Disappointment

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 Erotic Mind (1995)

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

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

  Neither Charlemagne nor Lewis the Pious succeeded in subjugating Bohemia, and although the country was added to the diocese of Regensburg, the inhabitants remained pagans. But when Bohemia became a dependency of the Moravian empire and Swatopluk married a daughter of the Bohemian duke, Borziwai, a door was opened to Christianity. Borziwai and his wife, Ludmilla, were baptized, and their children were educated in the Christian faith. Nevertheless, when Wratislav, Borziwai’s son and successor, died in 925, a violent reaction took place. He left two sons, Wenzeslav and Boleslav, who were placed under the tutelage of their grandmother, Ludmilla. But their mother, Drahomira, was an inveterate heathen, and she caused the murder first of Ludmilla, and then of Wenzeslav, 938. Boleslav, surnamed the Cruel, had his mother’s nature and also her faith, and he almost succeeded in sweeping Christianity out of Bohemia. But in 950 he was utterly defeated by the emperor, Otto I., and compelled not only to admit the Christian priests into the country, but also to rebuild the churches which had been destroyed, and this misfortune seems actually to have changed his mind. He now became, if not friendly, at least forbearing to his Christian subjects, and, during the reign of his son and successor, Boleslav the Mild, the Christian Church progressed so far in Bohemia that an independent archbishopric was founded in Prague. The mass of the people, however, still remained barbarous, and heathenish customs and ideas lingered among them for more than a century. Adalbert, archbishop of Prague, from 983 to 997,130 preached against polygamy, the trade in Christian slaves, chiefly carried on by the Jews, but in vain. Twice he left his see, disgusted and discouraged; finally he was martyred by the Prussian Wends. Not until 1038 archbishop Severus succeeded in enforcing laws concerning marriage, the celebration of the Lord’s Day, and other points of Christian morals. About the contest between the Romano-Slavic and the Romano-Germanic churches in Bohemia, nothing is known. Legend tells that Methodius himself baptized Borziwai and Ludmilla, and the first missionary, work was, no doubt, done by Slavic priests, but at the time of Adalbert the Germanic tendency was prevailing. Also among the Poles the Gospel was first preached by Slavic missionaries, and Cyrillus and Methodius are celebrated in the Polish liturgy131 as the apostles of the country. As the Moravian empire under Rastislaw comprised vast regions which afterward belonged to the kingdom of Poland, it is only natural that the movement started by Cyrillus and Methodius should have reached also these regions, and the name of at least one Slavic missionary among the Poles, Wiznach, is known to history.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  This “Higher Criticism” revealed that there was no univocal message in scripture; that Moses had not written the Pentateuch, which was composed of at least four different sources; that the miracle stories were little more than a literary trope; and that King David was not the author of the psalms. A little later Charles Lyell (1797–1875) argued that the earth’s crust had not been shaped by God but by the incremental effects of wind and water; Charles Darwin (1809–82) put forward the hypothesis that Homo sapiens had evolved from the same protoape as the chimpanzee; and studies revealed that the revered philosopher Immanuel Kant had actually undercut the entire Enlightenment project by maintaining that our ways of thinking bear no relation to objective reality. In Europe the rising tide of unbelief was born not merely from skepticism but from a hunger for radical social and political change. The Germans had been enthralled by the French Revolution, but the social and political situation in their country ruled out anything similar; it seemed better to try to change the way people thought than to resort to violence. By the 1830s, a radical cadre of intellectuals had emerged who were theologically literate, were particularly incensed by the social privileges of the clergy, and saw the Lutheran Church as a bastion of conservatism. As part of this corrupt Old Regime, they argued, the churches had to go, together with the God who had supported the system. Ludwig Feuerbach’s atheistic statement The Essence of Christianity (1841) was avidly read as a revolutionary as well as a theological tract. 140 In the United States, however, the urban elite had been appalled by the violence of the French Revolution and used Christianity to promote the social reform that would hold such turbulence at bay. Lyell’s revelations had caused a brief panic, but most Americans remained convinced by Newton’s vision of a design in the universe that proved the existence of an intelligent, benign Creator. These more liberal Christians were open to the Higher Criticism and willing to “christen” Darwinism, largely because they had not yet fully absorbed its implications. Evolution was not yet the bogey in America that it would become during the 1920s. At this point the liberal elite believed that God had been at work in the process of natural selection and that humanity was gradually evolving to a greater spiritual perfection. 141 After the Civil War, demoralized by their failure to resolve the slavery question, many of the Evangelicals withdrew from public life, realizing that they had marginalized themselves politically. 142 Their religion thus became separate from their politics, a private affair—just as the Founders had hoped. Instead of bringing a Christian voice to the great questions of the day, they turned inward, and perhaps because the Bible had seemed to fail them in the nation’s darkest hour, they became preoccupied with the minutiae of biblical orthodoxy. That retreat was in some ways a positive development.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Revolutionary France did not bring liberty to the peoples of Europe, however; instead, Napoleon, the revolution’s heir, created a traditional tributary empire that threatened the imperial ambitions of Britain. In 1798, to establish a base in Suez that would cut off the British sea routes to India, Napoleon invaded Egypt and at the Battle of the Pyramids inflicted a devastating defeat on the Mamluk army: only ten French soldiers were killed, but the Mamluks lost more than two thousand men.85 With consummate cynicism, Napoleon then presented himself as the liberator of the Egyptian people. Carefully briefed by the French Institut d’Égypte, he addressed the sheikhs of the Azhar madrassa in Arabic, expressing his deep respect for the Prophet and promising to free Egypt from the oppression of the Ottomans and their Mamluk agents. Accompanying the French army was a corps of scholars, a library of modern European literature, a laboratory, and a printing press with Arabic type. The ulema were not impressed: “All this is nothing but deceit and trickery,” they said, “to entice us.”86 They were right. Napoleon’s invasion, exploiting Enlightenment scholarship and science to subjugate the region, marked the beginning of Western domination of the Middle East. To many it seemed that the French Revolution had failed. The systemic violence of Napoleon’s empire betrayed revolutionary principles, and Napoleon also reinstated the Catholic Church. For decades the hopes of 1789 were dashed by one disillusioning event after another. The glory days of the fall of the Bastille were followed by the September Massacres, the Reign of Terror, the Vendée genocide, and a military dictatorship. After Napoleon’s fall from power in 1814, Louis XVIII (the brother of Louis XVI) was returned to the throne. But the republican dream refused to die. The republic was revived for two brief periods, during the Hundred Days before Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and for a brief period between 1848 and 1852. In 1870 it was restored yet again, this time lasting until it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940. Instead of seeing the French Revolution as a failure, therefore, we should perhaps see it as the explosive start of a lengthy process. Such massive social and political change overturning millennia of autocracy cannot be achieved overnight. Revolutions take a long time. But unlike several other European countries, where aristocratic regimes were so deeply entrenched that they managed to hang on, albeit in limited form, France eventually achieved its secular republic. We should bear this long-drawn-out and painful process in mind before dismissing as failures revolutions that have taken place in our own time in Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia, for example.

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

  dark colors, although Pastor endeavors to rescue the Church from the charge of total neglect of its duty and to clear the mediaeval hierarchy and theology from the charge of being responsible for the semi-paganism of the Renaissance. The mediaeval theology had put the priesthood in the place of the individual conscience. Far from possessing any passion to rescue Italy from a religious formalism which involved the seeds of stagnation of thought and moral disintegration, the priesthood was corrupt at heart and corrupt in practice in the highest seats of Christendom.1036 Finding the clerical mind of Italy insincere and the moral condition of the Church corrupt, Humanism not only made no serious effort to amend this deplorable state but, on the contrary, it contributed to the further decadence of morals by a revival of paganism, now Epicurean, now Stoical, attested both in the lives and the writings of many of its chief leaders. Gregorovius has felt justified in pronouncing the terrible sentence that the sole end of the Italian Renaissance was paganism.1037 The worship of classical forms led to the adoption of classical ideas. There were not wanting Humanists and artists who combined culture with Christian faith, and devoted their genius to the cause of truth and virtue. Traversari strictly observed the rules of his monastic order; Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Vittorino da Feltre, Ficino, Sadoleto, Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Michelangelo and others were devout Christian believers. Traversari at first hesitated to translate classic authors and, when he did, justified himself on the ground that the more the Pagan writers were understood, the more would the excellence of the Christian system be made manifest. But Poggio, Filelfo, Valla and the majority of the other writers of the Renaissance period, such as Ariosto, Aretino, Machiavelli, were indifferent to religion, or despised it in the form they saw it manifested. Culture was substituted for Christianity, the worship of art and eloquence for reverence for truth and holiness. The Humanists sacrificed in secret and openly to the gods of Greece and Rome rather than to the God of the Bible. Yet, they were not independent enough to run the risk of an open rupture with orthodoxy, which would have subjected them to the Inquisition and death at the stake.1038 Yea, those who were most flagrant in their attacks upon the ecclesiastics of their time often professed repentance for their writings in their last days, as Boccaccio and Bandello, and applied for extreme unction before death. So it was with Machiavelli, who died with the consolations of the Church which he undermined with his pen, with the half-Pagan Pomponius Laetus of Rome and the infamous Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini, who joined to his patronage of culture the commission of every crime.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  She waited at the edge of my driveway, even though I invited her in, toeing a stray weed that had forced its way up through the concrete. I wasn’t much of a gardener. My yard looked unloved. I walked Max back up to the house and opened the door I never locked. I stopped by his water bowl and topped it off under the faucet while he watched me. Max knew my routine with women. I’d take her to dinner, I’d say things about my writing and my passion, then we’d come back here. Before I went back outside, I ran my fingers through my hair, grabbed a piece of Juicy Fruit off the counter, and stepped into the chill. She was gone. It was then I realized that I had never asked her name. I never really told her mine—not my real one, anyway. I carefully unfolded the gum from its wrapper, sticking the yellow strip between my teeth. I pocketed the piece of wax paper, scanning the street for some sign of her. I’d just lost a girl I really wanted to know. It didn’t feel good. [image file=image22.jpg] Nick’s Book She came back. Two days later. I saw her from my living room window, standing in the same spot I’d left her, staring at my house as if it were something out of a bad dream. The last time I saw her she’d been standing in sunshine, this time it was rain. She had on a white slicker, the rim of it dripping water into her face. I could see the silver streak in her hair plastered to her cheek. I watched her from the window for a few minutes, just to see what she’d do. She seemed rooted to the spot. I decided to go get her. Walking barefoot down my driveway, I sipped my coffee casually, running my tongue over the chip in the rim. A few raindrops dripped into my mug. When I came within a few feet of her I stopped and looked up at the sky. “You like this weather.” It wasn’t a question. “Yes,” she said. I nodded. “Want to come in for some coffee?” Instead of answering me she started walking up the driveway, helping herself to the door. It slammed behind her before I realized she was alone in my house. Was it my imagination, or did she make sure to step on every weed on her way up?

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  12ON THE HUMAN CONDITION NOWAn Ambiguous State of AffairsStanding at the edge of the Sea of Galilee on a sunny winter morning, down a few steps from the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus of Nazareth talked to his followers, I turn my thoughts from the long gone troubles of the Roman Empire to the current crisis of the human condition. The crisis is intriguing because, although the local conditions across the world are distinct, they elicit similar responses featuring anger and confrontation as well as appeals to isolation and a slide toward autocracy; the crisis is also discouraging because it should not be happening at all. One hoped that at least the most advanced societies had been immunized by the horrors of World War II and the threats of the Cold War and would have found cooperative ways to overcome gradually and peacefully any and all problems that complex cultures face. In retrospect, one should have been less complacent. This could be the best of times to be alive because we are awash in spectacular scientific discoveries and in technical brilliance that make life ever more comfortable and convenient; because the amount of available knowledge and the ease of access to that knowledge are at an all-time high and so is human interconnectedness at a planetary scale, as measured by actual travel, electronic communication, and international agreements for all sorts of cooperation, in science, the arts, and trade; because the ability to diagnose, manage, and even cure diseases continues to expand and longevity continues to extend so remarkably that human beings born after the year 2000 are likely to live, hopefully well, to an average of at least a hundred. Soon we will be driven around by robotic cars, saving us effort and lives because, at some point, we should have few fatal accidents. In order to judge our time as the most perfect of times, however, one would need to be quite distracted, not to mention indifferent to the plight of down-and-out fellow humans. Although scientific and technical literacy have never been higher, the public spends little time reading novels or poetry, still the surest and most rewarding way of gaining entry into the comedy and drama of existence and having an opportunity to reflect on who we are or may be. Apparently, there is no time to be spent on the nonpractical matter of just being. A part of the societies that celebrate modern science and technology and that most benefit from them appears to be spiritually bankrupt, in the secular and religious sense of the term spiritual. Judging from their unconcerned acceptance of problematic financial crises—the 2000 Internet bubble, the 2007 mortgage abuses, and the 2008 banking collapse—they appear to be morally bankrupt as well. Intriguingly, or perhaps not so, the level of happiness in the societies that have most gained from the remarkable progress of our time is either stable or declining, assuming we can trust the respective measurements.1

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

  Many modernists defined themselves as anti -Romantic. The Romantic outlook seeme d comp r omised b y its co-option into the 'bourgeois' world-just as 'modernism' appears in our day to some 'post -modernists'. We can easily see why this was so. I described in the last c hapter the collusive relation that develops between bourgeois and avant garde. The creative imagination and the horizons of emotional fulfilment that i t open s become a n indispensable p ar t o f spiritua l nourishment-even for t h ose who staff the wo rld of p ower and commerce . We see this not only in the pop ulari ty in the ' stra i ght' world o f works about 'la vie de Boheme' but also 458 · SUBTLER LANGUAGES on a more serious, philosophical level in a synthesis such as that wrought by J. S. Mill. Mill suffered deeply in his own life from the conflict between th e demands of the most austere disengaged reason and the need for a richer sense of meaning , which he ultimately found through the Romantic poets. He had somehow to integrate Bentham and Coleridge, and he put together a synthesis; which one sees in such works as Utilitarianism and the Es say on Liberty, which combines a disengaged, scientistic utilitarianism with an expressivist conception of human growth and fulfilment, and which owe s a l o t to German Romanticism, through Coleridge and Humboldt. Whether this synthesis is consistent or not is another i ssue; what is important here is that it represents one form of a widespread attempt to integrate Romantic notions o f personal fulfilment into the private lives of the denizens of a civilization run more and more by the cano n s of instrumental reason. To the extent that this synthesis becomes believable, Romantic models of fulfilment can contribute to the self-justification of this civilization. We ca n see this in a widespread justificatory notion of late capitalism today: the wheels of industry turn in order to give individuals the means for a rich and satisfying private life. Late Victorian self-congratulation turned more on a sense of the fulfilments of family life. Here Romantic notions had helped to give further body to the ideal of the family as the haven of warm sentiment in an otherwise cooling world. The Wordsworthian picture of the child, for instance, as a being of unspoilt innocence, could be taken up by Dicken s in a critical spirit against the society that left them prey to expl o itati o n and degradation; but it also could serve as a ground for self-esteem as higher living standards allowed more and more families to provide safe, respectable h omes.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Despite the protests of her lover, Rita, Theresa requested that she meet with me alone. They were already in couple’s therapy with a woman therapist, working out disagreements about parenting Rita’s daughter from a previous marriage. They also had a variety of other concerns, among them an unwelcome phenomenon known as “lesbian bed death.”9 What little sex they still had was decreasing rapidly after less then two years together. Heated discussions seemed to be getting them nowhere, although they obviously loved each other and had a marvelous closeness and a community of friends. Theresa had recently confided in Rita that fantasies of dominance and submission had always turned her on and how disappointed she was that there appeared to be no room for playing with power in their sexual relationship. She had fully expected Rita to be upset because Rita felt so strongly about equality in all things, including sex. Theresa explained, “I tried to be as diplomatic as possible when I told her I long for the sexy energy when I submit to her or feel her surrender to me. But I wouldn’t dare tell her that I dream of commanding her to get on her knees and lick my pussy, or how much I would love it if she pinned me against the bed with the full weight of her body and called me a slut.” “Why not?” I asked as if I weren’t aware of the controversy dividing lesbians about the relationship between sex and power. “Because dominance and submission is based on heterosexist models that demean women and cheapen sex,” she responded with the most amazing mixture of sarcasm and heartfelt conviction. She was unwilling to discuss this with a woman therapist, especially a lesbian, for fear that she would be scolded. Like her community, she was conflicted and doubted she could risk telling any lesbian about what really turned her on. And because this was the early 1980s, few articulate lesbian voices had yet emerged to call for sexuality to be released from the choking demands of political correctness. Fortunately, the situation has since changed. Although she was outspoken, tough, and assertive, Theresa moved and spoke with feminine grace. One of her complaints about the lesbian community was its insistence that everyone be androgynous—nobody too “butch” or too “femme.” Theresa liked being an outspoken femme and was naturally drawn to butch women like Rita. She found the contrast a turn-on despite worries she was “mimicking heterosexual roles.”10 Lesbians continue to debate the acceptable parameters for sexual fantasy and play, especially within the framework of loving relationships. This question arises for men and women of all sexual orientations: Because so many people are harmed by large and small abuses of power, and because sexualized abuses of power are especially demeaning, is there any room in relationships of mutual respect and caring for sexual power play? The question is particularly difficult for anyone whose fantasies include images of humiliation, or who has been sexually abused.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  One of the earliest Baptists in India, William Carey, wrote in 1805 that his chief object was ‘the forming of our native brethren to usefulness, fostering every kind of genius, and cherishing every gift and grace in them; in this respect we can scarcely be too lavish in our attention to their improvement. It is only by means of native preachers we can hope for the universal spread of the Gospel through this immense Continent.’ Again, one of the Protestant pioneers in East Africa, Lewis Krapf, from the Basel Seminary, who worked for the Christian Missionary Society in the 1830s, thought the training of black clergy would bring about a qualitative change. ‘When the colour of a man’s skin no longer excludes him from the office of an evangelist, the traffic in slaves will have had its knell. A black bishop and a black clergy of the Protestant church may ere long become a necessity to the civilization of Africa.’ But then he was against colonialism too: ‘Banish the thought that Europe must spread her protecting wings over East Africa, if missionary work is to prosper in that land of outer darkness. Europe would, no doubt, remove much that is mischievous and obstructive out of the way of missionary work, but she would probably set in its way as many, and perhaps still greater checks.’ Examples of similar views could be produced from all the missionary territories. The missions themselves were divided. Those, like Carey and Krapf, who identified themselves with the natives and gave high priority to creating an independent clergy and Church, included most of the ablest and most sensitive of the missionaries, but constituted only a minority of the workers in the field. Most of those who lived among the natives, both in India and Africa, were more struck by their ignorance than by their potentialities. Whereas the Acts of the Apostles, for example, while drawing attention to gentile wickedness, never refers to cultural and economic inferiority of a kind to make the reception of Christianity difficult or the emergence of fully-fledged Christians impossible, the European evangelists tended to feel themselves confronted with a different, and inferior, kind of being. The New Testament seemed to give them no guidance on this point. Charles Grant, who cannot fairly be accused of prejudice against non-European races, who was one of the prime organizers of the anti-slavery campaign, and who strongly urged the case for missions, formed a very pessimistic view during the many years he spent in India. Writing in 1797, just eight years before Carey, he admitted: ‘. . .

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Nor did it make much sense in practical terms. The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ’s nature. In Arab territories, Christianity had penetrated heathenism, but usually in Monophysite form – and neither eastern nor western Catholicism could find a compromise with the Monophysites in the sixth and seventh centuries. The Arabs, driven by drought, would almost certainly have used force to expand anyway. As it was, Mohammed, a Monophysite, conflated the theological and economic problems to evolve a form of Monophysite religion which was simple, remarkably impervious to heresy, and included the doctrine of the sword to accommodate the Arab’s practical needs. It appealed strongly to a huge element within the Christian community. The first big Islamic victory, at the River Yarmuk in 636, was achieved because 12,000 Christian Arabs went over to the enemy. The Christian Monophysites – Copts, Jacobites and so forth – nearly always preferred Moslems to Catholics. Five centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Michael the Syrian, faithfully produced the tradition of his people when he wrote: ‘The God of Vengeance, who alone is the Almighty . . . raised from the south the children of Ishmael to deliver us by them from the hands of the Romans.’ And at the time a Nestorian chronicler wrote: ‘The hearts of the Christians rejoiced at the domination of the Arabs – may God strengthen it and prosper it.’ The Monophysite Moslems and the Monophysite Christians never fused theologically. But, unlike the Jews, they did not remain racially and culturally distinct. The religious pattern froze: the Arab Moslems tolerated all Children of the Book, but would not allow their rivals to expand. Christians were in the majority only in Alexandria and certain Syrian cities. Generally, they preferred Arab-Moslem to Greek-Christian rule, though there were periods of difficulty and persecution. There was never, at any stage, a mass-demand from the Christians under Moslem rule to be ‘liberated’. Three factors combined together to produce the militant crusades. The first was the development of small-scale ‘holy wars’ against Moslems in the Spanish theatre. In 1063, Ramiro I, King of Aragon, was murdered by a Moslem; and Alexander II promised an indulgence for all who fought for the cross to revenge the atrocity; the idea was developed in 1073 by Gregory VII who helped an international army to assemble for Spanish campaigning, guaranteeing canonically that any Christian knight could keep the lands he conquered, provided he acknowledged that the Spanish kingdom belonged to the see of St Peter. Papal expansionism, linked to the colonial appetite for acquiring land, thus supplied strong political and economic motives. There was, secondly, a Frankish tradition, dating from around 800, that the Carolingian monarchs had a right and a duty to protect the Holy Places in Jerusalem, and the western pilgrims who went there.

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

  But -- and this is the worst part -- I seem to be chasing him. I’m always the one who has to go upstairs; he never comes to me. But that’s because of the rooms, and he understands why I object. Oh, I’m sure he understands more than I think . Yours, Anne M. Frank MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1944 My dearest Kitty, Contrary to my usual practice, I’m going to write you a detailed description of the food situation, since it’s become a matter of some difficulty and importance, not only here in the Annex, but in all of Holland, all of Europe and even beyond. In the twenty-one months we’ve lived here, we’ve been through a good many “food cycles” -- you’ll understand what that means in a moment. A “food cycle” is a period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. For a long time we ate nothing but endive. Endive with sand, endive without sand, endive with mashed potatoes, endive-and-mashed potato casserole. Then it was spinach, followed by kohlrabi, salsify, cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, etc., etc. It’s not much fun when you have to eat, say, sauerkraut every day for lunch and dinner, but when you’re hungry enough, you do a lot of things. Now, however, we’re going through the most delightful period so far, because there are no vegetables at all. Our weekly lunch menu consists of brown beans, split-pea soup, potatoes with dumplings, potato kugel and, by the grace of God, turnip greens or rotten carrots, and then it’s back to brown beans. Because of the bread shortage, we eat potatoes at every meal, starting with breakfast, but then we fry them a little. To make soup we use brown beans, navy beans, potatoes, packages of vege- table soup, packages of chicken soup and packages of bean soup. There are brown beans in everything, including the bread. For dinner we always have potatoes with imitation gravy and -- thank goodness we’ve still got it -- beet salad. I must tell you about the dumplings. We make them with government-issue flour, water and yeast. They’re so gluey and tough that it feels as if you had rocks in your stomach, but oh well! The high point is our weekly slice of liverwurst, and the jam on our unbuttered bread. But we’re still alive, and much of the time it still tastes good too! Yours, Anne M. Frank WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1944 My dearest Kitty, For a long time now I didn’t know why I was bothering to do any schoolwork. The end of the war still seemed so far away, so unreal, like a fairy tale. If the war isn’t over by September, I won’t go back to school, since I don’t want to be two years behind. Peter filled my days, nothing but Peter, dreams and thoughts until Saturday night, when I felt so utterly miserable; oh, it was awful.

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

  Today I packed a suitcase Wl f;the stuff I’d need in case we had to flee, but as M ther correctly noted, “Where would you go?” All of Holland is being punishe or the workers’ strikes. Martial law has been declared, and everyone is going to get one less butter coupon. What naughty children. I washed Mother’s hair this evening, which is no easy task these days. We have to use a very sticky liquid cleanser because there’s no more shampoo. Besides that, Moms had a hard time combing her hair because the family comb has only ten teeth left. Yours, Anne SUNDAY, MAY 2, 1943 When I think about our lives here, I usually come to the conclusion that we live in a paradise compared to the Jews who aren’t in hiding. All the same, later on, when everything has returned to normal, I’ll probably wonder how we, who always lived in such comfortable circumstances, could have “sunk” so low. With respect to manners, I mean. For example, the same oilcloth has covered the dining table ever since we’ve been here. After so much use, it’s hardly what you’d call spotless. I do my best to clean it, but since the dishcloth was also purchased before we went into hiding and consists of more holes than cloth, it’s a thankless task. The van Daans have been sleeping all winter long on the same flannel sheet, which can’t be washed because detergent is rationed and in short supply. Besides, it’s of such poor quality that it’s practically useless. Father is walking around in frayed trousers, and his tie is also showing signs of wear and tear. Mama’s corset snapped today and is beyond repair, while Margot is wearing a bra that’s two sizes too small, Mother and Margot have shared the same three undershorts the entire winter, and mine are so small they don’t even cover my stomach. These are all things that can be overcome, but I sometimes wonder: how can we, whose every possession, from my underpants to Father’s shaving brush, is so old and worn, ever hope to regain the position we had before the war? SUNDAY, MAY 2, 1943 The Attitude of the Annex Residents Toward the War Mr. van Daan. In the opinion of us all, this revered gentleman has great insight into politics. Nevertheless, he predicts we’ll have to stay here until the end of ‘43. That’s a very long time, and yet it’s possible to hold out until then. But who can assure us that this war, which has caused nothing but pain and sorrow, will then be over? And that nothing will have happened to us and our helpers long before that time? No one! That’s why each and every day is filled with tension.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Like other philosophers of the Axial Age, Confucius felt profoundly alienated from his time. He was convinced that the root cause of the current disorder in China was neglect of the traditional rites that had governed the conduct of the principalities for so long. In the days of Yao and Shun and, later, under the early Zhou, he believed, the Way of Heaven had been practiced perfectly and human beings had lived together harmoniously. The li had encouraged a spirit of moderation and generosity. But these days, most princes never gave the dao a second thought. They were too busy chasing after luxury and pursuing their own selfish ambitions. The old world was crumbling, without anything of equal value emerging to take its place. In Confucius’s view, the best solution was to return to the traditions that had worked so well in the past. Confucius was horrified by the constant warfare that threatened to obliterate the small principalities. Yet, to his dismay, they did not seem fully alert to the danger. Lu could not compete militarily with a large state like Qi, but instead of marshaling all its resources to meet this external threat, the baronial families—all motivated by greed and vainglory—were fighting a self-destructive civil war. If the “three families” had observed the li correctly, this state of affairs could never have come to pass. In the past, the rites had helped to curb the danger of violence and vendetta, and had mitigated the horror of battle. They must do so again. As a ritualist, Confucius had spent far more time on the study of ceremony and the classics than on the princely arts of archery and chariot driving.6 He now redefined the role of the junzi: the true gentleman should be a scholar, not a warrior. Instead of fighting for power, the junzi must study the rules of correct behavior, as prescribed by the traditional li of family, political, military, and social life. Confucius never claimed to be an original thinker. “I have transmitted what was taught to me without making up anything of my own,” he once said. “I have been faithful to and loved the ancients.”7 Only a sage, who had been blessed with divine insight, could break with tradition. “I am simply one who loves the past, and who is diligent in investigating it.”8 And yet, despite these disclaimers, Confucius was an innovator. He was bent on “reanimating the Old to gain knowledge of the New.”9 The world had changed, but there could be no fruitful development unless there was also a measure of continuity.

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

  With the initial publication "The Sentiment of Rationality," he became a full-fledged professor in psychology in the year 1889. A year later, he finally published one of his most famous works entitled Principles of Psychology. It includes many of the initial founding principles of the field of study and goes into great detail about the methodologies he used to reach conclusions. A few of the chapters he included were inspired by some of the physiology classes he taught at Harvard, as well as the anatomy lessons he gave, drawing connections between the physical and psychological workings of the body. Many of the chapters in the book were highly influential to the future of the study of psychology, with other psychologists building off of these principles. In fact, many modern principles of psychology are based off of these initial teachings and continue to be relevant in the current field of study. There were very few principles that he did not anticipate in the future of psychological study, including behaviorism and concepts such as self-esteem, biopsychology, clinical psychology, and self-concept. He also included lengthy passages in which he took the discussion in a philosophical direction, with references to Kant and Hume. It is no surprise that there was crossover with philosophy and psychology, as both dealt with interpretation of the human mind. With psychology emerging during James' lifetime, it is also no surprise that James delved into both fields of study. This publication came 12 years after his initial agreement to write the text book with Henry Holt. The book's main argument is a rejection to psychology as needing to focus on perception and the senses. This view was held by a man named Wilhelm Wundt, a scholar who studied the ideas of psychology before the field of study even had a formal name. Though the thousand page book was a major success, James was ultimately unsatisfied with the work and in fact, with the subject of psychology itself. The field of study was only just beginning at the time, and James felt that many of the ideas of psychology being published were unfounded. He never did much experimental study in the field, believing there was no one way to objectively measure things in psychology as other fields of science could. Despite this, he signed on to write a shorter, abridged version of the Principles of Psychology entitled Psychology: Briefer Course. This, too, was a major success for James, but despite this, he resigned from Harvard's psychology department. At that point, he dedicated himself full time to philosophy.

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

  . hoping. The suspense is rising to fever pitch; by no means has everyone we think of as “good” Dutch people kept their faith in the English, not everyone thinks the English bluff is a masterful strategical move. Oh no, people want deeds-great, heroic deeds. No one can see farther than the end of their nose, no one gives a thought to the fact that the British are fighting for their own country and their own people; everyone thinks it’s England’s duty to save Holland, as quickly as possible. What obligations do the English have toward us? What have the Dutch done to deserve the generous help they so clearly expect? Oh no, the Dutch are very much mistaken. The English, despite their bluff, are certainly no more to blame for the war than all the other countries, large and small, that are now occupied by the Germans. The British are not about to offer their excuses; true, they were sleeping during the years Germany was rearming itself, but all the other countries, especially those bordering on Germany, were asleep too. England and the rest of the world have discovered that burying your head in the sand doesn’t work, and now each of them, especially England, is having to pay a heavy price for its ostrich policy. No country sacrifices its men without reason, and certainly not in the interests of another, and England is no exception. The invasion, liberation and freedom will come someday; yet England, not the occupied territories, will choose the moment. To our great sorrow and dismay, we’ve heard that many people have changed their attitude toward us Jews. We’ve been told that anti-Semitism has cropped up in circles where once it would have been unthinkable. This fact has affected us all very, very deeply. The reason for the hatred is understandable, maybe even human, but that doesn’t make it right. According to the Christians, the Jews are blabbing their secrets to the Germans, denouncing their helpers and causing them to suffer the dreadful fate and punishments that have already been meted out to so many. All of this is true. But as with everything, they should look at the matter from both sides: would Christians act any differently if they were in our place? Could anyone, regardless of whether they’re Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it’s practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? It’s being said in underground circles that the German Jews who immigrated to Holland before the war and have now been sent to Poland shouldn’t be allowed to return here. They were granted the right to asylum in Holland, but once Hitler is gone, they should go back to Germany. When you hear that, you begin to wonder why we’re fighting this long and difficult war. We’re always being told that we’re fighting for freedom, truth and justice!

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

  But their views had t h eir own impact and contributed to creating a new climate of thought, one in which the original Romantic vision of s p iritualized nature was not as easily believable. The continuing develop ment of a natural scientific view of nature and the 'disenchantment' brought about by industrial c ivilization undoubtedly also contributed to this change. In a sense, the shoe now began to be on the other foot. For those who stood in the tradition affirming the goodness of nature, it became necessary t o find new lan g u a ges to say what they wanted to say. This was the more ne cessary i n t ha t t he n e w articulations of fallen nature, being partly or wholl y o utside the C h rist i an t heologica l f ramework, wer e much more stark and 448 • SUBTLER L ANG U A GE S total. Within Christian theology, it is never possible to escape altogether th e notion that the creation is ultimately good. The semi-Manichaean outlook of Baudelaire was less restrained in this respect, and the theory of Schopenhauer not at all. But the position which affirms the goodness of n a ture isn't a mar g inal o ne. It has all the depth in our civilization of the combined weight of Christianity and Platonism. It is the basis of the most widespre ad secular ethics and political views, those which descend from the Enlightenment as well as those i n full continuit y with the original Romantics. And it is th e necessary basis for a family of life goods which is widely recognized in our civilization, those related to benevolence. The pessimists seemed to be undermining the grounds on which universal benevolenc e was seen as a good, the value of human life and happiness. In different ways, all three of the developments away from Ro m an t icis m, while exalting art and our transfigurative powers, can raise questions about the goodness of being. Thi s is obvious for Baudelaire and Schopenhauer; but it can also arise with naturalistic realism, not because of any intention to paint nature and mankind as bad, but just because the stark rejection of any spiritual dimension ma y easily engender a sense that the affirmation is insufficiently based, that there isn't that much to affirm after all. For those committed to the goodness of being and benevolence-and plainly that stil l means the vast majority of us in this civilization-this can open a crisis, a cri sis o f affirmation. One can try to meet this crisis by returning to the older creeds: either a Christian faith, or some Enlightenment doctrine of reason and freedom, or a Romantic-insp ired view of nature as a source.

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

  If the truth is disappointing, I won’t be able to bear it.” A little later I felt hopeful and full of expectation again, though my tears were still flowing -- on the inside. Yours, Anne M. Frank SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1944 What happens in other people’s houses during the rest of the week happens here in the Annex on Sundays. While other people put on their best clothes and go strolling in the sun, we scrub, sweep and do the laundry. Eight o’clock. Though the rest of us prefer to sleep in, Dussel gets up at eight. He goes to the bathroom, then downstairs, then up again and then to the bathroom, where he devotes a whole hour to washing himself. Nine-thirty. The stoves are lit, the blackout screen is taken down, and Mr. van Daan heads for the bathroom. One of my Sunday morning ordeals is having to lie in bed and look at Dussel’s back when he’s praying. I know it sounds strange, but a praying Dussel is a terrible sight to behold. It’s not that he cries or gets sentimental, not at all, but he does spend a quarter of an hour -- an entire fifteen minutes -- rocking from his toes to his heels. Back and forth, back and forth. It goes on forever, and if I don’t shut my eyes tight, my head starts to spin. Ten-fifteen. The van Daans whistle; the bathroom’s free. In the Frank family quarters, the first sleepy faces are beginning to emerge from their pillows. Then everything happens fast, fast, fast. Margot and I take turns doing the laundry. Since it’s quite cold downstairs, we put on pants and head scarves. Meanwhile, Father is busy in the bathroom. Either Margot or I have a turn in the bathroom at eleven, and then we’re all clean. Eleven-thirty. Breakfast. I won’t dwell on this, since there’s enough talk about food without my bringing the subject up as well. Twelve-fifteen. We each go our separate ways. Father, clad in overalls, gets down on his hands and knees and brushes the rug so vigorously that the room is enveloped in a cloud of dust. Mr. Dussel makes the beds (all wrong, of course), always whistling the same Beethoven violin concerto as he goes about his work. Mother can be heard shuffling around the attic as she hangs up the washing. Mr. van Daan puts on his hat and disappears into the lower regions, usually followed by Peter and Mouschi. Mrs. van D. dons a long apron, a black wool jacket and overshoes, winds a red wool scarf around her head, scoops up a bundle of dirty laundry and, with a well-rehearsed washerwoman’s nod, heads downstairs. Margot and I do the dishes and straighten up the room. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23,1944 My dearest Kitty, The weather’s been wonderful since yesterday, and I’ve perked up quite a bit. My writing, the best thing I have, is coming along well.

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

  And these, of cour se , only came to pass b ecause landowners began to function like entrepreneurs . But he doesn't seem to hav e had any particular brie f for large-scale commer c e and industry. But his ethical outlook was plainly an endorsement of th e seriou s, productive, pacific im prover of any class a nd against the aristocratic , caste-conscious pursuit of honour and glo ry throu g h sel f-display and the warrior virtues. Locke continued and further de veloped the inversion of the old hierarch y of values wh ich the ethic of ordinar y life entailed. His attitude towards science echoes that of Bacon: those whose discoveries have cont r ib uted to human welfare deserve praise over those who have merel y added ne w general maxims or wide-ranging hypotheses of the traditional, Aristotelian science. "For, notw ithstanding these lea r ned Disputants, these all-knowin g Doctors, it was to th e unscholastick Statesman, that the Governments of the W orld owed their Peace, Defence, and Liberties; and from the illite r ate and contemned Mechanick (a Name of Disgrace) that they received the im p rove ments of useful Arts" (3.10.9). As with Bacon, a judgement of intellectual v alue goes hand in hand with an inversion of social prestige. This was how it ought to be, but in fact it is rarel y like that. Men are d iverted from this path by sloth, covetousness, passion, ambition. Not only do they fail to li ve up to thi s i deal; t h ey fr eque n t l y fai l to r ecognize i t, mis l ed as they are b y their superstitions, b y bad education and cu stoms, b y partisan spirit, and by their own bad passions . Locke had certainly shed the belief in o r iginal sin in anything like its orthodox sense that he had inherited from his Puritan background. 22 But he had substituted a naturalized varian t, an inherent penchant of human beings to egocentrici ty a nd personal power. This was innate: we see it in v ery young children. We see Children as soon almost as they are born (I am sure long before they can speak) cry, grow peevish, sullen, out of humour, for nothing but to have their Wills. They would have t heir Desires submitted to b y others; they contend for a ready compliance from all about them ... Another thing wherein they shew their lo v e of Dominion , is t h eir d esire to have things to be theirs; They would have Propriety and possession, plea si ng themselves with the Power whic h that seems to give, and the Right they thereby have, to dispose of them, as th ey please.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  92 The first noble collected tribute from the member states and supervised common defense; even though he still recognized the sovereignty of the Zhou monarchy, he had in fact replaced the king. This league did not survive, however. After King Huan’s death in 643, his sons fought for succession, and Qi never fully recovered from this civil war. Chu resumed its aggression and the prince of Jin organized a new confederation, but in 597 Chu defeated the league. It seemed as though brute force had triumphed over moderation. But in the face of the growing menace of Chu, the old principalities clung even more closely to their rituals and customs. They could not compete with the military power of the new states, so they turned to diplomacy and persuasion. But the larger peripheral states were beginning to turn away from the ideals of concord and “yielding.” People had noticed that even though the states had bound themselves to the league with the most ferocious oaths, the spirits failed to punish defectors; indeed, states that remained true to the covenant suffered most. 93 A growing skepticism was beginning to undermine old assumptions. In Israel, the seventh century was a watershed that saw the beginnings of the religion of Judaism. Hezekiah had left a grim legacy. Determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes, his son Manasseh (687– 642) remained a loyal vassal of Assyria, and Judah prospered during his long reign. 94 The Assyrians did not expect their allies to worship Asshur, their national god, but inevitably, some of their religious symbols became highly visible. Manasseh was not interested in the worship of Yahweh alone. He rebuilt the rural shrines that Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars to Baal, brought an effigy of Asherah into the Jerusalem temple, set up statues of the divine horses of the sun at the entrance of the temple, and instituted child sacrifice outside Jerusalem. 95 The biblical historian was appalled by these developments, but few of Manasseh’s subjects would have found them very surprising, since, as archaeologists have discovered, many had similar icons in their own homes. 96 Nevertheless, there was widespread unrest in the rural districts, which had been devastated during the Assyrian invasions. 97 Even though Hezekiah’s nationalist policies had been so disastrous, some may have harbored dreams of a golden age when their forefathers had lived peacefully in their land, without the constant threat of enemy invasion and domination by foreign powers. This smoldering discontent erupted after the death of Manasseh.