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 Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  logo of interlocking C ’s. It looked like nothing else out there. To launch the perfume, she decided upon a subliminal campaign. She began by spraying the scent everywhere in her store in Paris. It filled the air. Women kept asking what it was and she would feign ignorance. She would then slip bottles of the perfume, without labels, into the bags of her wealthiest and best-connected clients. Soon women began to talk of this strange new scent, rather haunting and impossible to identify as any known flower. The word of yet another Chanel creation began to spread like wildfire and women were soon showing up at her store begging to buy the new scent, which she now began to place discreetly on shelves. In the first few weeks they could not stock enough. Nothing like this had ever happened in the industry, and it would go on to become the most successful perfume in history, making her a fortune. Over the next two decades the house of Chanel reigned supreme in the fashion world, but during World War II she flirted with Nazism, staying in Paris during the Nazi occupation and visibly siding with the occupiers. She had closed her store at the beginning of the war, and by the end of the war she had been thoroughly disgraced in the eyes of the French by her political sympathies. Aware and perhaps ashamed, she fled to Switzerland, where she would remain in self-imposed exile. By 1953, however, she felt the need not only for a comeback but for something even greater. Although she was now seventy, she had become disgusted at the latest trends in fashion, which she felt had returned to the old constrictions and fussiness of women’s clothing that she had sought to destroy. Perhaps this also signaled a return to a more subservient role for women. To Chanel it would be the ultimate challenge—after some fourteen years out of business, she was now largely forgotten. No one thought of her anymore as a trendsetter. She would have to start almost completely over. Her first move was to encourage rumors that she was planning a return, but she gave no interviews. She wanted to stimulate talk and excitement but surround herself with mystery. Her new show debuted in 1954, and an enormous crowd filled her store to watch it, mostly out of curiosity. Almost immediately there was a sense of disappointment. The clothes were mostly a rehash of her 1930s styles with a few new touches. The models were all Chanel look- alikes and mimicked her way of walking. To the audience, Chanel seemed a woman hopelessly locked in a past that would never return. The clothes seemed passé and the press pilloried her, dredging up at the same time her Nazi associations during the war. For almost any designer this would have been a devastating blow, but she appeared remarkably unfazed by it all. As always, she had a

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Wanting to cultivate a more public presence, Eisner decided to revive the old The Wonderful World of Disney , an hourlong television show from the fifties and sixties hosted by Walt Disney himself. This time Eisner would be the host. He was not a natural in front of the camera, but he felt audiences would grow to like him. He could be comforting to children, like Walt himself. In fact, he began to feel the two of them were somehow magically connected, as if he were more than just the head of the corporation but rather the natural son and successor to Walt Disney himself. Despite all his success, however, the old restlessness returned. He needed a new venture, a bigger challenge, and soon he found it. The Walt Disney Company had plans to create a new theme park in Europe. The last one to open, Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, had been a success. Those in charge of theme parks had settled upon two potential sites for the new Disneyland—one near Barcelona, Spain, the other near Paris. Although the Barcelona site made more economic sense, since the weather there was much better, Eisner chose the French site. This was going to be more than a theme park. This was going to be a cultural statement. He would hire the best architects in the world. Unlike the usual fiberglass castles at the other theme parks, at Euro Disney—as it came to be known—the castles would be built out of pink stone and feature handcrafted stained-glass windows with scenes from various fairy tales. It would be a place even snobby French elites would be excited to visit. Eisner loved architecture, and here he could be a modern-day Medici. As the years went by, the cost of Euro Disney mounted. Letting go of his usual obsession with the bottom line, Eisner felt that if he built it right, the crowds would come and the park would eventually pay for itself. But when it finally opened as planned in 1992, it quickly became clear that Eisner had not understood French tastes and vacation habits. The French were not so willing to wait in line for rides, particularly in bad weather. As in the other theme parks, no beer or wine was served on the premises, and that seemed like sacrilege to the French. The hotel rooms were too expensive for a family to stay there more than a night. And despite all the attention to detail, the pink stone castles still looked like kitschy versions of the originals. Attendance was only half of what Eisner had anticipated. The debts Disney had incurred in the construction had ballooned, and the money coming in from visitors could not even service the interest on them. It was shaping up to be a disaster, the first ever in his glorious career. As he finally came to terms with this reality, he decided that Frank Wells was to blame. It was his job to oversee the financial

• From Best Erotic Romance

  Now that the moment had finally arrived, he seemed underwhelmed, and I was starting to sweat in the tight-fitting black plastic. He rolled his eyes and sighed, his back collapsing against the bed, his muscles loose. I was starting to get discouraged. But, I pressed on, banging my pink leather riding crop against my open hand. Blake didn’t look scared, and there was absolutely no desire in his eyes. My back, which I had been holding straight in an attempt to look authoritative and sexy, started to droop. None of this was going how I thought it would. “Blake, I thought you were into this, what is the problem?” He squirmed against his ties, but not in the way I was hoping. He tried to sit up but couldn’t, and had to settle for an odd, reclined position that almost made me laugh. “I don’t know Daisy, I just don’t really feel like it tonight.” I sat on the edge of the bed and dropped my fetching whip on the floor. My knee-high patent leather boots were staring to hurt my feet, and I felt more ridiculous than I ever had before. “This is all your fault, you know that Blake!” “I know, baby. I know.” It was an offhand remark after a silly night of playing the game “I Never” with some friends. It wasn’t meant to be an insult, or at least that is what he said after the fact. There was no maliciousness in his words; he’d spoken them matter-of- factly as he pulled the car into the driveway. “I think our sex life has gotten boring.” I didn’t necessarily disagree with him, but I was quick to point out all the crazy things we had done in the past. When we first got together, our nonstop sex sessions were the stuff of legend, and we could hardly keep our hands off each other. I was confident that our sex life was anything but boring. But, Blake was just as quick to point out that our last truly adventurous tryst had been years before. As much as I hated to admit it, the sad fact was, he was right. He stopped short of saying we were in a rut, but I read between the lines. Adventure and lust had been replaced by comfort and our daily routine, which sadly didn’t have much room for sex. I always thought it was just a natural part of being together for a long time. I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t all that thrilled about our bedroom life either, but in my heart I knew. He didn’t say anything more that night, but his words had sent me on a mission. And, that mission was never to be boring in bed again. Blake didn’t know it then, but he had unleashed a monster. I hit every adult toy and video shop in a nearly fifty-mile radius in search of the ticket to sexy, smutty bliss.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  Blake was stoked at first and happily shared his love of hot girl-on-girl action with me. But, soon he found that he preferred to watch most of it alone, like he always had before. The DVDs now sat in a pile by the small television on the dresser, neither of us watching them at all. Our foray into role-playing took longer and didn’t really take hold until after a particularly good time at a Halloween party. I had never found Dracula sexy before, but Blake convinced me to join him in my sister’s guest room, and he turned me from a sexy kitty to a kitty in heat in no time flat. After that night, I bought more outfits to act out fantasies of all types. I chose the naughty nurse; Blake had a thing for lady cops, which we managed to accomplish with the help of a fake nightstick and the back seat of our car on a deserted dirt road. It had all been passionate and fun and, I thought, completely worth it. There wasn’t a boring night of sex in months, and we both seemed to be enjoying the ride. The dominatrix fantasy was mostly my idea, but Blake seemed more than a little interested. The outfit was the most expensive one yet, but I relished putting it on and the power I felt holding the whip was undeniable. I had hoped that Blake would be a good little submissive, but his willful eyes left me no choice but to reach over and untie him. “I’m sorry, Blakey. I thought this would be fun, but if you don’t want to do it, maybe we can save it for another time.” After I freed him, I felt even more foolish in my getup than I did before. He rubbed his wrists, and I moved off the bed to change out of my new personae. Blake shook his head and grabbed my arm to pull me back down next to him. “Daisy, I’m sorry. I really am. But, I don’t know. Do you think we could just have sex tonight?” “We were going to have sex, Blake. That was the point of this whole thing.” He stared at me until I looked up, embarrassment making my cheeks flush. “No. I mean sex. Like we used to have. Just you and me, on our bed. You know, sex. I hate to use the word normal, but it somehow seems appropriate.” “You mean boring sex?” “God, fuck! I wish I’d never said that. That’s what all this has been about, hasn’t it? Because I said we were boring in bed.” “No.” Blake didn’t say a word, but he made it clear with his eyes that he knew I was lying. “Okay, fine Blake. Fine. Yes. I was trying to make our sex life less boring. You seemed to enjoy it. What’s changed?” “Nothing. And, I did like most of it.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  that are often mysterious later on to person A. When it comes to our behavior in these situations, we never really completely understand what is happening. Too much of our unconscious is at play, and we have no rational access to its processes. But the eminent psychologist Carl Jung—who analyzed over the course of his very long career thousands of men and women with stories of painful love affairs—offered perhaps the most profound explanation for what happens to us when we fall in love. According to Jung, we are actually possessed in such moments. He gave the entity (person B) that takes hold of us the name anima (for the male) and animus (for the female). This entity exists in our unconscious but comes to the surface when a person of the opposite sex fascinates us. The following is the origin of the anima and the animus , and how they operate. We all possess hormones and genes of the opposite sex. These contrasexual traits are in the minority (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the individual), but they are within us all and they form a part of our character. Equally significant is the influence on our psyche of the parent of the opposite sex, from whom we absorb feminine or masculine traits. In our earliest years we were completely open and susceptible to the influence of others. The parent of the opposite sex was our first encounter with someone dramatically different from us. As we related to their alien nature, much of our personality was formed in response, becoming more dimensional and multifaceted. (With the parent of the same sex there is often a level of comfort and immediate identification that does not require the same adaptive energy). For instance, small boys are often comfortable expressing emotions and traits that they’ve learned from the mother, such as overt affection, empathy, and sensitivity. Small girls, conversely, are often comfortable expressing traits they’ve learned from the father, such as aggression, boldness, intellectual rigor, and physical prowess. Each child may also naturally possess these opposite- gender traits in him- or herself. In addition, each parent will also have a shadow side that the child must assimilate or deal with. For instance, a mother may be narcissistic rather than empathetic, and a father may be domineering or weak rather than protective and strong. Children must adapt to this. In any event, the boy and the girl will internalize the positive and the negative qualities of the parent of the opposite sex in ways that are unconscious and profound. And the association with the parent of the opposite sex will be charged with all kinds of emotions—physical and sensual connections, tremendous feelings of excitement, fascination, or disappointment at what one was not given. Soon, however, comes a critical period in our early lives in which we must separate from our parents and forge our identity. And the simplest and most powerful way to create this identity is around

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  business; she would work harder than all of them; she would reduce expenditures for the court, sacrificing her own income in the process; and all activity was to be directed toward lifting England out of the hole it had fallen into. She showed early on her superior knowledge of the finances of the country and the tough side of herself in any negotiation. Upon occasion, she would flash her anger if a minister seemed to be furthering a personal agenda, and such outbursts could be quite intimidating. Mostly, though, she was warm and empathetic, attuned to the various moods of these men. Soon they wanted to please her and win her approval. To not work hard or smart enough could mean isolation and some coldness, and unconsciously they wanted to avoid this. They respected the fact that she lived up to her own high standards. In this way, she slowly placed these ministers into the same position that she had found herself in: needing to gain her trust and respect through their actions. Now, instead of a cabal of conspiring, selfish ministers, the queen had a team working to further her agenda, and the results soon spoke for themselves. By these methods, Elizabeth acquired the credibility she needed, but she made one major mistake—her handling of Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth had become somewhat entitled herself, feeling in this case that she knew better than her ministers and that her personal qualms about executing a fellow queen trumped everything else. She paid a price for this policy, as she felt the people’s respect for her draining away, and it pained her. Her sense of the greater good was what guided her, but in this case the greater good would be served by having Mary executed. She was violating her own principles. It took some time, but she realized her mistake. She tasked the head of her secret service to lure Mary into her most far-reaching conspiracy to get rid of Elizabeth. Now with solid evidence of Mary’s complicity, Elizabeth could take the dreaded step. In the end, going against her own feelings for the sake of the country, in essence admitting her mistake, gained her even more trust from the English. It was the kind of response to public opinion that almost no rulers of the time were capable of. When it came to her foreign rivals, particularly Philip II, Elizabeth was not naive and understood the situation: Nothing she had done had earned her any respect or respite from their endless conspiracies to get rid of her. They disrespected her as an unmarried queen and as a woman who seemed to fear conflict and warfare. She largely ignored all of this and kept to her mission of securing England’s finances. But when the invasion of England seemed imminent, she knew it was time to finally prove herself as the great strategist that she was. She would play on Philip’s underestimating of her craftiness and her toughness as a leader.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  217Lecture 22—The Social Gospel õ Rauschenbusch thought his critique of society was in scripture, and had been there since the beginning. The church had simply forgotten it over the centuries as church leaders cast their lot with kings, wealth, and secular power. This is how they’d gone astray and ended up in the wreck of the 20th century. õ Rauschenbusch threw himself into his community work as well as writing books to articulate the theology of the Social Gospel movement. He was skeptical that any list of policy reforms could capture the essence of Jesus’s message. õ In 1912 he wrote: “It is not this thing or that thing that our nation needs, but a new mind and heart, a new conception of the way we all ought to live together, a new conviction about the worth of a human life and the use God wants us to make of our own lives.” POLITICAL FRUITS õ By the early 20 th century, Christian reformers in Britain were playing a role in the expansion of government-funded social services there, but their American colleagues were not enjoying the same success. õ Social Gospelers worked diligently at the local level, serving their immediate communities. They also wrote books and held international conferences that called for reforming the capitalist system and rethinking basic Christian doctrines. õ In North America, they established a network of churches in cities that offered not just worship but social services, health care, employment guidance, and recreational facilities. They also pushed for changes in state and federal law, limits on the workday, and limits on child labor. õ Echoes of the Social Gospel ethos appeared in some national political movements in the United States. The Populists in the American South and West and the Progressive Party took up a broad vision of

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ Some evangelical writers began interpreting the bows and swords of scripture as metaphors for the latest developments in nuclear technology. They said the United Nations was a tool of the Antichrist, and that he would use these kinds of organizations to seek world dominion. õ Events in Israel and the conflicts of the Middle East have always been of interest to premillennialists. Recall that Darby preached that Jews would establish a sovereign nation in Palestine, only to suffer great persecution at the hands of world leaders, leaving a small number of survivors to accept Christ. õ Darby’s followers got very excited in 1948 when the state of Israel was established, and they’ve followed Israeli affairs closely ever since. Israelis have been understandably ambivalent about this interest in their lives, but in general they’ve been savvy about reaching out to American evangelicals. AMERICAN POLITICS õ What happens when we look for evidence for the role of prophecy in evangelical leaders’ political decisions? The evidence is unclear. Consider the Ronald Reagan presidency, when several administration officials were adherents of this theology. Reagan himself was very interested in prophecy. õ In 1983 he told an Israeli lobbyist: “You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets … and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about.” Yet he didn’t initiate nuclear war, nor did he go out of his way to befriend Israel. And we now know that Reagan wanted nuclear weapons eliminated. Lecture 24—Apocalyptic Faith in the 1800s and Beyond 239 õ Belief in the coming apocalypse may have encouraged evangelicals to accept nuclear confrontation as part of God’s plan, but very few wanted to help actually bring on Armageddon. Throughout the Cold War, it seems that a different religious fear—the fear of godless communism— united evangelicals and motivated their political action. SUGGESTED READING Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More. Pagels, Revelations. Rowe, God’s Strange Work. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä Why have scripture’s references to the Apocalypse produced such a wide range of interpretation? ä What explains the appeal of William Miller’s and John Nelson Darby’s messages to their followers? ä How have ideas about the end times influenced politics? 240 The History of Christianity II LECTURE 25 THE CHURCH AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The Russian Revolution of 1917 is a good candidate for the single most cataclysmic event in the history of religion in the 20th century. When Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks emerged victorious after several years of civil war, their communist propaganda claimed that almost overnight, Russia had gone from one of the most religious civilizations in the world to the atheist state of every Marxist’s dreams. But to understand what the revolution meant for Russian religion, this lecture first backtracks and explores the religious landscape generations earlier, then looks at the state of Russian religion after the revolution. 241

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  19Lecture 2—Luther and the Dawn of Protestantism õ Luther wasn’t allowed to come because he was an outlaw. Another person had to take charge of getting everyone to agree and drafting the core beliefs of this new Lutheran faith. That person was Philipp Melanchthon, a professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg who was younger than Luther and his close collaborator. õ He consulted with other Protestants, read over Luther’s writings, and drafted a document that became one of the landmarks of the Reformation: the Augsburg Confession. It laid out the core beliefs of Lutheranism, including justification by faith alone and the importance of the sacraments, even if they are not agents of salvation. It asserted the right of priests to marry and denied that a man can purify his soul through isolation in a monastery. õ Luther’s sympathizers among the German leaders signed onto the Augsburg Confession and demanded a public reading. Despite all this, Luther wasn’t thrilled with the final document. He thought the tone was too polite. Charles V hardly felt that way. In fact, the Confession paved the way for the Protestant princes of Germany to form an alliance against the emperor called the Schmalkaldic League, and they would go to war against him in the 1540s. õ The Augsburg Confession had influence well beyond the Holy Roman Empire. In 1536 it was translated into English, just as Protestant sentiments were beginning to spread throughout England. And Melanchthon’s work helped crystalize the ideas of early English reformers. õ That same year in Scandinavia, the king Christian III marched on Copenhagen, arrested the Catholic bishops, and declared that the Reformation had come to Denmark and Norway. He wanted to bring the churches into line with Lutheran beliefs, and now he also had a handy excuse to confiscate bishops’ valuable properties, which he needed to help pay the cost of the civil war he had just won.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Fangpu had broken this taboo. Had he gone too far? A few days after the appearance of Fangpu’s poster, some strangers arrived on campus from Beijing. They were part of “work teams” sent to schools around China to help supervise and maintain some discipline over the bourgeoning Cultural Revolution. The work team at YMS ordered Fangpu to publicly apologize to Secretary Ding. At the same time, however, they lifted the ban on posters that criticized teachers. As in schools around China, they also suspended all classes and exams at YMS. Students were to devote themselves to making revolution, under their watchful eye. Suddenly feeling free of the yoke of the past and all the habits of obedience drummed into them, the students at YMS began to brazenly attack those teachers who had demonstrated less than revolutionary zeal or had been unkind to students. Jianhua felt compelled to join the campaign, but this was difficult —he happened to like almost all of his teachers. He did not want to seem, however, like a revisionist. Besides, he respected the wisdom and authority of Mao. He decided to make a poster attacking Teacher Wen, who had criticized him once for not being sufficiently interested in politics, which had bothered him at the time. He made his criticism of her as gentle as possible. Others took this up and went further with their attacks on Teacher Wen, and Jianhua felt bad. To satisfy the students’ growing anger, some teachers began to confess to some minor revolutionary sins, but this made the students feel they were hiding even more. They had to apply more pressure to get them to reveal the truth, and a student nicknamed “Little Bawang” (bawang meaning “overseer,” referring to his love of giving orders) had an idea on how to do this. He had read Mao’s description of how during the revolution in the 1940s peasants had captured the most notorious landlords and paraded them through their villages with enormous dunce caps on their heads and heavy wooden boards—with inscriptions describing their crimes—hung around their necks. To avoid such public humiliation, certainly the teachers would come clean and confess. The students agreed to try this, and their first target for such treatment was to be Teacher Li, Jianhua’s favorite. Teacher Li was accused of faking his switch to communism. Stories began to come out of his telling other teachers about his visits to brothels in Shanghai. Clearly he had a secret life, and Jianhua now felt disappointed in Li. China before the communist revolution had been a cruel place, and if Li was working to bring that back, he could only hate him.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  attention. She decides she will seduce him and become the target of his attention. She will play to his fantasies. How can he not want to settle down with her and reform himself? She will bask in his love. But somehow he is not as strong, masculine, or romantic as she had imagined. He is a bit self-absorbed. She does not get the desired attention, or it does not last very long. He cannot be reformed, and leaves her. This is often the projection of women who had rather intense, even flirtatious relationships with the father. Such fathers often find their wives boring, and the young daughter more charming and playful. They turn to the daughter for inspiration; the daughter becomes addicted to their attention and adept at playing the kind of girl that daddy wants. It gives her a sense of power. It becomes her lifelong goal to recapture this attention and the power that goes with it. Any association with the father figure will spark the projecting mechanism, and she will invent or exaggerate the man’s romantic nature. A prime example of this type would be Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jack Bouvier, her father, adored his two daughters, but Jacqueline was his favorite. Jack was devilishly handsome and dashing. He was a narcissist obsessed with his body and the fine clothes that he wore. He considered himself macho, a real risk taker, but underneath the façade he was in fact quite feminine in his tastes and totally immature. He was also a notorious womanizer. He treated Jackie more like a playmate and lover than a daughter. For Jackie, he could do no wrong. She took perverse pride in his popularity with women. In the frequent fights between her mother and father, she always took his side. Compared to the fun-loving father, the mother was prudish and rigid. Spending so much time in his company, even after her parents divorced, and thinking of him constantly, Jackie deeply absorbed his energy and spirit. As a young woman, she turned all of her attention to older, powerful, and unconventional men, with whom she could re- create the role she had played with her father—always the little girl in need of his love, but also quite flirtatious. And she was continually disappointed in the men she had chosen. John F. Kennedy was the closest to her ideal, for in so many ways he was just like her father in looks and in spirit. Kennedy, however, would never give her the attention she craved. He was too self-absorbed. He was too busy having affairs with other women. He was not really the romantic type. She was continually frustrated in this relationship, but she was trapped in this pattern, later marrying Aristotle Onassis, an older, unconventional man of great power who seemed so dashing and romantic but who would treat her horribly and cheat on her continually. Women in this scenario have become trapped by the early

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  the world in the same way. What we perceive is our personal version of reality, one that is of our own creation. To realize this is a critical step in our understanding of human nature. Imagine the following scenario: A young American must spend a year studying in Paris. He is somewhat timid and cautious, prone to feelings of depression and low self-esteem, but he’s genuinely excited by this opportunity. Once there, he finds it hard to speak the language, and the mistakes he makes and the slightly derisory attitude of the Parisians make it even harder for him to learn. He finds the people not friendly at all. The weather is damp and gloomy. The food is too rich. Even Notre Dame Cathedral seems disappointing, the area around it so crowded with tourists. Although he has pleasurable moments, he generally feels alienated and unhappy. He concludes that Paris is overrated and a rather unpleasant place. Now imagine the same scenario but with a young woman who is more extroverted and has an adventurous spirit. She’s not bothered by making mistakes in French, nor by the occasional snide remark from a Parisian. She finds learning the language a pleasant challenge. Others find her spirit engaging. She makes friends more easily, and with more contacts her knowledge of French improves. She finds the weather romantic and quite suitable to the place. To her, the city represents endless adventures and she finds it enchanting. In this case, two people see and judge the same city in opposite ways. As a matter of objective reality, the weather of Paris has no positive or negative qualities. Clouds simply pass by. The friendliness or unfriendliness of the Parisians is a subjective judgment—it depends on whom you meet and how they compare with the people where you come from. Notre Dame Cathedral is merely an agglomeration of carved pieces of stone. The world simply exists as it is—things or events are not good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. It is we with our particular perspectives who add color to or subtract it from things and people. We focus on either the beautiful Gothic architecture or the annoying tourists. We, with our mind-set, can make people respond to us in a friendly or unfriendly manner, depending on our anxiety or openness. We shape much of the reality that we perceive, dictated by our moods and emotions. Understand: Each of us sees the world through a particular lens that colors and shapes our perceptions. Let us call this lens our attitude . The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung defined this in the following way: “Attitude is a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way. . . . To have an attitude means to be ready for something definite, even though this something is unconscious; for having an attitude is synonymous with an a priori orientation to a definite thing.”

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ The second is the retreat of organized religion from a position of authority in the public square to something that is a person’s private business. Casanova calls this privatization. And the third is what Casanova calls differentiation: Religion comes to be one worldview among many, no longer taken for granted. THE FAITHFUL 1950S õ At first glance, it seems that during the 1950s, the churches of the Western world enjoyed plenty of prestige and influence. This is how it would have seemed to the millions of people who watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on television in 1953. That ceremony, administered by the archbishop of Canterbury, was heavy on Christian symbols and rituals. õ The following year, the evangelist Billy Graham led a crusade in London and attracted more than 2 million people; in 1955, more than a million came to hear him in Glasgow. Rates of church attendance weren’t quite what they had been at their peak around the turn of the century, but British churches were still growing in the 1950s. For most Brits, especially women, the church was still the center of social life. õ Church membership and attendance grew even more in the United States than in Britain or elsewhere in Western Europe. Another example: Catholicism ran the show in Quebec, Canada, with 88 percent of Quebeckers attending Mass weekly. In most places in the Western world, churches appeared—at least on the surface—to be thriving. Yet by 1965, rates of church attendance in all these places would start to slowly decline. 284 The History of Christianity II THE SKEPTICAL 1960S õ During the second week of April in 1966, anyone who passed by a newsstand in Manhattan or London or Toronto could not have missed the new issue of Time magazine. The cover was all black except for giant red letters that asked: “Is God Dead?” õ The article was all about the challenges facing modern theologians who sought to defend traditional religious teachings in a world in which the intellectual elite had come to rely on non-religious sources of authority, like the scientific method and the discoveries happening at modern research universities. Over the centuries since the Reformation, scientists and philosophers had challenged more and more of the church’s traditional claims about everything from human origins to life after death. Lecture 29—Secularism and the Death of God 285

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Babiki sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, refusing to budge. I was outside the car, pacing, stressed out. A friend of mine had a bottle of brandy that he’d smuggled into the dance. “Here,” he said, “have some of this.” Nothing mattered at that point, so I started drinking. I’d fucked up. The girl didn’t like me. The night was done. Most of the guys eventually wandered back inside. I was sitting on the pavement, taking swigs from the brandy bottle, getting buzzed. At some point Bongani went back over to the car to try one last time to convince Babiki to come in. After a minute his head popped up over the car with this confused look. “Yo, Trevor,” he said, “your date does not speak English.” “What?” “Your date. She does not speak any English.” “That’s not possible.” I got up and walked over to the car. I asked her a question in English and she gave me a blank stare. Bongani looked at me. “How did you not know that your date does not speak English?” “I...I don’t know.” “Have you never spoken to her?” “Of course I have—or, wait...have I?” I started flashing back through all the times I’d been with Babiki, meeting at her flat, hanging out with her friends, introducing her to Abel. Did I talk to her then? No. Did I talk to her then? No. It was like the scene in Fight Club where Ed Norton’s character flashes back and realizes he and Brad Pitt have never been in the same room with Helena Bonham Carter at the same time. He realizes he’s been punching himself the whole time. He’s Tyler Durden. In all the excitement of meeting Babiki, the times we were hanging out and getting to know each other, we were never actually speaking to each other. It was always through Tom. Fucking Tom. Tom had promised he’d get me a beautiful date for the dance, but he hadn’t made any promises about any of her other qualities. Whenever we were together, she was speaking Pedi to Tom, and Tom was speaking English to me. But she didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Pedi. Abel spoke Pedi. He’d learned several South African languages in order to deal with his customers, so he’d spoken with her fluently when they met. But in that moment I realized I’d never actually heard her say anything in English other than: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.” That’s it: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.” Babiki was so shy that she didn’t talk much to begin with, and I was so inept with women that I didn’t know how to talk to her. I’d never had a girlfriend; I didn’t even know what “girlfriend” meant. Someone put a beautiful woman on my arm and said, “She’s your girlfriend.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  understand him. Being married to him would be like being married to Pascal or Kant. She’ll learn Greek and Latin and help him complete his great masterpiece, The Key to All Mythologies . And he will help educate and elevate her. He will be the father she has been unconsciously missing. Only after being married to him does she discover the truth—he’s dead inside, and very controlling. He sees her as a glorified secretary. She becomes trapped in a loveless marriage. Although the relationship details might be quite different now, this type of projection is all too common among women. It stems from feelings of inferiority. The woman in this case has internalized the voices of the father and others who have been so critical of her, who have lowered her self-esteem by telling her who she is and how she should behave. Not having ever developed her own strength or confidence, she will tend to search for these qualities in men and exaggerate any traces of them. Many of the men who respond to her sense her low self-esteem and find this alluring. They like the adoring attention of a woman, often younger, whom they can lord over and control. This would be the classic professor seducing the student. Because such men are rarely as brilliant, clever, and self- assured as she imagines, the woman either is disappointed and leaves or is trapped in her low self-esteem, bending to his manipulations and blaming herself for any problems. What such a woman needs to do is first realize that the source of her insecurity is the critical opinions of others, which she has accepted and internalized. It does not stem from her inherent lack of intelligence or worthiness. She must actively work at developing her assertiveness and self-confidence through her actions—taking on projects, starting a business, mastering a craft. With men, she must see herself as their natural equal, as potentially strong and creative as they are, or even more so. With genuine self-confidence she will then be able to gauge the true worth and character of the men she meets. The Woman to Worship Him: He’s driven and ambitious, but his life is hard. It’s a harsh, unforgiving world out there, and it’s not easy to find any comfort. He feels something missing in his life. Then along comes a woman who is attentive to him, warm, and engaging. She seems to admire him. He feels overwhelmingly drawn to her and her energy. This is the woman to complete him, to help comfort him. But then, as the relationship develops, she no longer seems quite so nice and attentive. She certainly has stopped admiring him. He concludes that she has deceived him or has changed. Such a betrayal makes him angry. This male projection generally stems from a particular type of relationship with the mother—she adores her son and showers him with attention. Perhaps this is to compensate for never quite getting

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  356 The History of Christianity II SECULARIZATION õ Factors like declining church attendance numbers and the shrinking role of professional clergy in public life have many Christians, particularly in the Western world, wondering what to do. Some evangelical Christians in America have gone from calling themselves the moral majority to saying they must accept their role as a moral minority in a pagan culture. õ Some conservatives have blamed all these things on the Social Gospel. For more than a century, they have called the Social Gospel a dangerous shift in the church’s focus from personal salvation and the life hereafter toward, instead, trying to save the world in the here and now. õ It’s not really the job of historians to call a faith a success or failure. But Christians themselves think in these terms all the time. And often, they’re very focused on numbers: baptism rates, the percentage of tithing members, and so on. This is true for liberal Christians as well as for conservatives. õ But to take the attitude that success is a numbers game is to adopt what the historian David Hollinger calls a “Christian survivalist” mentality. What if, instead, we ask the question from a historian’s perspective: Which Christian groups have had great historical significance? Which have changed the course of history? We see that many of the Christian traditions that are dwindling today, like the liberal Protestant denominations in North America, had an incredible role in shaping modern Western society. õ Hollinger points out that many of them took that uncomfortable, humbling experience they had in the mission field, where they learned to respect other cultures and skin colors, and brought it home, where they helped lead the civil rights movement, encouraged their fellow citizens to embrace more freedoms for women, urged them to view non-Christian religions with curiosity and compassion, and generally laid the groundwork for a more tolerant, peaceful, pluralist society. 357Lecture 36—The Challenge of 21 st-Century Christianity õ These churches are now shrinking; perhaps their historical moment is in its twilight. But judging by the Christian principle of the incarnation, the notion of making God’s presence real in the human world, these churches can’t be considered a failure. õ From another angle, many people call secular modernity, not religion, the big failure: It has not brought peace, happiness, or material comfort to billions of people. War and terrorism rage in some areas. Drug addiction epidemics have destroyed families and communities in countries that are supposedly the wealthiest and most modern on earth. õ Perhaps disappointment with the promises of modernity is a major reason for the global explosion of Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity during the 20 th century. These are faith traditions that boldly rebel against the claims of modern reason; they say people can speak in strange tongues and claim the gifts of prophecy and healing.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  their lives easier. We may be in a perfectly satisfying relationship, but our minds continually wander toward a new person, someone who doesn’t have the very real flaws of our partner, or so we think. We dream of being taken out of our boring life by traveling to some culture that is exotic and where people are just happier than in the grimy city where we live. The moment we have a job, we imagine something better. On a political level, our government is corrupt and we need some real change, perhaps a revolution. In this revolution, we imagine a veritable utopia that replaces the imperfect world we live in. We don’t think of the vast majority of revolutions in history in which the results were more of the same, or something worse. In all these cases, if we got closer to the people we envy, to that supposed happy family, to the other man or woman we covet, to the exotic natives in a culture we wish to know, to that better job, to that utopia, we would see through the illusion. And often when we act on these desires, we realize this in our disappointment, but it doesn’t change our behavior. The next object glittering in the distance, the next exotic cult or get-rich-quick scheme will inevitably seduce us. One of the most striking examples of this syndrome is the view we take of our childhood as it recedes into the past. Most of us remember a golden time of play and excitement. As we get older, it becomes even more golden in our memory. Of course, we conveniently forget the anxieties, insecurities, and hurts that plagued us in childhood and more than likely consumed more of our mental space than the fleeting pleasures we remember. But because our youth is an object that grows more distant as we age, we are able to idealize it and see it as greener than green. Such a syndrome can be explained by three qualities of the human brain. The first is known as induction , how something positive generates a contrasting negative image in our mind. This is most obvious in our visual system. When we see some color—red or black, for instance—it tends to intensify our perception of the opposite color around us, in this case green or white. As we look at the red object, we often can see a green halo forming around it. In general, the mind operates by contrasts. We are able to formulate concepts about something by becoming aware of its opposite. The brain is continually dredging up these contrasts. What this means is that whenever we see or imagine something, our minds cannot help but see or imagine the opposite. If we are forbidden by our culture to think a particular thought or entertain a particular desire, that taboo instantly brings to mind the very thing we are forbidden. Every no sparks a corresponding yes. (It was the

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Stop it.” “Is this the way you’re telling me that you’re gay?” “What? No. Why would you say that?” “You know it’s okay if you are.” “No, Mom. I’m not gay.” Everyone in my family loved it. They all thought it looked great. My mom did tease the shit out of me, though. “It’s very well done,” she said, “but it is way too pretty. You do look like a girl.” — The big night finally came. Tom came over to help me get ready. The hair, the clothes, everything came together perfectly. Once I was set, we went to Abel to get the keys to the BMW, and that was the moment the whole night started to go wrong. It was a Saturday night, end of the week, which meant Abel was drinking with his workers. I walked out to his garage, and as soon as I saw his eyes I knew: He was wasted. Fuck. When Abel was drunk he was a completely different person. “Ah, you look nice!” he said with a big smile, looking me over. “Where are you going?” “Where am I—Abie, I’m going to the dance.” “Okay. Have fun.” “Um...can I get the keys?” “The keys to what?” “To the car.” “What car?” “The BMW. You promised I could drive the BMW to the dance.” “First go buy me some beers,” he said. He gave me his car keys; Tom and I drove to the liquor store. I bought Abel a few cases of beer, drove back, and unloaded it for him. “Okay,” I said, “can I take the BMW now?” “No.” “What do you mean ‘no’?” “I mean ‘no.’ I need my car tonight.” “But you promised. You said I could take it.” “Yeah, but I need the car.” I was crushed. I sat there with Tom and begged him for close to half an hour. “Please.” “No.” “Please.” “Nope.” Finally we realized it wasn’t going to happen. We took the shitty Mazda and drove to Babiki’s house. I was an hour late picking her up. She was completely pissed off. Tom had to go in and convince her to come out, and eventually she did. She was even more gorgeous than before, in an amazing red dress, but she was clearly not in a great mood. Inside I was quietly starting to panic, but I smiled and kept trying my gentlemanly best to be a good date, holding the door for her, telling her how beautiful she was. Tom and the sister gave us a send-off and we headed out. Then I got lost.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Take it easy,” I soothed him. Booker smashed the guy on the head with a bottle of ketchup. He said later it was the only thing he could grab in such a hurry. It did a fine job. I think it gave everyone a lift to see the Marine out cold, coveted in ketchup. The following weekend we heard the Marine had been found dead. No one knew who did it. When I got home that morning I reenacted the whole scene for Milli. Deep down I wanted so much to make love to her. I had wanted her all week. But we went to sleep still talking about what a hero Booker had been. It was the next Friday night that we fought so bitterly. I don’t even remember what started it. It doesn’t really matter. What mattered was that it was the kind of fight that’s so painful it takes the top layer of skin off your heart. I tried to go for a ride. My bike wouldn’t kick over. I stormed off for a walk around the block. When I came back, Milli was gone. I sat in the apartment for a long time in the dark. I was really upset. My brain wasn’t working too clearly, I remember that. That’s when I realized how we were running off the rails. I suddenly felt I had to apologize to her, to Stone Butch Blues W9 explain, or I’d lose her forever. So I went down to the Pink Pussy Kat. I don’t know what I was thinking. I paced outside the club smoking a cigarette. You couldn’t see inside the bar because the windows and doors were papered with shiny foil. As I opened the door Darlene saw me immediately. She had her arm around a sailor’s neck. She looked up at Milli, who was dancing in a little cage just above the bar. Milli had seen me too. Maybe I thought Milli wore an outfit when she danced. It wasn’t that it mattered, I just realized I had never wondered about it. I took in the sights and sounds and smells of the world in which she worked. I listened to the music she danced to: I never loved a man the way that I, I love you. I had been in so many sleazy bars there was something sort of familiar and commonplace about it all. I could see immediately who was working in the room. It was, of course, the women. But you could tell more by their attitude than their sex. This was, after all, a job. It paid well for women who could take care of themselves. And Milli could take care of herself. But I knew I had made a fatal error walking in the door—the last mistake I would be allowed to make. I realized in that moment it was too late for us. 120 = Leslie Feinberg I went back to our apartment to wait for her.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  are not naturally resistant but quite predictable. You know how they’ll respond to your great idea—they’ll love it. In fact, they need you and your work more than you need them. They should seek you out. The emphasis is not on what you need to do to succeed but on what you feel you deserve. You can foresee a lot of attention coming your way with this project, but if you fail, other people must be to blame, because you have gifts, your cause is the right one, and only those who are malicious or envious could stand in your way. We can call this psychological disease grandiosity . As you feel its effects, the normal realistic proportions are reversed—your self becomes larger and greater than anything else around it. That is the lens through which you view the task and the people you need to reach. This is not merely deep narcissism (see chapter 2), in which everything must revolve around you. This is seeing yourself as enlarged (the root of the word grandiosity meaning “big” or “great”), as superior and worthy of not only attention but of being adored. It is a feeling of being not merely human but godlike. You may think of powerful, egotistical leaders in the public eye as the ones who contract such a disease, but you would be very wrong in that assumption. Certainly we find many influential people, such as Michael Eisner, with high-grade versions of grandiosity, where the attention and accolades they receive create a more intense enlargement of the self. But there is a low-grade, everyday version of the disease that is common to almost all of us because it is a trait embedded in human nature. It stems from our deep need to feel important, esteemed by people, and superior to others in something. You are rarely aware of your own grandiosity because by its nature it alters your perception of reality and makes it hard to have an accurate assessment of yourself. And so you are unaware of the problems it might be causing you at this very moment. Your low- grade grandiosity will cause you to overestimate your own skills and abilities and to underestimate the obstacles that you face. And so you will take on tasks that are beyond your actual capacity. You will feel certain that people will respond to your idea in a particular way, and when they don’t, you will become upset and blame others. You may become restless and suddenly make a career change, not realizing that grandiosity is at the root—your present work is not confirming your greatness and superiority, because to be truly great would require more years of training and the development of new skills. Better to quit and be lured by the possibilities a new career offers, allowing you to entertain fantasies of greatness. In this way, you never quite master anything. You may have dozens of great