Hope

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.

Page 157 of 216 · 20 per page

• From Cultish (2021)

  The deeper we go into darkness, the higher we go back into the light like a slingshot,” he professed. “If I hadn’t experienced the darkness and suppression, the diminishing of self, I wouldn’t have had the impetus to move into this self-awareness I have now.” Indeed, while love-bombing can attract the broken, it’s those like Laura and Frank—those buoyed by enough idealism to trust that the act of committing wholeheartedly to this group will bring them miracles and meaning, to believe it’s worth the leap—who stay. “For me to have a positive outlook on life, I do my own brainwashing,” Laura told me matter-of-factly. “You look at the news. I’m fighting cancer now. We all have things in our lives that suck, things that try to keep us in bed or not fighting back. I definitely believe in brainwashing, or I guess you could call it ‘positive vibes’ in some settings. But I think we all brainwash ourselves. Sometimes we have to.” After our last interview, Laura and I remained in touch, emailed back and forth, swapping Synanon stories. One night she got together with some old Synanon pals for dinner, and with a guy named Frankie she wrote down a list of all the special jargon she remembered from back in those days. “Frankie thinks he remembers your dad—he was a youngster in Synanon at that time too,” she wrote to me, the glossary enclosed. “Funny, the synchronicity of life when you don’t expect it.” Two months later, Laura passed away from cancer, surrounded by so many of the companions she’d collected over the course of her wild life. I can think of so many motives explaining why someone might enter a community like the Peoples Temple or Heaven’s Gate. Maybe it’s because life is hard and they want to make it better. Because someone promised they could help. Maybe they want their time on Earth to feel more meaningful. Maybe they’re sick of feeling so alone. Maybe they want new friends. Or a new family. Or a change of scenery. Maybe someone they love is joining. Maybe everybody is joining. Maybe it just seems like an adventure. The majority leave before things get deadly, but the reasons some don’t might also sound familiar. They’re the same reasons you might put off a necessary breakup: denial, listlessness, social stresses, fear they might seek revenge, lack of money, lack of outside support, doubt that you’ll be able to find something better, and the sheer hope that your current situation will improve—go back to how it was at the start—if only you hold on a few more months, commit a fraction more. The behavioral economic theory of loss aversion says that human beings generally feel losses (of time, money, pride, etc.) much more acutely than gains; so psychologically, we’re willing to do a lot of work to avoid looking defeats in the eye.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Indeed, while love-bombing can attract the broken, it’s those like Laura and Frank—those buoyed by enough idealism to trust that the act of committing wholeheartedly to this group will bring them miracles and meaning, to believe it’s worth the leap—who stay. “For me to have a positive outlook on life, I do my own brainwashing,” Laura told me matter-of-factly. “You look at the news. I’m fighting cancer now. We all have things in our lives that suck, things that try to keep us in bed or not fighting back. I definitely believe in brainwashing, or I guess you could call it ‘positive vibes’ in some settings. But I think we all brainwash ourselves. Sometimes we have to.” After our last interview, Laura and I remained in touch, emailed back and forth, swapping Synanon stories. One night she got together with some old Synanon pals for dinner, and with a guy named Frankie she wrote down a list of all the special jargon she remembered from back in those days. “Frankie thinks he remembers your dad—he was a youngster in Synanon at that time too,” she wrote to me, the glossary enclosed. “Funny, the synchronicity of life when you don’t expect it.” Two months later, Laura passed away from cancer, surrounded by so many of the companions she’d collected over the course of her wild life. I can think of so many motives explaining why someone might enter a community like the Peoples Temple or Heaven’s Gate. Maybe it’s because life is hard and they want to make it better. Because someone promised they could help. Maybe they want their time on Earth to feel more meaningful. Maybe they’re sick of feeling so alone. Maybe they want new friends. Or a new family. Or a change of scenery. Maybe someone they love is joining. Maybe everybody is joining. Maybe it just seems like an adventure. The majority leave before things get deadly, but the reasons some don’t might also sound familiar. They’re the same reasons you might put off a necessary breakup: denial, listlessness, social stresses, fear they might seek revenge, lack of money, lack of outside support, doubt that you’ll be able to find something better, and the sheer hope that your current situation will improve— go back to how it was at the start—if only you hold on a few more months, commit a fraction more. The behavioral economic theory of loss aversion says that human beings generally feel losses (of time, money, pride, etc.) much more acutely than gains; so psychologically, we’re willing to do a lot of work to avoid looking defeats in the eye. Irrationally, we tend to stay in negative situations, from crappy relationships to lousy investments to cults, telling ourselves that a win is just around the corner, so we don’t have to admit to ourselves that things just didn’t work out and we should cut our losses.

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  [image file=image_rsrcBP.jpg] Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them—never become even conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through? I will not, if I can help it, shin up either the feathery or the prickly tree. Two widely different convictions press more and more on my mind. One is that the Eternal Vet is even more inexorable and the possible operations even more painful than our severest imaginings can forbode. But the other, that ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ It doesn’t matter that all the photographs of H. are bad. It doesn’t matter—not much—if my memory of her is imperfect. Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves. Merely links. Take a parallel from an infinitely higher sphere. Tomorrow morning a priest will give me a little round, thin, cold, tasteless wafer. Is it a disadvantage—is it not in some ways an advantage—that it can’t pretend the least resemblance to that with which it unites me? I need Christ, not something that resembles Him. I want H., not something that is like her. A really good photograph might become in the end a snare, a horror, and an obstacle. Images, I must suppose, have their use or they would not have been so popular. (It makes little difference whether they are pictures and statues outside the mind or imaginative constructions within it.) To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images—sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers. All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is, in her foursquare and independent reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Cultish leaders all rely on the power of confirmation bias by presenting a one-sided version of information that supports their ideology and that their followers actively want to hear; after that, confirmation bias does the work for them. Enhanced by peer pressure, it becomes all the harder to resist. Confirmation bias also explains why cultish leaders’ rhetoric is so vague—the loaded language and euphemisms are made purposefully amorphous to mask off- putting specifics about their ideology (and to leave space for that ideology to change). Meanwhile, followers project whatever they want onto the language. (For instance, whenever Jones used the phrase “White Night,” followers like Laura interpreted it how they wished, neglecting the possibility of more violent implications.) For most people, the fallout of confirmation bias isn’t Jonestown- level urgent, but it’s not the woefully naive or desperate among us who get that far. In many cases, it’s the extraordinarily idealistic. In her post-commune years, Laura became a public school teacher, a Quaker, an atheist, and an immigrant rights activist. “I have not become less political, but I have become less mesmerized by [the] words somebody says,” she told a reporter in 2017. Still, Laura never stopped searching for a way to achieve what the Peoples Temple originally promised. Even after all the violence, hope remained. “If there were any way for me to live in a community today, I would do it in a hot second,” she told me. “It just has to be leaderless, and it has to be diverse.” Easier imagined than found; Laura let loose a wistful sigh. “I just haven’t found a safe community that has the things I want. But I am a communalist, always have been. I’ve had a wild life, but I don’t want to sit with people who have had my same kind of wildness. So I did really love living in Peoples Temple. Jonestown was the highlight of my life.” Frank Lyford, who lost his entire early adulthood and beloved partner to Marshall Applewhite, doesn’t stew in regret, either. “My view of my experience is, I incarnated with the goal of going through Heaven’s Gate. The deeper we go into darkness, the higher we go back into the light like a slingshot,” he professed. “If I hadn’t experienced the darkness and suppression, the diminishing of self, I wouldn’t have had the impetus to move into this self- awareness I have now.”

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  I don’t believe God set it me at all. The fruition of God. Reunion with the dead. These can’t figure in my thinking except as counters. Blank cheques. My idea—if you can call it an idea—of the first is a huge, risky extrapolation from a very few and short experiences here on earth. Probably not such valuable experiences as I think. Perhaps even of less value than others that I take no account of. My idea of the second is also an extrapolation. The reality of either—the cashing of either cheque—would probably blow all one’s ideas about both (how much more one’s ideas about their relations to each other) into smithereens. The mystical union on the one hand. The resurrection of the body, on the other. I can’t reach the ghost of an image, a formula, or even a feeling, that combines them. But the reality, we are given to understand, does. Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem. And, more than once, that impression which I can’t describe except by saying that it’s like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer. It is often thought that the dead see us. And we assume, whether reasonably or not, that if they see us at all they see us more clearly than before. Does H. now see exactly how much froth or tinsel there was in what she called, and I call, my love? So be it. Look your hardest, dear. I wouldn’t hide if I could. We didn’t idealize each other. We tried to keep no secrets. You knew most of the rotten places in me already. If you now see anything worse, I can take it. So can you. Rebuke, explain, mock, forgive. For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives—to both, but perhaps especially to the woman—a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted. To see, in some measure, like God. His love and His knowledge are not distinct from one another, nor from Him. We could almost say He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees. Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise.

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  I ought to have said, ‘But also like a garden. Like a nest of gardens, wall within wall, hedge within hedge, more secret, more full of fragrant and fertile life, the further you entered.’ And then, of her, and of every created thing I praise, I should say, ‘In some way, in its unique way, like Him who made it.’ Thus up from the garden to the Gardener, from the sword to the Smith. To the life-giving Life and the Beauty that makes beautiful. ‘She is in God’s hands.’ That gains a new energy when I think of her as a sword. Perhaps the earthly life I shared with her was only part of the tempering. Now perhaps He grasps the hilt; weighs the new weapon; makes lightnings with it in the air. ‘A right Jerusalem blade.’ One moment last night can be described in similes; otherwise it won’t go into language at all. Imagine a man in total darkness. He thinks he is in a cellar or dungeon. Then there comes a sound. He thinks it might be a sound from far off—waves or wind-blown trees or cattle half a mile away. And if so, it proves he’s not in a cellar, but free, in the open air. Or it may be a much smaller sound close at hand—a chuckle of laughter. And if so, there is a friend just beside him in the dark. Either way, a good, good sound. I’m not mad enough to take such an experience as evidence for anything. It is simply the leaping into imaginative activity of an idea which I would always have theoretically admitted—the idea that I, or any mortal at any time, may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in. Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them—never become even conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through? I will not, if I can help it, shin up either the feathery or the prickly tree. Two widely different convictions press more and more on my mind. One is that the Eternal Vet is even more inexorable and the possible operations even more painful than our severest imaginings can forbode. But the other, that ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ It doesn’t matter that all the photographs of H. are bad. It doesn’t matter—not much—if my memory of her is imperfect. Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves. Merely links. Take a parallel from an infinitely higher sphere. Tomorrow morning a priest will give me a little round, thin, cold, tasteless wafer. Is it a disadvantage—is it not in some ways an advantage—that it can’t pretend the least resemblance to that with which it unites me?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady was not very intelligent, and it never occurred to her that if the scholar had known anything about magic he would have used it on his own behalf. She therefore took the maid’s suggestion seriously, and told her to go and find out at once whether he would do it. And in return for his assistance, she would promise him faithfully to give him whatever he wanted. The maid scrupulously delivered the message, on hearing which the scholar was overjoyed, and said to himself: ‘Praise be to God, for with His assistance, the time has come for me to punish the wicked hussy for the wrong she did me in exchange for all the love I bore her.’ And turning to the maid, he said: ‘Tell my lady not to worry about this, for even if her lover were in India, I should make him return to her at once and ask her forgiveness for flouting her wishes. Tell her that she has only to fix a time and a place, and I shall explain to her what she must do in order to remedy matters. And do please give her my kindest regards.’ The maid took his answer to her mistress, and it was arranged that they should meet in the church of Santa Lucia, near the Prato gate. So there they met, the lady and the scholar, and as they conversed alone together, quite forgetting that this was the man she had almost conveyed to his death, she freely poured out all her troubles, told him what she desired, and begged him to come to her rescue, whereupon the scholar said:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  If it is honourable for me to further your plans, I shall be glad to do so, and afterwards you may reward me in whatever way you please.’ Whereupon the Countess said: ‘What I require you to do is to send some trustworthy person to inform my husband, the Count, that your daughter is prepared to place herself entirely at his disposal, but only on condition that he proves to her that his love is as deep and genuine as he claims; this she will never believe until he sends her the ring which he wears upon his hand and to which she understands that he is deeply attached. If he sends her the ring, you will hand it over to me, and then you will send him a message to the effect that your daughter is ready to do his bidding, and you will cause him to come here in secret and, all unsuspecting, lie with me instead of your daughter. Perhaps by the grace of God I shall become pregnant, and later on, with my husband’s ring on my finger and my husband’s child in my arms, I will regain his love and live with him as a wife should live with a husband. And it will all be thanks to you.’ In the eyes of the gentlewoman, this was no trivial request, for she was afraid lest her daughter’s name be brought into disrepute. But after due reflection, she came to the conclusion that it was right and proper for her to assist the good lady to retrieve her husband, for she would be acting in pursuit of a worthy objective. And therefore, placing her trust in the transparent goodness and honesty of the Countess, she not only promised to do what was required, but within the space of a few days, proceeding with all necessary secrecy and caution, she had obtained possession of the ring from the Count (who was somewhat reluctant to part with it), and achieved the remarkable feat of putting the Countess to bed with him in place of her own daughter. In the course of their earliest embraces, to which the Count devoted considerable ardour, God so willed that the lady should conceive two sons, as became manifest when the time arrived for her to bring them forth. This was not the only occasion, however, on which the gentlewoman arranged for the Countess to enjoy her husband’s love, for she devised many other such encounters, proceeding with so much secrecy that nobody ever came to know about them. The Count went on believing that he had been consorting, not with his wife, but with the girl he loved; and before leaving her in the morning, he would present her with beautiful and precious jewels, all of which the Countess took special care to preserve.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  In the past decade I have embarked on many new ventures involving psychological or even physical risk. It puzzles me that in most instances my engagement in these enterprises was triggered by a suggestion or a remark made by someone else. This makes me realize that frequently there must be a readiness in me, of which I am not aware, which springs into action only when someone presses the appropriate button. Let me illustrate. My colleague Bill Coulson, along with a few others, said to me in 1968, “Our group should form a new and separate organization.” Out of that suggestion came the Center for Studies of the Person—the zaniest, most improbable, and most influential nonorganization imaginable. Once the idea of the Center had been suggested, I was very active in the group that brought it into being; I helped nurture it—and ourselves—during the first difficult years. A niece of mine, Ruth Cornell, an elementary schoolteacher, asked, “Why is there no book of yours on our reading lists in Education?” This sparked the initial thinking that led to my book, Freedom to Learn. I never would have considered trying to influence the status-conscious medical profession, had it not been for my colleague Orienne Strode’s dream of having a humanizing impact on physicians through intensive group experiences. Skeptical but hopeful, I devoted energy to helping start the program. We ran a great risk of failure. Instead, the program has become widely influential. Nine hundred medical educators have participated in the encounter groups, along with many spouses and some physicians-in-training, who bring in the “worm’s-eye- view” of medical education. It has been an exciting and rewarding development, now completely independent of any but the most minor assistance from me. This summer we held our fifth sixteen-day intensive Workshop in the Person- Centered Approach. These workshops have taught me more than any other one venture in the past decade. I have learned and put into practice new ways of being myself. I have learned cognitively and intuitively about the group process and about group-initiated ways of forming a community. These have been tremendous experiences, involving a strong staff which has become a close professional family. We have done more and more risking as we try out new ways of being with a group. And how did I become involved in this large and time-consuming enterprise? Four years ago my daughter Natalie said to me, “Why don’t we do a workshop together, perhaps around a client-centered approach?” Neither of us could have possibly guessed all that would grow out of that conversation. My book Carl Rogers on Personal Power (1977) likewise found its initial spark in a conversation. Alan Nelson, a graduate student at the time, challenged me on my statement that there was no “politics” in client-centered therapy. This led me into a line of thought that I must have been very ready to pursue, because portions of the book simply wrote themselves. Foolhardy or Wise?

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE CONTENT OF THE CICLOS We had a variety of resources at our disposal. One of the most impactful was a documentary film, Ô Gente, of a group of very low-income peasants in northeastern Brazil. To meet the havoc created by a drought, they began forming what must be called a person-centered community. They were a self-directed group in which power was shared by all: “No one commands, no one rules. We all command, all rule.” They made decisions by “always discussing, discussing until we reach an agreement.” They developed listening skills for helping those with problems. They knew the value of a support group: “When you have companions, you have more courage, don’t you? . . . We know we are no longer alone . . . but many together.” The parallels with our thinking were astonishing. To have this example of home-grown Brazilian person-centeredness was very valuable. It took away the “foreign” flavor of what we were doing. Although many in the audiences came “just to hear Carl Rogers,” his only really successful talk was a short and somewhat poetic commentary on this film, showing how many person-centered principles it exemplified and illuminated. John also gave a meditative commentary on the film. In addition, Carl gave two short talks in Recife, and one in Rio. These were generally disappointing to the audience because they were in such contrast to the vividness of the spontaneous interchange in the large group, although the questioning after these talks was lively and sophisticated. Twice, Maria (who speaks Portuguese) led demonstration encounter groups “on stage,” and these were of great value and interest, undoubtedly modeling to some extent the self-expression, the empathic listening, the facilitation which eventually came to be a part of the large group. Several times the staff offered groups with a special topical focus. The following suggest the range of issues explored: a women’s group; a men’s group; groups on education, psychotherapy, community development, homosexuality, sexual therapy, group process, and the evolution of consciousness. The largest blocks of time were spent in great circles, involving the whole audience, with no agenda except that which emerged from all of us collectively. This was where we learned the most. THE LARGE-GROUP PROCESS The Chaotic Beginning

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  I say. “Like Google did at their I/O conference last year, when they had people wearing Google Glass skydive onto the roof of the venue. You win the prize, and zoom—a plane flies overhead and a marketing person comes skydiving out of the plane and lands on your roof. How cool is that?” Dead stares. “Or,” I say, warming to the topic, “we could fire someone out of a cannon. We could make Spinner do it. I’d pay to see that. Or hey, Fatima would do it.” Fatima is an unbearably ambitious and energetic young woman who recently graduated from college, loves HubSpot more than life itself, and would do just about anything to get a promotion. “She’s tiny,” I say. “We could put her in an orange jumpsuit and an orange helmet and fire her right through an open window and into a cubicle. Bang! There she is! She doesn’t miss a beat. She just starts giving a lecture about marketing.” A few people laugh. But then they look around and see that the others aren’t laughing, and they stop. For a moment there’s nothing. Crickets. “You know,” I said, “I really think you should consider that money cannon. Because that one seriously would work.” Twenty-three Escape Velocity Fortunately, as it happens, my job hunt has been going well. I’m pretty sure I will have an offer lined up soon and can give my notice. Meanwhile, on October 9, HubSpot manages to pull off its IPO. I’m rich! Not really. My options are worth about $45,000 more than what I will pay to exercise them. Still, I can’t complain. When companies go public they have to file paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission and reveal information about their business, including their financial performance. After looking at the HubSpot prospectus I cannot believe anyone would actually buy shares in the company. The losses are huge, and instead of getting smaller, they are getting bigger. Losses in fact are growing faster than revenues. According to its IPO prospectus, in 2013, HubSpot generated $77.6 million in revenue but lost $34.2 million. In the previous year, HubSpot posted $51.6 million in revenue but lost $18.9 million. Losses are growing faster than sales. From 2009 through the middle of 2014, HubSpot has generated $231 million in revenues but lost $118 million doing it, meaning that for every dollar generated in sales, the company has spent nearly a dollar and a half. Sure, top line revenue is growing, but HubSpot is accomplishing this by spending more and more money on sales and marketing. According to the prospectus, in 2013 HubSpot spent $53 million just on sales and marketing— that’s about 68 percent of total revenues. Sales and marketing represents by far the biggest expense on the income statement. HubSpot spends more than three times as much on sales and marketing as it does on research and development.

• From Cultish (2021)

  You’d let everyone down, especially yourself. So, you might end up just buying all the inventory personally and eating the cost, with your eyes fixed firmly on the prize: to ascend the company’s structure, a geometric shape that would certainly never be described as a pyramid with levels, but instead maybe a “ladder” with “rungs.” Surely, next month you’ll find tons of recruits, achieve your goals, and finally be awarded a ritzier title: Senior Consultant, Head Coach, Sales Director. “There’s a lot of discussion around what I would describe as the purchase of hope,” analyzed Stacie Bosley, an economics professor at Hamline University in Minnesota. Bosley is one of the only financial researchers in the world who formally studies MLMs. Evidently, the male-dominated field of economics doesn’t seem to think an industry dominated by #girlbosses would be a hotbed of academic intrigue. (How wrong they are.) “Sometimes the MLM industry will even acknowledge that really what people are buying is a form of hope,” Bosley says. It’s part of why most MLM recruitment language is so grandiose and indirect—they avoid technical terms like “investment” and “employment,” favoring aspirational phrases like “amazing opportunity” and “empowering activity.” But these sugarcoated code words are hiding some really sketchy numbers. As these generations of downlines all grow, the market rapidly becomes overcrowded with everyone and their mother (literally) mining the same saturated communities, trying and failing to enlist newbies underneath them. The number of hopefuls expands exponentially from a small profitable few at the peak to a screwed-over mass at the base. If the MLM’s model, which your upline and founder endorsed over and over at all their business opportunity presentations and millionaire workshops, goes perfectly to plan, then yes, you will become rich within a year . . . but according to basic math, guess how many people will be in your downline by the end of those twelve months? Over a trillion. That’s 142 times the world population, and a whole lot of diet pills. Study after study shows that 99 percent of MLM recruits never make a dime, and the lucky 1 percent at the top only profits at everyone else’s expense. The calculations speak for themselves, but even if you’re totally in the red, with an empty bank account and a storage locker full of eye cream nobody wants, at least you get to stay a part of your team—your “family”—whose fellow recruits you might call your sisters and whose leaders you might even refer to as Mom and Dad. By this point, you’ve developed a deeply emotional, codependent bond with these people. You text with them all day. You’re in secret Facebook groups together. You have weekly meetings via video chat, where you all drink pink wine (“because you earned it!”) and spill your souls to each other. You save up all year to attend the company’s costly conferences so you can see your fellow boss babes in person.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  precognitive, predicting an event that actually occurs. For example, a woman I know had a dream (or a vision) of a relative of hers being near death in a hospital bed in a foreign country. A phone call confirmed that this was true—the dream matched the fact. Another person I know received a message through the Ouija board that predicted “death soon.” The message was ambiguous as to the person concerned but gave the date when death was to be expected. Within two days of the date given, her brother was killed in an auto accident. I believe that many people have such dreams or precognitions, but we have quite systematically ruled them out of our general consciousness. But if we, or even some of us, have little-understood abilities and capacities, they should be a prime field for learning. I will not press my point further. I would only say that this whole intuitive and psychic world is being opened to thoughtful, serious investigation. Two examples are the scholarly review of intuition by Frances Clark (1973) and the careful research of Dr. Grof (1975) on the puzzling and challenging inner experiences of individuals under LSD. There is ample reason to think that the inner experiences of individuals constitute as vast and mysterious an area for exploration as the incredible galaxies and “black holes” of outer space. I am simply expressing the hope that innovative educators and learners may have the courage, the creativity, and the skill to enter and learn this world of inner space. CONCLUSION I have endeavored to make a quick survey of the new issues that are being and will be faced by a human, innovative education as it increasingly comes into its own as a major social force. I have defined this new person-centered approach to learning as I perceive it, and contrasted it with the traditional approach. I have sketched some of the ways in which the educator is and will be challenged as innovative education grows. The political threat to institutions posed by these new developments is not often discussed. Here, I have emphasized the enormous threat that innovative educators pose to establishment power. From the field of research, I have presented some recent findings that are all too little known, and have also expressed the hope that continuing research will not limit itself to assessment, but will diligently search for relationships of an if- then nature. Finally, I have speculated that the next great frontier of learning may have to do with some of the least appreciated capabilities in Western culture—our intuitive and psychic powers.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Several chapters have been published previously in different form. Chapter 4, “Growing Old: Or Older and Growing?” Chapter 9, “Building Person-Centered Communities: The Implications for the Future,” and Chapter 15, “The World of Tomorrow, and the Person of Tomorrow,” are published here for the first time. The theme holding the book together is that every chapter expresses, in one form or another, a way of being toward which I strive—a way of being which persons in many countries, in many occupations and professions, in all walks of life, find appealing and enriching. Whether this will be true for you, only you can determine, but I bid you welcome, as you journey through this “way.” Part I PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND PERSPECTIVES

• From Cultish (2021)

  By the 1970s, brainwashing was a mainstream idea and served as a defense for the sketchy practice of deprogramming—attempts to “save” new religion converts that often involved illegal kidnapping and worse. * “The excuse was the person wouldn’t be able to leave of their own free will,” says Barker. But instead, what she found was this: Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism. It’s not untrue that cultish environments can appeal to individuals facing emotional turmoil. Love-bombing will feel especially good to those weathering stressful life transitions.

• From Cultish (2021)

  “This is about individual faith and spirituality.” Those who weren’t feeling it didn’t have to take Manuel-Davis’s credo with them outside the studio, or even come back at all—but a whole lot of people did. Manuel-Davis’s classes were known to sell out within minutes.* “I don’t go to Angela to get a workout; I go to hear a message, ” one rider professed. “Angela sees you. . . . She speaks to your soul.” Even with more agnostic instructors, the language rituals of boutique fitness classes mimic those of religious services. Whether it surrounds God or crushing your goals, rituals help people feel like they’re a part of something greater. As Casper ter Kuile put it, they’re a “connective tissue tool.” Ritual also temporarily removes a person from the center of their own little universe—their anxieties, their everyday priorities. It helps mentally transition followers from worldly, self-focused humans to one piece of a holy group. And then, theoretically, it should allow them to transition back into real life. Just as Christian congregates will say the Lord’s Prayer at the same point in church every week, intenSati instructors and attendees open each class by joining in what Moreno calls the Warrior Declaration: “Every day in a very true way, I co-create my reality. As above, so is below, this is what I know.” Like ministers inviting parishioners to mingle before a service, SoulCycle instructors encourage students to hobnob with the riders next to them. “At the beginning of class, everyone has to turn and say hello, exchange a name, and chat,” explained Sparkie, a “master instructor” in Los Angeles who’s been with SoulCycle since 2012. “‘You’re going to be sweating next to them. Get to know them.’ It gives people an opportunity to connect, because connection is the key.” November Project’s boot camp–style workouts all start out the same way, whether you’re in Baltimore or Amsterdam or Hong Kong: Come six thirty a.m., participants kick off a rallying ritual called “the bounce.” Gathered in a tight circle, everyone joins in the same script, their voices crescendoing into a Spartan bellow: “Good morning!” “Good morning!!!” “Y’all good?” “Fuck yeah!” “Y’all good?!” “Fuck yeah!!!” Then everyone chants, “Let’s go!!!!!” At the end of the session, participants always take a group photo, turn to someone they don’t know, introduce themselves, and close out with the same final line: “Have a great day.” Ideally, my parents and I would’ve tried out intenSati in person, but in April 2020, that wasn’t exactly possible. Two weeks into California’s COVID-19 quarantine, we were forced to exercise at home. I figure, though, if my thesis about language and power is correct, then Patricia’s incantations should compel me even through a screen. I didn’t actually think they’d work, of course. On paper, the workout coalesces two things I gravely detest: cardio (blegh) and group activities that require you to awkwardly shout things out loud.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Its liabilities, meanwhile, have more than doubled, from $27.6 million to $57.4 million. Also revealed in the prospectus is that HubSpot has started borrowing money against a line of credit. In total the company has borrowed $18 million, which will be repaid out of the money raised in the offering. Management hopes to raise $100 million in the IPO. The prospectus contains a warning: “We have a history of losses and may not achieve profitability in the future.” Note this does not say it will take a while to achieve profitability, or that profits will one day arrive but the company cannot predict when this will happen. Rather, the prospectus says the company might never become profitable. Sure, this is partly just a way to be conservative. Companies always exaggerate the risks to their business so that they can’t be accused later of misleading investors or overpromising. So what are you getting if you buy this stock? You’re not really investing; you’re speculating. You’re hoping that whatever price you pay, someday someone else will be willing to pay more for it. No doubt there are people who will buy HubSpot shares without ever reading the prospectus or looking at the income statement or balance sheet. They’re just buying a story. They’re also hoping that the IPO will deliver a little “pop,” meaning the stock will go up on its first day of trading, giving them an instant profit. In the end those people got their wish. In the days leading up to the IPO, HubSpot starts seeing strong enough interest from investors that it raises the price of its stock, from a range of $19 to $21 to a range of $22 to $24. On October 8, the night before HubSpot shares will start trading, the company raises the price again, to $25. The next day, when the market opens, HubSpot shares surge past $30 on the New York Stock Exchange. Halligan and Shah have overcome tremendous odds to get where they are. In 2006, the year they founded HubSpot, more than 600,000 new companies were launched in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fewer than 1,500 of those companies raised money from angel investors and venture capital firms, according to a 2015 report by CB Insights, which tracks the venture capital industry. Of those 1,500 companies, only 1 percent made it to “unicorn” status, achieving a market valuation of $1 billion or more, CB Insights says. What’s most remarkable is that HubSpot pulled this off even though the company had come within a hair’s breadth of running out of money. Apparently this happens more often than I realized. “It’s called ‘Go public or go broke,’ and it’s not at all uncommon,” says Trip, a former investment banker and venture capitalist. “The one thing people do not appreciate is that these companies are incredibly fragile. There is so much less to them than people believe.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  According to Maslow, self-actualizers have peak experiences more frequently than the rest of us, but nearly everyone has them occasionally. Among his most provocative observations was that during and following peak experiences we temporarily take on many of the characteristics of self-actualizers. In other words, peaks offer us glimpses of our most authentic, healthiest selves and thus can serve us as guides to growth. Maslow saw peak experiences as crucial sources of “clean and uncontaminated data” about who we are and might become.2 When I began my formal studies of eroticism as a practicing psychotherapist I approached the challenge with Maslow’s insights in mind. I was convinced that if I devoted as much attention to peak sexual experiences as I did to problems, I could eventually discern truths about eroticism that would otherwise elude me. My first discovery was rather discouraging: even in the nonjudgmental atmosphere of therapy people rarely bring up their peak turn-ons spontaneously. And when I started asking I quickly learned that most clients required a high comfort level and a significant amount of courage before they were willing to disclose details about this extremely intimate material. I began encouraging clients who were grappling with sexual problems to explore their peak turn-ons, hoping the potential benefits of doing so would be obvious to them. In most cases I was wrong. The majority had trouble grasping the value of discussing their peak experiences; they just wanted to fix their problems. A prevalent comment was, “Sure I’ve had good sex in the past but what can that do for me now?” Out of necessity I became adept at gently challenging clients to set aside their preoccupation with problems for a while so they might learn more about their eroticism. I quickly saw that those who accepted my challenge typically made more rapid and long-lasting progress than those who insisted on focusing exclusively on their troubles. Some improvements came about when they used their peak turn-ons to help clarify their conditions for satisfying sex—an extremely important ingredient for successful sex therapy. Fred: Centerfold syndrome? Fred consulted me because his sexual desire for Janette, his wife of six years, had been declining for more than a year. Although he assumed she must have noticed the reduction in both the frequency of sex and his enthusiasm, Fred had no idea how to discuss his predicament with Janette without hurting her. Besides, he felt ashamed of himself and was convinced she couldn’t possibly understand what he was going through.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE PERSON OF TOMORROW Who will be able to live in this utterly strange world? I believe it will be those who are young in mind and spirit—and that often means those who are young in body as well. As our youth grow up in a world where trends and views such as I have been describing envelop them, many will become new persons—fit to live in the world of tomorrow—and they will be joined by older folk who have absorbed the transforming concepts. Not all young people, of course. I hear that young people today are only interested in jobs and security, that they are not persons who take risks or make innovations, just conservatives looking out for “number one.” Possibly that is so, but it certainly is not true of the young people with whom I come in contact. But I am sure that some will continue to live in our present world; many, however, will dwell in this new world of tomorrow. Where will they come from? It is my observation that they already exist. Where have I found them? I find them among corporation executives who have given up the gray-flannel rat race, the lure of high salaries and stock options, to live a simpler new life. I find them among young men and women in blue jeans who are defying most of the values of today’s culture to live in new ways. I find them among priests and nuns and ministers who have left behind the dogmas of their institutions to live in a way that has more meaning. I find them among women who are vigorously rising above the limitations that society has placed on their personhood. I find them among blacks and Chicanos and other minority members who are pushing out from generations of passivity into an assertive, positive life. I find them among those who have experienced encounter groups, who are finding a place for feelings as well as thoughts in their lives. I find them among creative school dropouts who are thrusting into higher reaches than their sterile schooling permits. I realize, too, that I saw something of this person in my years as a psychotherapist, when clients were choosing a freer, richer, more self- directed kind of life for themselves. These are a few of the places in which I have found persons who may be able to live in this transformed world. The Qualities of the Person of Tomorrow As I have experienced these individuals, I find they have certain traits in common. Perhaps no one person possesses all of these qualities, but I believe that ability to live in this utterly revolutionized world of tomorrow is marked by certain characteristics. I will very briefly describe some as I have seen and experienced them.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Three prescriptions from three different doctors. No matter how bad things get or what happens to her, she always has these three, more than enough. As long as she has them, every day — every minute — is the result of her decision, and she likes knowing that. She no longer pours them into her hand and fondles them as she once did, toying with the feeling of her own mortality, but still, she thinks of them as her freedom. She walks over to the flower arrangement on the table and takes a tiger lily blossom in her hands, inhaling the fragrance. She looks at the blossom, so beautiful and yet so blatantly, almost comically sexual, the open and welcoming calyx of the petals, the quivering male anthers dotted with pollen. She smiles briefly and is aware of it, of how unfamiliar it feels, and she feels encouraged. Maybe this place will work for her. She replaces the flower, then walks out on to the terrace again, into the warm summer night where her eyes are caught by that same lighted window, open now, with a figure in it, sharply silhouetted against the shade. The Cavern 5 A man, apparently shirtless, his arms held above his head. He’s turned in three-quarters profile, and Dominique can see the dim shadow of another figure behind the shade as well. Dominique stops towelling her hair and stands transfixed as a woman enters the picture. The woman is wearing a corset, it’s obvious from her silhouette, and she’s holding a doubled over cord or strap in her hands, bringing her hands together and then pulling them apart with enough force that Dominique can hear the snap from across the way. She sees the woman bring her arm back, the strap dangling, and bring it down on the man’s behind. She hears the slap and sees his body jerk in whatever it is that holds him. Dominique stands as still as a statue as the woman hits him again, and again, and then she slowly backs up into her room and sits down on the bed. She knows what kind of place this is, of course, and why people come here. The reputation of sex and sexuality hangs heavily over the entire hotel, and the reputation is the reason she came. But the Arensen is also known for its exclusivity and sense of discretion. She hadn’t expected to be confronted with such a flagrant and lurid display.