patristic quotations. The spirit and aim of the book is almost Protestant. The chief thoughts are these: God alone is the object of worship and adoration (colondus et adorandus). Saints are only to be revered (venerandi). Images can in no sense be worshipped. To bow or kneel before them, to salute or kiss them, to strew incense and to light candles before them, is idolatrous and superstitious. It is far better to search the Scriptures, which know nothing of such practices. The tales of miracles wrought by images are inventions of the imagination, or deceptions of the evil spirit. On the other hand, the iconoclasts, in their honest zeal against idolatry, went too far in rejecting the images altogether. The legitimate and proper use of images is to adorn the churches and to perpetuate and popularize the memory of the persons and events which they represent. Yet even this is not necessary; for a Christian should be able without sensual means to rise to the contemplation of the virtues of the saints and to ascend to the fountain of eternal light. Man is made in the image of God, and hence capable of receiving Christ into his soul. God should ever be present and adored in our hearts. O unfortunate memory, which can realize the presence of Christ only by means of a picture drawn in sensuous colors. The Council of Nicaea committed a great wrong in condemning those who do not worship images. The author of the Caroline books, however, falls into the same inconsistency as the Eastern iconoclasts, by making an exception in favor of the sign of the cross and the relics of saints. The cross is called a banner which puts the enemy to flight, and the honoring of the relics is declared to be a great means of promoting piety, since the saints reign with Christ in heaven, and their bones will be raised to glory; while images are made by men’s hands and return to dust. A Synod in Frankfort, A.D. 794, the most important held during the reign of Charlemagne, and representing the churches of France and Germany, in the presence of two papal legates (Theophylactus and Stephanus), endorsed the doctrine of the Libri Carolini, unanimously condemned the worship of images in any form, and rejected the seventh oecumenical council.558 According to an old tradition, the English church agreed with this decision.559

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

  2: Christ the Desire of all Nations, or the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom (a commentary on the star of the wise men, Matt. ii.). Cambr. 4th ed. 1854 (also 1850). L. Preller: Griechische Mythologie. Berlin, 1854, 3d ed. 1875, 2 vols. By the same; Römische Mythologie. Berlin, 1858; 3d ed., by Jordan, 1881–83, 2 vols. M. W. Heffter: Griech. und Röm. Mythologie. Leipzig, 1854. Döllinger: Heidenthum und Judenthum, quoted in § 8. C. Schmidt: Essai historique sur la societé civil dans le monde romain et sur sa transformation par le christianisme. Paris, 1853. C. G. Seibert: Griechenthum und Christenthum, oder der Vorhof des Schönen und das Heiligthum der Wahrheit. Barmen, 1857. Fr. Fabri: Die Entstehung des Heidenthums und die Aufgabe der Heidenmission. Barmen, 1859. W. E. Gladstone (the English statesman): Studies on Homer and Homeric Age. Oxf. 1858, 3 vols. (vol. ii. Olympus; or the Religion of the Homeric Age). The same: Juventus Mundi: the Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. 2d ed. Lond. 1870. (Embodies the results of the larger work, with several modifications in the ethnological and mythological portions.) W. S. Tyler (Prof. in Amherst Coll., Mass.): The Theology of the Greek Poets. Boston, 1867. B. F. Cocker: Christianity and Greek Philosophy; or the Relation between Reflective Thought in Greece and the Positive Teaching of Christ and his Apostles. N. York, 1870. Edm. Spiess: Logos spermaticós. Parallelstellen zum N. Text. aus den Schriften der alten Griechen. Ein Beitrag zur christl. Apologetik und zur vergleichenden Religionsforschung. Leipz. 1871. G. Boissier: La religion romaine d’Auguste aux Antonins. Paris, 1884, 2 vols. J Reville: La religion à Rome sous les Sévères. Paris, 1886. Comp. the histories of Greece by Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius; the histories of Rome by Gibbon, Niebuhr, Arnold, Merivale, Schwegler, Ihne, Duruy (transl. from the French by W. J. Clarke), and Mommsen. Ranke’s Weltgeschichte. Th. iii. 1882. Schiller’s Gesch. der römischen Kaiserzeit. 1882. Heathenism is religion in its wild growth on the soil of fallen human nature, a darkening of the original consciousness of God, a deification of the rational and irrational creature, and a corresponding corruption of the moral sense, giving the sanction of religion to natural and unnatural vices.63 Even the religion of Greece, which, as an artistic product of the imagination, has been justly styled the religion of beauty, is deformed by this moral distortion. It utterly lacks the true conception of sin and consequently the true conception of holiness. It regards sin, not as a perverseness of will and an offence against the gods, but as a folly of the understanding and an offence against men, often even proceeding from the gods themselves; for "Infatuation," or Moral Blindness ( [Ath), is a "daughter of Jove," and a goddess, though cast from Olympus, and the source of all mischief upon earth. Homer knows no devil, but he put, a devilish element into his deities.

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

  For the people who are going to work in the sales department this process will be particularly brutal. The reps have high quotas, and if you fall short, you get cut. Most companies put sales reps on a quarterly or annual quota. At HubSpot the quotas are monthly, which means sales reps never come up for air. The sales department churns through these young hires. Bring them in, burn them out, toss them away, find new ones—that’s the model. In every aspect of life, we’re told, there is a HubSpotty way of doing things. Nobody can really explain what HubSpotty means, but it is a real word that people use, all the time. Some people are more HubSpotty than others. Some are 100 percent HubSpotty, possessed of a HubSpottiness that is so complete as to be beyond reproach. Those people “bleed orange.” Their ideas cannot be questioned. They can do pretty much anything they want. They are the HubSpot equivalent of a Level 8 Operating Thetan in Scientology. Newcomers are by definition not HubSpotty yet. We have to earn that designation, and it takes time. Nobody just comes in and gets accepted. A big part of establishing your HubSpottiness involves being relentlessly upbeat and positive. HubSpot is like a corporate version of Up with People, the inspirational singing group from the 1970s, but with a touch of Scientology. It’s a cult based around marketing. The Happy!! Awesome!! Start-up Cult, I began to call it. Instead of ID badges, the company gives out rubber ID bracelets with the HubSpot logo on them. The bracelets contain a transponder that unlocks doors into different parts of the office. It feels ridiculous and cultish to wear a special bracelet, but you can’t get anywhere without one. I’ve spent years writing incredibly over-the-top satire about the technology industry, inventing stories in which Steve Jobs possesses the power to hypnotize people just by staring at them, and depicting Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, as a crazy cult compound policed by rifle-toting public relations people and populated by brainwashed corporate zombies who speak their own private jargon and all truly believe they are doing incredibly important work, making the world a better place. Now I am encountering a real-life version of this, at a company in Kendall Square. It’s amazing. It’s the craziest, best thing ever. I love this place the way I love movies like Showgirls and Battlefield Earth and anything with Nicolas Cage—movies that are so bad you can’t believe they exist, yet you’re glad they do, movies that are so bad that they’re good. Five [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] HubSpeakS o I can be the DRI on this, or Jan and I can be DRIs together, and we’ll coordinate with Courtney to work up some potential KPIs, and then we can all meet again in like a week or two and we’ll present some ideas and then we can develop an SLA.

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

  A sentimental layman would feel, and ought to feel, horrified, on being admitted into such a, critic's mind, to see how cold, how thin, how void of human significance, are the motives for favor or disfavor that there prevail. The capacity to make a nice spot on the wall will outweigh a picture's whole content; a foolish trick of words will preserve a poem; an utterly meaningless fitness of sequence in one musical composition set at naught any amount of 'expressiveness' in another. I remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an hour on a piercing February day in the Academy at Venice before the celebrated 'Assumption' by Titian; and when I, after being chased from room to room by the cold, concluded to get into the sunshine as fast as possible and let the pictures go, but before leaving drew reverently near to them to learn with what superior forms of susceptibility they might be endowed, all I overheard was the woman's voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory expression her face wears! What self-abnegation! How unworthy she feels of the honor she is receiving!" Their honest hearts had been kept warm all the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that would have fairly made old Titian sick. Mr. Ruskin somewhere makes the (for him terrible) admission that religious people as a rule care little for pictures, and that when they do care for them they generally prefer the worst ones to the best. Yes! in every art, in every science, there is the keen perception of certain relations being right or not, and there is the emotional flush and thrill consequent thereupon. And these are two things, not one. In the former of them it is that experts and masters are at home. The latter accompaniments are bodily commotions that they may hardly feel, but that may be experienced in their fulness by crétins and philistines in whom the critical judgment is at its lowest ebb. The 'marvels' of Science, about which so much edifying popular literature is written, are apt to be 'caviare' to the men in the laboratories. And even divine Philosophy itself, which common mortals consider so 'sublime' an occupation, on account of the vastness of its data and outlook, is too apt to the practical philosopher himself to he but a sharpening and tightening business, a matter of 'points,' of screwing down things, of splitting hairs, and of the 'intent' rather than the 'extent' of conceptions. Very little emotion here!—except the effort of setting the attention fine, and the feeling of ease and relief (mainly in the breathing apparatus) when the inconsistencies are overcome and the thoughts run smoothly for a while. Emotion and cognition seem then parted even in this last retreat; and cerebral processes are almost feelingless, so far as we can judge, until they summon help from parts below.

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

  In the best kind of sim p le condition, " l e bien commun se montre partout avec evidence" ("the common good will then be everywhere evident") and doesn't need elaborate debate and deliberation. Laws are few, and when new ones are needed, cette necessite se voit universellement. Le premier qui les propose ne fait que dire ce que tous ont deja senti, et ii n'est question ni de brigues ni d'eloquence pour faire passer en loi ce que chacun a deja resolu de faire, sitot qu'il sera sur que les autres le fero n t comme lui. the necessity is perceived universally. He who proposes them only says what all have already felt, and neither faction nor eloquence is required to obtain the passage of a measure which each person has already resolved to adopt, as soon as he is sure that others will act with him. Th e happiest people are groups of peasants who settle their affairs u nde r a n oa k . Nature as Source · 3 6 I Quand on voit chez le peuple l e plus heureux du monde des troupes de paysans r egler les affaires de l'E_tat sous un chene et se conduire toujours sagement, peut-on s'emp eche r de mepriser les raffinements des autres nations, qui s e rendent illustres et miserables avec tant d 'art et de mystere? When we see, among the happies t p e ople in the world , groups of p easants directing affair s of s, tate un der a n oak, and always acting wisely, can we he]p but despise the refinements of those nations which render themselves illus trious and miserable by s o much art a nd mystery? 1 4 R ousseau's bor r owings from the standard Deism of the eighteenth ce ntury , in particular from the moral sense school, ar e evident enough. The Sa voya rd curate articulates a position whose main lines had bec ome com mo nplace: we infer from the order of things to the existence of a good God. The re must be a will to move matter, 1 5 and an intelligence to coo rdinate it. Our freedom implies the s p irituality of the soul; and the injustice of rewar ds and punishments in this world argues that th ere is a future one where this will be redressed. As with other Deist thinkers, the goodness of God is identified with that of his order, 16 and it is unreasonable to demand or expect that this will be interrupted by miracles or any special help to humans in their striving to be good.

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

  All we have to do is click on a link and a tweet will go out from our account, urging our followers to check out this amazing new article about a brilliant management technique. Our tweets will contain a link to Dharmesh’s post on LinkedIn. The lazy tweets make life easier for us, but having a bunch of people from HubSpot suddenly flood Twitter with exactly the same messages at exactly the same time doesn’t strike me as the smartest way to promote an article. On the Internet, ginning up fake grassroots support is called astroturfing, and the tactic is generally frowned upon. I’m surprised to see HubSpot doing it, because the company touts its expertise at social media marketing and claims it can teach small business owners how to attract attention online by creating unique, “lovable” content and being “remarkable.” But here we are, bludgeoning social media with a barrage of identical tweets, all telling everyone we know to go read this great new article by our boss. I’m willing to help, but before I post any tweets I take a few minutes to read the article—and what Dharmesh has written nearly knocks me off my chair. The title of the article is “Your Customers Are Not Ignorant, Selfish Control Freaks.” Our company’s “thought leader” claims he has made an innovative breakthrough in management science: He now brings a teddy bear to meetings, and he recommends that everyone else do the same. That’s right. A teddy bear. Dharmesh argues that a company should always be “solving for the customer,” or SFTC as people call it at HubSpot. This means that in everything you do, you should be putting the needs of your customers ahead of everything else. To remind his HubSpot colleagues of that, Dharmesh has acquired a teddy bear, and he sits her at the table during meetings as a stand-in for the customer. Her name is Molly. Dharmesh goes on to say that he started out just placing an empty chair at the conference table and pretending that the chair was a customer. But the empty chair wasn’t enough, he decided. So now he has taken his innovation to the next level and brought in Molly. Dharmesh’s LinkedIn article even includes a photograph of Molly sitting at a meeting, next to Cranium. In the photo, Cranium is the big guy in the white shirt at the right side, and Molly is the little one next to him, drinking what appears to be a Red Bull and looking like she’s ready to carve someone a new asshole. [image "image" file=Image00004.jpg] I cannot believe this. Here are grown men and women, who I presume are fully sentient adult human beings, and they are sitting in meetings, talking to a teddy bear . And I am working with these people. No: worse! I am working for them. At Newsweek I worked for Jon Meacham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson.

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

  In other chapters other qualities have seemed, and will again seem, more important parts of psychology. Men are so ingrained partial that, for common-sense and scholasticism (which is only common-sense grown articulate), the notion that there is no one quality genuinely, absolutely, and exclusively essential to anything is almost unthinkable. "B thing's essence makes it what it is. Without an exclusive essence it would be nothing in particular, would be quite nameless, we could not say it was this rather than that. What you write on, for example,—why talk of its being combustible, rectangular, and the like, when you know that these are mere accidents, and that what it really is, and was made to be, is just paper and nothing else?" The reader is pretty sure to make some such comment as this. But he is himself merely insisting on an aspect of the thing which suits his own petty purpose, that of naming the thing; or else on an aspect which suits the manufacturer's purpose, that of producing an article for which there is a vulgar demand. Meanwhile the reality overflows these purposes at every pore. Our usual purpose with it, our commonest title for it, and the properties which this title suggests, have in reality nothing sacramental. They characterize us more than they characterize the thing. But we are so stuck in our prejudices, so petrified intellectually, that to our vulgarest names, with their suggestions, we ascribe an eternal and exclusive worth. The thing must be, essentially, what the vulgarest name connotes; what less usual names connote, it can be only in an 'accidental' and relatively unreal sense. [343] Locke undermined the fallacy. But none of his successors, so far as I know, have radically escaped it, or seen that the only meaning of essence is teleological, and that classification and conception are purely teleological weapons of the mind. The essence of a thing is that one of its properties which is so important for my interests that in comparison with it I may neglect the rest. Amongst those other things which have this important property I class it, after this property I name it, as a thing endowed with this property I conceive it; and whilst so classing, naming, and conceiving it, all other truth about it becomes to me as naught. [344] The properties which are important vary from man to man and from hour to hour. [345] Hence divers appellations and conceptions for the same thing. But many objects of daily use—as paper, ink, butter, horse-car—have properties of such constant unwavering importance, and have such stereotyped names, that we end by believing that to conceive them in those ways is to conceive them in the only true way.

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

  A gap like this surfaced in the discussion above, wh er e som e n aturalist s pr opose to t rea t all moral on tologie s a s ir relevant stories, without validity, while the y themselves go on arguing like the rest of us about what objects are fit and what reactions appropriate. What generall y happens here is that the reductive explanation itself, often a sociobiological one, which supposedl y justifies this exclusion, itself takes on t he role of moral ontology. That is, it starts to provide the basis for discriminations about app ro pri ate obj ects or valid resp on ses . Wha t st arts off in ch apter I as a ha rd- n osed scient i fic theory ju stifying an error theory of moral ity becomes i n t he co nclus ion the basis for a ne w 's cientific' or 'evol utio na ry' ethic . 5 Here, o ne is fo rced to con cl ude, there reig ns an ideol ogical ly ind uce d illus ion ab out t he n a ture of the mor al ont o l o gy that the think ers con cerned a ctually rely on. The re is a very contro ve rsial but very im porta n t job of ar tic ula tion to be done zo • I DENTITY AND THE GOOD here, in the teeth of the people co ncerned , which can show to what extent the real spiritual basis of their own moral judgements deviates fr om what is officially admitted. It will be my claim that there is a gr eat deal of motiva ted supp res sion of moral ontol o gy among our contempo ra ries, in part because the pluralist na tur e of modern society m akes it easier to liv e that way, but also beca use of the grea t weight of modern epistemology (as with the naturalists evoked above} and, behind this, of the spiritual outlook associated w ith this epistemology. So the work I am embarked u p on her e could be called in large degree an essay in· retrieval.

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

  fully persuaded that the tenor of his life and conduct among the Jews was the best apology that could possibly be made in his behalf .... And even now he preserves the same silence, and makes no other answer than the unblemished lives of his sincere followers; they are his most cheerful and successful advocates, and have so loud a voice that they drown the clamors of the most zealous and bigoted adversaries." II. To their defence the Christians, with the rising consciousness of victory, added direct arguments against heathenism, which were practically sustained by, its dissolution in the following period. (1) The popular religion of the heathens, particularly the doctrine of the gods, is unworthy, contradictory, absurd, immoral, and pernicious. The apologists and most of the early church teachers looked upon the heathen gods not as mere imaginations or personified powers of nature or deifications of distinguished men, but as demons or fallen angels. They took this view from the Septuagint version of Ps. 96:5,104 and from the immorality of those deities, which was charged to demons (even sexual intercourse with fair daughters of men, according to Gen. 6:2). "What sad fates," says Minucius Felix, "what lies, ridiculous things, and weaknesses we read of the pretended gods! Even their form, how pitiable it is! Vulcan limps; Mercury has wings to his feet; Pan is hoofed; Saturn in fetters; and Janus has two faces, as if he walked backwards .... Sometimes Hercules is a hostler, Apollo a cow-herd, and Neptune, Laomedon’s mason, cheated of his wages. There we have the thunder of Jove and the arms of Aeneas forged on the same anvil (as if the heavens and the thunder and lightning did not exist before Jove was born in Crete); the adultery of Mars and Venus; the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede, all of which were invented for the gods to authorize men in their wickedness." "Which of the poets," asks Tertullian, "does not calumniate your gods? One sets Apollo to keep sheep; another hires out Neptune to build a wall; Pindar declares Esculapius was deservedly scathed for his avarice in exercising the art of medicine to a bad purpose; whilst the writers of tragedy and comedy alike, take for their subjects the crimes or the miseries of the deities. Nor are the philosophers behindhand in this respect. Out of pure contempt, they would swear by an oak, a goat, a dog. Diogenes turned Hercules into ridicule; and the Roman Cynic Varro introduces three hundred Joves without heads." From the stage abuser the sarcastic African father selects, partly from his own former observation, those of Diana being flogged, the reading of Jupiter’s will after his decease, and the three half-starved Herculesses!

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Alas, our fearless leader was deeply single and trying to be at peace with it. I wondered if she even had a boyfriend. How could she lead a group on sex and love issues? Who would want to take love advice from a single woman who convinced herself she was happy using store-bought sayings she posted on her wall? And what kind of doctor was she anyway? I didn’t see a PhD next to her name. Was she a doctor of love? Dr. Jude had yellowish teeth and a Dorothy Hamill haircut. I guess the yellow teeth meant that she accepted herself and would not be changing for anyone. I was oddly intrigued by her positivity in the face of the abyss, as though I were an anthropologist encountering a new culture for the first time. But when she quoted E. E. Cummings in an attempt to say that we could only be ourselves, I decided she was stupid. Also, she used the words radical acceptance a lot. I didn’t want to radically accept anything. When I returned to Phoenix I wanted everything to be radically different. I didn’t like her. But compared to the disaster that was the rest of the group, Dr. Jude seemed like a winner. Our youngest member was Amber: mid-twenties, built like a female wrestler, sweatpants covered in dog hair. Amber had been in the group longest and was furthest along in terms of “doing the work” in the personal growth and love department. She made sure we all knew that. Immediately, in my mind I called her Chickenhorse, as her head was long and horse-shaped but she had a beaky nose and big pink gums that resembled a chicken’s comb and wattles. She seemed to get aroused by telling all of us we were wrong. Dr. Jude had encouraged Chickenhorse to start dating again, but she had not yet begun. Instead, she focused on problematic interactions she had with people in her life. “My boss is emotionally abusive. He’s victimizing me,” she said. “Can you tell us more?” asked Dr. Jude. “I can’t explain it, it’s just a feeling,” she said. “And as the victim, I don’t think I should have to explain myself.” “Understandable,” said Dr. Jude. “It’s my truth. And I’m afraid to bring it up to his supervisors, because this is what happened with my last boss too. He was another abuser; there’s a pattern of abuse. When I came forward about it at my last job, everyone started gaslighting me by acting like I’m the crazy one.”

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

  The thing is, a lot of rich tech people do give away a lot of money; they just don’t go around bragging about it. Benioff’s challenge is a form of self-aggrandizement, his way of saying that while others might give away money, Mine is bigger . He wields his philanthropy like a four-foot cock, slapping us all in the face with it. Benioff talks about the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, which used to be called UCSF Children’s Hospital until Benioff donated $100 million and got them to rename the place after him. Next he shows a movie about Haiti and earthquake victims, and talks about all the money Salesforce.com has sent there to help rebuild the country. When the movie ends, he introduces the prime minister of Haiti, Laurent Lamothe, along with supermodel-turned-philanthropist Petra Nemcova, and actor-slash-asshole Sean Penn. The crowd goes nuts. I’m feeling like I might be sick. The idea is for Benioff to “interview” these people, but the “interview” consists of Lamothe saying how grateful he and his impoverished countrymen are to Benioff, and then Benioff talking over him. It’s painful. Here is the prime minister of a sovereign nation, flown into a tech conference by a billionaire, in those shoes , just so that the prime minister can kiss the billionaire’s ring in public. Everyone eats this up. They love Benioff! They stand and cheer. Benioff walks down off the stage into the aisles like a televangelist, bathing in the adoration, saying awesome and phenomenal , again and again. What, exactly, is awesome ? This whole thing! All of us! Just for being here, just for caring, we’re all awesome! It’s phenomenal! I glance over at Cranium. I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking, which is that we could purchase nuclear-powered orange tracksuits that shoot lasers from both sleeves and we would still be no match for this guy. Why would customers buy software from pikers like us when they can buy software from Benioff? I’m appalled by Benioff’s performance, and I find him completely repellent, but even I want to buy his software. Cranium looks pissed off. Finally the presentation shifts to product announcements. Huey Lewis returns to the stage and plays “Back in Time,” and then there’s a huge fake thunder explosion, dry ice machines blanket the stage in fog, and the co-founder of Salesforce.com, Parker Harris, drives onstage in a white Tesla and leaps out dressed as Emmett “Doc” Brown from the movie Back to the Future , in a white lab coat and a crazy snow-white wig. Harris and Benioff perform a clumsy skit about how Harris has just returned from the year 2019 and brought back some software he found there, and that is what Salesforce.com will be announcing today. The truth is that Salesforce.com has little new to introduce.

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

  Number four -- Margot. Eats like a bird and doesn’t talk at all. She eats only vegetables and fruit. “Spoiled,” in the opinion of the van Daans. “Too little exercise and fresh air,” in ours. Beside her -- Mama. Has a hearty appetite, does her share of the talking. No one has the impression, as they do with Mrs. van Daan, that this is a housewife. What’s the difference between the two? Well, Mrs. van D. does the cooking and Mother does the dishes and polishes the furniture. Numbers six and seven. I won’t say much about Father and me. The former is the most modest person at the table. He always looks to see whether the others have been served first. He needs nothing for himself; the best things are for the children. He’s goodness personified. Seated next to him is the Annex’s little bundle of nerves. Dussel. Help yourself, keep your eyes on the food, eat and don’t talk. And if you have to say something, then for goodness’ sake talk about food. That doesn’t lead to quarrels, just to bragging. He consumes enormous portions, and “no” is not part of his vocabulary, whether the food is good or bad. Pants that come up to his chest, a red jacket, black patent-leather slippers and horn-rimmed glasses -- that’s how he looks when he’s at work at the little table, always studying and never progressing. This is interrupted only by his afternoon nap, food and -- his favorite spot -- the bathroom. Three, four or five times a day there’s bound to be someone waiting outside the bathroom door, hopping impatiently from one foot to another, trying to hold it in and barely managing. Does Dussel care? Not a whit. From seven-fifteen to seven-thirty, from twelve-thirty to one, from two to two-fifteen, from four to four-fifteen, from six to six-fifteen, from eleven-thirty to twelve. You can set your watch by them; these are the times for his “regular sessions.” He never deviates or lets himself be swayed by the voices outside the door, begging him to open up before a disaster occurs. Number nine is not part of our Annex family, although she does share our house and table. Hep has a healthy appetite. She cleans her plate and isn’t choosy. Hep’s easy to please and that pleases us. She can be characterized as follows: cheerful, good-humored, kind and willing. TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1943 Dearest Kitty, . A new idea: during meals I talk more to myself than to the others, which has two advantages. First, they’re glad they don’t have to listen to my continuous chatter, and second, I don’t have to get annoyed by their opinions. I don’t think my opinions are stupid but other people do, so it’s better to keep them to myself. I apply the same tactic when I have to eat something I loathe.

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

  But I don’t look at him long, because the time whizzes by and before you know it, it’ll be 4 P.M. and the pedantic Dr. Dussel will be standing with the clock in his hand because I’m one minute ,late clearing off the table. Yours, Anne SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1943 Dearest Kitty, A few weeks ago I started writing a story, something I made up from beginning to end, and I’ve enjoyed it so much that the products of my pen are piling up. Yours, Anne MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1943 Dearest Kitty, We now continue with a typical day in the Annex. Since we’ve already had lunch, it’s time to describe dinner. Mr. van Daan. Is served first, and takes a generous portion of whatever he likes. Usually joins in the conversation, never fails to give his opinion. Once he’s spoken, his word is final. If anyone dares to suggest otherwise, Mr. van D. can put up a good fight. Oh, he can hiss like a cat. . . but I’d rather he didn’t. Once you’ve seen it, you never want to see it again. His opinion is the best, he knows the most about everything. Granted, the man has a good head on his shoulders, but it’s swelled to no small degree. Madame. Actually, the best thing would be to say nothing. Some days, especially when a foul mood is on the way, her face is hard to read. If you analyze the discussions, you realize she’s not the subject, but the guilty party! A fact everyone prefers to ignore. Even so, you could call her the instigator. Stirring up trouble, now that’s what Mrs. van Daan calls fun. Stirring up trouble between Mrs. Frank and Anne. Margot and Mr. Frank aren t qwte as easy. But let’s return to the table. Mrs. van D. may think she doesn’t always get enough, but that’s not the case. The choicest potatoes, the tastiest morsel, the tenderest bit of whatever there is, that’s Madame’s motto. The others can all have their turn, as long as I get the best. (Exactly what she accuses Anne Frank of doing.) Her second watchword is: keep talking. As long as somebody’s listening, it doesn’t seem to occur to her to wonder whether they’re interested. She must think that whatever Mrs. van Daan says will interest everyone. Smile coquettishly, pretend you know everything, offer everyone a piece of advice and mother them -- that’s sure to make a good impression. But if you take a better look, the good impression fades. One, she’s hardworking; two, cheerful; three, coquettish -- and sometimes a cute face. That’s Petronella van Daan. The third diner. Says very little. Young Mr. van Daan is usually quiet and hardly makes his presence known. As far as his appetite is concerned, he’s a Danaldean vessel that never gets full. Even after the most substantial meal, he can look you calmly in the eye and claim he could have eaten twice as much.

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

  Margot and Mother do the dishes, Mr. and Mrs. van D. head for the divan, Peter for the attic, Father for his divan, Dussel too, and Anne does her homework. What comes next is the quietest hour of the day; when they’re all asleep, there are no disturbances. To judge by his face, Dussel is dreaming of food. But I don’t look at him long, because the time whizzes by and before you know it, it’ll be 4 P.M. and the pedantic Dr. Dussel will be standing with the clock in his hand because I’m one minute ,late clearing off the table. Yours, Anne SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1943 Dearest Kitty, A few weeks ago I started writing a story, something I made up from beginning to end, and I’ve enjoyed it so much that the products of my pen are piling up. Yours, Anne MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1943 Dearest Kitty, We now continue with a typical day in the Annex. Since we’ve already had lunch, it’s time to describe dinner. Mr. van Daan. Is served first, and takes a generous portion of whatever he likes. Usually joins in the conversation, never fails to give his opinion. Once he’s spoken, his word is final. If anyone dares to suggest otherwise, Mr. van D. can put up a good fight. Oh, he can hiss like a cat. . . but I’d rather he didn’t. Once you’ve seen it, you never want to see it again. His opinion is the best, he knows the most about everything. Granted, the man has a good head on his shoulders, but it’s swelled to no small degree. Madame. Actually, the best thing would be to say nothing. Some days, especially when a foul mood is on the way, her face is hard to read. If you analyze the discussions, you realize she’s not the subject, but the guilty

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

  It falls between t he holes in the grid. We ca n e asily s ee why. It is not the exploration of an 'objective' order in the classical sense of a publicly accessible reality. The order is only a ccessib le through personal, hence 'subjective', resonance. This is why, as I argued e arlier, the danger of a regression to subjectivism always exists in this enterprise. It can easily slide into a celebration of our creative powers, or the s ources can be appropriated, interpreted as within us, and represented as the basis for 'liberation'. But at its best, in full integrity, the enterpr i se is an attem pt to surmount subjectivism. It is just that this remains a con tinuin g task , which cannot be put behind u s o n ce and for all, as wi th the pub lic ord er of former times. This exploration of order through personal resonance fares no better at the hands of another class of views, even more strongly anti-subjectivist tha n the ones just examined. These are views, like those of the followers of Leo Strauss, which are critical of the whole modern turn, both in its disengaged- The Conflicts of Modernity • 5 r r instrumental and in its Romantic-expressive forms. The sympathies of this type of outlook tend to be rather narrow, and their reading of the varied facets of the modern identity unsympathetic. The dee p er moral vision, the genuine moral sources invoked in the aspiration to disengaged reason or expressive fulfilment tend to be overlooked; and the less impressive motives pride, self-satisfaction, liberation from demanding standards-brought to the fore. Moderni ty is often read through its least impressive, most trivializing offshoots. 25 But this distorts. The most frivolous and self-indulgent forms of the human potential movement in the United States today can't give us the measure of the aspiration to expressive fulfilment as we find it, for instance, in Goethe or Arnold. And even the most frivolous manifestation may reflect more than we can see at a glance. Above all, we have to avoid t he error of declaring those goods invalid whose exclusive pursuit leads to contemptible or disastrous consequences. The search for pure subjective expressive fulfil ment may ma k e lif e thin and insubsta n ti a l , may ultimately undercut i tself, as I argued above. But that by itself does nothing to show that subjective fulfilment is not a good. It shows o nl y that it needs to be part of a 'package', to be sought within a life which is also ai med at other goods.

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

  A nd then Nietzsche took this attack a st age further and tried to break out of the wh o le form of thought he defined as 'moral', i.e., all forms whi ch involve the rejection of the sup po sedly "lower" in us, of our will to power, a nd to come to a more total self-af fir m ;:ation, a yea-sa ying to what one i s. Enlightenment naturalism also frequ ent l y portra y ed rel igious mo ralit i es o f the "higher" not only as the sourc e of self-r e pr es s ion but als o as t h e Ethics of Inarticulacy • 7 I ju st i fi c a tio n of social oppression, as the supposed carriers of the "higher", be t h e y p ri es ts or aristocrats, exercise their natural right to rule the " lower u o r d e rs fo r the latter's own good. Neo-Nietzschean thinkers have extended th i s c riti q ue an d tried to show ho w various forms of socia l exclusion and d o m in at i on are built into the very de fi n itions by which a h yp ergo o d pe rs p e cti ve is constituted, as certain models of religious order excluded and d o m in a ted w omen, 31 as ideals and disciplines of rational c ontrol excluded a n d do m in ated the lower classes (as well as women again), 32 as definitions of h eal th and fulfilment exclude and marginalize dissidents, 33 as other notions o f ci v i li z ation exclude subje ct rac e s , 34 and so on. Of cou rse, the argument is complicated by the fact that all of these a tt ac ks, with the exception of Foucault's, are overtly (and, in fact, I believe Fo uc a ult's are as well, though unadmittedly) committed to their own rival hy p ergoods, generally in the range of our third example above, connected to the principle of universal and equal respect. But this doe s n't reduce the p erplexity and uncertainty we feel here. It seems that at least some of the h ypergoods espoused so passionatel y must be illusory, the projection of le s s admirable interests or desires. Why then shouldn't all of them be so? So indeed they might be.