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 Historical Jesus (Great Courses) (2000)

  teachings of Jesus. Even though every single one of these prophets of doom, from the second century to the twentieth century, has been incontrovertibly wrong about their predictions, the business of predicting the end of the age continues to be alive and well. 3. I would like to mention a couple of the more interesting figures, starting closer to our own time. The year 1988 was supposed to be the year the world ended. Proof was given in a widely distributed and remarkably influential booklet entitled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Occur in 1988 by Edgar Whisenant, a former NASA rocket engineer. A. True to its title, the book enumerated biblical and logical reasons why 1988 would be the year that history would begin to end, and how. 1. Sometime during the Jewish festival of Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 1 1- 13, 1988, Jesus Christ would return from heaven to remove his followers from earth (the “rapture”), before a seven-year period of cataclysmic disaster on earth (the “tribulation”). 2. The tribulation would begin at “sunset 3 October 1 988,” when the Soviet Union invaded Israel and began World War III. The crises that ensued would lead to the rise of an agent of Satan who would lead millions away from God and declare himself to be divine. 3. He would then try to take over the world’s governments, leading to a thermonuclear war on Oct. 4, 1995, which would devastate the United States (“you can walk from Little Rock to Dallas over ashes only”). The world would be thrown into nuclear winter (temperatures would never rise above -150° F), and the food and water supply would be eliminated. D. Even though the book may sound like a quaint bit of Christian science fiction, it was read as Gospel truth by a surprising number of sincere and devout Christians. Within months, over 2 million copies were sold. 1 . Many Christians pointed out that such precision is unbiblical, because Jesus is recorded as saying, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matt. 24:36). 2. Whisenant was unfazed. After all, he had not predicted “the day and hour” of the end, just the week. E. To buttress his “88 Reasons,” Whisenant used biblical quotations that co-literalists had a hard time refuting, e.g.: From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. (Matt. 24:32-34) ©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 1 .

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

  In the chapter on Sensation sew that many illusions commonly ranged under this are, physiologically considered, of another sort altogether, and that associative processes, strictly so called, · nothing to do with their production. Illusions of the Second Type. We may now turn to illusions of the second of the two type discriminated on page 86. In this type we perceive a wrong object because our mind is full of the thought of it time, and any sensation which is in the least degree connected with it touches off, as it were, a train already laid and gives us a sense that the object is really before us. Here is a familiar example: "If a sportsman, while shooting woodcock in cover, sees a bird ;the size and color of a woodcock get up and fly through the foliage, not having time to see more than that it is a bird of such a size and color, he immediately supplies by inference the other qualities of a woodcock, and is afterwards disgusted to find that he has shot a thrush. I have done so myself, and could hardly believe that the thrush was the bird I had fired at, so complete was my mental supplement to my visual perception." [105] As with game, so with enemies, ghosts, and the like Anyone waiting in a dark place and expecting or fearing strongly a certain object will interpret any abrupt sensation to mean that object's presence. The boy playing 'I spy,' the criminal skulking from his pursuers, the superstitious person hurrying through the woods or past the church-yard at midnight, the man lost in the woods, the girl who tremulously has made an evening appointment with her swain, all are subject to illusions of sight and sound which make their hearts beat till they are dispelled. Twenty times a day the lover, perambulating the streets with his preoccupied fancy, will think he perceives his idol's bonnet before him. The Proof-reader's Illusion. I remember one night in Boston, whilst waiting for a, 'Mount Auburn' car to bring me to Cambridge, reading most distinctly that name upon the signboard of a car on which (as I afterwards learned) 'North Avenue' was painted. The illusion was so vivid that I could hardly believe my eyes had deceived me. All reading is more or less performed in this way. "Practised novel—or newspaper-readers could not possibly get on so fast if they had to see accurately every single letter of every word in order to perceive the words. More than half of the words come out of their mind, and hardly half from the printed page. Were this not so, did we perceive each letter by itself, typographic errors in well-known words would never be overlooked. Children, whose ideas are not yet ready enough to perceive words at a glance, read them wrong if they are printed wrong, that is, right according to the way of printing.

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

  Wingman has decided that we need to end this kooky experiment with smart content and go back to what works: really basic stuff, the kind of thing that people who know almost nothing about the Internet would be likely to search for on Google. That’s what Mary wants to read, and that’s what we are going to give her. HubSpot’s blog is already packed with low-end content, like “12 Tips for Doing Awesome Email Marketing” and “How to Make Chrome Your Default Web Browser.” Wingman says we need to ratchet things down even further. There is an even lower level whose depths we have not yet plumbed. Basically Wingman is arguing in favor of making the blog dumber. It’s fascinating, in a perverse way. Wingman has one goal: to get leads. If our software analytics were to indicate that our best conversion rate comes from publishing a blog post that just says the word dogshit over and over again, like this: dogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshit dogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshit dogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshit dogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshitdogshit then Wingman would publish that post. Every day. Three times a day. Twelve times a day, if the software said twelve works better than three. It simply, truly, does not matter to him. Wingman isn’t a bad guy. He’s just a guy who has a number to hit. My heart sinks. I’m not angry. I’m disappointed. I realize that there probably is a legitimate business to be made from churning out crappy content. But that is not something you hire the former technology editor of Newsweek to write for you. What Wingman is really telling me is that whatever Halligan promised me, it isn’t going to happen. Part of me just wants to quit. Instead, I decide to be a good soldier and go along with Wingman’s directive. Soon I am writing articles like “What Is CRM?” and “What Is CSS?” aimed at the reading level of Marketing Mary. It’s a long way from writing features on supercomputing and artificial intelligence, or interviewing Bill Gates for Newsweek. In a way it’s humiliating. I hate to think that people who knew me will see these articles with my name on them. I came to HubSpot with grandiose ideas about creating a new kind of corporate journalism. I was going to give speeches and write books and become a big-shot brand evangelist marketing guru. Instead, at the age of fifty-two, I’m writing lead-generation copy. In the world of publishing, lead-gen is about as low as you can go, a step down from writing copy for clothing catalogs. It’s hack work.

• From The Historical Jesus (Great Courses) (2000)

  D. Many, perhaps most, people today assume Jesus had thousands of avid followers and only a few powerful enemies. This was not the case. II. Traditions of Jesus’ rejection cover most of those with whom he came in contact: his own family, his townspeople, people living in surrounding towns and villages, the Jewish religious leaders, the aristocracy in Jerusalem, and of course, the Roman overlords. A. The tradition that Jesus’ own family rejected him is firmly rooted. This may seem hard to accept for those who know about the annunciation story in the Gospel of Luke (where the angel Gabriel informs Mary who her son will be). This story, of course, cannot pass the criteria of independent attestation or dissimilarity. 1. The theme of Jesus’ rejection by his family is attested in multiple and independent traditions and is not the sort of thing later Christians would be likely to make up. It passes our criteria. 2. Early in his ministry, according to our first account, Jesus’ family tried to seize him from the public eye because they thought he had 30 ©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership gone mad (Mark 3:21); he in turn spurned them when they came to see him (Mark 3:3 1-35). 3. His brothers are said in a later source not to have believed in him (John 7:5), and he had no relatives among his closest followers. Paul implies that Jesus’ brother James became a believer only after Jesus’ resurrection (1 Cor. 15:7). 4 . Only the latest Gospel, John, tells us what Mary thought of him. It says that she was with him till the end, although the Book of Acts indicates that she was one of the early believers immediately after the resurrection (John 19:25-27; Acts 1:14). B. Jesus was clearly rejected in his own hometown in Nazareth. 1. This is shown by the rejection scene recorded in our earliest narrative, Mark 6:1-6 (cf. Matt. 13:53-58), and amplified by independent traditions in Luke 4: 16-30. 2 . This rejection is supported even more firmly by Jesus’ widely attested saying “a prophet is not without honor except in his own country” (Mark 6:4; John 4:44; “in his own village,” G. Thom. 31). In the earliest form of the saying, Jesus indicates that the prophet is also dishonored “among his own relatives and in his own house,” suggesting that Jesus was not well received at home. C. Other towns and villages of Galilee also seem to have rejected Jesus. 1. This is best seen in Q materials, which are early and appear to pass the criterion of dissimilarity:

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

  James contended that studying religious experience should hold higher precedence over studying different religious institutions. He even said that psychologists should conform to this notion in regards to studying the mind. So deep was his interest in pragmatism that he launched a series of lectures at the University of California, one of which was called "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results." This lecture would attempt to make pragmatism a major intellectual movement in America. He followed up on this lecture with a book called Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals. As the end of the century approached, James' health began to wane and his physical condition was becoming worse. At Harvard, he was overworked and his physical condition was continuously jeopardized by this. He had a collapse in 1899 from stress. During his recovery, he spent the time studying religious experiences and producing a new series of lectures entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience which would be published and then presented at Scotland's University of Edinburgh between 1901 and 1902. This work was another success for James, though he was mildly unsatisfied with it. He believed that he had not done enough philosophical analysis in the work. Towards the end of his career, James began dedicating more and more time to writing material and delivering lectures in an attempt to develop a unique philosophy all his own. These works were collected into four printed volumes. By 1906, he was spending significant time outside of Harvard, attaining a visitor professorship in California's Stanford University and occasionally lecturing in San Francisco. He also continued to make lectures based around pragmatism, delivering them to audiences in Boston as well as universities like Columbia. These lectures were collected and published in the year 1907 in a book entitled Pragmatism. The same year, he retired from Harvard as a result of a fear that he would not be able to finish his own unique philosophical system before dying. In addition to these fears, he also suffered from physical ailments such as angina. After some lectures he presented in England, he had critics attacking him for some of his pragmatic principles. In a defense of his principles, he created a rebuttal with a volume of essays called The Meaning of Truth, which was published in the year 1909. In 1910, he started work on another book with the title Some Problems of Philosophy. He had problems completing the book due to a weak heart, making it difficult to do even the smallest tasks. Before he could complete this latest book, he died in August of 1910 from a number of physical complications and conditions. The following decade, many of his unpublished material was collected and published posthumously in books such as Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), The Letters of William James (1920) and Collected Essays and Reviews (1920).

• From The Historical Jesus (Great Courses) (2000)

  D. Just over a century before that, we find the writings of the apostle Paul, which later came to form part of the New Testament — the earliest Christian writings of any kind that we have. Paul tells his followers that Christ will return from heaven in a mighty act of judgment and remove his followers from the world, both those who had previously died and, in Paul’s words, “we who are still alive.” E. These are just a few of the many, many prophets that we know about. 1. Most of those who have predicted the imminent end of all things are lost in the shrouds of history. 2. All these predictors of the end have two things in common: Every one of them was completely wrong, and every one of them could cite the words of Jesus in support of his or her views. Let me conclude by telling you my point in making this brief survey. A. My point is not to stress the fact that Jesus got it wrong. B. Instead, I think that his earliest followers got something right. 1. I have to admit to being a bit hesitant to make this point, given the fact that these lectures have been completely based on a historical study of Jesus rather than on any theological set of beliefs — mine, yours, or someone else’s. 2. To paraphrase the Hebrew prophet Amos, I myself am neither a theologian nor the son of a theologian. My concerns in these lectures are not theological. If someone were interested in theology, however, he or she might want to take heed of how the early Christians handled their traditions about Jesus. C. One of the frustrations of the historian of ancient Christianity is that the early Christians did not preserve their traditions about Jesus intact, but modified them for new situations in which they found themselves. 1. As we have seen, Christians had no qualms about making Jesus relevant for new situations, instead of trying to pretend that what was suitable in one context was suitable for another. 2. Their willingness, even eagerness, to do so creates problems for historians who want to know what Jesus actually said and did. D. But what causes such problems for historians may create great possibilities for theologians — or even believers — who are interested in something more than the plain facts of history. 1. Those who refuse to recognize that every new situation is a new context and that new contexts require a rethinking of old traditions are committing the same error as those who refuse to recognize that Jesus must be understood in his own context. 2. We can’t pretend that Jesus lived in our context and interpret his words in light of what they might mean today. ©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 61 3. We also can’t pretend that we live in Jesus’ context and that his words are immediately relevant to a different situation.

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

  Trotsky is a loose cannon, she says. His emails are over the top and abusive, unprofessional and unacceptable. No boss should communicate to an employee in this way, she says. I tell her about what happened in Los Angeles, with the email from Trotsky asking why I wanted to work at HubSpot, then the harassment he delivered over that tiny joke on Facebook, and his warnings about me being as close to fired as you can get. I tell her that I suspect Trotsky is just trying to make me miserable and drive me out of the company. “You could go to HR and report him,” she says. “Show them the emails he’s sending you.” “I know,” I say, “but I don’t know if I trust HR. My guess is they won’t do anything to Trotsky, but they’ll tell him that I complained, and that will only piss him off even more. He’ll ramp up the harassment.” “So try to talk to him,” my friend suggests. “You guys were friends at one point, right? You don’t have to make a big deal of out of it. Just say hey, maybe we can get a coffee and clear the air and do a kind of reset. Keep it casual.” It could be that Trotsky is just stressed out. The IPO has everyone on edge. Everyone is under pressure to make sure things go well at Inbound. In addition, Trotsky’s wife just had a baby. Maybe he’s not getting much sleep and his nerves are frayed. In the end, Inbound goes well. Julia flies up for the day, and she’s terrific on stage and lovely to everyone. I moderate a panel with a bunch of HubSpot board members, who thank me afterward for doing a great job. I feel like I’ve redeemed myself. The week after Inbound, when we all get back to the office, I stop by Trotsky’s desk and ask him if we could grab a coffee at some point and have a talk about how things have been going. “My calendar is online,” he snaps. “Go find a time that works and send me a calendar invite.” At the appointed date and time, we set out for Starbucks but end up taking a long walk around a little canal near the office. Trotsky tells me he’s unhappy at HubSpot. Cranium is riding him, hard. The IPO is looking like a bust. He only took this job because he wanted to make a score on the stock. Word is that HubSpot is trying to price the shares in the range of $19 to $21. That’s above the strike price that Trotsky and I both have—our options are priced at $13. But Trotsky says it’s not enough. “Unless the stock gets to $40, it’s not even worth it for me to stay here,” he says.

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

  I add this last word, because his French freedom of speech came as pure spring water to my thirsty soul. A dozen of us were grouped about him one day, talking when one student with a remarkable gift for vague thought and highfalutin’ rhetoric, wanted to know what Taine thought of the idea that all the worlds and planets and solar systems were turning round one axis and moving to some divine fulfillment (accomplissement). Taine, who always disliked windy rhetoric, remarked quietly: “The only axis in my knowledge round which everything moves to some accomplishment is a woman’s cunt (le con d’une femme).” They laughed, but not as if the bold word had astonished them. He used it when it was needed, as I have often heard Anatole France use it since, and no one thought anything of it. In spite of the gorgeous installation of his brunette, Ned at the end of a week found out how blessed are those described in Holy Writ, who fished all night and caught nothing. He had caught a dreadful gonorrhea and was forbidden spirits or wine or coffee till he got well. Exercise, too, was only to be taken in small doses, so it happened that when I went out, he had to stay at home and the outlook on the rue St. Jacques was anything but exhilarating. This naturally increased his desire to get about and see things, and as soon as he began to understand spoken French and to speak it a little, he chafed against the confinement and a room without a bath; he longed for the centre, for the opera and the Boulevards, and nothing would do but we should take rooms in the heart of Paris: he would borrow money from his folks, he said. Like a fool I was willing and so we took rooms one day in a quiet street just behind the Madeleine, at ten times the price we were paying Marguerite. I soon found that my money was melting; but the life was very pleasant. We often drove in the Bois, went frequently to the Opera, the theatres and music-halls and appraised, too, the great restaurants, the Café Anglais and the Trois Frères as if we had been millionaires. As luck would have it, Ned’s venereal disease and the doctors became a heavy additional expense that I could ill afford. Suddenly one day I realised that I had only six hundred dollars in the bank: at once I made up my mind to stop and make a fresh start. I told my resolution to Bancroft: he asked me to wait: “he had written to his people for money”, he said, “he would soon pay his debt to me”; but that wasn’t what I wanted: I felt that I had got off the right road because of him and was angry with myself for having wasted my substance in profligate living and worst of all in silly luxury and brainless showing off.

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

  employees though business was slow. She worked like a woman who had known how to go hungry. Leeny didn’t say a word as I pointed out my new mattress. Her Secret powder fresh deodorant mingled with sweat and Irish Spring soap as she set it on the flat cart. “Tet me help you with that,” I said as the wheels fell silent by the back of my Suburban. “T got it, hon.” Her voice was high and girlish. She tossed the mattress in like a throw pillow. She gave me a strangely sweet smile that seduced me to smile back. “Fuck.” My voice came back in a long echo. “Fuck!” My most recent painting was a true piece of shit. I’d known it all along, but I worked on like it would somehow resolve itself. It didn’t. “Goddamn it!” I rubbed my fingers hard into my scalp. I had a new mattress, but little else. I was out of canvases. I had a sale coming in another week, and just enough crap in the improvised kitchen I had set up at the end of the large main room for sustenance. The side effect of less important pursuits like buying mattresses and food was that sometimes there wasn’t enough left to do the important thing. Paint. I started rifling through my stash of finished paintings in the hope that a blank canvas was mixed in. In the musty storeroom, I unearthed the remnants of my red period, back when I used pastels and large, toothy papers. Back then I obsessed with the figure and a classic technique. I smiled as I recalled the pleasure of having a model in front of me as soft waves of Technicolor dust rippled down the paper. Little Leeny popped into my head. The nametag said “Colleen”. She wore loose navy coveralls and scuffed steel-toed boots. Her long hands sported chipped cherry red polish on stubby nails that punctuated long, strong hands. I figured her to be in her mid twenties. What skin I could see was porcelain pale, smooth with a satin shimmer. Strong but girlish, sturdy but fair, contrasting eyes and hair. I still had a big box of pastels and a small stack of paper stashed somewhere. I decided to revive my red period. Little Leeny grinned skeptically. “Are you serious? You want to paint men? “For real.” I forced one side of my mouth to curl into a neo realistic smile. Canvas Back 381 “How much?” “Ten bucks an hour.” “How many hours?” “T dunno. At least three or four.” Leeny’s eyes lifted up to the Spartan roof of Ollie’s. “This is a joke, right?” “T don’t joke much.” “Oh? How ’bout fifteen bucks an hour.” Up to this point I had assumed Little Leeny wasn’t terribly intelligent. I realized how wrong I was as I measured the depth of her eyes. “How about twelve.” “What the hell, you’ve got a deal. Where and when?” She shook my hand like a longshoreman.

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

  But at the time I was indignant with his deafness and out of temper with Smith because he didn’t notice it and seemed somehow to make himself cheap. When we went away, I cried: “The old fool is as deaf as a post!” “Ah, that was the explanation then of his stereotyped smile and peculiar answers”, cried Smith, “how did you divine it?” “He put his hand to his ear more than once”, I replied. “So he did”, Smith exclaimed, “how foolish of me not to have drawn the obvious inference!” It was in this fall, I believe, that the Gregorys went off to Colorado. I felt the loss of Kate a good deal at first; but she had made no deep impression on my mind and the new life in Philadelphia and my journalistic work left me but little time for regrets and as she never wrote to me, following doubtless her mother’s advice, she soon drifted out of my memory. Moreover, Lily was quite as interesting a lover and Lily too had begun to pall on me. The truth is, the fever of desire in youth is a passing malady that intimacy quickly cures. Besides, I was already in pursuit of a girl in Philadelphia who kept me a long time at arm’s length, and when she yielded I found her figure commonplace and her sex so large and loose that she deserves no place in this chronicle. She was modest, if you please, and no wonder. I have always since thought, that modesty is the proper fig-leaf of ugliness. In the spring of this year 1875, I had to return to Lawrence on business connected with my hoardings. In several cases the owners of the lots refused to allow me to keep up the hoardings unless they had a reasonable share in the profits. Finally I called them all together and came to an amicable agreement to divide twenty-five percent of my profit among them, year by year. I had also to go through my examination and get admitted to the Bar. I had already taken out my first naturalization papers and Judge Bassett of the District Court appointed the lawyers Barker and Hutchings to examine me. The examination was a mere form: they each asked me three simple questions: I answered them and we adjourned to the Eldridge House for supper and they drank my health in champagne. I was notified by Judge Bassett that I had passed the examination and told to present myself for admission on the 15th of June, I think, 1875.

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

  We do not know whether he accomplished the object of his mission.142 He left no information about his route, whether be passed through Switzerland or through the Tyrol, nor about the sublime scenery of the Alps and the lovely scenery of Italy.143 The beauties of nature made little or no impression upon the Reformers, and were not properly appreciated before the close of the eighteenth century.144 Zwingli and Calvin lived on the banks of Swiss lakes and in view of the Swiss Alps, but never allude to them; they were absorbed in theology and religion. In his later writings and Table-Talk, Luther left some interesting reminiscences of his journey. He spoke of the fine climate and fertility of Italy, the temperance of the Italians contrasted with the intemperate Germans, also of their shrewdness, craftiness, and of the pride with which they looked down upon the "stupid Germans" and "German beasts," as semi-barbarians; he praised the hospitals and charitable institutions in Florence; but he was greatly disappointed with the state of religion in Rome, which he found just the reverse of what he had expected. Rome was at that time filled with enthusiasm for the renaissance of classical literature and art, but indifferent to religion. Julius II., who sat in Peter’s chair from 1503 to 1513, bent his energies on the aggrandizement of the secular dominion of the papacy by means of an unscrupulous diplomacy and bloody wars, founded the Vatican Museum, and liberally encouraged the great architects and painters of his age in their immortal works of art. The building of the new church of St. Peter with its colossal cupola had begun under the direction of Bramante; the pencil of Michael Angelo was adorning the Sixtine chapel in the adjoining Vatican Palace with the pictures of the Prophets, Sibyls, and the last judgment; and the youthful genius of Raphael conceived his inimitable Madonna, with the Christ-child in her arms, and was transforming the chambers of the Vatican into galleries of undying beauty. These were the wonders of the new Italian art; but they had as little interest for the German monk as the temples and statues of classical Athens had for the Apostle Paul.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  They regard social conflict as only an expedient of the moment “until broader principles of education and co-operation can be established.” {8} Anarchism, with an uncoerced and voluntary justice, seems to be either an explicit or implicit social goal of every second social scientist. Modern religious idealists usually follow in the wake of social scientists in advocating compromise and accommodation as the way to social justice. Many leaders of the church like to insist that it is not their business to champion the cause of either labor or capital, but only to admonish both sides to a spirit of fairness and accommodation. “Between the far-visioned capitalism of Owen Young and the hard-headed socialism of Ramsay MacDonald,” declares Doctor Justin Wroe Nixon, “there is probably no impassable gulf. The progress of mankind...depends upon following the MacDonalds and Youngs into those areas.” {9} Unfortunately, since those lines were written the socialism of MacDonald has been revealed as not particularly hard-headed, and the depression has shown how little difference there really is between Mr. Young’s “new capitalism” and the older and less suave types of capitalism. What is lacking among all these moralists, whether religious or rational, is an understanding of the brutal character of the behavior of all human collectives, and the power of self-interest and collective egoism in all intergroup relations. Failure to recognise the stubborn resistance of group egoism to all moral and inclusive social objectives inevitably involves them in unrealistic and confused political thought. They regard social conflict either as an impossible method of achieving morally approved ends or as a momentary expedient which a more perfect education or a purer religion will make unnecessary. They do not see that the limitations of the human imagination, the easy subservience of reason to prejudice and passion, and the consequent persistence of irrational egoism, particularly in group behavior, make social conflict an inevitability in human history, probably to its very end. The romantic overestimate of human virtue and moral capacity, current in our modern middle-class culture, does not always result in an unrealistic appraisal of present social facts. Contemporary social situations are frequently appraised quite realistically, but the hope is expressed that a new pedagogy or a revival of religion will make conflict unnecessary in the future. Nevertheless a considerable portion of middle-class culture remains quite unrealistic in its analysis of the contemporary situation. It assumes that evidences of a growing brotherliness between classes and nations are apparent in the present moment. It gives such arrangements as the League of Nations, such ventures as the Kellogg Pact and such schemes as company industrial unions, a connotation of moral and social achievement which the total facts completely belie. “There must,” declares Professor George Stratton, a social psychologist, “always be a continuing and widening progress.

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

  Then she fell in love with a musician, a saxophone player she met at a speakeasy named Slim Fats. I knew what a speakeasy was because I had seen Public Enemy Number One. She soon found out Slim Fats was already deeply in love with someone else: his sister. All Aunt Zippy’s spells and incantations were not strong enough to break that tie. When Slim Fats left her, she went out of her mind and was sick for a long, long time. Boss Tweed arranged for a special maid to be with her night and day and bathe her in milk. Houdini visited and fed her creampuffs with his magician’s hands. Eventually Zippy recovered, only to find she had lost her powers as witches do when they fall in love. After a miserable year of doing nothing but crossword puzzles, one of her powers came back, that of clairvoyance. She wanted to return to work right away and help women who like her had suffered disappointments in love. She moved out of Manhattan to one of her properties, a tenement on Jerome Avenue high on top of a hill in the Bronx. Once again, Aunt Zippy took the top floor with its many windows because a witch must be able to see the nighttime sky, the moon and the stars. A few phone calls were all it took and soon she was back in business, women clients only. Gradually, Aunt Zippy regained the ability to do simple spells, but she knew that never again could she change herself into a tiny fairy the size of a thumb or fly through the night riding one of the hounds of hell. Two huge, battered stone lions stood guard at the door to Aunt Zippy’s building. We ascended six flights of stairs to stand in front of a heavy steel door. The door was flung open before my mother even had a chance to knock. There was Aunt Zippy. She was wearing a tall, black pointy hat and a long filmy red negligée. Beneath the flimsy fabric of her negligée I could make out the top of her low cut black brassiere. Aunt Zippy had amazing cleavage. “Darlings,” she cried out. As she stood on tiptoe to embrace my mother who was only five feet two, I saw that Aunt Zippy’s eyes were yellow, smoldering like the eyes of the tigers in the zoo. She kissed me on both cheeks, then took my head in her hands. “You resemble your mother,” she said, “but you have a beauty of your own. You have the face of a poet.” Did she know about the secret notebook I kept under my mattress already half-filled with poems? A black dog the size of a collie but without a collie’s pointed muzzle stood behind her. I didn’t like dogs and drew back. 392 Tsaurah Litzky

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

  James had his first book on philosophy published in 1897, entitled The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. This book was dedicated to the founder of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce. This book included essays he had written in the previous 19 years, including his famous "The Sentiment of Rationality." Two of the major topics he addresses in the work are science and belief. He states that in science, one can await and test for answers. Yet in other areas, one is forced to form beliefs or answers despite relevant evidence. In this book he also tackles moral and religious questions, most notably regarding the existence of a God. He makes the claim that a belief in answers to moral or religious questions cannot be substantiated by any kind of proof other than through the idea of faith. He also goes into the conflict between science and religion, attempting to find some type of reconciliation between the two. He contends that the reason a higher form of animal might believe in what he sees as a religious occurrence is because thinking intervenes between sensation and action. This premise was developed further in lectures he gave at the University of Edinburgh where he focused on pragmatism as a way of studying faith. James contended that studying religious experience should hold higher precedence over studying different religious institutions. He even said that psychologists should conform to this notion in regards to studying the mind. So deep was his interest in pragmatism that he launched a series of lectures at the University of California, one of which was called "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results." This lecture would attempt to make pragmatism a major intellectual movement in America. He followed up on this lecture with a book called Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals. As the end of the century approached, James' health began to wane and his physical condition was becoming worse. At Harvard, he was overworked and his physical condition was continuously jeopardized by this. He had a collapse in 1899 from stress. During his recovery, he spent the time studying religious experiences and producing a new series of lectures entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience which would be published and then presented at Scotland's University of Edinburgh between 1901 and 1902. This work was another success for James, though he was mildly unsatisfied with it. He believed that he had not done enough philosophical analysis in the work.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  last words the client has said.” I was so shocked by these complete distortions of our approach that for a number of years I said almost nothing about empathic listening, and when I did it was to stress an empathic attitude, with little comment as to how this might be implemented in the relationship. I preferred to discuss the qualities of positive regard and therapist congruence, which, together with empathy, I hypothesized as promoting the therapeutic process. They, too, were often misunderstood, but at least they were not caricatured. THE CURRENT NEED Over the years, however, the research evidence has kept piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent factor in bringing about change and learning. And so I believe it is time for me to forget the caricatures and misrepresentations of the past and take a fresh look at empathy. For still another reason it seems timely to do this. In the United States during the past decade or two, many new approaches to therapy have held center stage. Gestalt therapy, psychodrama, primal therapy, bioenergetics, rational-emotive therapy, and transactional analysis are some of the best known, but there are more. Part of their appeal lies in the fact that in most instances, the therapist is clearly the expert, actively manipulating the situation, often in dramatic ways, for the client’s benefit. If I am reading the signs correctly, I believe there is a decrease in the fascination with such expertise in guidance. With behavior therapy, another approach based on expertise, I believe interest and fascination are still on the increase. A technological society has been delighted to have found a technology by which people’s behavior can be shaped, even without their knowledge or approval, toward goals selected by therapists or by society. Yet even in this case, much questioning by thoughtful individuals is springing up as the philosophical and political implications of “behavior mod” become more clearly visible. So I have seen a willingness on the part of many to take another look at ways of being with people that locate power in the person, not the expert, and this brings me again to examine carefully what is meant by the term “empathy” and what we have come to know about it. Perhaps the time is ripe for its value to be appreciated. EARLY DEFINITIONS Many definitions have been given of the term, and I myself have set forth several. More than twenty years ago, I (Rogers, 1959) attempted to give a highly rigorous definition as part of a formal statement of my concepts and theory. It went as follows:

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

  I declared I was ill and was going to England at once; I must make a new start and accumulate some more money and a few mornings later I bade Bancroft “Good-bye” and crossed the Channel and went on to my sister and father in Tenby, arriving there in a severe shivering fit with a bad headache and every symptom of ague. I was indeed ill and played out: I had taken double doses of life and literature, had swallowed all the chief French writers from Rabelais and Montaigne to Flaubert, Zola and Balzac, passing by Pascal and Vauvenargues, Renan and Hugo, a glutton’s feast for six months. Then, too, I had nosed out this artist’s studio and that; had spent hours watching Rodin at work and more hours comparing this painter’s model with that: these breasts and hips with those. My love of plastic beauty nearly brought me to grief at least once and perhaps I had better record the incident, though it rather hurt my vanity at the time. One day I called at Manet’s old studio which was rented now by an American painter named Alexander. He had real power as a craftsman but only a moderate brain and was always trying by beauty or something remarkable in his model to make up for his own want of originality. On this visit I noticed an extraordinary sketch of a young girl standing where childhood and womanhood meet: she had cut her hair short and her chestnut-dark eyes lent her a startling distinction. “You like it?” asked Alexander. “She has the most perfect figure I have ever seen!” “I like it”, I replied; “I wonder whether the magic is in the model or in your brush?” “You’ll soon see”, he retorted, a little piqued, “she’s due here already” and almost as he spoke she came in with quick, alert step. She was below medium height; but evidently already a woman. Without a word she went behind the screens to undress, when Alexander said: “Well?” I had to think a moment or two before answering. “God and you have conspired together!” I exclaimed, and indeed his brush had surpassed itself. He had caught and rendered a childish innocence in expression that I had not remarked and he had blocked in the features with superb _brio_: “It is your best work to date”, I went on, “and almost anyone would have signed it.”

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

  “Hey, you are one great piece of face. I’ve got to take a shower.’ She uttered both sentences in the same tone of voice. And she again mentioned having to meet her office colleague for breakfast before flying home. | She went into the bathroom, and I heard her turn on the shower. For the first time since last night I was actually alone in the room, and this seemed to prompt all the misgivings I had been hiding, even from myself. Yes, she was truly gifted as a lover, I reflected. And yes, over the last ten hours she had shown me a whole new _ domain of sexuality, one I had never known existed. And yes, it was utterly genuine, as intense as any sexual pleasure I had ever enjoyed. I would certainly want to go on enjoying such pleasure in the future. And this is where I foresaw a real problem... 472 Alex Gross Now that our encounter was almost over, I found myself wondering how on earth I would ever be able to enjoy this kind of loving again. And with whom. This was a remarkably new way of enjoying sex, something I knew I would never be able to achieve with my wife. There was no way I could hope to teach her, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. How could I ever find another girl like Bossetta? If I wanted to go on making love like this, I would have to bring about some important changes in my lifestyle, perhaps frequenting darkened East Village haunts or posting suggestive ads on weird websites. But if I did this, I wondered how long my marriage would survive ... I was also still unhappy that I had not been able to finish our session the way I wanted. In our short remaining time, how could I ever convey to her my deepest desire? That I needed to see her before me on her hands and knees, her bottom arching high as the clouds, while I gleefully rammed her buttocks into the sunset. There had to be a way I could do this. Hell, now I was really getting angry! She promised me I could do it my way. And then she jumped me in the morning before I was ready! Damn it, she has to keep her word! But how could I persuade her? Calling me her conquest was an understatement — she’d scored several direct hits and totally demolished me. She’d taken the lead at every point, claiming my face twice and ravishing my cock, not to mention her strange assault with her breasts. But she had clearly broken the rules, she had gone too far. What I had trouble understanding was why I found so much of what she had done positively exciting and all of it remarkable.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” condition. Thus it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth. If this “as if” quality is lost, then the state is one of identification. (pp. 210–211. See also Rogers, 1957.) EXPERIENCING AS A USEFUL CONSTRUCT In formulating my current description, I have drawn on the concept of “experiencing” as formulated by Gendlin (1962). This concept has enriched my thinking in various ways, as will be evident in this paper. Briefly, it is his view that at all times there is going on in the human organism a flow of experiencings to which the individual can turn again and again as a referent in order to discover the meaning of those experiences. An empathic therapist points sensitively to the “felt meaning” which the client is experiencing in this particular moment, in order to help him or her to focus on that meaning and carry it further to its full and uninhibited experiencing. An example may clarify both the concept and its relation to empathy. A man in an encounter group has been making vaguely negative statements about his father. The facilitator says, “It sounds as though you might be angry at your father.” The man replies, “No, I don’t think so.” “Possibly dissatisfied with him?” “Well, yes, perhaps” (said rather doubtfully). “Maybe you’re disappointed in him.” Quickly the man responds, “That’s it! I am disappointed that he’s not a strong person. I think I’ve always been disappointed in him ever since I was a boy.” Against what is the man checking these terms for their correctness? Gendlin’s view, with which I concur, is that he is checking them against the ongoing psychophysiological flow within himself to see if they fit. This flow is a very real thing, and people are able to use it as a referent. In this case, “angry” doesn’t match the felt meaning at all; “dissatisfied” comes closer, but is not really correct; “disappointed” matches it exactly, and encourages a further flow of the experiencing, as often happens.

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

  As soon as I began to take note of things, I remarked that Lizzie no longer came near my room. One day I asked my sister what had become of her. To my astonishment my sister broke out in passionate dislike of her: “while you were lying unconscious”, she cried, “and the doctor was taking your pulse every few minutes, evidently frightened: he asked me could he get a prescription made up at once: he wanted to inject morphia, he said, to stop or check the racing of your heart. He wrote the prescription and I sent Lizzie with it and told her to be as quick as she could for your life might depend on it. When she didn’t come back in ten minutes, I got the Doctor to write it out again and sent Father with it. He brought it back in double-quick time. Hours passed and Lizzie didn’t return: she had gone out before ten and didn’t get back till it was almost one. I asked her where she had been? Why she hadn’t got back sooner? She replied coolly that she had been listening to the Band. I was so shocked and angry I wouldn’t keep her another moment. I sent her away at once. Think of it! I have no patience with such heartless brutes!” Lizzie’s callousness seemed to me even stranger than it seemed to my sister. I have often noticed that girls are less considerate of others than even boys, unless their affections are engaged, but I certainly thought I had half won Lizzie at least! However, the fact is so peculiar that I insert it here for what it may be worth. During my convalescence which lasted three months, Molly went for a visit to some friends: at the time I regretted it; now looking back I have no doubt she went away to free herself from an engagement she thought ill-advised. Missing her I went about with her younger, prettier sister Kathleen who was more sensuous and more affectionate than Molly. A little later, Molly went to Dresden to stay with an elder married sister: thence she wrote to me to set her free and I consented as a matter of course very willingly. Indeed I had already more real affection for Kathleen than Molly had ever called to life in me. As I got strong again I came to know a young Oxford man who professed to be astonished at my knowledge of literature and one day he came to me with the news that Grant Allen, the writer, had thrown up his job as Professor of Literature at Brighton College: “why should you not apply for it: it’s about two hundred pounds a year and they can do no worse than refuse you.”

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

  Mr Pickering wondered out loud in a tone that approached despair why I hadn’t used a putty knife any better than I had, and I wondered to myself why I was working for somebody like Calvin Pickering in a place called Auntie’s Antiques. To this point in my life I’d accomplished only what was minimally expected of me, which was almost nothing. My family and friends had done little to distinguish themselves,(they all drank a lot, they all had broken relationships or none, they all worked menial jobs or didn’t work at all), and my example was no more stellar. But Auntie’s Antiques? Was this where I truly belonged? Even the name of the place annoyed me, called up oppressive images of perfumed and prunelike old dowagers, clustered together in some ancient drawing room, murmuring inanely about sewing or flowers or recipes for apple crumb cake. Why not Larry’s Liquors? I asked myself, if we’re going to be alliterative, or Hootie’s Harleys, or Bob’s Big Boy, or— “Just what the hell kinda stripper you wanna be?” Mr Pickering demanded of me. “Huh? A first-class stripper that takes it off smooth and gorgeous the way you’re supposed to? Or a stripper that can’t strip?” Truth is, I was beginning to think I didn’t want to be a stripper period, but I didn’t figure that answer would’ve lifted my boss’s spirits. A few days later, when I made another trip to the Superfresh, I saw the girl again. This time, of course, I was watching for her. Once again it was summery twilight; a sprinkle of lightning bugs winked at me, and in the distance I could hear the sounds of a small-town baseball game: the postmodern plink of an aluminum bat, the collective shout 354 Greg Fenkins of a crowd. As before, I was lugging a couple of bags of groceries to the far recesses of the parking lot. I noted that the girl’s house was one of three that faced me from the opposite side of a narrow street adjacent to the lot. All three houses were dark and quiet; no one seemed to be stirring. Then the pink light came on, and the girl was in the window. (Had she been watching for me as well?) Like last time, she was clad in a skimpy bra and panties, neither of which provided more than technical coverage. They were a rich, devil’s-food-cake black on this occasion, and she had a sheer black scarf around her lovely neck. Soon she began to move, to dance, and I became conscious of my heart, which began thumping against the walls of my chest as if it wanted to escape.