Fear

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 From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  FORNICATION: FROM HEBREW TO GREEKAround the year AD 51 the apostle Paul arrived for the first time in Corinth, the bustling seat of Roman power in Achaea. The city, once razed by the Romans but long since resurrected by its destroyers, was an imposing sight. In Paul’s own words, he came to Corinth “in weakness and in much fear and trembling.” The Acrocorinth, the sheer escarpment housing Corinth’s most archaic temples, dominated the views of the approaching visitor. Perched on its eastern summit was a temple of Aphrodite, looming over the town that sprawled toward the sea beneath her solicitous watch. As Paul entered the forum, he would have been confronted by the bewildering noise of power, commerce, and diffuse piety that characterized urban life in a vibrant provincial town of the Roman Empire. The sanctuaries of the gods—Tychē and Aphrodite, Artemis and Dionysus—ringed the crowded center of the town, hard by the merchants’ stalls and public offices. The haphazard accretion of religious monuments, and the tessellation of the sacred and the profane, belied the reverent balance and careful rhythms that guaranteed the gods their due honor. Into this enveloping cityscape of tremulous paganism crept a missionary with a startling message. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?”9 We meet the community of Christians Paul founded in Corinth through the tantalizing but imperfect prism of the letters he wrote, some six years after first visiting the city, when challenged by the unexpectedly fractious relations in a small apocalyptic movement. Word reached Paul in Ephesus that the Corinthian Christians were feuding, split on a range of mundane problems, from marriage and manumission to sacrificial meat. In the patient response of the apostle that has come to be known as First Corinthians, fierce disagreement over proper sexual behavior lurches to the surface. Such dissent was surely inevitable. Nowhere did the moral expectations of the Jesus movement stand in such stark contrast to the world in which its adherents moved. Corinth in particular was not famous for its sexual virtue. In recent decades the reputation of Roman Corinth has enjoyed the sort of undeserved rehabilitation that comes only when generations of gross exaggeration allow overcorrection to pass as healthy revision. It is true that Corinth had first earned its notoriety in centuries long past. But the laxity of the Corinthians in venereal affairs was not just hoary legend. In the words of a second-century admirer, Corinth was a city “more dear to Aphrodite than all cities that exist or have existed.” The eroticized atmosphere of Corinth was the predictable attribute of a wealthy, imperial crossroads; even against the indulgent backdrop of late pagan sensuality, Corinth stood out as louche.10

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  People who were sexually abused as children often have crippling phobias about themselves programmed into them by their perpetrators. Many children have no conscious memories of the phobia installation. However they suffer deep trauma issues about identity and sexuality. They are unable to visualize themselves being healthy and valued as a unique human being. Not surprisingly, a large number of sex trafficking victims were sexually abused as children, making them especially vulnerable to recruitment and continued abuse. This childhood mind control abuse set them up for being abused again and again. What do phobias have to do with cult groups and mind control? In some cults, members are systematically made to be phobic about ever leaving the group. Today’s cults know how to effectively implant vivid negative images deep within members’ unconscious minds, making it impossible for them to even conceive of ever being happy and successful outside of the group. When the unconscious is programmed to accept such negative associations, it behaves as though they were true. The unconscious mind of the typical cult member contains a substantial image-bank of all of the bad things that will occur if they, or anyone, were to ever betray the group. Members are programmed, either overtly or subtly, to believe that if they ever leave, they will die of some horrible disease, be hit by a car, be killed in a plane crash, or perhaps cause the death of loved ones. Some cults program members to believe that if they leave the group, planetary nuclear holocaust will be the result. Yet cult-induced phobias are so cleverly created and implanted that people often don’t even know they exist. Of course, these thoughts are irrational and often nonsensical. However, keep in mind that most phobias are irrational. Most planes don’t crash, most elevators don’t get stuck, and most dogs aren’t rabid. Imagine what it would be like if you believed that mysterious people were determined to poison you. If this belief were implanted deep in your unconscious, do you think you would ever be able to go to a restaurant and enjoy your meal? How long would it be before you only ate food that you bought and prepared yourself? If, by chance, someone you were eating with in a restaurant suddenly became ill, how long would it be before you stopped eating out altogether? Such a belief—whether conscious or unconscious—would substantially limit your choices. If the belief were not conscious, you might try to rationalize your behavior by telling your friends that you don’t like eating out because you are on a diet, or because many restaurants are unsanitary. Either way, your choices no longer include simply going to a restaurant and enjoying a good meal. In the same way, cult phobias take away people’s choices. Members truly believe they will be destroyed if they leave the safety of the group. They think there is no way outside the group for them to grow—spiritually, intellectually, or emotionally.

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

  For the longest time I thought she meant that the other kids were going to steal me, but she was talking about the police. Children could be taken. Children were taken. The wrong color kid in the wrong color area, and the government could come in, strip your parents of custody, haul you off to an orphanage. To police the townships, the government relied on its network of impipis, the anonymous snitches who’d inform on suspicious activity. There were also the blackjacks, black people who worked for the police. My grandmother’s neighbor was a blackjack. She had to make sure he wasn’t watching when she smuggled me in and out of the house. My gran still tells the story of when I was three years old and, fed up with being a prisoner, I dug a hole under the gate in the driveway, wriggled through, and ran off. Everyone panicked. A search party went out and tracked me down. I had no idea how much danger I was putting everyone in. The family could have been deported, my gran could have been arrested, my mom might have gone to prison, and I probably would have been packed off to a home for colored kids. So I was kept inside. Other than those few instances of walking in the park, the flashes of memory I have from when I was young are almost all indoors, me with my mom in her tiny flat, me by myself at my gran’s. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know any kids besides my cousins. I wasn’t a lonely kid—I was good at being alone. I’d read books, play with the toy that I had, make up imaginary worlds. I lived inside my head. I still live inside my head. To this day you can leave me alone for hours and I’m perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have to remember to be with people. — Obviously, I was not the only child born to black and white parents during apartheid. Traveling around the world today, I meet other mixed South Africans all the time. Our stories start off identically. We’re around the same age. Their parents met at some underground party in Hillbrow or Cape Town. They lived in an illegal flat. The difference is that in virtually every other case they left. The white parent smuggled them out through Lesotho or Botswana, and they grew up in exile, in England or Germany or Switzerland, because being a mixed family under apartheid was just that unbearable.

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

  They were coming home from church, a big group, my mom and Andrew and Isaac, her new husband and his children and a whole bunch of his extended family, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. They had just pulled into the driveway when Abel pulled up and got out of his car. He had his gun. He looked right at my mother. “You’ve stolen my life,” he said. “You’ve taken everything away from me. Now I’m going to kill all of you.” Andrew stepped in front of his father. He stepped right in front of the gun. “Don’t do this, Dad, please. You’re drunk. Just put the gun away.” Abel looked down at his son. “No,” he said. “I’m killing everybody, and if you don’t walk away I will shoot you first.” Andrew stepped aside. “His eyes were not lying,” he told me. “He had the eyes of the Devil. In that moment I could tell my father was gone.” For all the pain I felt that day, in hindsight, I have to imagine that Andrew’s pain was far greater than mine. My mom had been shot by a man I despised. If anything, I felt vindicated; I’d been right about Abel all along. I could direct my anger and hatred toward him with no shame or guilt whatsoever. But Andrew’s mother had been shot by Andrew’s father, a father he loved. How does he reconcile his love with that situation? How does he carry on loving both sides? Both sides of himself? Isaac was only four years old. He didn’t fully comprehend what was happening, and as Andrew stepped aside, Isaac started crying. “Daddy, what are you doing? Daddy, what are you doing?” “Isaac, go to your brother,” Abel said. Isaac ran over to Andrew, and Andrew held him. Then Abel raised his gun and he started shooting. My mother jumped in front of the gun to protect everyone, and that’s when she took the first bullet, not in her leg but in her butt cheek. She collapsed, and as she fell to the ground she screamed. “Run!” Abel kept shooting and everyone ran. They scattered. My mom was struggling to get back to her feet when Abel walked up and stood over her. He pointed the gun at her head point-blank, execution-style. Then he pulled the trigger. Nothing. The gun misfired. Click! He pulled the trigger again, same thing. Then again and again. Click! Click! Click! Click! Four times he pulled the trigger, and four times the gun misfired. Bullets were popping out of the ejection port, falling out of the gun, falling down on my mom and clattering to the ground. Abel stopped to see what was wrong with the gun. My mother jumped up in a panic. She shoved him aside, ran for the car, jumped into the driver’s seat.

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

  When I was born, my mother hadn’t seen her family in three years, but she wanted me to know them and wanted them to know me, so the prodigal daughter returned. We lived in town, but I would spend weeks at a time with my grandmother in Soweto, often during the holidays. I have so many memories from the place that in my mind it’s like we lived there, too. Soweto was designed to be bombed—that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone. Growing up, I never knew that my grandmother lived in the center of a bull’s-eye. In the city, as difficult as it was to get around, we managed. Enough people were out and about, black, white, and colored, going to and from work, that we could get lost in the crowd. But only black people were permitted in Soweto. It was much harder to hide someone who looked like me, and the government was watching much more closely. In the white areas you rarely saw the police, and if you did it was Officer Friendly in his collared shirt and pressed pants. In Soweto the police were an occupying army. They didn’t wear collared shirts. They wore riot gear. They were militarized. They operated in teams known as flying squads, because they would swoop in out of nowhere, riding in armored personnel carriers—hippos, we called them—tanks with enormous tires and slotted holes in the side of the vehicle to fire their guns out of. You didn’t mess with a hippo. You saw one, you ran. That was a fact of life. The township was in a constant state of insurrection; someone was always marching or protesting somewhere and had to be suppressed. Playing in my grandmother’s house, I’d hear gunshots, screams, tear gas being fired into crowds. My memories of the hippos and the flying squads come from when I was five or six, when apartheid was finally coming apart. I never saw the police before that, because we could never risk the police seeing me. Whenever we went to Soweto, my grandmother refused to let me outside. If she was watching me it was, “No, no, no. He doesn’t leave the house.” Behind the wall, in the yard, I could play, but not in the street. And that’s where the rest of the boys and girls were playing, in the street. My cousins, the neighborhood kids, they’d open the gate and head out and roam free and come back at dusk. I’d beg my grandmother to go outside. “Please. Please, can I go play with my cousins?” “No! They’re going to take you!”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Perhaps the “sister,” in searching for the kerosene can, might overturn the jar of prunes which were being stewed and thus endanger all our lives by robbing us of the required calories in the morrow’s meal. A severe beating would have to be given, not in anger, because that would disturb the digestive apparatus, but silently and efficiently, as a chemist would beat up the white of an egg in preparation for a minor analysis. But the “sister,” not understanding the prophylactic nature of the punishment, would give vent to the most bloodcurdling screams and this would so affect the old man that he would go out for a walk and return two or three hours later blind drunk and, what was worse, scratching a little paint off the rolling doors in his blind staggers. The little piece of paint that had been chipped off would bring on a battle royal which was very bad for my dream life, because in my dream life I frequently changed places with my sister, accepting the tortures inflicted upon her and nourishing them with my supersensitive brain. It was in these dreams, always accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, of shrieks, curses, groans and sobs, that I gathered an unformulated knowledge of the ancient mysteries, of the rites of initiation, of the transmigration of souls and so on. It might begin with a scene from real life—the sister standing by the blackboard in the kitchen, the mother towering over her with a ruler, saying two and two makes how much? and the sister screaming five . Bang! no , seven , Bang! no , thirteen , eighteen , twenty! I would be sitting at the table, doing my lessons, just as in real life during these scenes, when by a slight twist or squirm, perhaps as I saw the ruler come down on the sister’s face, suddenly I would be in another realm where glass was unknown, as it was unknown to the Kickapoos or the Lenni-Lenape. The faces of those about me were familiar—they were my uterine relatives who, for some mysterious reason, failed to recognize me in this new ambiance . They were garbed in black and the color of their skin was ash gray, like that of the Tibetan devils. They were all fitted out with knives and other instruments of torture: they belonged to the caste of sacrificial butchers. I seemed to have absolute liberty and the authority of a god, and yet by some capricious turn of events the end would be that I’d be lying on the sacrificial block and one of my charming uterine relatives would be bending over me with a gleaming knife to cut out my heart. In sweat and terror I would begin to recite “my lessons” in a high, screaming voice, faster and faster, as I felt the knife searching for my heart.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  People kept singing for a block or two as we left the Party headquarters behind, turning right on the narrow street just past it, they cycled through two or three verses before the song faded away once we reached Stamboliyski Boulevard. We had returned to civilization, I thought, we were passing shops and restaurants, their lit interiors calling us back from what we had almost become, it was unimaginable now. At the intersection with Vitosha, the beautiful old church, Sveta Nedelya, sat brooding in the pool of its lights. Ostavka, people were still chanting, but it felt half-hearted now, a matter almost of form. That hasn’t happened before, M. said, meaning the moment at the Party headquarters, I was scared almost, she said, were you, and I admitted that I was, that for a minute I had thought things might get bad. But it’s good that we’re scared, she said. If we’re scared, that means they’re scared, too. She looked at me, her face bright in a streetlamp, then looked away. They need to be scared, she said, maybe that’s the whole point, they need to know they should be scared of us. We turned back onto Vitosha, where M. stopped and said goodbye, she would take the metro home. I guess I should do my homework, she said, squeezing my arm in farewell before deciding instead to give me a quick hug. I’m so happy I saw you, she said, it was so great to do this, and then she was gone. Other people were leaving too, streaming down into the metro or dispersing on foot, the march was thinning out. Those of us who stayed turned onto Tsar Osvoboditel again, beginning the last leg of the protest, bringing us back full circle. There were still people yelling cherveni boklutsi but not many, most people were walking quietly, chatting among themselves. I would follow the march to the end, I had booked a hotel room for the night, in the luxury hotel near the statue of the tsar; after the embassy warnings travelers were staying in hotels far from the protests, the rooms were cheap enough for me to afford. I would spend the night there and take the metro to campus in the morning. I glanced at my phone and saw that D. was already waiting for me to join him for a drink at the bar. He was right, D. had texted, meaning the writer I had met and the argument they had had, what’s happening is better than I thought, I can’t wait to talk to you, hurry up. We were still a few blocks away but a new chant had started up, utre pak, tomorrow again, it gave people fresh energy, everyone was chanting it, pumping their fists in the air. Even I joined in, utre pak, I wanted to see what it was like to chant with the others, but soon I felt foolish and stopped.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I was born on the Fourth of July. I can’t feel . . .” “What religion are you?” “Catholic,” I say. “What outfit did you come from?” “What’s going on? When are you going to operate?” I say. “The doctors will operate,” he says. “Don’t worry,” he says confidently. “They are very busy and there are many wounded but they will take care of you soon.” He continues to stand almost at attention in front of me with a long clipboard in his hand, jotting down all the information he can. I cannot understand why they are taking so long to operate. There is something very wrong with me, I think, and they must operate as quickly as possible. The man with the clipboard walks out of the room. He will send the priest in soon. I lie in the room alone staring at the walls, still sucking the air, determined to live more than ever now. The priest seems to appear suddenly above my head. With his fingers he is gently touching my forehead, rubbing it slowly and softly. “How are you,” he says. “I’m fine, Father.” His face is very tired but it is not frightened. He is almost at ease, as if what he is doing he has done many times before. “I have come to give you the Last Rites, my son.” “I’m ready, Father,” I say. And he prays, rubbing oils on my face and gently placing the crucifix to my lips. “I will pray for you,” he says. “When will they operate?” I say to the priest. “I do not know,” he says. “The doctors are very busy. There are many wounded. There is not much time for anything here but trying to live. So you must try to live my son, and I will pray for you.” Soon after that I am taken to a long room where there are many doctors and nurses. They move quickly around me. They are acting very competent. “You will be fine,” says one nurse calmly. “Breathe deeply into the mask,” the doctor says. “Are you going to operate?” I ask. “Yes. Now breathe deeply into the mask.” As the darkness of the mask slowly covers my face I pray with all my being that I will live through this operation and see the light of day once again. I want to live so much. And even before I go to sleep with the blackness still swirling around my head and the numbness of sleep, I begin to fight as I have never fought before in my life. I awake to the screams of other men around me. I have made it. I think that maybe the wound is my punishment for killing the corporal and the children. That now everything is okay and the score is evened up. And now I am packed in this place with the others who have been wounded like myself, strapped onto a strange circular bed.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I don’t want you people to look left or right, I want you people to stand straight ahead.” It was unbearably hot. He could feel the sweat rolling off his face. He was afraid to look either way and he stared straight ahead like he’d been told. “Left face!” screamed the sergeant. “You goddamned idiots!” screamed the short sergeant again. “You’re turned the wrong way. You goddamned fucking people, you goddamned scum, when are you people gonna listen, when are you people gonna learn? You came here to be marines.” The short sergeant was laughing now. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, picking out one of the young boys, the tips of his shiny shoes almost touching the tips of the ones the boy wore. “You no good fucking civilian maggot,” he screamed in the boy’s ears. “You’re worthless, do you understand? And I’m gonna kill you. There are eighty of you, eighty young warm bodies, eighty sweet little ladies, eighty sweetpeas, and I want you maggots to know today that you belong to me and you will belong to me until I have made you into marines.” The formation was very sloppy. It didn’t look to him like a military formation at all. He was trying so hard, standing straight and looking straight ahead and cupping his hands right along the seams of his trousers the way the guidebook had taught him, the way Richie and he had practiced it so many times. He was straining till he felt his hands almost go numb, he was trying so hard to be a good marine and do what they said and boot camp hadn’t even started yet. But he was determined, even though he didn’t understand why they had to be so angry and so mean, why they had to scream and shout and curse the way they did. He couldn’t understand that, but it didn’t matter. He was going to make it, he was going to do what they said, like a good marine. They took them from the place where they had stayed that night and marched them and ran them shouting and screaming, eighty of them, dressed in suits and ties and sweatshirts and T-shirts, long-haired and short-haired, short ones and fat ones, kids from New Jersey, kids from Detroit, the drill instructor almost stepping on the boys’ heels, taunting and threatening, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” He looked up at the sky as he ran; he could hardly breathe. “Awright, awright, all you maggots, get in there!” They had come to what looked like a large hangar. And they marched, all eighty, single file, with their heads straight ahead, into the aluminum structure, with the chrome-domes they had just gotten spinning on their heads, their cartridge belts loosely fitted, jumping and dangling from their waists. They didn’t look like marines, he thought, they looked like Richie and Pete and the rest of the guys, running into Sally’s Woods for a game of guns.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Nigger he hum all time. White man think nigger learn his place. Nigger learn nuthin’. Nigger wait. Nigger watch everything white man do. Nigger no say nuthin’, no sir, no siree. BUT JUST THE SAME THE NIGGER IS KILLING THE WHITE MAN OFF ! Every time the nigger looks at a white man he’s putting a dagger through him. It’s not the heat, it’s not the hookworm, it’s not the bad crops that’s killing the South off—it’s the nigger! The nigger is giving off a poison, whether he means to or not. The South is coked and doped with nigger poison. Pass on. . . . Sitting outside a barber shop by the James River. I’ll be here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There’s a hotel and a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began—for no reason. From the bottom of my soul I pity the poor devils who are born and die here. There is no earthly reason why this place should exist. There is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and haircut, or even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a gun and kill each other off! Wipe this street out of my mind forever—it hasn’t an ounce of meaning in it. The same day, after nightfall. Still plugging on, digging deeper and deeper into the South. I’m coming away from a little town by a short road leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might. I stand there a moment, wondering what it’s all about. I hear another man coming on the trot; he’s an older man and he’s carrying a gun. He breathes fairly easy, and not a word out of his trap. Just as he comes in view the moon breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his face. He’s a manhunter. I stand back as the others come up behind him. I’m trembling with fear. It’s the sheriff, I hear a man say, and he’s going to get him. Horrible. I move on toward the highway waiting to hear the shot that will end it all. I hear nothing—just this heavy breathing of the young man and the quick, eager steps of the mob following behind the sheriff. Just as I get near the main road a man steps out of the darkness and comes over to me very quietly. “Where yer goin’, son?” he says, quiet like and almost tenderly. I stammer out something about the next town. “Better stay right here, son,” he says. I didn’t say another word. I let him take me back into town and hand me over like a thief. I lay on the floor with about fifty other blokes. I had a marvelous sexual dream which ended with the guillotine. I plug on. .

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I made ideological changes and excursions; I was a vagabond in the country of the brain. Everything was absolutely clear to me because done in rock crystal; at every egress there was written in big letters ANNIHILATION. The fright of extinction solidified me; the body became itself a piece of ferroconcrete. It was ornamented by a permanent erection in the best taste. I had achieved that state of vacuity so earnestly desired by certain devout members of esoteric cults. I was no more. I was not even a personal hard on . It was about this time, adopting the pseudonym Samson Lackawanna, that I began my depredations. The criminal instinct in me had gotten the upper hand. Whereas heretofore I had been only an errant soul, a sort of Gentile Dybbuk, now I became a flesh-filled ghost. I had taken the name which pleased me and I had only to act instinctively. In Hong Kong, for instance, I made my entry as a book agent. I carried a leather purse filled with Mexican dollars and I visited religiously all those Chinese who were in need of further education. At the hotel I rang for women like you would ring for whisky and soda. Mornings I studied Tibetan in order to prepare for the journey to Lhasa. I already spoke Yiddish fluently, and Hebrew too. I could count two rows of figures at once. It was so easy to swindle the Chinese that I went back to Manila in disgust. There I took a Mr. Rico in hand and taught him the art of selling books with no handling charges. All the profit came from ocean freight rates, but it was sufficient to keep me in luxury while it lasted. The breath had become as much a trick as breathing. Things were not dual merely, but multiple. I had became a cage of mirrors reflecting vacuity. But vacuity once stoutly posited I was at home and what is called creation was merely a job of filling up holes. The trolley conveniently carried me about from place to place and in each little side pocket of the great vacuum I dropped a ton of poems to wipe out the idea of annihilation. I had ever before me boundless vistas. I began to live in the vista, like a microscopic speck on the lens of a giant telescope. There was no night in which to rest. It was perpetual starlight on the arid surface of dead planets. Now and then a lake black as marble in which I saw myself walking amidst brilliant orbs of light. So low hung the stars and so dazzling was the light they shed, that it seemed as if the universe were only about to be born. What rendered the impression stronger was that I was alone; not only were there no animals, no trees, no other beings, but there was not even a blade of grass, not even a dead root.

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

  Things like that happened a lot. I was bullied all the time. The incident at the mulberry tree was probably the worst of them. Late one afternoon I was playing by myself like I always did, running around the neighborhood. This group of five or six colored boys was up the street picking berries off the mulberry tree and eating them. I went over and started picking some to take home for myself. The boys were a few years older than me, around twelve or thirteen. They didn’t talk to me, and I didn’t talk to them. They were speaking to one another in Afrikaans, and I could understand what they were saying. Then one of them, this kid who was the ringleader of the group, walked over. “Mag ek jou moerbeie sien?” “Can I see your mulberries?” My first thought, again, was, Oh, cool. I made a friend. I held up my hand and showed him my mulberries. Then he knocked them out of my hand and smushed them into the ground. The other kids started laughing. I stood there and looked at him a moment. By that point I’d developed thick skin. I was used to being bullied. I shrugged it off and went back to picking berries. Clearly not getting the reaction he wanted, this kid started cursing me out. “Fok weg, jou onnosele Boesman!” “Get the fuck out of here! Go away, you stupid Bushie! Bushman!” I ignored him and went on about my business. Then I felt a splat! on the back of my head. He’d hit me with a mulberry. It wasn’t painful, just startling. I turned to look at him and, splat!, he hit me again, right in my face. Then, in a split second, before I could even react, all of these kids started pelting me with berries, pelting the shit out of me. Some of the berries weren’t ripe, and they stung like rocks. I tried to cover my face with my hands, but there was a barrage coming at me from all sides. They were laughing and pelting me and calling me names. “Bushie! Bushman!” I was terrified. […] I started crying, and I ran. I ran for my life, all the way back down the road to our house. […] “No, no, Trevor,” she said. “I’m not laughing because it’s funny. I’m laughing out of relief. I thought you’d been beaten up. I thought this was blood. I’m laughing because it’s only berry juice.” […] “Look on the bright side,” she said, laughing and pointing to the half of me covered in dark berry juice. “Now you really are half black and half white.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, whosoever exposes himself to danger sins. But he who renounces all he has and embraces voluntary poverty exposes himself to danger—not only spiritual, according to Prov. 30:9, “Lest perhaps . . . being compelled by poverty, I should steal and forswear the name of my God,” and Ecclus. 27:1, “Through poverty many have sinned”—but also corporal, for it is written (Eccles. 7:13): “As wisdom is a defense, so money is a defense,” and the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1) that “the waste of property appears to be a sort of ruining of one’s self, since thereby man lives.” Therefore it would seem that voluntary poverty is not requisite for the perfection of religious life. Objection 3: Further, “Virtue observes the mean,” as stated in Ethic. ii, 6. But he who renounces all by voluntary poverty seems to go to the extreme rather than to observe the mean. Therefore he does not act virtuously: and so this does not pertain to the perfection of life. Objection 4: Further, the ultimate perfection of man consists in happiness. Now riches conduce to happiness; for it is written (Ecclus. 31:8): “Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish,” and the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 8) that “riches contribute instrumentally to happiness.” Therefore voluntary poverty is not requisite for religious perfection. Objection 5: Further, the episcopal state is more perfect than the religious state. But bishops may have property, as stated above ([3791]Q[185], A[6]). Therefore religious may also. Objection 6: Further, almsgiving is a work most acceptable to God, and as Chrysostom says (Hom. ix in Ep. ad Hebr.) “is a most effective remedy in repentance.” Now poverty excludes almsgiving. Therefore it would seem that poverty does not pertain to religious perfection. On the contrary, Gregory says (Moral. viii, 26): “There are some of the righteous who bracing themselves up to lay hold of the very height of perfection, while they aim at higher objects within, abandon all things without.” Now, as stated above, ([3792]AA[1],2), it belongs properly to religious to brace themselves up in order to lay hold of the very height of perfection. Therefore it belongs to them to abandon all outward things by voluntary poverty.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  During this time, though, Moon was making new and bigger waves. In Congress, the House Subcommittee on International Relations held a lengthy investigation into Korean CIA activities in the United States and other efforts by Korean agents to influence United States’ government decisions. I agreed to help the investigation as much as the committee wanted, provided they not ask me to testify publicly. The truth was, as the highest-ranking recent defector who knew a lot of the inner workings, I was afraid of being harassed and possibly murdered. I didn’t really follow the “Koreagate” investigation, except when I read an occasional article. I was absolutely confident that the government would expose the Moon group and it would be destroyed. The final report of the investigation had an 80-page section on the Moonies.45 The report found that the Moon organization “systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking, currency, and Foreign Agents Registration Act laws, as well as state and local laws relating to charity fraud.” It called for an interagency task force to continue to gather evidence, and to prosecute Moon and other Unification Church leaders for their criminal violations. The subcommittee’s Republican minority included its own statement, which said, in part, “It is difficult to understand why the appropriate agencies of the Executive Branch have not long since taken action against those activities of the Moon organization that are illegal.” The report was released October 31, 1978. Three weeks later, California Congressman Leo J. Ryan, a member of the Koreagate investigation, was gunned down at an airstrip near Jonestown, Guyana, while trying to help members of another cult, the People’s Temple, escape the horrors of Jim Jones’ camp. Others with Ryan were shot or killed. I watched the news bulletins about the nine hundred people who were dead because a cult leader had ordered mass murder. Chills went down my spine. I had never heard of the People’s Temple before, but I completely identified with the mindset of its members. I remembered listening to Moon harangue us and ask if we were willing to follow him to our deaths. I remembered hearing Moon say that if North Korea invaded South Korea, he would send American Unification members to die on the front lines, so that Americans would be inspired to fight another land war in Asia. I spent days thinking about the cult problem. More than anything else, the Jonestown massacre motivated me to become a public activist again. I accepted several invitations to appear on television. I was asked to speak at Senator Robert Dole’s public hearing on cults, on Capitol Hill, in 1979. But at the last moment, all the ex-cult members invited to speak were taken off the program due to political pressure from cults. The hearing was a disaster and the effort to educate the Government officials and the public about the dangers of destructive cults was undermined.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Since mind control depends on creating a new identity within the individual, cult doctrine always requires that a person distrust their authentic self. The doctrine becomes the “master program” for all their thoughts, feelings and actions. Since it is the “Truth,” perfect and absolute, any flaw in it is viewed as a reflection of the believer’s own imperfection. They are taught that they must follow the prescribed formula, even if they don’t really understand it. At the same time, the cult member is told that they should work harder and have more faith, so they will come to understand the truth more clearly. Reality is Black and White, Good Versus Evil Even the most complex cult doctrines ultimately reduce reality into two basic poles: black versus white; good versus evil; spiritual world versus physical world; us versus them. There is never room for pluralism. The doctrine allows no outside group to be recognized as valid (or good, or godly, or real), because that would threaten the cult’s monopoly on truth. There is also no room for interpretation or deviation. If the doctrine doesn’t provide an answer directly, then the member must ask a leader. If the leader doesn’t have an answer, they can always brush off the question as unimportant or irrelevant. “Devils” vary from group to group. They can be political or economic institutions (communism, socialism, or capitalism); mental-health professionals (psychiatrists, psychologists, or deprogrammers); metaphysical entities such as Satan, spirits, or aliens; or just the cruel laws of nature. Devils are certain to take on the bodies of parents, friends, ex-members, reporters, and anyone else who is critical of the group. The “huge conspiracies” working to thwart the group are, of course, proof of its tremendous importance. Some groups cultivate a psychic paranoia, telling members that spirit beings are constantly observing them, and even taking possession of them whenever they feel or think in non-cult ways. Moon once ordered me, and busloads of other members, to see the movie The Exorcist, which showed horribly graphic scenes of demonic possession. Afterward, we were brought to Tarrytown to hear Moon rant about “how God had made The Exorcist movie and how it was a prophecy of what would happen to people who left the Unification Church.” It was years after I had left the cult when I started studying phobias that I was able to trace back my own programming to that very night. After watching that movie and then hearing that speech, fear of Satanic possession took over my unconscious. I never had any conscious doubts about Moon or the group until my deprogramming. Elitist Mentality Members are made to feel part of an elite corps of humankind. This feeling of being special, of participating in the most important acts in human history, with a vanguard of committed believers, is strong emotional glue that keeps people sacrificing and working hard.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  There has been a trend of cases over the last few decades holding that cult critics who describe a group as a “cult” and accuse it of using “mind control” or “brainwashing” are protected under the First Amendment from liability for defamation.216 Therefore, former members should feel encouraged to speak out about their experiences. There are a small handful of lawyers in the United States that have offered to assist cult victims in these types of suits at low rates or pro bono. Attorney Paul Grosswald (who himself is an ex-Scientologist) is such a pioneering individual. He has truly stepped up to the plate regarding a recent libel suit brought by “God the Mother” of the World Mission Society Church of God (WMSCOG) against former member Michele Colon for writing on the examiningthewmscog.com website that the group was a cult and broke up her marriage. There is little doubt, as well, that if the American economy gets shaky, cult-owned businesses will flourish. Many cult-owned businesses are able to undercut competition because they have free labor. They can also avoid paying taxes because their bookkeeping systems show payment of full salaries, yet those paychecks are in reality turned over to the tax-exempt organization. It therefore appears the business is making a marginal profit in comparison with the monies it is actually taking in. In other cases, new employees will be expected to attend all company—sponsored “workshops” and “seminars.” Even now, business executives are flocking to programs that can teach them how to better influence and control people. Cults have actually taken over the running of some companies in this way. Despite the progress, there is still much more work that needs to be done. The threat of lawsuits by cults chills many people and makes them refrain from expressing themselves. It has also caused the media—which is entrusted with reporting difficult truths—to hang back or shy away altogether. Heather Kavan of Massey University in New Zealand wrote an important paper, “Falun Gong in the Media: What Can We Believe?” 217 I have personally seen how fear of cult lawsuits can affect the media. In early 1988, the editor of a popular magazine saw me on television and asked me to write a review of the then-new book L. Ron Hubbard—Messiah or Madman? by Bent Corydon, a former 22-year Scientologist. As it happened, I had just finished the book the week before, and happily agreed. However, the review was never published. The publisher later told me she was afraid of being sued by the Church of Scientology. She regretted not being able to print it, but said that it just didn’t make good business sense for them to do so. Prior to its publication, eleven publishers told Jon Atack that they would like to publish his book, A Piece of Blue Sky, but that they were afraid of litigation from the Scientology cult.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  I also appealed to her maternal instinct. I asked how she felt letting her children grow up in virtual poverty, with no formal education, and with little or no medical attention. I knew that she was aware of other members’ children who had died because they weren’t allowed to see a doctor. Before she went to bed, I reminded her to pray, and pray hard. “Pray like you’ve never prayed before. Beseech God to show you the way. Ask Him what He wants you to do.” That night we let the children sleep in her sister’s room, so she could have an undisturbed night’s rest. The next morning Margaret told us of incredible dreams, filled with symbols of great struggle and turmoil. In one dream she was lost at night in a forest, not knowing how to get out. In another she was alone in a small boat, being bombarded by stormy ocean waves. The third dream was of wandering in a field of wildflowers in the middle of a warm, sunny, Spring day. Over breakfast I asked her if she was aware of God’s answer to her question. She flashed a smile, which then turned into a frown. She got up from the table and walked to the window. Then, after staring outside for a while, she turned and said, “In my heart I think I should go back to the States, but I don’t think I can.” I felt as though a hundred-pound weight had just been lifted from my chest, but I tried to show little excitement. Her sisters started to cry. “What is stopping you?” I asked. She sighed and thought for a long time. Then she said, “I’m afraid.” Her sisters and I went over, and the four of us stood there in one massive hug. “Don’t worry, “ I reassured her. “We’ll help you in every way we can. Trust God.” We acted as if that settled the matter. Now was the time to get moving. Within two hours, we were on our way to the airport. We phoned ahead to her parents and told them the good news. Margaret left a long letter to Tom saying that we were on our way to the States, that she wanted to be alone with the kids and her family for a few weeks, and that she would contact him and let him know when he could come visit, if he wanted to. She assured him that she had decided on this voluntarily—that she had been very unhappy for a long time, and felt that God wanted her to do it.

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

  “Well, it would be nice if we could see them,” I’d say. “Because I don’t think the rioters know they’re there.” She’d tell me not to worry. She always came back to the phrase she lived by: “If God is with me, who can be against me?” She was never scared. Even when she should have been. — That carless Sunday we made our circuit of churches, ending up, as usual, at white church. When we walked out of Rosebank Union it was dark and we were alone. It had been an endless day of minibuses from mixed church to black church to white church, and I was exhausted. It was nine o’clock at least. In those days, with all the violence and riots going on, you did not want to be out that late at night. We were standing at the corner of Jellicoe Avenue and Oxford Road, right in the heart of Johannesburg’s wealthy, white suburbia, and there were no minibuses. The streets were empty. I so badly wanted to turn to my mom and say, “You see? This is why God wanted us to stay home.” But one look at the expression on her face, and I knew better than to speak. There were times I could talk smack to my mom—this was not one of them. We waited and waited for a minibus to come by. Under apartheid the government provided no public transportation for blacks, but white people still needed us to show up to mop their floors and clean their bathrooms. Necessity being the mother of invention, black people created their own transit system, an informal network of bus routes, controlled by private associations operating entirely outside the law. Because the minibus business was completely unregulated, it was basically organized crime. Different groups ran different routes, and they would fight over who controlled what. There was bribery and general shadiness that went on, a great deal of violence, and a lot of protection money paid to avoid violence. The one thing you didn’t do was steal a route from a rival group. Drivers who stole routes would get killed. Being unregulated, minibuses were also very unreliable. When they came, they came. When they didn’t, they didn’t. Standing outside Rosebank Union, I was literally falling asleep on my feet. Not a minibus in sight. Eventually my mother said, “Let’s hitchhike.” We walked and walked, and after what felt like an eternity, a car drove up and stopped. The driver offered us a ride, and we climbed in. We hadn’t gone ten feet when suddenly a minibus swerved right in front of the car and cut us off.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: The fact of any will in Christ willing something else than did the Divine will, proceeded from the Divine will, by whose permission the human nature in Christ was moved by its proper movements, as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 15,18,19). Reply to Objection 2: In us the desires of the spirit are impeded or retarded by the desires of the flesh: this did not occur in Christ. Hence in Christ there was no contrariety of flesh and spirit, as in us. Reply to Objection 3: The agony in Christ was not in the rational soul, in as far as it implies a struggle in the will arising from a diversity of motives, as when anyone, on his reason considering one, wishes one thing, and on its considering another, wishes the contrary. For this springs from the weakness of the reason, which is unable to judge which is the best simply. Now this did not occur in Christ, since by His reason He judged it best that the Divine will regarding the salvation of the human race should be fulfilled by His passion. Nevertheless, there was an agony in Christ as regards the sensitive part, inasmuch as it implied a dread of coming trial, as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 15; iii, 18,23). OF THE UNITY OF CHRIST’S OPERATION (FOUR ARTICLES)We must now consider the unity of Christ’s operation; and under this head there are four points of inquiry: (1) Whether in Christ there was one or several operations of the Godhead and Manhood? (2) Whether in Christ there were several operations of the human nature? (3) Whether Christ by His human operation merited anything for Himself? (4) Whether He merited anything for us by it? Whether in Christ there is only one operation of the Godhead and Manhood?Objection 1: It would seem that in Christ there is but one operation of the Godhead and the Manhood. For Dionysius says (Div. Nom. ii): “The most loving operation of God is made manifest to us by the supersubstantial Word having taken flesh integrally and truly, and having operated and suffered whatsoever befits His human and Divine operation.” But he here mentions only one human and Divine operation, which is written in Greek {theandrike}, i.e. God-manlike. Hence it seems that there is but one composite operation in Christ. Objection 2: Further, there is but one operation of the principal and instrumental agent. Now the human nature in Christ was the instrument of the Divine, as was said above ([4086]Q[7], A[1], ad 3;[4087] Q[8], A[1], ad 1;[4088] Q[18], A[1], ad 2). Hence the operations of the Divine and human natures in Christ are the same.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  9:7–97. Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him: and he was perplexed, because that it was said of some, that John was risen from the dead; 8. And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of the old prophets was risen again. 9. And Herod said, John have I beheaded: but who is this, of whom I hear such things? And he desired to see him. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 48. in Matt.) It was not till a long time had passed that Herod took notice of the things that were done by Jesus, (to shew you the pride of a tyrant,) for he did not acknowledge them at first, as it is said, Now Herod heard, &c. THEOPHYLACT. Herod was the son of Herod the Great who slew the children, who was king, but this Herod was tetrarch. He inquired about Christ, who He was. Hence it follows, And he was perplexed. CHRYSOSTOM. For sinners fear both when they know, and when they are ignorant; they are afraid of shadows, are suspicious about every thing, and are alarmed at the slightest noise. Such in truth is sin; when no one blames or finds fault, it betrays a man, when no one accuses it condemns, and makes the offender timid and backward. But the cause of fear is stated afterwards, in the words, Because that it was said of some. THEOPHYLACT. For the Jews expected a resurrection of the dead to a fleshly life, eating and drinking, but those that rise again will not be concerned with the deeds of the flesh. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) When Herod then heard of the miracles which Jesus was performing, he says, John have I beheaded, which was not an expression of boasting, but by way of allaying his fears, and bringing his distracted soul to recollect that he had killed. And because he had beheaded John, he adds, but who is this. THEOPHYLACT. If John is alive and has risen from the dead, I shall know him when I see him; as it follows, And he sought to see him. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. l. 2. c. 45.) Now Luke, though he keeps the same order in his narrative with Mark, docs not oblige us to believe that the course of events was the same. In these words too, Mark testifies only to the fact that others (not Herod) said that John had risen from the dead, but since Luke has mentioned Herod’s perplexity, we must suppose either that after that perplexity, he confirmed in his own mind what was said by others, since he says to his servants, (as Matthew relates,) This is John the Baptist, he is risen from the dead, or these words of Matthew must have been uttered so as to signify that he was still doubting.