Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  Such responses and the ensuing altered configuration of the organism are also mapped and thus “imaged” by the nervous system as part of the same event. Creating images for the motor reaction helps guarantee that the situation does not go unnoticed. Curiously, such motor responses appeared in evolution long before there were nervous systems. Simple organisms recoil, cower, and fight when the integrity of their body is compromised. 3 In brief, the package of reactions to a wound that I have been describing for humans—antibacterial and analgesic chemicals, flinching and evading actions—is an ancient and well-structured response resulting from interactions of the body proper and the nervous system. Later in evolution, after organisms with nervous systems were able to map non-neural events, the components of this complex response were imageable. The mental experience we call “feeling pain” is based on this multidimensional image. 4 The point to be made is that feeling pain is fully supported by an ensemble of older biological phenomena whose goals are transparently useful from the standpoint of homeostasis. To say that simple life-forms without nervous systems have pain is unnecessary and probably not correct. They certainly have some of the elements required to construct feelings of pain, but it is reasonable to hypothesize that for pain itself to emerge, as a mental experience, the organism needed to have a mind and that for that to pass, the organism needed a nervous system capable of mapping structures and events. In other words, I suspect that life-forms without nervous systems or minds had and have elaborate emotive processes, defensive and adaptive action programs, but not feelings. Once nervous systems entered the scene, the path for feelings was open. That is why even humble nervous systems probably allow some measure of feeling. 5 It is often asked, not unreasonably, why feelings should feel like anything at all, pleasant or unpleasant, tolerably quiet or like an uncontainable storm. The reason should now be clear: when the full constellation of physiological events that constitutes feelings began to appear in evolution and provided mental experiences, it made a difference. Feelings made lives better. They prolonged and saved lives. Feelings conformed to the goals of the homeostatic imperative and helped implement them by making them matter mentally to their owner as, for example, the phenomenon of conditioned place aversion appears to demonstrate. 6 The presence of feelings is closely related to another development: consciousness and, more specifically, subjectivity. The value of the knowledge provided by feelings to the organism in which they occur is the likely reason why evolution contrived to hold on to them.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  I can see humanlike robots predict the weather, operate heavy machinery, and perhaps even turn against us. But it will take a while until they really feel, and until then the simulation of humanity will be just that, a simulation. Back to Mortality While we wait for the promised and touted singularities, we might as well deal seriously with two of the largest medical problems anywhere in the world: drug addictions and pain management. The centrality of feelings and homeostasis to an account of human cultures is made very clear by the resistance of these assiduously studied problems to reasonably satisfactory solutions. One can blame drug cartels, big pharma, and irresponsible physicians for ensuring the continuation of drug addictions. They certainly are to blame. We can blame the Internet for making it possible for intelligent and knowledgeable individuals to concoct addictive drugs meshing together otherwise nonaddictive compounds obtained by legal prescriptions. But all that blaming simply misses the point. The addictions are related to molecules that have governed fundamental processes of homeostasis since the mists of time and to an entire suite of opioid receptors. Good, bad, and in-between feelings are tied to what goes on in these receptors, and those feelings, in turn, reflect how well our life is marching, prior to any drug taking. The molecules and receptors on which our feelings depend are old and experienced. They have survived hundreds of millions of years, they are devious, and their effects are powerful. As befits their nature, they produce arresting and tyrannical feelings. The effects of the drugs are destructive to the physical and mental health of the users, achieving the very opposite of the goals of homeostasis. And while people worry about downloading themselves into a computer, these molecules and receptors continue to wreak havoc in the brains and bodies of those people with the misfortune of chronic pain syndromes or a drug addiction, often both. 12 ON THE HUMAN CONDITION NOW An Ambiguous State of Affairs Standing at the edge of the Sea of Galilee on a sunny winter morning, down a few steps from the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus of Nazareth talked to his followers, I turn my thoughts from the long gone troubles of the Roman Empire to the current crisis of the human condition.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  Wilson calls social insects “robotic” and for good reason. Now, back to humans. We humans do ponder alternatives for our behavior, do mourn the loss of others, do want to do something about our losses and about maximizing our gains, and do ask questions about our origin and destiny and propose answers, and we are so disorderly in our bubbling and conflicting creativities that we are often a mess. We do not know exactly when humans began grieving, reacting to losses and gains, commenting on their condition, and asking inconvenient questions about the wherefrom and whereto of their lives. We know for certain, based on artifacts from the burial sites and caves that have been explored to date, that 50,000 years ago some of these processes were well established. But note how, amazingly, this is a mere evolutionary instant when we compare, say, 50 thousand years of humanity to 100 million years of the lives of social insects, not to mention a few billion years of history for bacteria. Although we do not descend directly from bacteria or social insects, I believe it is instructive to reflect on these three lines of evidence: bacteria devoid of brains or minds that defend their turf, wage warfare, and act according to something equivalent to a code of conduct; enterprising insects that create cities, systems of governance, and functional economies; and humans who invent flutes, write poetry, believe in God, conquer the planet and the space around, fight diseases to alleviate suffering but also destroy other humans for their own gain, invent the Internet, find ways to turn it into an instrument of progress and of catastrophe, and, to boot, ask questions about bacteria, about ants and bees, and about themselves. Homeostasis How can we reconcile the seemingly reasonable idea that feelings motivated intelligent cultural solutions for problems posed by the human condition with the fact that un-minded bacteria exhibit socially efficacious behaviors whose contours foreshadow some human cultural responses? What is the thread that links these two sets of biological manifestations, whose emergence is separated by billions of years of evolution? I believe that the common ground and the thread can be found in the dynamics of homeostasis . Homeostasis refers to the fundamental set of operations at the core of life, from the earliest and long-vanished point of its beginning in early biochemistry to the present. Homeostasis is the powerful, unthought, unspoken imperative, whose discharge implies, for every living organism, small or large, nothing less than enduring and prevailing.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  But given the triggers, the mind is now largely tuned to the world of our ongoing thoughts—rather than the world of the body—as we react to those thoughts and feel the reaction. From instance to instance, the musical execution varies because the execution of emotive responses and the experience of the respective feeling also vary, at least as much as the execution of a famous musical piece at the hands of different performers. But the score being played is still unmistakably the same. Human emotions are recognizable pieces of a standard repertoire. A substantial portion of human glory and human tragedy depends on affect in spite of its modest, nonhuman genealogy. Layered Feelings The emotive responses to images even apply to the images called feelings themselves. The state of being in pain, of feeling pain, for example, can become enriched by a new layer of processing—a secondary feeling, as it were—prompted by varied thoughts with which we react to the basic situation. The depth of this layered feeling state is probably a hallmark of human minds. It is the sort of process likely to undergird what we call suffering. Animals with complex brains similar to ours, as is the case with higher mammals, may well have layered feeling states as well. Traditionally, extreme human exceptionalism has denied feelings to animals, but the science of feeling has gradually shown the opposite. This is not to say that human feelings are not more complex and layered and elaborate than those of animals. How could they not be? But as I see it, the distinction in humans has to do with the web of associations that feeling states establish with all sorts of ideas and especially with the interpretations we can make of our present moment and of our anticipated future. Curiously, layered feelings support the intellectualization of feelings to which I referred earlier. The wealth of objects, events, and ideas conjured up by ongoing feelings enriches the process of creating an intellectual description of the prompting situation. Great poetry depends on layered feelings. The definitive exploration of layered feelings was the life’s work of a novelist and philosopher by the name of Marcel Proust. 8 THE CONSTRUCTION OF FEELINGS To understand the origin and construction of feelings, and to appreciate the contribution they make to the human mind, we need to set them in the panorama of homeostasis. The alignment of pleasant and unpleasant feelings with, respectively, positive and negative ranges of homeostasis is a verified fact.

• From Between Us

  Sounds right? That would be because a MINE model of emotions prevails in Western contexts. Having the emotions that are required by others or by the setting is thought to be demanding and unnatural in MINE contexts. It is quite the norm in contexts that favor an OURS model. Take the example of a Buddhist community in Northern Thailand. During her field trip in 2005, anthropologist Julia Cassaniti recorded the emotions of a family of an alcoholic thirty-three-year-old man named Sen. After a long period of disease, Sen was finally taken to the hospital, where the doctors found that he suffered from advanced liver disease, and was untreatable. Sen’s family gathered around his bed, being “upset by the turn of events: Most had expected that he would eventually get help and be healthy again.” Despite the general sense of devastation, Sen’s relatives “crafted their emotions so that they could accept what had happened. . . . Sen’s father and sister went to the temple to make offerings every morning. His sister, brother, relatives, and friends, at least at first, for the most part, displayed what seemed to be blank faces: faces that did not show emotion at all.” Cassanti assures us that the blank faces of Sen’s friends and family neither meant that they were indifferent, nor that they just faked it for others’ benefit. Instead, she writes, they were working towards a state that they felt to be appropriate—to accept what had happened (tham jai), and to be calm (jai yen). Acceptance is quite the opposite idea to “grief work.” Where grief work makes sure that inner feelings are expressed, acceptance is the effect of becoming detached from these inner feelings. Julia Cassaniti tells us that family and friends who show distress when Sen was hospitalized (herself included) were kindly reminded by others to “not think about it” and “not talk about it.” The Buddhist Thai community thought that talking and thinking about negative feelings would exacerbate them, and this was to be avoided at all cost. It was important to accept, be calm, and detach, rather than getting the grief out. The Buddhist Thai practice of grief is reminiscent of the Utku Inuit stance towards anger: anger was unacceptable among the Inuit, and equanimity was valued instead. Briggs could not force her feelings, or so she felt—her inner feelings needed out. In contrast, her Inuit hosts managed to achieve the valued state of equanimity, even in the face of frustrated goals.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  To be experienced, the patterns of operations related to pain or pleasure had to be turned into feeling, which is the same as saying that they had to acquire a mental face, which is the same as saying that the mental face had to be owned by the organism in which it occurred, thereby becoming subjective, in brief, conscious. Non-experienceable pain and pleasure mechanisms, by which I mean nonconscious and nonsubjective pain-related and pleasure-related mechanisms, clearly assisted early life regulation in an automatic and undeliberated way. But in the absence of subjectivity, the organism in which such mechanisms occurred would not have been able to consider either the mechanism or the results. The respective body states would not have been examinable. The collection of questions, explanations, consolations, adjustments, discoveries, and inventions that make up the noblest part of human history required a motive. Felt pain and suffering, on their own, but especially when contrasted with felt pleasure and flourishing, did move the mind and call for action. Provided, of course, that there was something to be moved in the mind, and there certainly was, especially as Homo sapiens developed, in the form of the expanded cognitive and language abilities discussed earlier. In the most practical terms, that movable something was the ability to think beyond what could be immediately perceived and the ability to interpret and diagnose a situation, understanding causes and effects. How correct the interpretations and diagnoses were, over the ages, is not the point. Obviously, they were often incorrect. The point was having an interpretation, correct or not, firmly motivated by a strong feeling, positive or negative. On that basis, it was possible for intensely social humans to motivate the invention, individually and in the collective space, of previously nonexisting responses. This movable, mental something involves not just what we sense as reality here and now, but reality as it might have happened or as it might have been forecast to happen. I am referring to recalled reality, a reality that can be altered by our imagination, processed in chains of remembered images of every sensory stripe—sight, sound, touch, smell, taste—images that can be cut in pieces and moved about, playfully recombined to form new arrangements and address specific goals: the construction of a tool, a practice, an explanation. None of this is incompatible with the earlier appearance, prior to Homo sapiens, of some limited cultural manifestations such as stone tools. 19 The movable something identified the relationships between certain objects, people, events, or ideas and the onset of either suffering or joy; it provided an awareness of the immediate and not so immediate antecedents to pain and pleasure; and it identified possible and even likely causes.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  They divide labor intelligently within the group to deal with the problems of finding energy sources, transform them into products useful for their lives, and manage the flow of those products. They do so to the point of changing the number of workers assigned to specific jobs depending on the energy sources available. They act in a seemingly altruistic manner whenever sacrifice is needed. In their colonies, they build nests that constitute remarkable urban architectural projects and provide efficient shelter, traffic patterns, and even systems of ventilation and waste removal, not to mention a security guard for the queen. One almost expects them to have harnessed fire and invented the wheel. Their zeal and discipline put to shame, any day, the governments of our leading democracies. These creatures acquired their complex social behaviors from their biology, not from Montessori schools or Ivy League colleges. But in spite of having come by these astounding abilities as early as 100 million years ago, ants and bees, individually or as colonies, do not grieve for the loss of their mates when they disappear and do not ask themselves about their place in the universe. They do not inquire about their origin, let alone their destiny. Their seemingly responsible, socially successful behavior is not guided by a sense of responsibility, to themselves or to others, or by a corpus of philosophical reflections on the condition of being an insect. It is guided by the gravitational pull of their life regulation needs as it acts on their nervous systems and produces certain repertoires of behavior selected over numerous evolving generations, under the control of their fine-tuned genomes. Members of a colony do not think as much as they act, by which I mean that upon registering a particular need—theirs, or the group’s, or the queen’s—they do not ponder alternatives for how to fulfill such a need in any way comparable to ours. They simply fulfill it. Their repertoire of actions is limited, and in many instances it is confined to one option. The general schema of their elaborate sociality does resemble that of human cultures, but it is a fixed schema. E. O. Wilson calls social insects “robotic” and for good reason. Now, back to humans. We humans do ponder alternatives for our behavior, do mourn the loss of others, do want to do something about our losses and about maximizing our gains, and do ask questions about our origin and destiny and propose answers, and we are so disorderly in our bubbling and conflicting creativities that we are often a mess.

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

  The revivability in memory of the emotions, like that of all the feelings of the lower senses, is very small. We can remember that we underwent grief or rapture, but not just how the grief or rapture felt. This difficult ideal revivability is, however, more than compensated in the case of the emotions by a very easy actual revivability. That is, we can produce, not remembrances of the old grief or rapture, but new griefs and raptures, by summoning up a lively thought of their exciting cause. The cause is now only an idea, but this idea produces the same organic irradiations, or almost the same, which were produced by its original, so that the emotion is again a reality. We have 'recaptured' it. Shame, love, and anger are particularly liable to be thus revived by ideas of their object. Professor Bain admits[434] that "in their strict character of emotion proper, they [the emotions] have the minimum of revivability; but being always incorporated with the sensations of the higher senses, they share in the superior revivability of sights and sounds." But he fails to point out that the revived sights and sounds may be ideal without ceasing to be distinct; whilst the emotion, to be distinct, must become real again. Prof. Bain seems to forget that an 'ideal emotion' and a real emotion prompted by an ideal object are two very different things.

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

  Several bishops were deposed.10 Archbishop Wido of Rheims narrowly escaped the same fate on a charge of simony. On his return, Leo held synods in lower Italy and in Rome. He made a second tour across the Alps in 1052, visiting Burgundy, Lorraine, and Germany, and his friend the emperor. We find him at Regensburg, Bamberg, Mainz, and Worms. Returning to Rome, he held in April, 1053, his fourth Easter Synod. Besides the reform of the Church, the case of Berengar and the relation to the Greek Church were topics of discussion in several of these synods. Berengar was condemned, 1050, for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. It is remarkable with what leniency Hildebrand treated Berengar and his eucharistic doctrine, in spite of the papal condemnation; but he was not a learned theologian. The negotiation with the Greek Church only ended in greater separation.11 Leo surrounded himself with a council of cardinals who supported him in his reform. Towards the close of his pontificate, he acted inconsistently by taking up arms against the Normans in defense of Church property. He was defeated and taken prisoner at Benevento, but released again by granting them in the name of St. Peter their conquests in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. The Normans kissed his toe, and asked his absolution and blessing. He incurred the censure of the strict reform party. Damiani maintained that a clergyman dare not bear arms even in defense of the property of the Church, but must oppose invincible patience to the fury of the world, according to the example of Christ. Leo spent his remaining days in grief over his defeat. He died at Rome, April 19, 1054, in his fifty-third year, after commending his soul to God in a German prayer of humble resignation, and was buried near the tomb of Gregory I. As he had begun the reformation of the Church, and miracles were reported, he was enrolled in the Calendar of Saints. Desiderius, afterwards Victor III., wrote, "All ecclesiastical interests were reformed by Leo and in him a new light arose in the world." § 6. Victor II. and Stephen IX. (X.). 1055–1058. Hildebrand was absent in France when Leo died, and hurried to Rome. He could find no worthy successor in Italy, and was unwilling to assume the burden of the papacy himself. He cast his eye upon Gebhard, bishop of Eichstädt, the ablest, richest, and most influential prelate of Germany, who was warmly devoted to the emperor. He proceeded at the head of a deputation, appointed by the clergy and people, to the German court, and begged the emperor to raise Gebhard to the papal chair. After long delay, Gebhard was elected at a council in Regensburg, March, 1055, and consecrated in St. Peter’s at Rome, April 13, as Victor II. He continued the synodical war against simony, but died as early as July 28, 1057, at Arezzo, of a fever. He was the last of the German popes.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Reading and relaxation: No German books may be read, except for the classics and works of a scholarly nature. Other books are optional. Calisthenics: Daily. Singing: Only softly, and after 6 P.M. Movies: Prior arrangements required. Classes: A weekly correspondence course in shorthand. Courses in English, French, math and history offered at any hour of the day or night. Payment in the form of tutoring, e.g., Dutch. Separate department for the care of small household pets (with the exception of vermin, for which special permits are required). Mealtimes: Breakfast: At 9 A.M. daily except holidays and Sundays; at approximately 11:30 A.M. on Sundays and holidays. Lunch: A light meal. From 1:15 P.M. to 1:45 P.M. Dinner: Mayor not be a hot meal. Mealtime depends on news broadcasts. Obligations with respect to the Supply Corps: Residents must be prepared to help with office work at all times. Baths: The washtub is available to all residents after 9 A.M. on Sundays. Residents may bathe in the bathroom, kitchen, private office or front office, as they choose. Alcohol: For medicinal purposes only. The end. Yours, Anne THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1942 Dearest Kitty, Just as we thought, Mr. Dussel is a very nice man. Of course he didn’t mind sharing a room with me; to be honest, I’m not exactly delighted at having a stranger use my things, but you have to make sacrifices for a good cause, and I’m glad I can make this small one. “If we can save even one of our friends, the rest doesn’t matter,” said Father, and he’s absolutely right. The first day Mr. Dussel was here, he asked me all sorts of questions -- for example, what time the cleaning lady comes to the office, how we’ve arranged to use the washroom and when we’re allowed to go to the toilet. You may laugh, but these things aren’t so easy in a hiding place. During the daytime we can’t make any noise that might be heard downstairs, and when someone else is there, like the cleaning lady, we have to be extra careful. I patiently explained all this to Mr. Dussel, but I was surprised to see how slow he is to catch on. He asks everything twice and still can’t remember what you’ve told him. Maybe he’s just confused by the sudden change and he’ll get over it. Otherwise, everything is going fine. Mr. Dussel has told us much about the outside world we’ve missed for so long. He had sad news. Countless friends and acquaintances have been taken off to a dreadful fate. Night after night, green and gray military vehicles cruise the streets. They knock on every door, asking whether any Jews live there. If so, the whole family is immediately taken away. If not, they proceed to the next house. It’s impossible to escape their clutches unless you go into hiding. They often go around with lists, knocking only on those doors where they know there’s a big haul to be made.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  WHAT BECOMES OF TROUBLESOME TURN-ONS?Almost as challenging as expanding one’s identity is figuring out what to do with old sexual scripts as new ones take hold. In a logical world, problematic scenarios would quickly lose their appeal in the face of more fulfilling ones. In actual practice, most men and women who successfully create more gratifying turn-ons make a similar discovery about their erotic repertoires as they do about their identities: it’s much easier to cultivate new sources of arousal than to cast aside old ones. This is the primary reason that I suggested in Step 1 to focus your goals on what you want rather than what you don’t want. Although it may go against common sense, integrating erotic changes normally doesn’t involve obliterating problematic turn-ons altogether but rather finding a harmless place for them in an expanding, multidimensional self. Is such a feat realistic, particularly for those whose CETs have compelled them to reenact self-defeating scenarios? I’m convinced that it is. Needless to say, the ability to integrate once-destructive turn-ons into a self-affirming identity rarely develops easily. But unquestionably it does happen. Ryan, the “prisoner of prohibition” who had spent most of his life struggling with his fascination with sleazy women, is a good example. With determination and courage he learned to enjoy warm, affectionate sex with his girlfriend, Janet. He even mourned the loss of the heart-pounding excitation his old activities once produced. Yet raunchy images continued to run through his fantasies no matter how much he tried to control them. For a time he couldn’t resist declaring himself a failure. It was obvious he had truly reached his goals only when he learned to accept—and enjoy—these fantasies, without reactivating the inner battle that had made him miserable for so long, and without sinking into shame or self-reproach. Eventually, he even went so far as to use old naughty feelings, accompanied by a wisp of guilt, as harmless aphrodisiacs. Ryan’s battle didn’t end with the vanquishing of his old turn-ons as he once assumed it would. Instead his ultimate success stemmed from a transformation in how he used them. Most people I’ve known who have successfully resolved troublesome turn-ons have been similar to Ryan. They gradually discovered that it wasn’t their sexual scripts per se that had hurt them. The real problem was how they had learned to use their CETs against themselves. Once they stopped doing that—the most far-reaching change of all—they went on to develop more relaxed attitudes toward erotic material that was once deadly serious. By building an identity founded on self-respect, they used their imaginations to enjoy scenarios similar to those that once tormented them but without taking any of their detrimental aspects to heart. PUTTING THE SEVEN STEPS TO WORKErotic transitions are as multifaceted as eroticism itself—full of detours and surprises. Try not to think of these steps as instructions to be followed like a recipe. To receive maximum benefit, approach them with a spirit of flexibility and creativity.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Neither love-lust fusions nor splits are compatible with sexual well-being because both result from a destructive and tragic conviction—often vigorously denied—that lust is disgusting and incompatible with love. The capacity to experience genital arousal together with emotional intimacy falls within what I call the zone of interaction, where love and lust overlap. This zone may be large or small and can be visualized like this: [image file=image_rsrc3FG.jpg] Disagreements abound regarding the optimum amount of love-lust overlap. There are those who strongly believe, as a matter of morality or preference, that eros reaches its full potential only to the degree that love and lust are experienced in tandem. Others feel especially alive and vital during experiences of uncomplicated lust. Disputes about the best relationship between love and lust will never be settled because there is no single ideal arrangement. My observations as a therapist have convinced me that erotic health is possible as long as some degree of love-lust interaction exists at least some of the time. Not surprisingly, the convergence of love and lust is normally at its fullest during the limerent period of a romantic involvement. At such times love and lust usually feel totally unified. As intimate relationships develop, however, the zone of interaction normally grows smaller and less consistent. Virtually all long-term couples grapple with this change, and hardly any are pleased about it. In most cases, however, as long as affection and lust continue to interact to some degree, the partners stand a good chance of finding ways to continue enjoying sex with each other. PRISONERS OF PROHIBITIONWe have devoted considerable attention to the naughtiness factor and the way it brings the thrill of the forbidden to all sorts of encounters and fantasies. You’ve probably noticed in your own life how a sense of raunchy fun can add a welcome spark to already satisfying sex. The ability to transform naughtiness into arousal begins as a creative adaptation to the distressing fact that the adults upon whom we depend for survival don’t approve of our sexual curiosity. When you have fun with naughtiness, you acknowledge the restrictions you faced as a child while asserting that, to a significant degree, your desires have triumphed over the forces that tried to suppress you. You have grown sufficiently free to use prohibitions for your own enjoyment and play. Many people, however, grew up in homes so permeated with antisexual restrictions that the drama of violating prohibitions has become the central feature of their eroticism. These people are prisoners of sexual prohibition, and it’s no exaggeration to say that they have been victimized just as surely as if they had been molested.

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

  "But this weakness of the entire voluntary motor apparatus (the so-called apparatus of 'animal' life) is only one side of the physiology of grief. Another side, hardly less important, and in its consequences perhaps even more so, belongs to another subdivision of the motor apparatus, namely, the involuntary or 'organic' muscles, especially those which are found in the walls of the blood-vessels, and the use of which is, by contracting, to diminish the latter's calibre. These muscles and their nerves, forming together the 'vaso-motor apparatus,' act in grief contrarily to the voluntary motor apparatus. Instead of being paralyzed, like the latter, the vascular muscles are more strongly contracted than usual, so that the tissues and organs of the body become anæmic. The immediate consequence of this bloodlessness is pallor and shrunkenness, and the pale color and collapsed features are the peculiarities which, in connection with the relaxation of the visage, give to the victim of grief his characteristic physiognomy, and often give an impression of emaciation which ensues too rapidly to be possibly due to real disturbance of nutrition, or waste uncompensated by repair. Another regular consequence of the bloodlessness of the skin is a feeling of cold, and shivering. A constant symptom of grief is sensitiveness to cold, and difficulty in keeping warm. In grief, the inner organs are unquestionably anæmic as well as the skin. This is of course not obvious to the eye, but many phenomena prove it. Such is the diminution of the various secretions, at least of such as are accessible to observation. The mouth grows dry, the tongue sticky, and a bitter taste ensues which, it would appear, is only a consequence of the tongue's dryness. [The expression 'bitter sorrow' may possibly arise from this.] In nursing women the milk diminishes or altogether dries up. There is one of the most regular manifestations of grief, which apparently contradicts these other physiological phenomena, and that is the weeping, with its profuse secretion of tears, its swollen reddened face, red eyes, and augmented secretion from the nasal mucous membrane."

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  1 It was this first group of deportees who created the new Axial Age vision. Nebuchadnezzar had torn the heart out of the Judean state, but it struggled on for another ten years, with Zedekiah, a Babylonian appointee, on the throne. When Zedekiah rebelled in 587, Nebuchadnezzar showed no mercy. His army fell upon Jerusalem, destroyed its temple, and razed the city to the ground. Zedekiah was forced to watch the slaughter of his sons before his eyes were torn out, and he too was carried off to Babylon, with five thousand more deportees, leaving only the poorer people and those who had defected to Babylon in the devastated land. Judah was incorporated into the administrative structure of the empire, and in 581, a third group was taken into exile. 2 This was a period of intense suffering. Recently some scholars have argued that the Babylonian exile was not really very traumatic: about 75 percent of the population remained behind, and life continued as before. The deportees were well cared for in Babylonia. They settled down and made lives for themselves as rent collectors, business agents, and managers of canals. Some even owned fiefs of land. 3 But recent archaeological investigations have revealed the fury of the Babylonian attack on Jerusalem, Judah, and the entire Levant, which was far more destructive than the Assyrian onslaught. The country entered a dark age, one of the most miserable periods of its history. 4 Jerusalem and its temple remained a desolate ruin. The book of Lamentations described its empty squares, crumbling walls, and damaged gates; the crowded, prosperous city was now the abode of jackals. People clawed at garbage dumps for food, mothers killed and boiled their babies, and handsome young men roamed the ruined streets with blackened faces and skeletal bodies. 5 The people of Israel had looked into a terrifying void, but having lost everything, some were able to create a new vision out of the experience of grief, loss, and humiliation. The prophet Jeremiah was not deported, because he had consistently supported the Babylonians, realizing that rebellion was utter folly. Some prophets thought that because Yahweh dwelt in his temple, Jerusalem could not be destroyed, but Jeremiah told them that this was dangerous nonsense. It was useless to chant “This is the temple of Yahweh!” like a magic spell. If the people did not mend their ways, Yahweh would destroy the city. 6 This was treason, and Jeremiah was almost executed, but after his acquittal he continued to wander through the streets, uttering his grim oracles. His name has become a byword for exaggerated pessimism, but Jeremiah was not being “negative.” He was right.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  In the early years, while Athanasius still enjoyed Constantine’s favor, Arians complained of his “greed, aggression, and boundless ambition” 52 and accused him of “force,” “murder,” and the “killing of bishops.” 53 For their part, the Nicenes vividly described the rattling weapons and flashing swords of the imperial troops, who thrashed their deacons and trampled worshippers underfoot. 54 Both sides dwelled obsessively on their enemies’ vicious treatment of the consecrated virgins, 55 and both revered their dead as “martyrs.” Christians were developing a history of grievance that intensified during the brief but dramatic reign of the emperor Julian (361–63), known as “the Apostate.” Despite his Christian upbringing, Julian had come to detest the new faith, convinced it would ruin the empire. Many of his subjects felt the same. Those who still loved the old rites feared that this violation of the Pax Deorum would result in political catastrophe. Throughout the imperial domains, Julian appointed pagan priests to sacrifice to the One God worshipped under many names—as Zeus, Jupiter, Helios, or in the Hebrew Bible, “God Most High.” 56 He removed Christians from public office, gave special privileges to towns that had never adopted Christianity, and announced that he would rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Julian was careful to avoid outright persecution but merely boosted pagan sacrifice, refurbished pagan shrines, and covertly encouraged anti-Christian violence. 57 Over the years a great deal of pent-up resentment had accumulated against the Church, and when Julian’s edicts were published, in some towns pagans rioted against Christians, who now discovered how vulnerable they really were. Once again, some Christians responded to the state that had suddenly turned against them with the defiant gesture of martyrdom. Most of the martyrs who died during these two years were either killed by pagan mobs or put to death by local officials for their provocative attacks on pagan religion. 58 As Jews began work on their new temple and pagans gleefully refurbished their shrines, conflict throughout the empire centered on iconic buildings. Ever since Constantine, Christians had become accustomed to seeing the decline of Judaism as the essential concomitant to the triumph of the Church. Now as they watched the purposeful activity of the Jewish workmen on the temple site in Jerusalem, they felt as if the fabric of their own faith had been undermined. At Merum in Phrygia, there was a more ominous development. While the local pagan temple was being repaired and the statues of the gods polished, three Christians, “unable to endure the indignity put upon their religion and impelled by a fervent zeal for virtue, rushed by night into the temple and broke the images in pieces.” This amounted to a suicide attack on a building that seemed to epitomize their new humiliation. Even though the governor urged them to repent, they refused, “declaring their readiness to undergo any sufferings, rather than pollute themselves by sacrificing.”

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Furthermore, he answers every reproach or accusation with a load of fine 1\ promises, which he never manages to keep. “Der Mann hat einen grossen Geist Una ist so klein van Taten!”*[*A well-known expression] “The spirit of the man is great, How puny are his deeds.” Yours, Anne SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1943 Dearest Kitty, Last night, just as I was falling asleep, Hanneli suddenly appeared before me. I saw her there, dressed in rags, her face thin and worn. She looked at me with such sadness and reproach in her enormous eyes that I could read the message in them: “Oh, Anne, why have you deserted me? Help me, help me, rescue me from this hell!” And I can’t help her. I can only stand by and watch while other people suffer and die. All I can do is pray to God to bring her back to us. I saw Hanneli, and no one else, and I understood why. I misjudged her, wasn’t mature enough to understand how difficult it was for her. She was devoted to her girlfriend, and it must have seemed as though I were trying to take her away. The poor thing, she must have felt awful! I know, because I recognize the feeling in myself! I had an occasional flash of understanding, but then got selfishly wrapped up again in my own problems and pleasures. It was mean of me to treat her that way, and now she was looking at me, oh so helplessly, with her pale face and beseeching eyes. If only I could help her! Dear God, I have everything I could wish for, while fate has her in its deadly clutches. She was as devout as I am, maybe even more so, and she too wanted to do what was right. But then why have I been chosen to live, while she’s probably going to die? What’s the difference between us? Why are we now so far apart? To be honest, I hadn’t thought of her for months -- no, for at least a year. I hadn’t forgotten her entirely, and yet it wasn’t until I saw her before me that I thought of all her suffering. Oh, Hanneli, I hope that if you live to the end of the war and return to us, I’ll be able to take you in and make up for the wrong I’ve done you. But even if I were ever in a position to help, she wouldn’t need it more than she does now. I wonder if she ever thinks of me, and what she’s feeling? Merciful God, comfort her, so that at least she won’t be alone. Oh, if only You could tell her I’m thinking of her with compassion and love, it might help her go on. I’ve got to stop dwelling on this. It won’t get me anywhere. I keep seeing her enormous eyes, and they haunt me.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  But instead of attacking them, in order to defend his family, Abraham prostrated himself as though they were gods. He then gave his visitors an elaborate meal to refresh them on their journey. The act of personal surrender, combined with practical compassion to three total strangers, led to a divine encounter: in the course of the ensuing conversation, it transpired quite naturally that one of these strangers was none other than Yahweh. Even more striking was E’s story of the binding of Isaac. 35 Abraham had been promised that he would become the father of a mighty nation, but he had only one remaining son. Then, E tells us, “It happened some time later that elohim put Abraham to the test.” He called him by name, and Abraham cried, Hinneni! “Here I am!” Patriarchs and prophets often responded to God with this cry, which indicated their total readiness and presence. But God then issued the shocking command, “Take your son, your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will point out to you.” 36 This story marked a new conception of the divine. In the ancient world, a firstborn child was often regarded as the property of a god, and had to be returned to him in human sacrifice. The young blood restored the deity’s depleted energies and ensured the circulation of power in the cosmos. But there was no such rationale here. Elohim was making a purely arbitrary demand, to which Abraham could only respond in faith. 37 This god was entirely different from the other deities of the region; he did not share the human predicament, he did not require an input of energy from men and women, but could make whatever demands he chose. Abraham did not falter. He immediately saddled his ass, and set out for the land of Moriah with Isaac and two servants, carrying in his own hands the knife that would kill his son and the wood for the holocaust. He bound Isaac, laid him on the altar, and seized the knife. It was an act of total obedience that threatened to drain his life of significance. The god he had served so long had shown that he was a breaker of promises and a heartless slayer of children. Only at the very last moment did elohim send his “angel” to stop the killing, commanding Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead. The story is supposed to mark an important cultic transition, when animal oblation was substituted for human sacrifice. But the pain of the story goes far beyond its liturgical relevance.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  57 The Dome as a perceived symbol of Jewish humiliation, subjugation, and obliteration fed dangerously into the Jewish history of grievance and suffering, a phenomenon that, as we have seen, can fester dangerously and inspire a violent riposte. Jews had fought back and achieved a superpower status in the Middle East that would once have seemed inconceivable. For the Gush, the peace process seemed to threaten this hard-won status, and like the monks who obliterated the iconic pagan temples after Julian’s attempt to suppress Christianity, they instinctively responded, “Never again.” Hence Jewish radicals, with or without rabbinic approval, continue to flirt with Livni’s dangerous idea, convinced that their political designs have some basis in eternal truth. The Temple Mount Faithful have drawn up plans for the Jewish temple that will one day replace the Dome, which they display in a museum provocatively close to the Haram al-Sharif with the ritual utensils and ceremonial robes that they have prepared for the cult. For many, Jewish Jerusalem rising phoenixlike from the ashes of Auschwitz has acquired a symbolic value that is nonnegotiable. The history of Jerusalem shows that a holy place always becomes more precious to a people after they have lost it or feel that their tenure is endangered. Livni’s plot therefore helped to make the Haram al-Sharif even more sacred to the Palestinians. When Islam was a great world power, Muslims had the confidence to be inclusive in their devotion to this sacred space. Calling Jerusalem al-Quds (“the Holy”), they understood that a holy place belongs to God and can never be the exclusive preserve of a state. When Umar conquered the city, he left the Christian shrines intact and invited Jews to return to the city from which they had been excluded for centuries. But now, as they feel that they are losing their city, Palestinian Muslims have become more possessive. Hence the tension between Muslims and Jews frequently erupts into violence at this holy place: in 2000 the provocative visit of the hawkish Israeli politician Ariel Sharon with his right-wing entourage sparked the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada. Rabbi Meir Kahane also plotted to destroy what he called “the gentiles’ abomination on the Temple Mount.” Most Israelis were horrified when he was elected to a seat in the 1984 Knesset with 1.2 percent of the vote. 58 For Kahane, to attack any gentile who posed the slightest threat to the Jewish nation was a sacred duty.

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

  Innocent, formerly cardinal-legate of Urban II. and mediator of the Concordat of Worms, enjoyed the reputation of superior learning and piety, which even his opponents could not dispute. He had also the advantage of a prior election, but of doubtful legal validity, since it was effected only by a minority of cardinals, who met in great hurry in an unknown place to anticipate the rival candidate.118 Anacletus was a son of Pierleone, Petrus Leonis, and a grandson of Leo, a baptized Jewish banker, who had acquired great financial, social, and political influence under the Hildebrandian popes. A Jewish community with a few hundred members were tolerated in Trastevere and around the island of the Tiber as a monumental proof of the truth of Christianity, and furnished some of the best physicians and richest bankers, who helped the nobility and the popes in their financial troubles. Anacletus betrayed his Semitic origin in his physiognomy, and was inferior to Innocent in moral character; but he secured an election by a majority of cardinals and the support of the principal noble families and the Roman community. With the help of the Normans, he took possession of Rome, banished his opponent, deposed the hostile cardinals, and filled the college with his friends. Innocent was obliged to flee to France, and received there the powerful support of Peter of Cluny and Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest monks and oracles of their age. He was acknowledged as the legitimate pope by all the monastic orders and by the kings of France and England. Lothaire II. (III.) of Saxony, 1125–1137, to whom both parties appealed, decided for Innocent, led him and St. Bernard to Rome by armed force, and received in turn from the pope the imperial crown, June 4, 1133. But after Lothaire’s departure, Anacletus regained possession of Rome, with the help of the Norman duke, Roger, and the party of the rival emperor, Conrad III. He made Roger II. king of Sicily, and thus helped to found a kingdom which lasted seven hundred and thirty years, till it was absorbed in the kingdom of Italy, 1860. Innocent retired to Pisa (1135). Lothaire made a second expedition to Italy and defeated Roger II. Bernard again appeared at Rome and succeeded in strengthening Innocent’s position. At this juncture Anacletus died, 1138. The healing of the schism was solemnly announced at the Second Lateran Council, 1139. War soon after broke out between Innocent and Roger, and Innocent was taken prisoner. On his release he confirmed Roger as king of Sicily. Lothaire had returned to Germany to die, 1137. Innocent had granted to him the territories of Matilda for an annual payment. On this transaction later popes based the claim that the emperor was a papal vassal.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  10 Secular nationalism seems unable to cultivate a similarly universal ideology, even though our globalized world is so deeply interconnected. Gandhi could not countenance Western secularism: “To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest creature as oneself,” he concluded in his autobiography. Devotion to this truth required one to be involved in every field of life; it had brought him into politics, for “those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.” 11 Gandhi’s last years were darkened by the communal violence that had erupted during and after partition. He was assassinated in 1948 by a radical nationalist who believed that Gandhi had given too many concessions to the Muslims and had made a large monetary donation to Pakistan. As they forged their national identities in the peculiarly tense conditions of India, Muslims and Hindus would both fall prey to the besetting sin of secular nationalism: its inability to tolerate minorities. And because their outlook was still permeated by spirituality, this nationalist bias distorted their traditional religious vision. As violence between Muslims and Hindus escalated during the 1920s, the Arya Samaj became more militant. 12 At a conference in 1927, it formed a military cadre, the Arya Vir Dal (“Troop of Aryan Horses”). It declared that the new Aryan hero must develop the virtues of the Kshatriya—courage, physical strength, and, especially, proficiency in the use of weapons. His principal duty was to defend the rights of the Aryan nation against the Muslims and the British. 13 The Arya was anxious not to be outdone by the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (“National Volunteer Association”), usually referred to as RSS, founded in central India three years earlier by Keshav B. Hedgewar. Where the Arya had adapted the British idea of “religion” to “Hinduism,” RSS had fused traditional religious ideals with Western nationalism. It was primarily a character-building organization designed to develop an ethos of service, based on loyalty, discipline, and a respect for the Hindu heritage, and it appealed particularly to the urban middle classes. Its hero was the seventeenth-century warrior Shivaji who, empowered by his fidelity to traditional Hindu ritual as well as his organizational skills, had led a successful revolt against the Moghuls. He had managed to weld recruits from disparate peasant castes into a unified army, and RSS vowed to do the same in British India. 1 4 Thus a new religiosity was coming to birth in India, one that cultivated Hindu strength not by evoking ahimsa but by developing the traditional warrior ethos. Yet this combination of the Kshatriya ideal with secular nationalism was dangerous. For RSS, Mother India was not simply a territorial entity but a living goddess.