Contentment

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 The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  All night long our arms and legs remained linked and our faces were often touching. Most clearly I remember that the head of my cock spent almost the entire night right inside the vestibule of her passage. And sometimes it tried to peek further in, only to be gently prodded away. After all, we needed our sleep more than passion. But I recall for a certainty that during that night, though we did not make love again, we were as close as lovers ever can be. Ladies Go First 469 On one occasion, about an hour before dawn, I almost woke because I was getting hard, but this time she resisted even more fervently. Once again sleep trumped sex. And I also remember thinking, Oh, well, nail her in the morning, just as I fell off again. It was she who woke me that morning with the noise of aTV news program. As soon as she saw me moving, she turned it off. I had trouble focusing my eyes, but I could see that she was standing stark naked by the TV, and just as desirable as ever. [ think I was still half-dozing, while she rattled on in the background about how she had to have breakfast with another girl from her firm before they both flew back to LA together. This meant she would have to return to her room and change clothes, because she couldn’t possibly come to breakfast looking the way she had in the bar last night. I was still sleep-logged and couldn’t absorb it all. “Please don’t go,” I blurted out. “Tm not going anywhere,” she replied, coming right up to the bed. “I have no intention of going. I’m not leaving until I’ve taken you again...” She wasn’t joking at all. She stood next to me, right above me, and her voice was at its bossiést. In orte motion she jumped back into bed and landed on top of me again. Needless to say I began to wake up, but she had taken me by surprise, and there was no way I could stop her from what she was already doing. Out came her lube tube, squish went a large glob all over my face, and there it was again, looming downward towards my nose, irresistible but maybe just slightly menacing, her whole passionate center throbbing as it moved to engulf me. She had fully and truly mounted me again, and when I looked up I saw how useless any resistance would be. This time, she didn’t even ask my permission. She simply took charge of me as though I were her property. I felt a bit resentful, since this meant any hopes I had of taking her were null and void.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  I felt good in these pre-dawn moments. My cock comfortably sore. My balls unloaded. My body mighty and ready to sleep at the same time. I’d get through my day and when the urge hit me again a day or two later, sometimes three, I’d go out again. I hadn’t had any drinks. I was sober. And sober, I was less aggressive. But I knew if I walked on, I would never again see this quiet beauty sitting on my steps. Maybe it was the night. I felt drunk sometimes even before I had my first drink. Maybe it was how jaded I was, hoping to prove her less than she was. If she spoke and she was stupid or vapid or just too normal, her aura would disappear. Maybe it was the way her eyes moved from whatever horizon she was looking at to my eyes. She looked at me for a long time and, not being one to lose a staring contest, I looked at her for a long time too. “Tt’s anatomical,” I said. “What is?” she said and I liked her voice. It was quiet and calm. Two words spoken, one question, but she sounded like she had all the time in the world. And she had the faintest accent, refined, almost regal. “My eyes,” I said. “I don’r need to blink. I can look at something * for hours without blinking.” “At something?” she said. “Or someone.” “And you can look for hours?” “Tf I have to.” “Well,” she said and smiled and then she blinked slowly, not because she had to but because blinking went so well with her smile. “Are you waiting for someone?” “No,” she said. “I’m simply tired. I’ve just arrived to New York City and feel quite jet-lagged. I thought Td sit for a few moments before I walked on.” “Europe?” I said. “Yes. Though you'll never guess the country.” I looked at my watch. “So it’s around two in the morning for you.” “Exactly. And I didn’t sleep well on the flight.” “I’m going to get a drink. Would you like to come along? A little alcohol might help you with your jet lag.” Without a word she stood and, just like that, took my arm, her hand around my bicep and we walked down the street. We drank. I had my usual gin on the rocks. It was summer and in summer I drank gin. She drank Sauvignon Blanc. It felt like a 78 Adam Berlin

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  We need to be realistic about what we can hope for, while searching for an existentially habitable space of relative stability amid a troubled ocean of uncertainty. Rovelli’s ‘vast intermediate space’ of ambiguity and uncertainty is not an unknown territory or an unexplored ocean; it has been recognised and inhabited by philosophers, theologians, artists and writers since the classical period, who have found ways of flourishing in its half-lights and coping with its ambiguities – and in doing so, demonstrated the ability of human beings to deal with a complex world. We can learn from them, and put their wisdom to good use today. Most of us know the experience of a seemingly irrepressible drive to make sense of ourselves which can send us on ‘dangerous voyages of exploration’ (Bernard Lonergan). 9 The human mind roams the intellectual landscape in search of stable and meaningful beliefs, which might offer what the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce termed ‘an ideal of life’ or a ‘thoroughly satisfactory explanation’ of things that matter to us. My argument throughout this work is that the big questions of life – such as the meaning of life, or the nature of the good – lie beyond rational or scientific proof. Like Isaiah Berlin, I am suspicious of those who claim to possess ‘incorrigible knowledge about issues of fact or principle in any sphere of human behaviour’. I’m willing to accept my limitations – indeed, the limitations of the human race – when it comes to these questions. Like Alexander Pope, I have reluctantly come to accept the limited degrees of certainty that are associated with these ‘ultimate questions’ – not because I am weak minded, but because the evidence clearly points to this conclusion. Believing is a human stance to be embraced, not a liability that is to be eradicated. ‘Faith’ is the name we give to this commitment to living in line with what we believe to be true. This does not, as I have emphasised throughout, permit us to ‘believe anything we like’. We all need to give good reasons for what we believe, accepting responsibility for our beliefs, while realising that neither proof nor certainty are possible in dealing with ‘ultimate questions’. We have to accept that others will disagree with us on these grand questions, not because they are stupid or evil, but because the questions simply cannot be answered with the precision and certainty that many would hope for. Believing and Human Nature Human beings are believing and meaning-seeking animals, with an imprinted instinct to make sense of what we experience. We can no more eliminate our propensity to believe than our tendency to be tribal – despite the difficulties this creates, not least the risk of genocide (think of Rwanda in 1994, which pitted Tutsi against Hutu), or the serious communal tensions that can arise between people groups in multicultural western cities.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE PHYSICAL SIDE I do feel physical deterioration. I notice it in many ways. Ten years ago I greatly enjoyed throwing a frisbee. Now my right shoulder is so painfully arthritic that this kind of activity is out of the question. In my garden I realize that a task which would have been easy five years ago, but difficult last year, now seems like too much, and I had better leave it for my once-a-week gardener. This slow deterioration, with various minor disorders of vision, heartbeat, and the like, informs me that the physical portion of what I call “me” is not going to last forever. Yet I still enjoy a four-mile walk on the beach. I can lift heavy objects, do all the shopping, cooking, and dishwashing when my wife is ill, carry my own luggage without puffing. The female form still seems to me one of the loveliest creations of the universe, and I appreciate it greatly. I feel as sexual in my interests as I was at thirty-five, though I can’t say the same about my ability to perform. I am delighted that I am still sexually alive, even though I can sympathize with the remark of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upon leaving a burlesque house at age eighty: “Oh to be seventy again!” Yes, or sixty-five, or sixty! So, I am well aware that I am obviously old. Yet from the inside I’m still the same person in many ways, neither old nor young. It is that person of whom I will speak. ACTIVITIES New Enterprises

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  decorous construction of a common life. Within that framework, many radicals created communities where resources were shared, but on the basis of monogamous families – the sort of Hutterite village that sheltered the dying Ochino in Moravia. Their leadership remained male: a Hutterite community was called the Court of Brothers (Bruderhof). The radical Peter Riedemann, in drawing up one of the most prominent Hutterite confessional statements in 1540, set the tone of his discussion of the role of women by sounding an utterly traditional note: ‘We say, first, that since woman was taken from man, and not man from woman, man hath lordship but woman weakness, humility and submission, therefore she should be under the yoke of man and obedient to him.’ [43] Hutterite communities nevertheless boasted one distinctive feature: a reversal of the medieval Western trend to emphasize a couple’s initiative in marriage. Arrangements were taken out of the hands of a prospective couple and given to the community elders (men, naturally), so it broadened out from the ancient dynastic principle that marriages should be arranged by the fathers of bride and groom. The elders would choose a small group of eligible young people from among those of suitable age and bring together those selected; thus suitably supervised they then chose their partner, avoiding ‘the inclinations of the flesh’. Hutterite marriage custom proved one of the greatest points of internal contention in their determinedly peaceable communities. In the seventeenth century, one of their most distinguished bishops had to put a stop to widespread blatant fraud, as young lovers schemed to gerrymander the chosen group for particular wedding occasions. The dispute rumbled on until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Church authorities finally admitted defeat and gave up their prerogatives. [44] Matters were different in the Magisterial Protestant Churches, which hearkened to the Pauline epistles in emphasizing a couple’s individual choice. No doubt a consideration in this was the aspiration of clerical families to heroic marital partnerships, together with early Reformation uncertainties for Protestants in dealing with unsympathetic Catholic parents. The Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland has seldom boasted a reputation for sentimentality, but right away during the revolutionary birth of ‘the Kirk’ in 1560, when making official provision for marriage in the First Book of Discipline, it emphatically declared that the attraction between young people was ‘a work of God’ which trumped the admitted desirability of parental consent. If parents stood in the way of their children’s happiness for ‘no other cause than the common sort of men have, to wit lack of goods and because they are not so high-born as they require’, then the minister should try to win the parents round – but if that did not work, he should overrule them and go ahead with a marriage. ‘For the work of God ought not to be hindered by the corrupt affections of worldly men’: one in the eye for patriarchy, echoed elsewhere in the Reformed Protestant world.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  imperial official in Basel, she was first widow to the Basel humanist artist Ludwig Keller (Cellarius) before wedding in succession three prominent clerical Reformers: the former monk Johannes Oecolampadius (Hussgen), the first Protestant pastor of Basel; another former monk Wolfgang Capito (Köpfel), pastor in Strassburg; and finally one of the Reformation’s most eloquent propagandists for happy companionate marriage, the former friar Martin Bucer, chief pastor of Strassburg and finally Regius Professor in Cambridge. Wibrandis had been recommended to Bucer by his dying first wife Elisabeth. Oecolampadius gave her a rave review: ‘what I always wanted...She is not contentious, garrulous, or a gadabout, but looks after the household.’ Bucer wanted a little more pepper – ‘My first wife felt somewhat more free to admonish me and now I realize that that freedom of hers was not only useful but necessary.’ Many clergy were to discover that a frank but affectionate wifely perspective was helpful preparation for the inevitable critics outside the parsonage door. [21] Only gradually, as in the 1530s and 1540s Protestantism began winning the allegiance of more and more territories in and beyond the Empire, did the clergy wife begin to reflect what the new emerging Church authorities wanted in the marriages of pastors, in the manner of Fraulein Rosenblatt: a solidly respectable background in families among the middle layers of urban society. It took time for social attitudes to reflect changing realities beyond the ranks of men and women who championed clerical marriage as an ideological statement (Plate 24). In the Holy Roman Empire, it was not till 1555 that military defeat of the Habsburg Emperor and his Catholic allies and the resulting Peace of Augsburg forced the Habsburgs grudgingly to grant secure legal status to Lutheran clergy marriages and their children within the Empire. [22] In England, where a truly Protestant Reformation rapidly gained in momentum after 1547 through a regime acting in the name of the young Edward VI, the one part of their legislative programme that met prolonged obstruction from conservative nobility and bishops in Parliament was the full legalization of clerical marriage; that legislation did not finally pass till 1549. Then when a version of the Edwardian Protestant Church was restored in 1559 after the death of Catholic Queen Mary, her half-sister Queen Elizabeth showed herself untypical of Protestants in her lack of enthusiasm for clerical wives (but then Elizabeth had problems with most people’s wives). This personal idiosyncrasy could not withstand the Protestant tide even for the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, but it had one curious long-term effect that outlasted Elizabeth’s own capacity to choose her bishops; after the death of her happily married first Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker in 1575, no occupant of the see of Canterbury had a wife until John Tillotson in 1691. [23] It is not surprising that an initially uncertain place in Western society encouraged clergy and their children to stick together socially, resulting in a great deal of intermarriage among clergy families.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In the nick of time for me the war broke out between Chili and Peru: Chilian bonds dropped from 90 to 60: I saw Hamilton and assured him that Chili if left alone, could beat all South America: he advised me to wait and see. A little later Bolivia threw in her lot with Peru and Chilian bonds fell to 43 or 44. At once I went to Hamilton and asked him to buy Chilians for all I possessed on a margin of three or four. After much talk he did what I wished on a margin of ten: a fortnight later came the news of the first Chilian victory and Chilians jumped to 60 odd and continued to climb steadily: I sold at over 80 and thus netted from my first five hundred pounds over two thousand pounds and by Christmas was free once more to study with a mind at case. Hamilton told me that he had followed my lead a little later but had made more from a larger investment. The most important happening at Brighton I must now relate. I have already told in a pen-portrait of Carlyle published by Austin Harrison in the “English Review” some twelve years ago how I went one Sunday morning and called upon my hero, Thomas Carlyle in Chelsea. I told there, too, how on more than one Sunday I used to meet him on his morning walk along the Chelsea embankment, and how once at least he talked to me of his wife and admitted his impotence. I only gave a summary of a few talks in my portrait of him; for the traits did not call for strengthening by repetition; but here I am inclined to add a few details, for everything about Carlyle at his best, is of enduring interest! When I told him how I had been affected by reading Emerson’s speech to the students of Dartmouth College and how it had in a way forced me to give up my law-practice and go to Europe to study, he broke in excitedly: “I remember well reading that very page to my wife and saying that nothing like it for pure nobility had been heard since Schiller went silent. It had a great power with it.... And so that started you off and changed your way of life?... I don’t wonder ... it was a great Call.” After that Carlyle seemed to like me. At our final parting too, when I was going to Germany to study and he wished me “God speed and Goodspeed! on the way that lies before ye”, he spoke again of Emerson and the sorrow he had felt on parting with him, deep, deep sorrow and regret, and he added, laying his hands on my shoulders, “sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more forever.” I remembered the passage and cried:

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  CONCLUSION I trust I have made it clear that over the years I have moved a long way from some of the beliefs with which I started: that man was essentially evil; that professionally he was best treated as an object; that help was based on expertise; that the expert could advise, manipulate, and mold the individual to produce the desired result. Let me, in contrast, try to summarize the learnings in which I currently believe and by which I would like to live. As I have indicated, I frequently fail to profit by these learnings, failing many times in small ways and occasionally in enormous blunders. I will list the learnings, not in the order in which they occurred in me but in what appears to be a more natural order. I have come to prize each emerging facet of my experience, of myself. I would like to treasure the feelings of anger and tenderness and shame and hurt and love and anxiety and giving and fear—all the positive and negative reactions that crop up. I would like to treasure the ideas that emerge—foolish, creative, bizarre, sound, trivial—all part of me. I like the behavioral impulses— appropriate, crazy, achievement-oriented, sexual, murderous. I want to accept all of these feelings, ideas, and impulses as an enriching part of me. I don’t expect to act on all of them, but when I accept them all, I can be more real; my behavior, therefore, will be much more appropriate to the immediate situation. On the basis of my experience I have found that if I can help bring about a climate marked by genuineness, prizing, and understanding, then exciting things happen. Persons and groups in such a climate move away from rigidity and toward flexibility, away from static living toward process living, away from dependence toward autonomy, away from defensiveness toward self-acceptance, away from being predictable toward an unpredictable creativity. They exhibit living proof of an actualizing tendency. When I am exposed to a growth-promoting climate, I am able to develop a deep trust in myself, in individuals, and in entire groups. I love to create such an environment, in which persons, groups, and even plants can grow. I have learned that in any significant or continuing relationship, persistent feelings had best be expressed. If they are expressed as feelings, owned by me, the result may be temporarily upsetting but ultimately far more rewarding than any attempt to deny or conceal them.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  In general, the Didascalia seeks to remove Christian laypeople from civic life, but it is particularly ingeniously eloquent about widows staying home: ‘let a widow know that she is the altar of God’, it says, adding unctuously that ‘the altar of God indeed never wanders or runs about anywhere, but is fixed in one place.’ [17] In view of such a narrowing of options for senior women, it is rather charming to find that the earliest known epitaph anywhere for any member of the Christian Church’s hierarchy, predating anything for bishops, priests or deacons, is for a formally enrolled widow from the second-century Church in Rome: Flavia Arcas, ‘the sweetest of mothers’ according to her daughter Flavia Theophila, who financed the inscription. [18] Moreover, it has to be said that a formal place for widows, and a warm and open welcome for the financial patronage that wealthy widows might offer a Church community, were a good deal more than the rabbis were offering women in the synagogue. Judaism also continued its relentless emphasis on marriage, whereas Christianity in the

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Like just about everything that human beings turn their hands to, this enterprise of believing can go wrong. As we have seen, beliefs can lead to discrimination, violence and prejudice. This, however, points to the need to be critical and reflective about those beliefs, and how they are enacted and embodied. We can’t change who we are – but we can try to live ethically and peacefully. Paradoxically, it is the belief that we should live in these ways that allows us to subdue and redirect our more fundamental human instincts – a point emphasised by Thomas H. Huxley in his famous 1893 lecture ‘Evolution and Ethics’. For Huxley, ethical values – which human beings create – can help suppress our more fundamental primitive tendency towards violence, rooted in a distant past. The solution to toxic beliefs is not a crude abolition of the category of ‘believing’, but the search for better forms of believing that foster good lives, individually and communally. Much research has been carried out on the way in which belief systems are correlated with flourishing and resilience, at both the individual and communal level. This research often focuses on how beliefs help individuals cope with ageing, trauma and uncertainty; in recent times, its scope has been expanded to include indigenous communities, exploring how their beliefs and practices enable them to survive, particularly in the face of colonialism and the erosion of their traditional cultures.11 A recurrent theme to emerge from this research is that existentially disengaged beliefs do not seem to encourage human flourishing or create resilience. We care about beliefs that make a difference to us. I was fascinated by the 2006 debate which led to Pluto being reclassified as a ‘dwarf planet’ by the International Astronomical Union. But did it impact on me in any meaningful way? No. It was interesting in a detached sort of way. I also believe that the atomic weight of the chemical element chlorine is 35.453 – not because I’ve checked this out myself, having outsourced this matter to the scientific community at large. But if it turned out it was 35.467, I would shrug my shoulders. It would be interesting, but not personally relevant to me, even though it might be important to theoretical chemistry. Yet other beliefs make a profound difference to how we understand ourselves, and feel about our lives. Human flourishing seems to rest on three broad pillars: truth, purpose and meaning.12 To flourish is to live according to realities that are not of our own fabrication or invention; to live a life that is significant and leads to the advancement of what is good and just; and to know that we matter in life. ‘Flourishing’ includes good mental and physical health, but is also linked with happiness, life satisfaction, meaning, purpose, character, virtue and close social relationships. People flourish when they believe and feel they are part of something greater, as when individuals and communities locate themselves within ‘Big Pictures’.

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

  The times were favorable for the development of monastic communities. If our own is the age of the laic, the mediaeval period was the age of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The convent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard calls his monks "the order of the Peaceful." Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherhood and co-operation. It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on earth. The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time, pacificus, "the peaceful"; tranquilla pace serenus, "in quiet and undisturbed repose"; fraternae pacis amicus, "friend of brotherly peace." The circumstances are presented by Caesar of Heisterbach under which a number of monks abandoned the world, and were "converted"—that is, determined to enter a convent. Now the decision was made at a burial.538 Now it was due to the impression made by the relation of the wonderful things which occurred in convents. This was the case with a young knight, Gerlach,539 who listened to an abbot who was then visiting a castle, as he told his experiences within cloistral walls. Gerlach went to Paris to study, but could not get rid of the seed which had been sown in his heart, and entered upon the monastic novitiate. Sometimes the decision was made in consequence of a sermon.540 Caesar of Heisterbach himself was "converted" by a description given by Gerard of Walberberg, abbot of Heisterbach, while they were on the way to Cologne during the troublous times of Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. Gerard described the appearance of the Virgin, her mother Anna, and St. Mary Magdalene, who descended from the mountain and revealed themselves to the monks of Clairvaux while they were engaged in the harvest, dried the perspiration from their foreheads, and cooled them by fanning. Within three months Caesar entered the convent of Heisterbach.541 There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages, the career of the knight and the career of the monk. It would be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and rewards, even for the present life. The monk himself was a soldier. The well-ordered convent offered a daily drill, exercise following exercise with the regularity of clockwork; and though the enemy was not drawn up in visible array on open field, he was a constant reality.542 Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the problem of their salvation and fight their conflict with the devil. The Third Lateran, 1179, bears witness to the popularity of the conventual life among the higher classes, and the tendency to restrict it to them, when it forbade the practice of receiving motley as a price of admission to the vow.543 The monk proved to be stronger than the knight and the institution of chivalry decayed before the institution of monasticism which still survives.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  I plan to write to the company that makes my spanking machine praising them, and suggesting some additions for future models. I hope that with advances in technology, new versions will be able to speak to the user and tell her what a naughty girl she’s been, along with reading her body temperature and movements and sensing when she needs a stronger spanking, even if she’s not quite ready to request it. For now, though, I have a daily date with my spanking machine. I usually use it in the morning, when others are going to the gym to use other, slightly more masochistic machines. I walk out of my building with a grin that has everything to do with my blushing bottom and being able to’afford the best spankings money can buy. Raw Adam Berlin I craved raw fish. And like an addict, from the first time I ate perfect sushi, carefully cut, colorfully presented, dark soy sauce, green wasabi and white rice highlighting the delicate pink and pale and red fish flesh, I was smitten. It was like love. All of my money went to eating sushi. I worked and I went out to eat. I worked to go out to eat. I ate sushi until I was full and then I rested and ate more sushi until I was beyond full. Unlike other foods, the craving was back the next day and, as I plodded through my nine-to-five, I dreamed of sushi, all kinds of sushi. Plain sushi and sushi rolls, simple rolls wrapped in seaweed and inside-out rolls rolled in sesame or roe, maki tuna and yellowtail and salmon and eel and combination rolls, exotic, innovative rolls. And the more sushi J ate, the better the sushi needed to be. A ten-dollar hand of blackjack becomes dull with time and so the player bets twenty-five dollars and then a hundred dollars a hand and when he wins, he bets more, thousands of dollars just to keep the high going. A gambler who bets six figures a hand is called a whale. Fish and addiction. The addiction of fish.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  The smacks ring out, colouring his bottom a darker red. “Ow! Please! Mistress! Not so hard!” “How else will you learn?” He knows better than to argue. “Romance!” I signal the change of subject with a hefty slap across both cheeks, then gently scratching the reddened surface with my fingernails. I run my hands up and down the insides of his legs, then tease his cock and balls. Slowly and carefully I peel the panties down, freeing his stiff manhood, which is yearning to be inside me. For which ultimate pleasure he will have to wait. I am as moist as he is hard. Were I not such a scrupulous avoider of the vulgar I would say we are both “gagging for it”. “Romance is the only fetish sanctioned by society. The glue that keeps workers chained to their mortgages.” __ [ put my index finger to the base of the butt plug and wriggle it slowly, enjoying the look of pure dumb pleasure on his face. I keep up the finger fucking as I sift through my thoughts on Valentine’s Day. 348 Marissa Moon “The original Valentine was a priest who married couples in secret after the Emperor Claudius made marriage illegal. I suppose that’s one way of bringing back the romance to these mutual slavery contracts. Make it illegal.” I give him another two sets of six slaps. He’s finding it harder to stay in place. “Keep still! Or I'll cane you. And you wouldn’t want that, would you, my lad?” Decorum is restored. If one can use that word of a man kneeling to offer up his bare bottom for punishment and penetration. I stroke his warmed flesh, keeping him yearning for my touch. “Some anthropologists think two years is the limit for chemical attraction, for a union to last any longer each party must make an effort.” Two more sets of six slaps and I can hear a whinier note in his voice. Good. I’m getting through to him. “Perhaps female domination is the answer to marriages that have gone stale. “That’s female domination in the sexual sense as opposed to the usual henpecking. Women can be powerful and capricious while men can be as slutty as they like, becoming the sex slaves they were always designed to be.” I pick up the paddle and start to cook his flesh, ignoring his pitiful protests. “These cute little buns of yours are going to glow like red hot coals.” Three of the best and brightest accompany those words. I find the spot that gives the best whacking sound, although it’s still not as resonant as my hand. Keeping the whacks coming on the same spot has him moaning hard. “Please, Mistress! Ow! Please ...I can’t... OWWW!” ‘Time to give the little lamb a rest. That certainly is a most attractive shade of crimson.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  HAVING SOLVED HER IRS CRISIS, Anaïs expected that I should also be able to manifest my desires. Whenever I saw her she’d ask, “What about your Don Juan?” grousing that I was doing something wrong by not having seduced Don. I’d come to the opposite conclusion, though. If he and I had violated our house incest taboo, it would have destabilized our commune family, and I would have missed the best two years of my life. I would have missed having genuine friendships with men and the experience of being part of a functioning family. We had embraced the ideal of community devoid of capitalism, and it had worked. Money was never a problem; we each paid less for food and shelter than before. We had the usual roommate disagreements about decorating and cleaning, and our political discussions occasionally led to shouting, especially about sexism, but I always felt a real equality and trust with the guys. I never had a steady boyfriend during my years in the Georgina house, but I never felt lonely. It was enough to be part of this intelligent, hip family with whom I shared meals and our earnest political ideals. We kept track of each other at anti-war demonstrations, boycotted grapes and Coors beer, harbored Berkeley Free Speech orator Mario Savio after his psychotic breakdown, and threw huge holiday parties that were the hot invite among the Westside’s liberal chic. On academic breaks the five of us would pile our sleeping bags into Bob’s van, bring along some joints, and take off on camping trips to Death Valley, the Santa Barbara hot springs, and the High Sierras. We rented a cabin at Lake Arrowhead where we tried acid together, confident that we would all be safe in each other’s company. We hiked, and swam in our birthday suits, and talked deep into the night under the open sky. For a latchkey kid who’d eaten alone in front of the TV and didn’t go on vacations, these were days of heaven. Then one evening I was upstairs in the ballroom working on my doctoral dissertation, which I’d changed three times already from Renaissance tragedy to Restoration comedy to women’s diaries. Actually, I had wanted to write about Anaïs’s Diaries, but my dissertation chair had objected that she was neither important enough, nor dead. He recommended I write about all women’s diaries, from the tenth-century Japanese diarists on through to the present, so I would have enough material for a “proper” PhD dissertation.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  As you progress, you will notice that once a desire is fulfilled, you almost immediately start to want something else. If the object of your desire turns out to be disappointing, you become frustrated and unsettled. You soon realize that nothing lasts long. An irritation, idea, or fantasy that seemed all-consuming a moment ago tends to pass quite quickly, and before long you are distracted by a startling noise or a sudden drop in temperature, which shatters your concentration. We humans rarely sit absolutely still but are constantly shifting our position, even when we sleep. We suddenly get it into our heads to wander into another room, make a cup of tea, or find somebody to talk to. One minute we are seething over a colleague’s inefficiency; the next we are daydreaming about our summer vacation. Gradually, as you become conscious of your changeability, you will find that you are beginning to sit a little more lightly to your opinions and desires. Your current preoccupation is not really “you,” because in a few moments you will almost certainly be obsessing about something else. This calm, dispassionate appraisal of our behavior helps us to become aware that our judgments are often biased and dependent on a passing mood, and that our endless self-preoccupation brings us into conflict with people who seem to get in our way. You will notice how easily and carelessly you inflict pain on others, sighing impatiently over a minor inconvenience, grimacing when the clerk is slow at the checkout, or raising your eyebrows in derision at what you regard as a stupid remark. But you will also see how upsetting it is when somebody behaves like that to you —and, conversely, that an unexpectedly kind or helpful act can brighten the day and change your mood in an instant. Once we know that the cause of so much human pain is within ourselves, we have the motivation to change. We will find that we are happier when we are peaceful than when we are angry or restless, and that, like the Buddha, we can make the effort to cultivate these positive emotions, noticing, for example, that when we perform an act of kindness we ourselves feel better. Mindfulness should not make us anxious. Instead of being afraid of what will happen tomorrow, or wishing it was this time last week, we can learn to live more fully in the present. Instead of allowing a past memory to cloud our present mood, we can learn to savor simple pleasures—a sunset, an apple, or a joke. Mindfulness should be something that becomes habitual, but it is not an end in itself. It should segue naturally into action and could, after a few days, be profitably combined with the next step. THE SIXTH STEP Action O n arrival at the House of Studies as a recently professed nun, I discovered that my new superior was dying of cancer.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Much the same point was made by Iris Murdoch, noted for her emphasis on the ‘calming’ and ‘whole-making’ effect of beliefs, 47 which help us to see the world as coherent and capable of sustaining meaningful human existence. Like Midgley, Murdoch recognised the importance of finding a unifying picture which coordinates the metaphysical (what reality is ) with the existential (what reality means ). Where Alex Rosenberg believes that the universe is meaningless, recommending judicious use of antidepressants such as Prozac to cope with this unsettling insight, Midgley and Murdoch argue that we can achieve mental stability by discerning the richer vision of the universe that results from interdisciplinary reflection and allows us insights into how we can live more authentically in this complex world. Moving On In this chapter, we have explored the idea of a ‘big picture’, a way of understanding this world and our place within it that is attentive to its particularities, while still attuned to the grander vision of reality that lies behind or beyond them. It creates specifically an imaginative space within which beliefs can be interconnected and enriched, enabling not simply an explanation of how our world works, but an interpretation of that world that enables its meaningful habitation. For Wittgenstein, authentic meaning and happiness arise when we think and live in accordance with something deeper and greater than ourselves – something to which we are accountable for our beliefs. ‘In order to live happily I must be in agreement with the world.’ 48 Similar views can be instanced from Chinese or Japanese philosophies of life and spiritual traditions. Confucianism, for example, stresses the importance of enacting a way of life that is in harmony with the way of the world. 49 To believe is not to be religious (though that is certainly one possible outcome); it is rather to have discerned ‘an unseen order of some kind’ or grasped an intuited scheme of things, that enables us to understand our world and live a meaningful life. The case for faith or belief in sustaining meaningful human existence does not need to be made on religious grounds, nor is religion the sole example – or even the best example – of a way of thinking that requires faith. Yet since many consider that religion is the most obvious instance of something that is characterised by beliefs, we will explore the question of specifically religious belief in the next chapter, before moving on to consider how we might assess the reliability of our beliefs. Chapter 4 Making Judgements: Belief, Explanation and Interpretation The Oxford Dictionaries ‘Word of the Year’ for 2016 was a new arrival, symptomatic of yet another shift within the public rationality of western culture – ‘post-truth’, defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  During the 1980s, they worked to forge closer connections with the military in order to strengthen this last bastion of American greatness. Not surprisingly, Falwell assisted in this effort. Working at the Reagan administration’s behest to point out the follies of détente, he frequently called on retired military men to help him make his case. But it was James Dobson who would play the most critical role in cementing ties between evangelicals and the military. In 1983, army chief of staff General John A. Wickham Jr. tapped Dobson—who had just been named the NAE’s “Layman of the Year” for his work in “saving the family”—to spearhead a campaign to inculcate evangelical “family values” within the military. Wickham, “a man of great faith,” had recommitted to faith and family in a foxhole in Vietnam, and as chief of staff he made it his priority to strengthen moral values throughout the army. He had learned of Dobson from two Republican congressmen, Indiana’s Dan Coats and Virginia’s Frank Wolf. Two years earlier, Coats and Wolf had attended a screening of Dobson’s Where’s Dad? They promoted the film and other Focus on the Family materials to fellow members of Congress and their families, and they thought Dobson’s film could be used to strengthen military families, too. Wickham agreed to bring Dobson on board. The two first met at a Pentagon fellowship breakfast, and Dobson told Wickham that he felt “a definite sense of camaraderie and Christian brotherhood with you and the other military leaders.” The two men began to work closely together with the purpose of strengthening “family values” among those serving in the military. The next year, Wickham invited Dobson to the Spring Commanders’ Conference at the Pentagon, where Dobson gave a talk on “the importance of traditional home-life values” for officers and their wives. The following year, Wickham arranged for the distribution of Dobson’s Where’s Dad? video throughout the army; all 780,000 active-duty soldiers were expected to view the film, and it served as the “building block” for the army’s entire “Family Action Plan.”25 The military scrubbed all overtly religious language from the video, but the family values ideology remained intact. Dobson believed that the fate of the family, and the nation, depended on men taking up proper leadership roles: “Folks, if America is going to survive, it will be because husbands and fathers begin to put their families at the highest level of priorities and reserve something of their time, effort and energy for leadership within their own homes.” Wickham concurred. “The readiness of our Army is directly related to the strength of our families,” he attested. “The stronger the family, the stronger the Army, because strong families improve our combat readiness.”26 Their partnership paid dividends for both men. Dobson was able to expand his influence throughout the military and tap new distribution networks (neither the army nor Dobson’s publisher would disclose how much the army paid for Where’s Dad?

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  A soothing regulatory system takes over, balancing the systems that control the response to threat and hunger, so that they can take time out and allow their bodies to repair themselves. It used to be thought that this quiescence was simply the result of the more aggressive drives zoning out, but it has now been found that this physical relaxation is also accompanied in both mammals and humans by profound and positive feelings of peace, security, and well-being. 19 Produced initially by maternal soothing, these emotions are activated by such hormones as oxytocin, which induces a sense of closeness to others and plays a crucial role in the development of parental attachment. 20 When human beings entered this peaceful state of mind, they were liberated from anxiety and could, therefore, think more clearly and have fresh insights; as they acquired new skills and had more leisure, some sought to reproduce this serenity in activities, disciplines, and rituals that were found to induce it. In Semitic languages, the word for “compassion” ( rahamanut in post-biblical Hebrew and rahman in Arabic), is related etymologically to rehem/RHM (“womb”). The icon of mother and child is an archetypal expression of human love. It evokes the maternal affection that in all likelihood gave birth to our capacity for unselfish, unconditional altruism. It may well be that the experience of teaching, guiding, soothing, protecting, and nourishing their young taught men and women how to look after people other than their own kin, developing a concern that was not based on cold calculation but imbued with warmth. We humans are more radically dependent on love than any other species. Our brains have evolved to be caring and to need care—to such an extent that they are impaired if this nurture is lacking. 21 Mother love involves affective love; it has a powerful hormonal base, but it also requires dedicated, unselfish action “all day and every day.” A mother’s concern for her child pervades all her activities. Whether she feels like it or not, she has to get up to her crying infant night after night, watch him at every moment of the day, and learn to control her own exhaustion, impatience, anger, and frustration. She is tied to her child long after he has reached adulthood; indeed, on both sides, the relationship is usually terminated only at death. Maternal love can be heartbreaking as well as fulfilling; it requires stamina, fortitude, and a strong degree of selflessness. We know from our own experience that human beings do not confine their altruistic behavior to those who carry their genes. The Confucian philosopher Mencius (c. 371–c. 289 BCE) was convinced that nobody was wholly without sympathy for other people. If you saw a child poised perilously on the edge of a well, you would immediately lunge forward to save her.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Both the Buddha and Confucius seem to have conducted discussion in a similar manner. Confucius always developed his insights in conversation with other people, because in his view we needed this friendly interaction to achieve maturity. In Chinese script, ren had two elements: the simple ideogram of a human being and two horizontal strokes indicating human relations. Ren can, therefore, be translated as “cohumanity.” 4 But this cooperation required ren ’s “softness” and “pliability,” and Confucius would probably have appreciated the ritual of the Socratic dialogue, which demanded that participants “yield” to one another instead of holding rigidly to their own opinions. In the Analects, we see him mildly scolding his pupils, pushing them to the limit of their ability but never bullying them. Easygoing, affable, and calm, Confucius listened to them carefully and was always ready to concede their point of view. He was no sage, he would protest; his only talent was an “unwearying effort to learn and unflagging patience in teaching others.” 5 The Buddha too taught his monks to converse kindly and courteously with one another. His lay disciple King Pasenadi of Kosala was extremely impressed by the friendliness of the Buddhist community, which was in marked contrast to the royal court, where everybody was on the lookout for himself and chronically quarrelsome. When he sat with his council, he complained, he was constantly interrupted and sometimes even heckled. But when he visited the Buddha, he saw monks “living together as uncontentiously as milk with water and looking at one another with kind eyes … smiling, courteous, sincerely happy … their minds remaining as gentle as wild deer.” 6 One day he told the Buddha about a conversation with his wife in which they had both admitted that nothing was more important to them than their own selves. Instead of lecturing the king on the “unskilful” nature of egotism or launching into a discussion of anatta , he entered into Pasenadi’s position, starting from where his disciple actually was rather than where the Buddha thought he ought to be. He suggested that if the king found that there was nothing dearer to him than himself, he should reflect that everybody else felt exactly the same. Therefore, the Buddha concluded, giving Pasenadi his version of the Golden Rule, “A person who loves the self should not harm the self of others.” 7 Like Socrates, the Buddha believed that knowledge was a process of self-discovery. You did not gain insight by accepting the opinions of other people but by finding the truth within yourself. Even laypeople could achieve this. The Kalamans, a tribal people living on the northernmost fringe of the Ganges basin who were trying to find their place in the new urban civilization, sent a delegation to the Buddha.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Weak or strong, of high, middle or low estate, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, alive or still to be born—May they all be perfectly happy! Let nobody lie to anybody or despise any single being anywhere . May nobody wish harm to any single creature out of anger or hatred! Let us cherish all creatures, as a mother her only child! May our loving thoughts fill the whole world, above, below, across—without limit; our love will know no obstacles—a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred or enmity . Whether we are standing or walking, sitting or lying down, as long as we are awake we should cultivate this love in our heart. This is the noblest way of living . 1 A Last Word T he Trojan War did not end with the embrace of Achilles and Priam. The fighting continued the next day and would not cease until the beautiful city of Troy was destroyed. We have moments of insight that take us beyond our self-absorption, but it is all too easy to fall back into our old ways. Yaakov’s epiphany at Peniel was the high point of his life, but he was unable to build upon it. The authors of Genesis show that his later life was characterized by a debilitating egotism. When his daughter Dinah is raped, Yaakov is more concerned about his standing in the region than with her suffering. Instead of treating all members of his family with equal affection, he shows a self-indulgent partiality to his favorite son that has almost fatal consequences. This does not mean that we end on a depressing note. It is rather a reminder that the attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project. It is not achieved in an hour or a day—or even in twelve steps. It is a struggle that will last until our dying hour. Nearly every day we will fail, but we cannot give up like Yaakov; we must pick ourselves up and start again. If you have followed the steps carefully, you have come a long way. But the process is not over. You will have to work at all twelve steps continuously for the rest of your life—learning more about compassion, surveying your world anew, struggling with self-hatred and discouragement. Never mind loving your enemies—sometimes loving your nearest and dearest selflessly and patiently will be a struggle! I hope I have shown in this book that compassion is possible, and that even in our torn and conflicted world some people have achieved heroic levels of empathy, forgiveness, and “concern for everybody.”