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 Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  State officials blamed Mr. Smith for their inability to kill him in 2022, arguing that his appeals to stop his execution “frustrated the process” and shortened the time to carry out a lethal injection. Mr. Smith had sued to prevent the State from executing him because Alabama had bungled the two executions immediately preceding his. Two months earlier, Alan Miller survived a botched execution during which state officials strapped him down and jabbed him for several hours before returning him to his cell. The failed execution of Mr. Miller followed the disastrous execution of a condemned man named Joe James, who was killed by state officials after hours of unsuccessful stabbing to access his veins. The autopsy revealed that Mr. James suffered multiple cuts and injuries over the course of the three-hour execution process—one of the longest ever recorded. Reports circulated that the attempted execution of Mr. James was so upsetting that at least one member of the execution team fled the death chamber in distress. Citing these accounts, Mr. Smith persuaded a federal court to issue an order stopping his November 17, 2022, execution. But the State appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which vacated the stay and allowed the execution to proceed. State officials later contended that Mr. Smith’s successful litigation before the Supreme Court’s ruling left them only two hours to execute him before the expiration of his death warrant—too little time given the complications of accessing his veins. The governor ordered a review of the multiple botched executions. After a truncated internal review, the State announced that it would make no changes to the execution process. Instead, Alabama adopted a plan where state officials would have a whole week to execute a condemned prisoner instead of just one day. For its second execution of Mr. Smith, Alabama decided to try a new, untested method involving the use of nitrogen gas. Rather than inject lethal chemicals into his veins, Alabama planned to put a gas mask over Mr. Smith’s face and pump in nitrogen, which would kill him by depriving him of oxygen. Some experts contended this would amount to torture. One federal appeals court judge, the Hon. Jill Pryor, argued that the execution should be stopped. In a dissent from her colleagues’ decision allowing the execution to proceed, she wrote:

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

  The contrasts with the law of 390 are telling. The measure of Theodosius I ordering the incineration of the male prostitutes in Rome also deployed a vocabulary of Roman manhood that would have been not unfamiliar to Cicero. And though the measure of Theodosius was aimed against male prostitutes and thus might seem more narrowly constructed, there is good reason to regard it as a more portentous enactment. The immolation of male prostitutes was not a vice-squad operation. As Firmicus shows, there was a tendency to assimilate open sexual passivity, infamia, and prostitution. Similarly, John Chrysostom slips inadvertently between discussion of same-sex eros and same-sex prostitution. The mental association was imponderably ancient. The incineration of male prostitutes was a malevolent and symbolic act, which might be seen as something like a proxy measure against male passivity altogether, conducted within the technological means of the Roman state.29 With Theodosius I’s enactment, a state that had refrained from “witch hunts” was now explicitly trying to eradicate the “contamination” of sexual passivity. The sense of sexual deviance as a disease threatening to infect the body politic is subtly but ominously new in the legislative domain. This sensibility rests on the assumption, not indigenous to Roman legal tradition, that the people itself risked pollution by irregular sexual practices. The law is emphatic on this point. The drafter enunciates a concern that the plebs will become weakened if defiled. The holocaust was meant to be executed “with the populus watching.” This language reflects a new style of social solidarity in late antiquity, in which the sexual behavior of “the people” might be the object of imperial concern. In earlier phases of Roman history, enormous social prejudice in combination with rigid stratification of rank and citizenship allowed the state to stare past the inconsequential lives beneath its field of vision. Christianity carried with it a sense of “the people” not only as a civic category but as the human collective itself. This solidarity, in the field of sexual regulation, had unintended and at times violent consequences.

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

  Despite the extraordinary weight Paul places on sexual purity, his missive to Corinth was a delicate act of triangulation. Word had reached Paul of a faction within the Christian community who declared that strict continence was the measure of holiness. Paul could not register unqualified disagreement. “I wish that all were as I myself am,” he writes, foregrounding his own celibacy. For centuries Christians will elaborate on this most gentle of moral suggestions, usually with a stridency that contrasts with Paul’s cautious sensibility. Paul was not willing to disenfranchise the reliable married householders who held together the fledgling church. Marriage was to be accommodated, “by way of concession, not of command.” In fact, although marriage might tie down a man or woman to the dull distractions of everyday life, it was the surest bulwark against sexual sin. “Because of fornications, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.” Paul imagines a sexual version of Pascal’s wager: “It is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” Surrounded by the temptations of the Greek city, the Christians for whom continence was not a practicable goal were to find safe exercise in the licit amours of the marriage bed. Eros was an ominous threat hanging over the purity of the body, not a constitutive feature of human identity. The most that could be said for marriage was that it was not, at least, an act of desecration. Amid the ubiquitous lures of Aphrodite’s city, that was not necessarily a trivial blessing.19

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

  Jon has been doing incredible, long-form interviews for his YouTube channel called jon atack family & friends. Jon has authored academic textbook chapters with me and edited this volume, adding Scientology information to this book, which my first publisher forbade due to his fear of lawsuit. Jon Atack’s work has been endorsed by over 40 academics from around the globe. Rachel Thomas and Sex Trafficking Rachel Thomas has a master’s degree from UCLA and is cofounder of Sowers Education Group, an educational organization dedicated to prevent human trafficking. We were introduced to each other by Carissa Phelps in the summer of 2013. Carissa’s organization, Runaway Girl, was conducting human trafficking trainings for the Joint Regional Intelligence Organization (JRIC.org) of Southern California. As an outgrowth of that experience, I asked Rachel to be part of a panel on trafficking as a commercial cult mind control phenomenon. The video of that program is on our website.100 Rachel was an all-American girl from an upper-middle-class home in southern California. While she was a junior at Emory University in Atlanta, Rachel was approached by a well-spoken modeling agent with business cards, a nice suit, and a charming smile. He told her that he wanted to invest in her modeling career by paying for her first photo shoot and set of comp cards (i.e., a model’s resume). Rachel accepted. At the photo shoot, everything was professional and seemingly legitimate. A few days later, Rachel received a phone call from the agent. “Hey, beautiful! Guess what? You’re already booked for your first gig!” Excited and impressed by his fast work, Rachel showed up to the gig—a music video for a Grammy-award-winning artist. At the end of the shoot, the agent informed Rachel that she had earned $350 for her work that day and asked her to complete a W-9. She filled out the form, including her permanent address (her parents’ home address in California), her current address (the apartment she shared with her best friend near campus), her social security number, and other information. In the next three weeks, her agent used his connections throughout the city to secure her another paid modeling gig and an audition for a major magazine. To finalize their working relationship, the agent asked Rachel to sign a contract in which she agreed to pay him a regular retainer fee. She signed the contract. During her fifth week with the agent, Rachel first saw him slap another model on her face in an instantaneous, unpredictable fit of rage. A day later, she tried to cancel her contract. The agent not only refused, but forced her to have sex with a stranger, threatening to kill her parents if she didn’t obey.

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

  The pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or dogma says one should experience. The internalized message in totalistic environments is that one must find the truth of the dogma and subject one’s experiences to that truth. Often the experience of contradiction, or the admission of that experience, can be immediately associated with guilt; or else (in order to hold one to that doctrine) condemned by others in a way that leads quickly to that guilty association. One is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one’s own evil. Yet doubts can arise; and when conflicts become intense, people can leave. This is the most frequent difficulty of many of the cults: membership may represent more of a problem than money. Finally, the eighth, and perhaps the most general and significant of these characteristics, is what I call the “dispensing of existence.” This principle is usually metaphorical. But if one has an absolute or totalistic vision of truth, then those who have not seen the light—have not embraced that truth, are in some way in the shadows—are bound up with evil, tainted, and do not have the right to exist. There is a “being versus nothingness” dichotomy at work here. Impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed. One placed in the second category of not having the right to exist can experience psychologically a tremendous fear of inner extinction or collapse. However, when one is accepted, there can be great satisfaction of feeling oneself a part of the elite. Under more malignant conditions, the dispensing of existence, the absence of the right to exist, can be literalized; people can be put to death because of their alleged doctrinal shortcomings, as has happened in all too many places, including the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. In the Peoples Temple mass suicide/murder in Guyana, a single cult leader could preside over the literal dispensing of existence—or more precisely, nonexistence—by means of a suicidal mystique he himself had made a part of the group’s ideology. (Subsequent reports based on the results of autopsies reveal that there were probably as many murders as suicides.) The totalistic impulse to draw a sharp line between those who have a right to live and those who do not—though occurring in varying degrees—can become a deadly approach to resolving fundamental human problems. And all such approaches involving totalism or fundamentalism are doubly dangerous in a nuclear age. I should say that, despite these problems, none of these processes is airtight. One of my purposes in writing about them is to counter the tendency in the culture to deny that such things exist; another purpose is to demystify them, to see them as comprehensible in terms of our understanding of human behavior.

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

  For people fortunate enough to receive good cult counseling, floating is rarely a problem. However, for people who don’t understand mind control, it can be a terrifying experience. Suddenly, you flip back into the cult mindset, and are hit with a tremendous rush of fear and guilt for betraying the group and its leader. You can become irrational and begin to think magically, interpreting personal and world events from the cult’s perspective. For example, you didn’t get that job “because God wants you to go back to the group,” or the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by the Russians “because you left the Moonies.” When you start to float, simply but firmly remind yourself that the experience has been triggered by some stimulus, and that it will pass. If you can, try to connect as soon as possible with someone who understands mind control, and talk it over rationally with them. The most powerful and effective technique of all is to identify the trigger. It could be hearing a song, seeing someone who looks like a member of the group, or watching someone act or gesture in a way that cult members often do. Once you know what triggers you, deliberately call forth that stimulus, but make a new, positive mental association with it. Think of something non-cult related. Do this over and over again, until the association becomes a new, learned response. In my case, when I heard the word moon, I would form a mental picture of a beautiful full moon. I would say to myself, The earth only has one natural satellite, the moon. For about a week, I often said to myself “moon,” and conjured up this image, until it stuck. I referred to the leader of my former cult as Mr. Moon, not wishing to call him “Reverend,” since that was a self-appointed title anyway, and visualized him behind bars in prison garb. Similarly, for ex-Scientologists, it is better to speak of “Ron Hubbard” rather than “L. Ron Hubbard” or “LRH”, and not to call the cult “the Church”. Such loaded language is a significant trigger. One ex-member of est told me that even though she loves the beach, she avoided it because the sounds of ocean waves always reminded her of her indoctrination. Even though she had been out of the group for five years, that association was still inhibiting her ability to enjoy something she had always loved. I encouraged her to change the association. She could hear the sound of waves and deliberately program in a new and personally gratifying association. I told her to repeat the new association until it automatically overrode the cult programming. Within a few days she was able to visit the beach again. Ultimately, exposure techniques are the fastest methods to override the programming and make new, healthy associations.

• From Stripped: Las Vegas (2021)

  But I have to be making money, I have to pay bills. My parents are getting older. I have to be able to support them. And I think I have an underlying fear of being really poor again. And I'm really willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that that never happens. But it is stressful at times, for sure. [upbeat music] - Before COVID, things were good, but I feel like I actually started making a lot more money when COVID hit than I did before. There was nowhere to work, there was nothing you could do, but you had to make it work, so you made stuff happen. I made stuff happen. Going to the bars, and finding clients, and throwing parties together, throwing events together. My hustle just turned on, when everything shut down, my instincts shined. When you grip with both legs and you just kinda hang. - [Student] Oh, like a side bar to it. - [Galaxciii] Mm-hmm, can you do that? I can teach you that. During COVID, I actually did start doing pole classes. Obviously, it was another source of income. Legs up, hold your grip, boom, hold, split, yeah. And that was another way. And also meeting other girls that are down to perform at events, at gigs. You just gotta kind of find where your strengths are. And my strength is just hustling. Hustle was within my blood. [upbeat music] - Okay, good job. I have my own pole company, Tricks By Yas. I do women's sessions, private one-on-ones. So, that's fine. That is my second stream of income. I would say I've had at least 100 girls over the past 14 months that have hit me up. 'Cause that way, you'll have more control. Pole dancing I'm forever progressing at. I always want to meet people who do teach professional pole dance classes because I don't have that background. I never took a pole class. It's always good to keep learning. No matter what you're doing, it's always good to keep learning. You can always know more, you can always improve. [upbeat music] - In the pandemic, I started doing Onlyfans because a second source of income, they cut our pay at life guarding. And I was very lucky that my stripper friends are also doing Onlyfans. And Jesse helped me so much. She said, "You have to make your Onlyfans, "you have to make your online platform, "a safe space for you." And if I'm making it reflect me, then it's gonna be so much easier to put work into it, and to spend the time editing videos, and networking. [upbeat music] So my mornings start with a cup of coffee, and sitting on my couch, and catching up with all of the social media from the night before, seeing how my Onlyfans did, how much money did I make while I was sleeping.

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

  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. Andrew ran behind and jumped into the passenger seat next to her. Just as she turned the ignition, Andrew heard one last gunshot, and the windshield went red. Abel had fired from behind the car. The bullet went into the back of her head and exited through the front of her face, and blood sprayed everywhere. Her body slumped over the steering wheel. Andrew, reacting without thinking, pulled my mom to the passenger side, flipped over her, jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the car into gear, and raced to the hospital in Linksfield.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  the colors guidons guide posts guide posts oh god goal posts touchdown touchdown jackets green utility’s fresh smell one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four (his voice the voices they them letters) hi mom and hi dad! MARINE CORPS MARINE CORPS MARINE CORPS PORK CHOP HILL From the halls of Montezuma the vice president of the united states is WE HAVE NEVER LOST! EMPTY THOSE SEA BAGS! I WANT YOU TO CRAWL WORMS CRAWL WORMS CRAWL! GET THOSE LOCKER BOXES ABOVE YOUR HEADS! WE HAVE NEVER LOST!(tear apart racks tear apart racks) YOU’RE EITHER GONNA SINK OR SWIM PEOPLE! LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN !RUN!RUN! RUN!!! 4 THEY CAME for him early that morning, walking up the wooden ramp and knocking on the front door of his house. He could hear them in the living room talking to his mom and dad about the parade and how important it was to have him marching with them on Memorial Day in his wheelchair. “Parade time,” his father said, walking into his room. “I’ll be right with you, Dad,” he said, looking up from his bed. “I’ve got to get my pants on.” It was always hard getting dressed, but he was getting better at it. He turned from his back to his stomach, grabbing his pants and pulling them up until they reached his waist. Turning on his back again, he buckled his belt. Then he pushed himself with both hands in back of him until he was sitting up in the bed next to his wheelchair. He grabbed the chair with one hand, dragging his body across in a quick sweeping motion until he was seated, his legs still up on the bed. Now his father knew it was time to help. He took each leg, carefully lowering them one at a time to the chair, spreading them apart to make sure the rubber tube wasn’t twisted. “Ready?” shouted the boy. “Ready!” said his dad. And his father went in back of the chair as he always did and lifted him up underneath his arms so that he could pull his pants up again. “Good,” said the boy. His father let him slowly down back onto the cushion and he turned around in his wheelchair to face the door and pushed his chair down the long, narrow hallway to the living room. His mom was there with a tall man he immediately remembered from the hospital; right next to him was a heavy guy. Both of them had on their American Legion uniforms with special caps placed smartly on their heads. He sat as straight in his chair as he could, holding on with one hand so he wouldn’t lose his balance. He shook hands with the tall commander and with the heavy guy who stood beside him. “You sure look great,” said the tall commander, stepping forward. “Same tough marine we visited in the hospital,” he said, smiling. “You know, Mr.

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

  As we talked, I learned that she had been recruited into the Moonies in 1969—more than 12 years earlier—and had stayed in the group for only three months. “When they started making too many demands on me, I left,” she told me. It was clear that she had brushed off her encounter as simply a close call. “Did it ever occur to you that your fear of having children might be related to your experience in the Moonies?” I asked. She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?” “Do you remember ever being told anything about having children when you were in the Moonies?” She rolled her head up slightly, as if her eyes were scanning the ceiling. After a few moments, her face became flushed and she shrieked. “Yes! I do remember something!” To my surprise, she took hold of my shoulders and shook me back and forth. “I remember being told that if anyone ever betrayed the Messiah and left the movement, their children would be stillborn!”178 Her excitement at remembering the source of her fear of having children was tremendous, and I couldn’t help but share it. It seemed as though we could hear the psychological chains that had been locking her mind fall to the floor. At that point, I realized that I had to explain phobia indoctrination to her. I told her that even though she had been involved with the Moonies for only a few months, her recruiters and trainers had successfully implanted a phobia of giving birth to a dead child in her unconscious mind. “Even though I don’t believe in Moon anymore?” she asked. “The mind is capable of learning new information and retaining it forever,” I said. “This goes for harmful things as well as helpful things. You may have thought that you were finished with the Moonies when you walked out the door, but it has taken you 12 years to locate and eliminate that fear bomb they put inside your mind.” Of course, it is rare to have a conversation with a former cult member like this—a social situation at a friend’s house which suddenly leads to a breakthrough about phobia indoctrination. Yet, a great number of people, just like this woman, are somehow coping with the damaging aftereffects of undue influence. Their problems are often made worse by the fact that many mental health professionals are not knowledgeable about mind control and do not know how to effectively help people suffering from its lingering consequences. People may be able to escape the cult if they are exposed to too much of the inner doctrine before they are ready to swallow it. For example, when one woman I was recruiting found out that Moon was soon going to assign her a husband, it so infuriated her that she stormed out. A man I was recruiting discovered that we believed Moon was the Messiah before we had had enough time to prepare him for that conclusion.179 He turned and walked out.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  god bless the batallion commander god bless chesty puller god bless john wayne From the halls of Montezuma BY THE RIGHT FLANK! AWRIGHT WHEN I TELL YOU PEOPLE YOU GOT TWO FUCKIN MINUTES TO SHIT SHOWER AND SHAVE I MEAN EXACTLY THAT NOW GET DOWN SCUMBAGS! MAIL CALL! (eighty chests hitting the deck) i want the flag SECOND’S AS GOOD AS LAST LADIES! can’t you see, Father, the tests in spring shots GOTTA BE FIRST GOTTA BE FIRST! STARBOARD SIDE MAKE A HEAD CALL PORTSIDE MAKE A HEAD CALL oh hail Mary full of grace the Lord is motherfucking cocksuckers! oh Our Father KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! Who art in COMMIES CHINKS JAPS AND DINKS hallowed be IF YOU WANT TO BE MARINES . . . HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE PAY THE PRICE PAY THE PRICE If I die in a combat zone box me up and ship me home, Thy kingdom come private kovic sir two-oh-three-oh-two-six-one sir yessir no sir one two aye aye sir Thy will be done the private requests permission to speak to his senior drill instructor oh god oh jesus help me help me on earth as it is in heaven SCHOOL CIRCLES! aye aye sir as it is WHAT DO YOU WANT MAGGOT? READY—SEATS! aye aye sir DO IT! aye aye sir THIS IS YOUR RIFLE I WANT YOU TO SLEEP WITH IT GET UP GET DOWN GET UP GET DOWN DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU HEAR ME PEOPLE? (we are moving now) GET OUT OF THE PASSAGEWAY GIMME FIVE HUNDRED BENDS AND THRUSTS aye aye sir one two aye aye sir one two DON’T STOP PEOPLE KEEP RUNNING PEOPLE SCUM SCUM SWINE SWINE THERE WILL BE NO DROPOUTS TODAY THERE WILL BE NO QUITTERS IN MY MARINE CORPS! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! YOU BETTER BE DEAD IF YOU DROP OUT There is nothing finer QUICKLY! QUICKLY! and when i grow up i’m going to TEN!NINE!EIGHT!SEVEN!SIX!FIVE!FOUR!THREE!TWO!ONE! YOU’RE LATE! LATE LATE LATE LATE LATE LATE! (raising the flag) DON’T MOVE DON’T SIT DON’T STAND DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT! FORWARD—MARCH! o mary mother of jesus you gotta help me WE ARE THE BEST WE ARE THE BEST WE ARE THE BEST platoon one eighty-one is the best KILL THEM AT THREE HUNDRED FEET! DRESS RIGHT! AT THIRTY FEET! in the trenches on the benches in the butts o get me outta here god (cracking strings and pasting holes and making hits) i’m an expert mom i’m an expert! oh make this time this time i want to scream i want to scream oh no oh wait, hey i’m, wait, i’m just, wait i’m just going to scream scream scream scream scream scream scream scream scream GOTTA GRADUATE GOTTA GRADUATE! BY THE LEFT FLANK—MARCH! YOU’LL NEVER MAKE IT! BY THE RIGHT FLANK EIGHTY PLATOON ONE EIGHTY! platoon one eighty-one sir!

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

  e crisis that swept across the former territories of Roman rule, progressing from northwest to southeast, carried in its train unpredictable consequences for erotic life. Perhaps the reverberations of the crisis were least felt inside the monastery, which possessed the cultural resources to maintain ancient styles of moral philosophy indiff erent to the transformations of the external world. In the ascetic literature we fi nd an ethics of the sexual body that, despite its novelty, seems to extend backward in time across the centuries. Here we encounter the vital legends of the monastic fathers, like Paphnutius, who once believed that he had vanquished the demonic impulses that tempted his fl esh. His pride earned him a visitation from an angel of the Lord, who warned him how incomplete his spiritual transformation remained. “Go, take a most beautiful naked virgin, and if holding her you feel that the tranquility of your heart remains undisturbed and your peace is untouched by fl eshly burnings,” then only might he vaunt his spiritual accomplishment. If this was an unusual proposal for an angel to make, we are quickly informed that it worked its eff ects without having to be tried literally, as the humility of Paphnutius was restored. In stories like these we see how intimately the array of cosmic beings had settled into ancient conversations about sexual desires; but the psychological assumptions and moral imagination of such lore draws on centuries of tradition. We remember that Epictetus had imagined a phi los o pher confronted with the temptations of a willing girl; the Stoic imagined victory in such a scenario as a rational decision to discount the impulses of plea sure. Epictetus frankly admitted that you could cut off the penis but never cut out desire. In the ascetic literature of late antiquity, we see the fulfi llment of the trajectory promised already by Clement of Alexandria, that Christian sexual morality, in its purest expression, would not conquer desire but eliminate it. We meet the story of Paphnutius and the virgin in the Conferences of John Cassian, a later contemporary of Augustine who did more than anyone to translate the lessons of eastern asceticism into a western tradition of cenobitic monasticism. Although Foucault’s work on ancient Christianity was cut short by his death, it is evident from the published fragments that he intended to treat Cassian’s thought as the quintessence of late antique sexual morality. Th is would have been both a canny and an idiosyncratic  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N choice. Cassian outlines, with the prescriptive clarity of an institutional found er, the place of sexual austerity within a communal monastic regimen. For Cassian, chastity was one element in a complex of interrelated virtues through which the monk sought extraordinary personal transformation. Th

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

  In the last of a long series of threats to her chastity, the heroine of a second-century Greek novel, Leucippe, stood in imminent danger of suffering sexual violence at the hands of a man claiming to be her master. The romantic novel, the characteristic literary invention of the Roman Empire, was a genre built out of such theatrical endangerments to feminine chastity. In the scene of her attempted rape, Leucippe is threatened by Thersander, a caricature of a villain whose very name means “Savage Man.” Leucippe, a freeborn girl of unparalleled beauty, has been enslaved by pirates and sold to this stereotypical brute. It was “fate’s wish” that she be a slave for a time, but her true status is never really in doubt, and the problematic relationship between status and behavior runs as a thread throughout the entire confrontation between Thersander and Leucippe. When Thersander puts his hands beneath Leucippe’s chin and lifts her face upward for a kiss, she resists and reproaches him, “You are not acting as a free man, nor as a wellborn one.” While his hopes were still high, Thersander remained “wholly enthralled” by Leucippe, but the disappointment of rebuff lets loose his fury. He resorts to physical and psychological violence, striking Leucippe across the face and calling her a “miserable slaveling.” “You should be grateful that I speak to you, and count your lucky stars that you seem worthy of my kisses.… I know that you’re just a little whore, and the man you love is an adulterer. Since you don’t want to accept me as your lover, you will experience me as your master.” In the slave society of the Roman Empire, where the routine sexual exploitation of slaves was an integral part of the sexual economy, the narration of such pedestrian violence was highly unusual, and surely jarring. But the author builds up the uncomfortable potential of the scene, only to let it dissipate in arch melodrama.1

• From Untrue (2018)

  But some people are drawn to women who are already partnered, for various reasons—because it’s convenient, because it’s a little dangerous, or because they have a “thing” for married women. I spoke and emailed with a few men for whom these factors seemed to be in play. Robert, sixty, told me the story of being with a married woman when he was younger. It was a sexy story (this anecdote draws from both an email and a phone conversation) with an unhappy ending. “A married woman is responsible for one of the worst scares of my life. Her name was Sally. I was in my mid-twenties, and we had a once a week or so thing going on in my apartment that was quite wonderful…I liked that she was attracted to me, and that she went for it. I liked her independence in that regard. That she wanted to do this, and she did. That was appealing. And there were no strings attached. I didn’t have to take her out, or wonder. It wasn’t a serious thing for me—she showed up and we had our fun. But it got to the point where we were too indiscreet. I was young and stupid…and she was only a few years older than I was. We went out to a bar one time, and a friend of hers saw us…One Friday night I got a call [from a man] at about 7:00 asking if Sally was there. I thought it was an innocent wrong number. An hour later, the phone rang again. Same voice telling me that he knows where I live and if I ever touch her again he’ll know and he’ll kill me.” A shaken Robert walked into the bathroom and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. All the blood had drained from his face. He had been reminded—with a death threat—that he lived in a world where women were the property of men and that his transgression against Sally’s husband could be lethal. It worked. He saw himself as a dead man. Like Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, he knows a cheating woman is as dangerous as she is alluring. Unlike Neff, Robert got out before he was in too deep. He told me, “I stayed away but good. I waited a few weeks to call and explain what had happened and that we were over. Not long after that she called one night to tell me that she loved me and had planned to leave her husband for me. I explained that she was lovely but I wasn’t up for getting shot. After that I limited my fun and games to unwed women.”

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  We hold on to ourselves, to things around us, to memories, to thoughts, to dreams. I breathe slowly, desperately trying to stay awake. The steel trapdoor is opening. I see faces. Corpsmen, I think. Others, curious, looking in at us. Air, fresh, I feel, I smell. They are carrying me out now. Over wounded bodies, past wounded screams. I’m in a helicopter now lifting above the battalion area. I’m leaving the war. I’m going to live. I am still breathing, I keep thinking over and over, I’m going to live and get out of here. They are shoving tubes and needles in my arms. Now we are being packed into planes. I begin to believe more and more as I watch the other wounded packed around me on shelves that I am going to live. I still fight desperately to stay awake. I am in an ambulance now rushing to some place. There is a man without any legs screaming in pain, moaning like a little baby. He is bleeding terribly from the stumps that were once his legs, thrashing his arms wildly about his chest, in a semiconscious daze. It is almost too much for me to watch. I cannot take much more of this. I must be knocked out soon, before I lose my mind. I’ve seen too much today, I think. But I hold on, sucking the air. I shout then curse for him to be quiet. “My wound is much worse than yours!” I scream. “You’re lucky,” I shout, staring him in the eyes. “I can feel nothing from my chest down. You at least still have part of your legs. Shut up!” I scream again. “Shut the fuck up, you goddamned baby!” He keeps thrashing his arms wildly above his head and kicking his bleeding stumps toward the roof of the ambulance. The journey seems to take a very long time, but soon we are at the place where the wounded are sent. I feel a tremendous exhilaration inside me. I have made it this far. I have actually made it this far without giving up and now I am in a hospital where they will operate on me and find out why I cannot feel anything from my chest down anymore. I know I am going to make it now. I am going to make it not because of any god, or any religion, but because I want to make it, I want to live. And I leave the screaming man without legs and am brought to a room that is very bright. “What’s your name?” the voice shouts. “Wh-wh-what?” I say. “What’s your name?” the voice says again. “K-K-Kovic,” I say. “No!” says the voice. “I want your name, rank, and service number. Your date of birth, the name of your father and mother.” “Kovic. Sergeant. Two-oh-three-oh-two-six-one, uh, when are you going to . . .” “Date of birth!” the voice shouts. “July fourth, nineteen forty-six.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And when he was finished the lights went out and they slowly closed their eyes. And the first day had ended. * * * (Lights flash, flash, flash standing by my rack now) sir! the private requests to make an emergency sitting head call WHAT DO YOU WANT KOVIC? sir! o god o jesus yessir aye aye sir one two aye aye sir If I die in a combat zone pack me up and ship me home COUNTDOWN—READY—SEATS! GET IN THE PASSAGEWAY SWEETPEA AND GIVE ME FIVE HUNDRED BENDS AND THRUSTS—DO IT! BY THE LEFT FLANK—one two three four I love the Marine Corps THIS IS YOUR RIFLE LADIES I WANT YOU TO KNOW IT ALL OF IT EVERY PART OF IT! CAN’T YOU READ SWEETPEA? this is my rifle this is my gun this is for fighting this is for fun, Ask not what your country (the formation now) remember i can talk no i can’t talk no i can’t bring back by the river—with the rifle—America. America. God shed His grace on thee, Eenie meenie mynie moe catch a nigger by the toe EYES RIGHT! I WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THIS AFTERNOON THAT THIS THING OUT THERE IS A COMMIE SONOFABITCH and wops and spics and chinks and japs and GET IN FRONT OF YOUR RACKS!! THAT’S NOT QUICK ENOUGH! (never quick enough, eighteen i’m eighteen now) UP! DOWN! GET IT! OUT! GET IT! o mom o please o someone someone help now somebody BY THE RIGHT FLANK! GET DOWN! GET UP! (hot deck parades faces mirror face still pimples now boots and socks) o lights flashes GET THE FUCK UP! We will bear any burden by your leave sir excuse me sir pardon me sir suffer any hardships i’m sorry sir o yessir no sir aye aye sir, sir! (push-ups push-ups clanking sounds steel) READY—SEATS! (plates forks and) EAT AND HURRY UP AND RUN AND HURRY UP AND EAT AND HURRY UP AND RUN AND HURRY UP HURRY UP! There is something I believe—we’ll be home by Christmas Eve sir my service number is two-oh-three-oh-two-six-one sir the president of the united states is the honorable lyndon baines johnson sir the vice president is Our Father, Who art in heaven PREPARE TO MOUNT aye aye sir hallowed be Thy name MOUNT! Thy kingdom come, if I die on the Russian front bury me with a Russian cunt DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! Thy will be done DO IT! DO IT! DO IT IN YOUR SLEEP ON THE FLOOR ON YOUR HEAD DO IT NOW WANT TO BECOME MEN WANT TO BECOME MEN WANT TO BECOME MEN oh, become, marines oh god bless the marine corps god bless america TIGHTEN UP! TIGHTEN UP! god bless my senior drill instructor god bless the president PLATOON HALT!

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  “Motherfuckers motherfuckers!” he screams. And the rounds keep cracking and the sky and the sun on my face and my body all gone, all twisted up dangling like a puppet’s, diving again and again into the sand, up and down, rolling and cursing, gasping for breath. “Goddamn goddamn motherfuckers!” And finally I am dragged into a hole in the sand with the bottom of my body that can no longer feel, twisted and bent underneath me. The black man runs from the hole without ever saying a thing. I never see his face. I will never know who he is. He is gone. And others now are in the hole helping me. They are bandaging my wounds. There is fear in their faces. “It’s all right,” I say to them. “Everything is fine.” Someone has just saved my life. My rifle is gone and I don’t feel like finding it or picking it up ever again. The only thing I can think of, the only thing that crosses my mind, is living. There seems to be nothing in the world more important than that. Hundreds of rounds begin to crash in now. I stare up at the sky because I cannot move. Above the hole men are running around in every direction. I see their legs and frightened faces. They are screaming and dragging the wounded past me. Again and again the rounds crash in. They seem to be coming in closer and closer. A tall man jumps in, hugging me to the earth. “Oh God!” he is crying. “Oh God please help us!” The attack is lifted. They are carrying me out of the hole now—two, three, four men—quickly they are strapping me to a stretcher. My legs dangle off the sides until they realize I cannot control them. “I can’t move them,” I say, almost in a whisper. “I can’t move them.” I’m still carefully sucking the air, trying to calm myself, trying not to get excited, not to panic. I want to live. I keep telling myself, Take it slow now, as they strap my legs to the stretcher and carry my wounded body into an Amtrac packed with other wounded men. The steel trapdoor of the Amtrac slowly closes as we begin to move to the northern bank and back across the river to the battalion area. Men are screaming all around me. “Oh God get me out of here!” “Please help!” they scream. Oh Jesus, like little children now, not like marines, not like the posters, not like that day in the high school, this is for real. “Mother!” screams a man without a face. “Oh I don’t want to die!” screams a young boy cupping his intestines with his hands. “Oh please, oh no, oh God, oh help! Mother!” he screams again. We are moving slowly through the water, the Amtrac rocking back and forth. We cannot be brave anymore, there is no reason. It means nothing now.

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

  It was the dramatic and decisive policy of a zealous emperor bent on rebuilding the Roman Empire, without time or tears for those who risked the favor of God. Th e enterprise of reconquest, of course, was to collapse, crumbling of its own overweening ambition and the unfore- seeable advent of plague. Th e later legislation of Justinian bears the darkened mood of po liti cal disappointment and desperate suff ering. A law issued sometime in the years after the appearance of the bubonic plague refl ects the utterly transformed atmosphere. Th e law is motivated by the fear of God, whose dis plea sure manifested itself in the famines, earthquakes, and pestilence that had struck so inexplicably. It is written in the language of sin and salvation. Justinian, as legislator, considered the “sins” against nature within his regulatory remit. Th e prefect was charged to take care lest these sins lead to the destruction of the “city and the polity.” Another law, com- posed toward the end of Justinian’s reign, represents a complete union of Christian ideology, state power, and ecclesiastical ambition. In response to terrible earthquakes, Justinian came to believe that God was angry at the sins of man, with special anger reserved for the grievous impiety of sex between men. If proof were needed, he pointed to the fi res of Sodom, which smoldered “up to the present time.” What God wanted, even more than the destruction of sinners, was their repentance. Justinian commanded that all guilty of such sin immediately repent. Th ey were to take themselves  FROM SHAME TO SIN to the patriarch of Constantinople, undergoing penance as a “therapy for their disease.” Th e prefect was to encourage penitence, but any who failed to submit themselves faced “atrocious penalties.” To allow sin to abide was to invite “the good God to destroy us all.”  Th e late mea sures of Justinian are truly the end of a late antique trajec- tory. In Justinian’s reign the legal regime has become fully consonant with a cultural system that or ga nized sexual morality fi rst and foremost around the gender of the participants. Th e conception of same- sex desire as a dis- ease, susceptible to ecclesiastical therapy, has come to be embodied in im- perial law. Justinian’s policies presume a powerful religio- juridical complex. Th e state, with its monopoly of violence, is used to control and enforce private morality directly.

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

  Virtually anyone can be seduced into a mind control relationship or recruited into a cult, especially if they don’t understand what to watch out for. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the typical cult member was college-aged, but by the late 1980s it had become commonplace for people of all ages to fall victim. Elderly people are quite likely to be recruited.70 The elderly tend to be solicited for heavy financial contributions or public-relations endorsements. Many middle-aged people are recruited for their professional expertise, to help set up or run cult-owned businesses. Still, young people, for the most part, represent the core workers. They can sleep less, eat less and work harder. Although the white middle class is still the main target of recruitment, several groups are now actively seeking out blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. As they gather individuals from these communities, they use them to design programs that will bring in others. The big cults have already developed indoctrination programs in Spanish, for example. Another target population is made up of Europeans visiting, going to school or working in the United States. After a few years of training and indoctrination (usually with expired visas), they are sent home to recruit in their own countries. Cults also reach into foreign countries to provide workers. For decades, Scientology has recruited in Africa, eastern Europe and Asia to provide staff for its U.S., UK and Australian organizations. Recruits are offered a ‘scholarship’ which in reality is a 90-hour work week. Interestingly, cults generally avoid recruiting people who will burden them, such as those with physical disabilities or severe emotional problems. They want people who will stand up to the grueling demands of cult life. If someone is recruited who uses illegal drugs, they are usually told to either stop using them or leave. To my knowledge, there are few people with disabilities recruited in cults, because it takes time, money, and effort to assist them. People born into cults who develop disabilities are often distanced and sent to government welfare programs. Cult Life: Illusion And Abuse Once a person joins a destructive cult, for the first few weeks or months they typically enjoy a “honeymoon phase.” They are treated as though they were royalty. They are made to feel very special as they embark on a new life with the group. The new convert has yet to experience what life in the group is really going to be like. Even though most cult members say publicly that they are happier than they’ve ever been in their lives, the reality is sadly different. Life in a destructive cult is, for the most part, a life of sacrifice, pain and fear. People involved full-time in a destructive cult know what it is like to live under totalitarianism, but can’t objectively see what is happening to them. They live in a fantasy world created by the group.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  There were boys on their knees—three, four, five, six—he couldn’t count them all, but they were on their knees with their sea bags still over their shoulders like Christs, and they were crawling, he saw them crawling! trying not to quit, trying to catch up with the rest. And he was thankful now he was still on his feet. Oh his legs ached and his chest felt like it was going to explode and his head was pounding now and his eyes were burning and he was getting closer and closer. Some men were cursing now, swearing and cursing like the drill instructors, cursing the heat, cursing the sweat. They began to shout and curse the shock, the shock of this day. They dragged themselves, exhausted, in single file into the squad bay. It was a long hallway painted green with double racks on each side making the place seem even tighter than it was. He found a rack at the end near the window that looked out into the swamps. He stood rigid at attention in front of his rack, dropping his sea bag at his side, staring straight ahead like they had told him, staring directly into the eyes of another young man. All of them now were coming in, their big boots banging against the wooden deck, cursing and sweating and dragging their sea bags up to their racks. “Get in there! Hurry up! Hurry up! Get in there!” screamed the sergeant who came running through the open door of the squad bay. “I want each one of you to get in front of a rack!” screamed the sergeant. “And now I want you to listen to me!” And he told them that this place, this squad bay, would be their home for the next three months. They would live here and sleep here and shower here and work here until they became marines. “It’s late!” screamed the short sergeant. “And I know how tired you ladies are tonight. Are you tired ladies?” screamed the sergeant. “Yessir!” shouted the men. “I can’t hear you!” screamed the sergeant. “Louder!” “Yessir!” the young men screamed again. “That’s more like it.” The sergeant repeated a long list of names including the president and vice president of the United States and everyone else right on down to the senior drill instructor himself, and after completing the list, he shouted to the men that every night from here on out they would repeat those names. And then he shouted, “Ready—Mount!” And they shouted back “Ready—Mount! Aye aye, sir!” And all eighty jumped into bed, still standing at attention, lying in their racks. “Awright! I want you to stand at attention all night! I think it’s good practice for you.” And as they lay in their racks at attention, one of the sergeants had a young black boy from Georgia sing the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallo-o-wed be Thy name,” he sang.