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 Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Now, the dissociation of these two elements probably occurs first in the child's mind on the occasion of some error or false expectation which would make him experience the shock of difference between merely imagining a thing and getting it. The thought experienced once with the concomitant reality, and then without it or with opposite concomitants, reminds the child of other cases in which the same provoking phenomenon occurred. Thus the general ingredient of error may be dissociated and noticed per se, and from the notion of his error or wrong thought to that of his thought in general the transition is easy. The brute, no doubt, has plenty of instances of error and disappointment in his life, but the similar shock is in him most likely always swallowed up in the accidents of the actual case. An expectation disappointed may breed dubiety as to the realization of that particular thing when the dog next expects it. But that disappointment, that dubiety, while they represent in the mind, will not call up other cases, in which the material details were different, but this feature of possible error was the same. The brute will, therefore, stop short of dissociating the general notion of error per se, and a fortiori will never attain the conception of Thought itself as such. We may then, we think, consider it proven that the most elementary single difference between the human mind and that of brutes lies in this deficiency on the brute's part to associate ideas by similarity—characters, the abstraction of which depends on this sort of association, must in the brute always remain drowned, swamped in the total phenomenon which they help constitute, and never used to reason from. If a character stands out alone, it is always some obvious sensible quality like a sound or a smell which is instinctively exciting and lies in the line of the animal's propensities; or it is some obvious sign which experience has habitually coupled with a consequence, such as, for the dog, the sight of his master's hat on and the master's going out. DIFFERENT ORDERS OF HUMAN GENIUS.

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

  in a hair halter, it will be luxury to die in hemp. . . . What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all," etc. etc. [264] T. W. Higginson's translation (1866), p. 105. [265] "The usual mode of lessening the shock of disappointment or disesteem is to contract, if possible, a low estimate of the persons that inflict it. This is our remedy for the unjust censures of party spirit, as well as of personal malignity." (Bain: Emotion and Will, p. 209.) [266] It must be observed that the qualities of the Self thus ideally constituted are all qualities approved by my actual fellows in the first instance; and that my reason for now appealing from their verdict to that of the ideal judge lies in some outward peculiarity of the immediate case. What once was admired in me as courage has now become in the eyes of men 'impertinence'; what was fortitude is obstinacy; what was fidelity is now fanaticism. The ideal judge alone, I now believe, can read my qualities, my willingnesses, my powers, or what they truly are. My fellows, misled by interest and prejudice, have gone astray. [267] The kind of selfishness varies with the self that is sought. If it be the mere bodily self; if a man grabs the best food the warm corner, the vacant seat; if he makes room for no one, spits about, and belches in our faces,—we call it hoggishness. If it be the social self, in the form of popularity or influence, for which he is greedy, he may in material ways subordinate himself to others as the best means to his end; and in this case he is very apt to pass for a disinterested man. If it be the 'other-worldly' self which he seeks, and if he seeks it ascetically,—even though he would rather see all mankind damned eternally than lose his individual soul,—'saintliness' will probably be the name by which his selfishness will be called. [268] Lotze, Med. Psych. 498-501; Microcosmus, bk. II. chap. V §§ 3, 4. [269] Psychologische Analyzen auf Physiologischer Grundlage. Theil II. IIte Hälfte, § 11. The whole section ought to be read. [270] Professor Bain, in his chapter on 'Emotions of Self,' does scant justice to the primitive nature of a large part of our self-feeling, and seems to reduce it to reflective self-estimation of this sober intellectual sort, which certainly most of it is not. He says that when the attention is turned inward upon self as a Personality, "we are putting forth towards ourselves the kind of exercise that properly accompanies our contemplation of other persons. We are accustomed to scrutinize the actions and conduct of those about us, to set a higher value upon one man than upon another, by comparing the two; to pity one in distress; to feel complacency towards a particular individual; to congratulate a man on some good fortune

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

  the whole, safer under the circumstances for bringing it forth. So far the action has a teleological character; but such mere outward teleology as this might still be the blind result of vis a tergo . The growth and movements of plants, the processes of development, digestion, secretion, etc., in animals, supply innumerable instances of performances useful to the individual which may nevertheless be, and by most of us are supposed to be, produced by automatic mechanism. The physiologist does not confidently assert conscious intelligence in the frog's spinal cord until he has shown that the useful result which the nervous machinery brings forth under a given irritation remains the same when the machinery is altered . If, to take the stock-instance, the right knee of a headless frog be irritated with acid, the right foot will wipe it off. When, however, this foot is amputated, the animal will often raise the left foot to the spot and wipe the offending material away. Pflüger and Lewes reason from such facts in the following way: If the first reaction were the result of mere machinery, they say; if that irritated portion of the skin discharged the right leg as a trigger discharges its own barrel of a shotgun; then amputating the right foot would indeed frustrate the wiping, but would not make the left leg move. It would simply result in the right stump moving through the empty air (which is in fact the phenomenon sometimes observed). The right trigger makes no effort to discharge the left barrel if the right one be unloaded; nor does an electrical machine ever get restless because it can only emit sparks, and not hem pillow-cases like a sewing-machine. If, on the contrary, the right leg originally moved for the purpose of wiping the acid, then nothing is more natural than that, when the easiest means of effecting that purpose prove fruitless, other means should be tried. Every failure must keep the animal in a state of disappointment which will lead to all sorts of new trials and devices; and tranquillity will not ensue till one of these, by a happy stroke, achieves the wished-for end. In a similar way Goltz ascribes intelligence to the frog's optic lobes and cerebellum. We alluded above to the manner in which a sound frog imprisoned in water will discover an outlet to the atmosphere. Goltz found that frogs deprived of their cerebral hemispheres would often exhibit a like ingenuity. Such a frog, after rising from the bottom and finding his farther upward progress checked by the glass bell which has been inverted over him, will not persist in butting his nose against the obstacle until dead of suffocation, but will often re-descend and emerge from under its rim as if, not a definite mechanical propulsion upwards, but rather a conscious desire to reach the air by hook or crook were the main-spring of his activity. Goltz concluded from this that the hemispheres are not the seat of intellectual

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  In this section, Kahneman critiques prospect theory, particularly its assumption that outcomes are evaluated relative to a static reference point, commonly the status quo. He presents various gambling scenarios to reveal that the emotional impact of gaining or losing can vary dramatically based on context, challenging the notion that winning nothing holds the same value across different situations. Kahneman argues that the model fails to take into account real emotional experiences of disappointment and regret, asserting that these feelings significantly influence decision-making but are not adequately addressed in the current theoretical framework. This sets the stage for exploring a more nuanced understanding of decision-making that integrates psychological emotions into economic models. Kahneman delves into the intricacies of regret in this section, emphasizing how prevailing theories inadequately address the emotional ramifications of decision-making. He illustrates through thought experiments that the pain of regret operates differently depending on the alternative choices available. By positing scenarios where anticipated disappointment compounds the emotional response to losses, he critiques the simplistically independent evaluation of options assumed in traditional economic models. This critique points toward the necessity for incorporating models of regret that can navigate the emotional landscape of decision-making as opposed to those that neglect this critical component. This section introduces the endowment effect, a phenomenon wherein ownership increases the perceived value of an item. Citing Richard Thaler's observations of irrational economic behavior, Kahneman illustrates how possessions are valued differently based on ownership, particularly when it comes to goods typically held for use rather than exchange. He draws upon experimental findings that show a dramatic disparity in the selling prices set by owners compared to the purchasing prices offered by buyers for the same item. This highlights how psychological factors override conventional economic realities, further calling for a reevaluation of traditional models in light of behavioral insights. In this section, Kahneman recounts experimental studies designed to delineate the endowment effect clearly. He collaborates with Thaler and Knetsch, building on prior research to contrast consumer behavior in trading exchanges versus personal items held for use. The experiments compellingly demonstrate that market dynamics operate differently depending on whether items are held for use or exchange. The findings underscore the limitations of conventional economic theory, which does not account for the psychological investment associated with personal ownership, suggesting that human biases similarly distort perceptions of market behavior in meaningful ways. Kahneman elaborates on the significant distinction between how individuals evaluate items based on their intended use versus items held for exchange. He argues that while interactions in a standard market exhibit predictable patterns, personal goods that are not regularly traded elicit strong feelings of attachment and reluctance to sell. This emotional underpinning leads to inconsistencies in economic predictions, where perceived value drastically shifts depending on whether the goods are meant for personal enjoyment or financial exchange. The section serves to reinforce the contention that failing to recognize the role of subjective experiences in valuation can lead to fundamental misunderstandings within traditional economic models.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  In reflecting on his personal experiences with the planning fallacy, Kahneman illustrates how cognitive biases can obscure rational judgment, even among knowledgeable individuals. He recalls a pivotal project that he managed, acknowledging his failure to incorporate prior statistical data that outlined the project's unlikelihood of success. This admission underscores the insidious nature of optimistic bias, where the emotional aversion to acknowledging potential failure can distort judgment, leading teams to bypass essential discussions about project viability. As Kahneman argues, rather than facing tough realities, individuals often remain in a state of "lethargy" that prevents them from reassessing their commitment to a project in light of unfavorable information, a dynamic compounded by the sunk-cost fallacy. His insights serve as a cautionary tale to project managers about the importance of embracing the outside view to cultivate a culture of informed decision-making. This section delves into the broader implications of optimistic bias, characterizing it as a crucial element within the framework of capitalism and entrepreneurial pursuits. Kahneman posits that while such optimism can spur innovation and drive individuals to undertake substantial risks, it can also have detrimental effects on decision-making. Citing research that indicates overly optimistic individuals consistently overrate their probabilities of success, he discusses how this cognitive bias fuels entrepreneurial ventures, often leading to an underestimation of risks and poorer outcomes. He asserts that optimistic individuals, though often successful, are prone to overlooking the potential pitfalls inherent in their endeavors. Through his analysis, he highlights the duality of optimism as both a catalyst for progress and a potential harbinger of failure, emphasizing the necessity for a balanced perspective in evaluating risks and rewards. In this illuminating section, Kahneman explores the often delusional optimism held by entrepreneurs concerning the success of their ventures. He cites empirical data indicating that while only about 35% of small businesses survive beyond five years, most entrepreneurs grossly overestimate their odds, believing their chances to be significantly higher. Delving into a study conducted under the Inventor’s Assistance Program, he reveals that nearly half of the inventors persisted with projects deemed likely to fail, often exacerbating their losses. This tendency to ignore bleak forecasts illustrates the profound influence of an optimistic bias that leads individuals to discount unfavorable statistics. Kahneman argues that this insatiable persistence, while sometimes fostering innovation, often culminates in financial disappointment and broader economic implications, leading to questions about the sustainability of such optimistic endeavors in the face of reality.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  And two of the milestones were complete fails.” Verhun shared with his boss how dismayed he was with the team’s performance and his own failure as a leader. The conversation went as follows: Chairman: Did you think we were going to achieve all those goals? Verhun: Of course, we put them on paper and the team all agreed to them. Chairman: Darcy, if we had achieved all our goals, that would have been an indication that we weren’t dreaming big enough. Verhun: But two of the milestones were epic fails. They’ll never be achieved. Chairman: Did you learn something from them? Verhun: Yeah, a ton. Chairman: Okay, great. And I’m guessing we will apply the lessons we learned from any mistakes we made along the way? Verhun: Yes. Chairman: Awesome. Carry on. See you next quarter. Verhun says he’s told this story on many occasions at every level in his company. “It is such a great example of our ethos: We are going to try things, fine-tune as we learn, fix mistakes, and produce results together. We will never be perfect, but we will always strive for excellence,” he said. We think the wisdom this chairman imparted is a great story to share with all perfectionists. Ryan Westwood, cofounder and CEO of Simplus, told us, “It helps tremendously with perfectionism when leaders are open about their own anxieties. It puts people at ease and gives everyone permission to be human. We did a leadership training last week, and I told a story about how I screwed up in the way we structured management incentives in our latest acquisition. We failed to maximize the benefits of the team. I talked about how hard it was to navigate through it and how much it stressed me. It was almost like there was this collective sigh of relief by employees on the call. They were posting on the thread about how it was so nice to hear their CEO had messed up.” Another manager we interviewed about this issue shared a great message he reinforces in his firm. Roland Ligtenberg is the founder of Housecall Pro, an eight-year-old San Diego software company with about 150 employees. He has seen firsthand the effects of perfectionism on rising anxiety levels in his firm, so he began coaching his employees: “In our world, perfection is the enemy of done .”

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The Anatomy of Love, the book from which we’ve been quoting, is a beautifully written popularization of her groundbreaking academic work on the “evolution of serial pair-bonding” in humans (not all apes) within the past few million years. Furthermore, note how Fisher refers to the very qualities bonobos share with humans as “extremes of primate sexuality.” Further hints of neo-Victorianism appear in Fisher’s description of the transition our ancestors made from the treetops to life on land: “Perhaps our primitive female ancestors living in the trees pursued sex with a variety of males to keep friends. Then, when our forbears were driven onto the grasslands of Africa some four million years ago and pair bonding evolved to raise the young, females turned from open promiscuity to clandestine copulations, reaping the benefits of resources and better or more varied genes as well.” 24 Fisher assumes the advent of pair bonding four million years ago despite the absence of any supporting evidence. Continuing this circular reasoning, she writes: Because bonobos appear to be the smartest of the apes, because they have many physical traits quite similar to people’s, and because these chimps copulate with flair and frequency, some anthropologists conjecture that bonobos are much like the African hominoid prototype, our last common tree-dwelling ancestor. Maybe pygmy chimps are living relics of our past. But they certainly manifest some fundamental differences in their sexual behavior. For one thing, bonobos do not form long-term pair-bonds the way humans do. Nor do they raise their young as husband and wife. Males do care for infant siblings, but monogamy is no life for them. Promiscuity is their fare. 25 Here we have crystalline expression of the Flintstonizing that can distort the thinking of even the most informed theorists on the origins of human sexual behavior. We’re confident Dr. Fisher will find that what she calls “fundamental differences” in sexual behavior are not differences at all when she looks at the full breadth of information we cover in following chapters. We’ll show that husband/wife marriage and sexual monogamy are far from universal human behaviors, as she and others have argued. Simply because bonobos raise doubts about the naturalness of human long-term pair bonding, Fisher and most other authorities conclude that they cannot serve as models for human evolution. They begin by assuming that long-term sexual monogamy forms the nucleus of the one and only natural, eternal human family structure and reason backwards from there. Yucatán be damned! I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and chimpanzee only later or not at all.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Zeus was sure that women did, but Hera would hear none of it. Tiresias replied that not only did females enjoy sex more than males, they enjoyed it nine times more! His response incensed Hera so much that she struck Tiresias blind. Feeling responsible for having dragged poor Tiresias into this mess, Zeus tried to make amends by giving him the gift of prophesy. It was from this state of blinded vision that Tiresias saw the terrible destiny of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Peter of Spain, author of one of the most widely read medical books of the thirteenth century, the Thesaurus Pauperum, was more diplomatic when confronted with the same question. His answer (published in Quaestiones super Viaticum) was that although it was true women experienced greater quantity of pleasure, men’s sexual pleasure was of higher quality. Peter’s book included ingredients for thirty-four aphrodisiacs, fifty-six prescriptions to enhance male libido, and advice for women wanting to avoid pregnancy. Perhaps it was his diplomacy, the birth-control advice, or his open-mindedness that led to one of history’s strange and tragic turns. In 1276, Peter of Spain was elected Pope John XXI, but he died just nine months later when the ceiling of his library suspiciously collapsed on him as he slept. Why does any of this history matter? Why is it important that we correct widely held misconceptions about human sexual evolution? Well, ask yourself what might change if everyone knew that women do (or, at least, can, in the right circumstances) enjoy sex as much as men, not to mention nine times more, as Tiresias claimed? What if Darwin was wrong about the sexuality of the human female—led astray by his Victorian bias? What if Victoria’s biggest secret was that men and women are both victims of false propaganda about our true sexual natures and the war between the sexes —still waged today—is a false-flag operation, a diversion from our common enemy? We’re being misled and misinformed by an unfounded yet constantly repeated mantra about the naturalness of wedded bliss, female sexual reticence, and happily-ever-after sexual monogamy—a narrative pitting man against woman in a tragic tango of unrealistic expectations, snowballing frustration, and crushing disappointment. Living under this tyranny of two, as author and media critic Laura Kipnis puts it, we carry the weight of “modern love’s central anxiety,” namely, “the expectation that romance and sexual attraction can last a lifetime of coupled togetherness despite much hard evidence to the contrary.” 21 We build our most sacred relationships on the battleground where evolved appetites clash with the romantic mythology of monogamous marriage. As Andrew J. Cherlin recounts in The Marriage-Go-Round, this unresolved conflict between what we are and what many wish we were results in “a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else.”

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Cherlin’s research shows that “[t]here are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country.” 22 But we rarely dare to confront the contradiction at the heart of our mistaken ideal of marriage head-on. And if we do? During a routine discussion of yet another long-married politician caught with his pants down, comedian/social critic Bill Maher asked the guests on his TV show to consider the unspoken reality underlying many of these situations: “When a man’s been married twenty years,” Maher said, “he doesn’t want to have sex, or his wife doesn’t want to have sex with him. Whatever it is. What is the right answer? I mean, I know he’s bad for cheating, but what’s the right answer? Is it—to just suck it up and live the rest of your life passionless, and imagine somebody else when you’re having sex with your wife the three days a year that you have sex?” After an extended, awkward silence, one of Maher’s panelists eventually suggested, “The right answer is to get out of the relationship…. Move on. I mean, you’re an adult.” Another agreed, noting, “Divorce is legal in this country.” The third, normally outspoken journalist P. J. O’Rourke, just looked down at his shoes and said nothing. “Move on?” Really? Is abandonment of one’s family the “adult” option for dealing with the inherent conflict between socially sanctioned romantic ideals and the inconvenient truths of sexual passion? 23 Darwin’s sense of the coy female wasn’t based only on his Victorian assumptions. In addition to natural selection, he proposed a second mechanism for evolutionary change: sexual selection. The central premise of sexual selection is that in most mammals, the female has a much higher investment in offspring than does the male. She’s stuck with gestation, lactation, and extended nurturing of the young. Because of this inequality in unavoidable sacrifice, Darwin reasoned, she is the more hesitant participant, needing to be convinced it’s a good idea—while the male, with his slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach to reproduction, is eager to do the convincing. Evolutionary psychology is founded on the belief that male and female approaches to mating have intrinsically conflicted agendas. The selection of the winning bachelor typically involves male competition: rams slamming their heads together, peacocks dragging around colorful, predator-attracting tails, men bearing expensive gifts and vowing eternal love over candlelight. Darwin saw sexual selection as a struggle between males for sexual access to passive, fertile females who would submit to the victor. Given the competitive context his theories assume, he believed “promiscuous intercourse in a state of nature [to be] extremely improbable.” But at least one of Darwin’s contemporaries disagreed. Lewis Henry Morgan To white people, he was known as Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), a railroad lawyer with a fascination for scholarship and the ways in which societies organize themselves.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  He asked women to sniff T-shirts men had been wearing for a few days, with no perfumes, soaps, or showers. Wedekind found, and subsequent research has confirmed, that most of the women were attracted to the scent of men whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC) differed from her own. 9 This preference makes genetic sense in that the MHC indicates the range of immunity to various pathogens. Children born of parents with different immunities are likely to benefit from a broader, more robust immune response themselves. The problem is that women taking birth control pills don’t seem to show the same responsiveness to these male scent cues. Women who were using birth control pills chose men’s T-shirts randomly or, even worse, showed a preference for men with similar immunity to their own. 10 Consider the implications. Many couples meet when the woman is on the pill. They go out for a while, like each other a lot, and then decide to get together and have a family. She goes off the pill, gets pregnant, and has a baby. But her response to him changes. There’s something about him she finds irritating—something she hadn’t noticed before. Maybe she finds him sexually unattractive, and the distance between them grows. But her libido is fine. She gets flushed every time she gets close enough to smell her tennis coach. Her body, no longer silenced by the effects of the pill, may now be telling her that her husband (still the great guy she married) isn’t a good genetic match for her. But it’s too late. They blame it on the work pressure, the stress of parenthood, each other…. Because this couple inadvertently short-circuited an important test of biological compatibility, their children may face significant health risks ranging from reduced birth weight to impaired immune function. 11 How many couples in this situation blame themselves for having “failed” somehow? How many families are fractured by this common, tragic, undetected sequence of events? 12 Psychologist Richard Lippa teamed up with the BBC to survey over 200,000 people of all ages from all over the world concerning the strength of their sex drive and how it affects their desires. 13 He found the same inversion of male and female sexuality: for men, both gay and straight, higher sex drive increases the specificity of their sexual desire. In other words, a straight guy with a higher sex drive tends to be more focused on women, while higher sex drive in a gay guy makes him more intent on men.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Just as pope after pope dismissed any cosmology that removed humankind from the exalted center of the endless expanse of space, just as Darwin was (and, in some crowds, still is) ridiculed for recognizing that human beings are the creation of natural laws, many scientists are blinded by their emotional resistance to any account of human sexual evolution that doesn’t revolve around the monogamous nuclear family unit. Although we’re led to believe we live in times of sexual liberation, contemporary human sexuality throbs with obvious, painful truths that must not be spoken aloud. The conflict between what we’re told we feel and what we really feel may be the richest source of confusion, dissatisfaction, and unnecessary suffering of our time. The answers normally proffered don’t answer the questions at the heart of our erotic lives: why are men and women so different in our desires, fantasies, responses, and sexual behavior? Why are we betraying and divorcing each other at ever increasing rates when not opting out of marriage entirely? Why the pandemic spread of single-parent families? Why does the passion evaporate from so many marriages so quickly? What causes the death of desire? Having evolved together right here on Earth, why do so many men and women resonate with the idea that we may as well be from different planets? Oriented toward medicine and business, American society has responded to this ongoing crisis by developing a marital-industrial complex of couples therapy, pharmaceutical hard-ons, sex-advice columnists, creepy father-daughter purity cults, and an endless stream of in-box come-ons (“Unleash your LoveMonster! She’ll thank you!”). Every month, truckloads of glossy supermarket magazines offer the same old tricks to get the spark back into our moribund sex lives. Yes, a few candles here, some crotchless panties there, toss a handful of rose petals on the bed and it’ll be just like the very first time! What’s that you say? He’s still checking out other women? She’s still got an air of detached disappointment? He’s finished before you’ve begun? Well, then, let the experts figure out what ails you, your partner, your relationship. Perhaps his penis needs enlarging or her vagina needs a retrofit. Maybe he has “commitment issues,” a “fragmentary superego,” or the dreaded “Peter Pan complex.” Are you depressed? You say you love your spouse of a dozen years but don’t feel sexually attracted the way you used to? One or both of you are tempted by another? Maybe you two should try doing it on the kitchen floor. Or force yourself to do it every night for a year. 4 Maybe he’s going through a midlife crisis. Take these pills. Get a new hairstyle.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  For example, in his recent essay entitled “Why War?,” philosopher David Livingstone Smith projects the Malthusian panorama in all its mistaken despair: “Competition for limited resources is the engine of evolutionary change,” he writes. “Any population that reproduces without inhibition will eventually outstrip the resources upon which it depends and, as numbers swell, individuals will have no alternative but to compete more and more desperately for dwindling resources. Those who can secure them will flourish, and those who cannot will die.” 9 True, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far, because Smith forgets that our ancestors were the original ramblin’ men (and women)— nomads who rarely stopped walking for more than a few days at a stretch. Walking away is what they did best. Why assume they would have stuck around to struggle “desperately” in an overpopulated area with depleted resources when they could simply walk up the beach, as they’d been doing for uncounted generations? And prehistoric human beings never reproduced “without inhibition,” like rabbits. Far from it. In fact, prehistoric world population growth is estimated to have been well below .001 percent per year throughout prehistory 10 —hardly the population bomb Malthus assumed. Basic human reproductive biology in a foraging context made rapid population growth unlikely, if not impossible. Women rarely conceive while breastfeeding, and without milk from domesticated animals, hunter-gatherer women typically breastfeed each child for five or six years. Furthermore, the demands of a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle make carrying more than one small child at a time unreasonable for a mother—even assuming lots of help from others. Finally, low body-fat levels result in much later menarche for hunter-gatherer females than for their post-agricultural sisters. Most foragers don’t start ovulating until their late teens, resulting in a shorter reproductive life. 11 Hobbes, Malthus, and Darwin were themselves surrounded by the desperate effects of population saturation (rampant infectious disease, ceaseless war, Machiavellian struggles for power). The prehistoric world, however, was sparsely populated—where it was populated at all. Other than isolated pockets surrounded by desert, or islands like Papua New Guinea, the prehistoric world was almost all open frontier. Most scholars believe that our ancestors were just setting out from Africa about fifty thousand years ago, entering Europe five or ten thousand years later. 12 The first human footprints probably weren’t left on North American soil until about twelve thousand years ago. 13 During the many millennia before agriculture, the entire number of Homo sapiens on the planet probably never surpassed a million people and certainly never approached the current population of Chicago.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Is it silly romanticism to point out that ancient humans who survived their first few years often lived as long as the richest and luckiest of us do today, even with our high-tech coronary stents, diabetes medication, and titanium hips? No. If you think about it, the neo-Hobbesian vision is far sunnier than ours. To have concluded, as we have, that our species has an innate capacity for love and generosity at least equal to our taste for destruction, for peaceful cooperation as much as coordinated attack, for an open, relaxed sexuality as much as for jealous, passion-smothering possessiveness … to see that both these worlds were open to us, but that around ten thousand years ago a few of our ancestors wandered off the path they’d been on forever into a garden of toil, disease, and conflict where our species has been trapped ever since … well, this is not exactly a rose-colored view of the overall trajectory of humankind. Who are the naïve romantics here, anyway? Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality P A R T IV Bodies in Motion Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. J OHN D ONNE (1572–1631) Everybody has a story to tell. So does every body, and the story told by the human body is rated XXX. Like any narrative of prehistory, ours rests on two types of evidence: circumstantial and material. We’ve already covered a good bit of the circumstantial evidence. As for more tangible material evidence, the song says, “What goes up must come down,” but unfortunately for archaeologists and those of us who rely on their findings, what goes down rarely comes back up. And even when it does, ancient social behavior is hard to see reflected in bits of bone, flint, and pottery—fragments that represent only a fraction of what once existed. At a conference not long ago, the subject of our research came up over breakfast. Upon hearing that we were investigating human sexual behavior in prehistory, the professor sitting across the table from us scoffed and asked (rhetorically), “So what do you do, close your eyes and dream?” While one should never scoff with a mouthful of scone, he had a point. As social behavior presumably doesn’t leave physical artifacts, any theorizing must amount to little but “dreaming.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame. 'May I trouble you to sit down, princess?' the celebrated doctor said to her. He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up furious. 'Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the third time you've asked me the same thing.' The celebrated doctor did not take offence. 'Nervous irritability,' he said to the princess, when Kitty had left the room. 'However, I had finished….' And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doc tor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need. It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending now. 'Really, I'm quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let's go!' she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the journey. II S OON after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear Kitty's fate, which was to be decided that day. 'Well, well?' she said, coming into the drawing-room, without taking off her hat. 'You're all in good spirits. Good news, then?' They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it was settled they should go abroad. Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going away.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its defects, inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on with it. The same experience befell him as Golenishtchev, who felt that he had nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory that his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and collecting materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but .Vronsky was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without explanation or apology, he simply ceased working at painting. But without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the broken plaster on the cornices became so disagreeably obvious, and the everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and the German traveller became so wearisome, that they had to make some change. They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Vronsky intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother, while Anna meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on Vronsky's great family estate. XIV L EVIN had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'What! disappointed in him?' 'Not disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected more. I had expected a rush of new delightful emotion to come as a surprise. And then instead of that—disgust, pity…' She listened attentively, looking at him over the baby, while she put back on her slender fingers the rings she had taken off while giving Mitya his bath. 'And most of all, at there being far more apprehension and pity than pleasure. Today, after that fright during the storm, I understand how I love him.' Kitty's smile was radiant. 'Were you very much frightened?' she said. 'So was I too, but I feel it more now that it's over. I'm going to look at the oak. How nice Katavasov is! And what a happy day we've had altogether. And you're so nice with Sergey Ivanovitch, when you care to be. . . . Well, go back to them. It's always so hot and steamy here after the bath.' XIX G OING out of the nursery and being again alone, Levin went back at once to the thought, in which there was something not clear. Instead of going into the drawing-room, where he heard voices, he stopped on the terrace, and leaning his elbows on the parapet, he gazed up at the sky. It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking there were no clouds. The storms had drifted on to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Levin listened to the monotonous drip from the lime-trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand had flung them back with careful aim. 'Well, what is it perplexes me?' Levin said to himself, feeling beforehand that the solution of his difficulties was ready in his soul, though he did not know it yet. 'Yes, the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity—the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself, and in the recognition of which—I don't make myself, but whether I will or not— I am made one with other men in one body of believers, which is called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians, the Buddhists—what of them?' he put to himself the question he had feared to face. 'Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of that highest blessing without which life has no meaning?' He pondered a moment, but immediately corrected himself. 'But what am I questioning?' he said to himself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she's dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing much, somehow didn't count, but that after marriage, life began in earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won't do; I must begin. Of course, it's not her fault. She's not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into such ways, and she'll get used to them too. . . . Of course she's not to blame,' he told himself. But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to them, for the ground of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin's mind that she herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous. ('That fool Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn't know how to.') 'Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has), apart from dress and broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though she's rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and is perfectly satisfied.' Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse, and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of this, and, preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her love that she enjoyed now while gaily building her nest for the future. XVI W HEN Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent correspondence. 'You see, your good lady's settled me here, told me to sit a bit with her,' said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Kitty. In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of the drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But with her father's coming all the world in which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount. Moreover she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had already gone with her children. But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said good-bye, Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia. 'I'll come when you get married,' said Varenka. 'I shall never marry.' 'Well, then, I shall never come.' 'Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember your promise,' said Kitty. The doctor's prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to Russia cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a' memory to her. Anna Karenina PART III I S ERGEY I VANOVITCH K OZNISHEV wanted a rest from mental work, and instead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the end of May to stay in the country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had come now to enjoy such a life at his brother's. Konstantin Levin was very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, and it positively annoyed him to see his brother's attitude to the country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the background of life, that is of pleasures, endeavours, labour. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the other a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town, which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Varenka felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had a sense of relief. When he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He could not be false to the memory of Marie. 'Gently, children, gently!' Levin shouted quite angrily to the chil dren, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them. Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka walked out of the wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off. 'Well?' her husband questioned her as they were going home again. 'It doesn't bite,' said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure. 'How doesn't bite?' 'I'll show you,' she said, taking her husband's hand, lifting it to her mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. 'Like a kiss on a priest's hand.' 'Which didn't it bite with?' he said, laughing. 'Both. But it should have been like this .. .' 'There are some peasants coming…' 'Oh, they didn't see.' VI D URING the time of the children's tea the grown-up people sat in the balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all, especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka, were very well aware that there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or shut him out of the school for ever. Everyone present, feeling too that something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Levin and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and could not—and they felt a prick of conscience. 'Mark my words, Alexander will not come,' said the old princess. That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch to come down by train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too. 'And I know why,' the princess went on; 'he says that young people ought to be left alone for a while at first.' 'But papa has left us alone. We've never seen him,' said Kitty. 'Besides, we're not young people! —we're old, married people by now.' 'Only if he doesn't come, I shall say good-bye to you children,' said the princess, sighing mournfully. 'What nonsense, mamma!' both the daughters fell upon her at once. 'How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now.. . ' And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess's voice.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The conditions of the native tribes was investigated in its political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and religious aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the product of official activity. The answers were all based on official data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents, founded in their turn on the reports of parochial overseers and parish priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All such questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs, etc.—questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages— received full, unhesitating solution. And this solution was in favour of Alexey Alexandrovitch's contention. But Stremov, who had felt stung to the quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception of the. commission's report, resorted to tactics which Alexey Alexandrovitch had not anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him several other members, went over to Alexey Alexandrovitch's side, and not contenting himself with warmly defending the measure proposed by Karenin, proposed other more extreme measures in the same direction. These measures, still further exaggerated in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch's fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of Stremov's tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the measures seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest authorities, and public opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the newspapers, all at the same time fell foul of them, expressing their indignation both with the measures and their nominal father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremov drew back, affecting to have blindly followed Karenin, and to be astounded and distressed at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his domestic griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the commission. Some members, with Stremov at their head, justified their mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the commission of revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the report of the commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper. Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence of this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was chaos, and although everyone was interested, no one could tell whether the native tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined, or whether they were in a flourishing condition.