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.

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

  In the days leading up to his execution, with confrontation hanging over the atmosphere like a leaden sky, Jesus relayed to the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem the startling message that they would be preceded into the kingdom of heaven by tax-collectors and prostitutes. The charismatic Galilean rabbi had earned a reputation for his charitable attitude toward society’s outcasts, and it was known on solid authority that he went so far as to share a table with them. Almost four centuries later the radical benevolence of Jesus had lost none of its original charge, in part because he had chosen his outcasts so well. In the words of the Antiochene preacher John Chrysostom, “These two represent the highest sins, born each of a grievous passion, lust for the body and lust for coin.” God, in the dispensation of forgiveness, was not a respecter of persons, and nothing symbolized the limitless potential of grace like the moral rehabilitation of a prostitute. Because of her penitence, there was hope for all. She proved that “it is easy to rise from the very depths of wickedness.” But John Chrysostom did not have to rely on ancient scriptures to find an example of such extraordinary transformation. Have you not heard how that prostitute, who once surpassed all in her wanton immorality, now overshadows all in her moral scruple? I am not talking about the prostitute in the gospels, but the one in our own time, hailing from the most lawless city of Phoenicia. For she was at one time a prostitute among us, in fact holding pride of place in the theater, and her name was famous everywhere, not just in our city but as far as Cilicia and Cappadocia. She emptied many an estate, conquered many an orphan. Not a few even accused her of sorcery, saying that she ensnared not just by her physical charms but also by the use of potions. This whore at one time held the brother of the empress under her spell, so great was her tyranny. The conversion of such a celebrity, from the most insalubrious quarters of ancient society, furnished an irresistible opportunity for a crusader like Chrysostom to make a point about the quality of divine mercy. The woman—a stage actress and quite possibly a courtesan, for the two professions shaded into one another in law, ideology, and reality—had attained a reputation stretching across the eastern Mediterranean. We need not doubt the ability of an exquisitely beautiful woman, in a world where respectability meant seclusion, to capture the public mind. But this nameless actress walked away from her fame. If Chrysostom is to be believed, her retirement caused such resentment that the governor was prodded to force her back on stage, going so far as to dispatch armed soldiers for the purpose. But having received the purifying waters of baptism, she could not be dislodged from the virgins who had received her.1

• From Untrue (2018)

  Another new wrinkle: the polyamory movement, which has emerged only in the last decade or so and is in large part driven and led by women, according to experts. Polyamory—being involved with more than one person at once, and being honest about it—is an option that, like open marriage and swinging before it, allows women new freedoms. But might it also recapitulate old roles and stereotypes, and open them to the same forms of stigma, slut-shaming, and interpersonal violence that have long plagued women who “step out of line”? A woman with access to resources and power or celebrity, such as Tilda Swinton—who at one point reportedly occasionally lived with both her ex-partner and her current partner but denied that she was in a “dual relationship” or “ménage à trois”—may be able to get away with having an intimate relationship with two men at once. But what about regular women with average incomes? What about women of color, whose sexual lives, longings, and predilections have long been subjected to extraordinary scrutiny and social control? Will polyamory change their lives too? And what does “female infidelity” even mean in a context where, increasingly, millennials may identify as post-binary—rejecting the neat distinction between antinomies that previously defined our lives and created meaning, including heterosexuality and homosexuality, male and female, true and untrue? I was surprised to hear the phrase “I’m non-binary” from so many of the people in their twenties and thirties I spoke with, and impressed by the conviction with which so many people now live it. Finally, the book looks at “female sexual fluidity,” a term coined by the psychologist Lisa Diamond to describe both a tendency among many women to feel and sometimes act on attractions outside their orientation, and a growing social acceptance of that reality. When Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, left her husband for her female best friend, she was breaking the mold while also fitting a profile of women loving in ways that are more flexible than the categories we currently use to describe them. How is female sexual fluidity impacting our marriages, partnerships, affairs, and friendships? Is a woman who discovers she’d rather be with a woman than with her husband “cheating”?

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I’ve come here every day, M. said, walking beside me, it makes me so happy to be here. Some people walking nearby began shouting Ostavka , picking up a chant that had migrated from the front of the march, and M. joined them for a few rounds, looking at me a little sheepishly. I didn’t join in, I hadn’t joined in any of the chants, even though I felt moved to; it wasn’t my country, I kept saying to myself, it wasn’t my place, but I was sorry when M. fell silent too. We walked a little faster, moving back into the middle of the boulevard, headed toward NDK, the Palace of Culture. One side of the street was lined with apartment buildings, the gray of their façades broken by large flags draped from the balconies, on almost all of which people stood watching, elderly men and women, many of them waving, as if to say they would be with us if they could. On the other side of us the trees lining the canal were catching the last of the light, the new leaves incandescent, Sofia was more beautiful to me then than I had ever seen it. There’s never been anything like this, M. said then, I mean maybe in 1989 but nothing I’ve ever seen. Something’s really happening, I feel like I’m part of something, not just here but something bigger. It’s the same as what’s happening in Taksim Square, in Brazil, the Arab Spring, something is happening, something real, I think there’s a chance for things really to change. I felt this too, it wasn’t to challenge her that I asked what she thought that change would be. She shrugged. I’m not sure, she said, but I feel like we’ll figure it out. She paused. I feel powerful in a way I never have before, she said, and then she glanced at me and laughed, I feel like one of the opalchentsi on Shipka. These were Bulgarian volunteers who fought with the Russians against the Ottomans, there was a poem about them by Ivan Vazov that every Bulgarian knew; I had heard a poet declaim it once, drunk at a dinner party, the room quiet with reverence. I feel the power of the people, she said gingerly, cringing at the cliché.

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

  Also keep in mind that floating is a natural byproduct of subjection to mind control. It is not your fault and not a defect on your part. Over time, its effects will naturally decrease, especially if you practice the techniques described above. Overcoming Loaded Language Substituting real language for the cult’s “loaded language” can speed up a person’s full recovery. By eradicating the cult jargon put inside my head, I was able to begin looking at the world again without wearing cult “glasses.” The cult’s loaded language had created little cubbyholes in my mind, and when I was a member, all reality was filtered through them. The faster an ex-member reclaims words and their real meaning, the faster recovery happens. When I was in the Moonies, all relationships between people were described as either a “Cain-Abel” or a “Chapter 2” problem. The term “Cain-Abel,” as explained earlier, was used to categorize everyone as either a superior or a subordinate. “Chapter 2 problems” were anything that had to do with sexuality, and any attraction members felt towards others. Therefore, all personal relationships fell into either of these two categories. The most common mistake made by ex-members is to tell themselves that they should not think of the cult word. The mind doesn’t know how not to think of something. Language is structured so that we have to think in positive associations. So, if you are an ex-member, make a new association, just as I described for the problem of “floating.” If you are an ex-Moonie and have trouble getting along with a person, think of it as a personality conflict or a communication problem. For anyone who has been a Scientologist, it is absolutely essential to stop using the enormous cult vocabulary to stop thinking in the loaded terms invented by Hubbard and recorded in two dictionaries totaling a thousand pages. These folks are still thinking in the cult cubbyholes of the human experience. This becomes an issue with ex-Scientologists because unless they have made the intense effort necessary to eradicate the cult jargon installed in their minds, they inevitably use this jargon with each other and triggering happens all the time. Check the real meaning of words in a proper dictionary. Choose your friends and reclaim your native language! It will speed up your healing! Loss Of Psychological Power Another common problem for former cult members is the loss of concentration and memory. Before I became involved in the Moonies, I used to read a book at one sitting, averaging three books a week. But during the two and a half years I spent in the group, virtually all I read was Moonie propaganda.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  The demonstration had stirred something in my mind that would be there from now on. It was so very different from boot camp and fighting in the war. There was a togetherness, just as there had been in Vietnam, but it was a togetherness of a different kind of people and for a much different reason. In the war we were killing and maiming people. In Washington on that Saturday afternoon in May we were trying to heal them and set them free. IT WILL be my turn to speak soon. They have put me up on the platform of this auditorium in this high school that is so much like the one I went to, in this town that is like the one I grew up in. I am looking at all the young faces. Kids. They were laughing, horsing around when they came in, just the way we used to. Now they are silent, looking at me and Bobby Muller, my friend from the V.A. hospital who is speaking to them from his wheelchair. It is like the day the marine recruiters came. I remember it like it was yesterday—their shiny shoes and their uniforms, their firm handshakes, all the dreams, the medals, the hills taken with Castiglia by my side his army-navy store canteen rattling, the movies the books the plastic guns, everything in 3-D and the explosive spiraling colors of a rainbow. Except this time, this time it is Bobby and me. What if I had seen someone like me that day, a guy in a wheelchair, just sitting there in front of the senior class not saying a word? Maybe things would have been different. Maybe that’s all it would have taken. Bobby is telling his story and I will tell mine. I am glad he has brought me here and that all of them are looking at us, seeing the war firsthand—the dead while still living, the living reminders, the two young men who had the shit shot out of them. I have never spoken before but it is time now. I am thinking about what I can tell them. I wheel myself to the center of the platform. I begin by telling them about the hospital. 5 AFTER THE SPEECH in the high school I spent less and less time going to classes at the university. Suddenly school no longer seemed important. What I really wanted to do was to go on speaking out. Bobby and I made a couple of other speeches at high schools together and once I did one by myself at a university. It was November and turning cold. Ever since I’d been wounded, I’d hated the cold weather. Snow was like a jailer for me. It made it so hard for me to get out of the house, to move around.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I don’t know which story is true but I try not to ask too many questions. In a place like this, those things don’t seem to matter. Of the new friends I’ve made at the hospital, Jafu is probably the quietest of the bunch, saying very little and letting his grunting and groaning down in the physical therapy room speak for itself. A runner-up in the Mr. Universe contest before the war, Jafu could bench press 250 pounds and now boasts he will soon be lifting three hundred pounds as a paraplegic. He has an incredible physique. From his waist up, his bulging muscles remind me of a championship boxer or wrestler. In high school he ran the hundred-yard dash in 9.7 seconds and set a school record. Jafu refuses to accept the fact that his paralysis is permanent. He is convinced that given enough time, determination, and effort he will be able to overcome his injury. He talks about it all the time and has even hired a Chinese herbalist on the outside who says he can help. The man prescribes herbal medicines, everything from devil’s claw to capsaicin, arnica to coca leaves. Jafu takes all sorts of vitamins and supplements, convinced his spine can be fused together through a proper diet and physical regimen. He speaks of experiments with rats in Canada that he has read about in Reader’s Digest where, miraculously, the animals’ severed spines have been regenerated. Like everyone else in this place, Jafu has his hopes and dreams. As soon as he gets out of the hospital he plans to move to Hawaii and open a weightlifting gym on Waikiki Beach where he will continue his journey toward walking again. I have often seen him sitting in his wheelchair alone in the hallway, staring off into the distance, seeming terribly lost and deep in thought. I want to go up to him but I hesitate. There are just some things a man needs to figure out for himself. While most of us here have accepted our fate and know our wounding in the war is permanent, Jafu refuses to believe that he will never walk again. For the most part we support him, encouraging him, even if we all know it’s just his way of coping. A person has a right to keep on hoping; no one wants to take away Jafu’s dreams. In a place like this, there must be hope, and even Jafu’s stubbornness and denial give us all something to believe in. I understand why Jafu feels the way he does. When I was at the Bronx VA in New York back in 1968, I was determined to walk again no matter what. I was young, twenty-one years old, and though initially devastated by my paralysis, I was convinced like Jafu that with enough hard work and determination I could walk again.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  send home. . . .” The general does not finish what he is saying. He stares at the nineteen-year-old for what seems a long time. He hands the picture back to his photographer and as sharply as before marches to the next bed. “Good afternoon, marine,” he says. The kid is still pissing in his clean white sheets when the general walks out of the room. I am in this place for seven days and seven nights. I write notes on scraps of paper telling myself over and over that I will make it out of here, that I am going to live. I am squeezing rubber balls with my hands to try to get strong again. I write letters home to Mom and Dad. I dictate them to a woman named Lucy who is with the USO. I am telling Mom and Dad that I am hurt pretty bad but I have done it for America and that it is worth it. I tell them not to worry. I will be home soon. The day I am supposed to leave has come. I am strapped in a long frame and taken from the place of the wounded. I am moved from hangar to hangar, then finally put on a plane, and I leave Vietnam forever.

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

  quite well that men become murderers, adulterers, or perpetrators of other sorts of wickedness because of stellar confi gurations, and in the same way women who are honorable and chaste behave well because they are compelled to do so.” His own wife had been born under an evil horoscope, with a confi guration of Mars and Venus that “leads women to be adulteresses and lovers of their own slaves, to perish in travels and in waters.” When his wife mysteriously abandoned him, he concluded that the awful destiny had materialized. Peter, in reply, off ers a lengthy defense of free will; Peter admits that external agents, such as demons, encourage and intensify sin, but he insists that every human is endowed with an internal faculty of choice, free of all external causation and ultimately responsible for sin. Only a friend of Satan would “attribute to the course of the stars his own sins, which he chose deliberately and willingly.” It shortly emerges that the old man is Clement’s father, and his deterministic philosophy collapses in the cascade of ensuing recognitions. His wife, far from succumbing to sexual lust, had fl ed to save her virtue from the nefarious designs of her brother- in-law. Like a romantic heroine, her chastity was imperiled but safeguarded by her virtue. Her example proves that “a chaste mind can prevail over irrational impulses . . . and horoscopes mean nothing.” She was the author of her own destiny; her sexual honor stands as a rousing vindication of free will. Once again sexual action is the truest test of individual freedom. Th e Recognitions are unusual only for the extent to which the reworking of traditional literary mechanics becomes an explicit refl ection on the order of the cosmos. Christian fi ction, as we will explore in Chapter 4, consciously manipulated the conventions of Greek and Roman narrative. Stories of Christian sexual austerity turned the pagan romances inside out, right down to the fatalism that is built into the very structure of the ancient novel. Sexual austerity was a symbol of absolute human freedom. Unlike the protagonists of romance, the heroes of Christian fi ction are the agents of their own destiny. Th eir “freedom,” unlike Leucippe’s, is not a passive attribute, not a mysterious dispensation of the stellar lottery, nor an adjunct of social position. Christian freedom meant the power to choose one’s sexual fate. It was a choice with eternal ramifi cations. It was a model of human agency that would not long survive the mainstreaming of the religion, as Christian leaders came to encounter, at a more intimate level, the contours of the human will and the material complications of freedom and unfreedom. But, we might imagine, the power of Christian narrative, with its  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N

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

  Through my investigations and experiences, I have come to believe that human beings are all born with an authentic self as well as a desire for love, fairness, truth and meaning. It is something that no group can program out of a person and therefore there is always hope for real healing. A subsequent chapter focuses on recovery strategies and a future book will be written on this subject.110 However, I do wish to make a special note about courage. People who choose to exit a group where they know they will likely be cut off—shunned, disconnected from by all of their family and friends—face incredible suffering, pain and hardship. The level of pain is unimaginable for the average person. If those trying to exit do not succumb to the pressures to return to the group, they can become resilient and strong. They often become staunch atheists or strong believers in the Bible, God or some Higher Power. People kicked out of these groups are most at risk for serious emotional breakdown, addiction, suicide and other major public health issues. Research must be done to ascertain what I believe is a monumental drain on our health care system by destructive cult involvement. Mental health professionals, unless sensitized and trained, do not know how to even do a proper intake when it comes to involvement with undue influence. However, I am working on a forthcoming book and a training curriculum to help address this profound need. Over the decades, people who were being born into large cults—the Moonies, Scientology, Hare Krishnas, Children of God,111 TM—began coming of age and started to question their group’s programming. With the creation of the Internet, online discussion groups and support communities sprang up. These have been very helpful for people raised in cults. I am pleased to share the stories of a woman raised as a child in TM, two former Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a former Mormon. I understand that these organizations are very high profile and that the public generally does not think of them as psychologically harmful. The Watchtower Society and the LDS Church have been around since the 19th century and have millions of members worldwide and enormous resources. I understand that I risk being put on enemies’ lists, though I hope their leadership has more foresight than to do this. My hope is that the leadership will actually read this book and take steps to reform the policies of their organizations. Gina Catena and Transcendental Meditation (TM)112

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

  Once you have finished the book, give yourself at least a few days before reading it again. When you pick it up a second time, read it objectively, as though it may or may not apply to your own personal situation. Make a new set of notes on what you agree with, what you disagree with, and what you need to research further. On completing this second reading, go find the answers to the issues that are raised pertaining to your own group. Take some time off (if possible, a minimum of a few weeks) and go to a restful place, away from other group members, and gather more information from other sources. Remember, if the group is a legitimate, valid organization, it will stand up to any scrutiny. It is far better to find out the truth now than to invest more time, money, and energy, only to discover years later that the group is very different from its idealized image. Truth is stronger than lies, and love is stronger than fear. If you are involved with a religious organization, keep in mind that God created us with free will, and that no truly spiritual organization would ever use deception or mind control, or take away your freedom. If you are a family member, friend, or loved one of someone who is involved in what you suspect is a destructive cult: It is best to approach the problem in a systematic and methodical manner. Avoid overreacting and getting hysterical. Don’t jump the gun and tell the person that you have bought this book or are reading it. Wait until you and other relevant people have had a chance to read and get prepared before planning a team Strategic Interactive Approach (SIA). Be sure to also read my book Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs, which will offer a great deal of further information and guidance. Unfortunately, there have been cases in which people have bought Combating Cult Mind Control and impulsively given it to cult members. This can backfire badly if anyone from the cult finds out. Most cult groups fear anything and anyone that might cause them to lose members, and giving a member this book will tip them off that you are educating yourself. Be careful! Instead of sounding the alarm, adopt a curious yet concerned posture. Try to avoid confrontations and ultimatums. Read this book as many times as you need to in order to clearly explain to others the characteristics of mind control, the criteria of a destructive cult, and the basics of cult psychology. The BITE model in Chapter 4 will be a particularly valuable tool. Get as many concerned friends and relatives involved as you can. A strong first step will be for them to read this book, too. If everyone is prepared, they will not be caught off guard.

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

  These are just three examples from the many hundreds of people I have worked with since my exit from the Moonies. I’ve learned the incredible lengths to which people will go for a cause they believe is great and just. I have also learned that no one wants to sacrifice their time, energy and dreams for a cause that is harmful and untrue. Once the phobia against leaving is addressed, I can make contact with the person’s true self and let them know what has been done to them. At this point, they almost always choose to be free, because people will choose what they believe is best for them. It is also important for former cult members and their families not to view everything that happened inside a mind control cult as negative. Sometimes people learn important skills. Sometimes they meet good people, who eventually also leave the group, and a good post-cult relationship evolves. I always encourage people to remember the good and take it with them when they decide to leave. Still, there is no question that belonging to a destructive cult changes you forever. You realize how many things you’ve taken for granted: family, friends, education, your ability to make decisions, your individuality and your personal belief system. Leaving a cult also affords a unique opportunity to sit “naked” with yourself and analyze everything you ever knew or believed in. Such a process can be liberating, and also quite terrifying. It is a chance to start your life all over again. Chapter 9–How to Help If someone you care about becomes a member of a destructive cult, you will probably find yourself facing one of the toughest situations of your life. In helping this person return to their authentic self, it’s easy to fall into mistakes that will make your job even harder. But if you respond to the challenge in a planned, emotionally balanced way, the chances are good that your efforts will ultimately be successful. The experience will also be very rewarding and joyful. That is what I have seen time and time again in the families I’ve worked with. This chapter will give you some basic, practical ideas of what to do and not do when trying to help a cult member leave their group. It will also explain what to do for yourself and other members of your family while involved in this effort. Taking a few basic precautions can save you a lot of frustration. The best place to start is with two contrasting examples—one leading to success, the other to failure. The two stories that follow are composites, based on real people I have counseled. To protect their privacy, all of the people’s names have been changed. The Johnson Family and the Twelve Tribes169

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

  I also hope that this book will help to create a powerful public consumer awareness movement about mind control and destructive cults. I hope that the government will finally acknowledge the problem and take steps to protect the public. In the meantime, I hope readers of this book will join Freedom of Mind, ICSA and other counter-cult groups and subscribe to their newsletters and journals. Furthermore, I encourage those people who have been through a cult mind control experience to get involved and make a stand. We need your help! Sharing your knowledge and experience—telling your story—can be incredibly powerful. It is freeing and empowering to tell it. And it can be freeing and empowering to hear it. You can save lives. As destructive cults and mind control come to be better understood, the social stigma attached to former cult membership will begin to dissolve. Former members will come to realize that we were not to blame for our involvement. People will see that we have a lot to give back to society given the chance. Many of my former clients and friends have gone on with their lives and become happy, productive citizens. They are doctors, lawyers, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, architects, artists, teachers, parents and social activists. Support groups can help a lot, but it takes active participation. Whether you are in need, or have something to give, or both, I urge you to take a positive step. You can make an enormous difference. In the words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Or as Margaret Mead put it: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has. Appendix Lifton’s Eight Criteria of Mind Control The following excerpt from Robert Jay Lifton’s The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age (New York, Basic Books, 1987) is a concise explanation of Lifton’s eight criteria for defining mind control. These are: 1. Milieu control 2. Mystical manipulation (or planned spontaneity) 3. The demand for purity 4. The cult of confession 5. Sacred science 6. Loading of the language 7. Doctrine over person 8. Dispensing of existence The essay from which this selection is taken is entitled “Cults: Religious Totalism and Civil Liberties.” In it, Lifton frames his comments in relation to what he calls ideological totalism. This was the environment in which Chinese thought reform was practiced, as Lifton came to know of it from the Korean War and afterward. Ideological Totalism

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

  I wrote to Yeakley that I thought these findings offered support for my idea that cults actually give new personalities to their members—Yeakley refers to it as “cloning”—as they suppress the members’ original identities. As Dr. Yeakley explained in a letter to me: “In the Boston Church of Christ and in three of the cults, the shifting was toward the ESFJ (extrovert, sensing, feeling, judging) personality type. Two of the cults were shifting toward ESTJ (extrovert, sensing, thinking, judging) and one toward ENTJ (extrovert, intuitive, thinking, judging). There is nothing wrong with any of these three types. The problem is with the pressure to conform to any type. It is the shifting which is negative, not the type toward which the shifting takes place.”208 Much more research needs to be done. Well-respected mental health professionals who are experts on mind control—Lifton, Singer, West, and Zimbardo, along with John Clark, Edgar Schein, Michael Langone, Carmen Almendros, Rod Dubrow-Marshall, Bill and Lorna Goldberg, Steve Eichel and others associated with the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA)—have researched, written on, and advocated for more awareness about mind control. There is an especially profound need for epidemiological studies to investigate the public-health effects of undue influence. Psychotic breakdowns, violent acts by former cult members, suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and anxiety disorders are public health issues that can all be caused by mind control, either deliberately or as side effects. There are exciting possibilities in the developing technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which might help us understand whether brain function changes as a result of undue influence. I suspect it does. Functional MRI’s have already shown a distinct signature when someone is in a hypnotic state—the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) lights up distinctively. They have also shown that dissociative identity disorder (DID) produces a distinctive brain signature when a person switches identities.209 Every day, in real-life contexts, cults are essentially performing unethical social psychology experiments. One way to stop them is to expose the biological effects of their manipulations. I believe that incredible good can come from this kind of research. More research also needs to be done on the potentially beneficial use of ethical mind control techniques (for instance, for weight loss, motivation, smoking cessation, and so on). The use of mind control technology is not inherently evil. Like any technology, it can be used to serve or to harm, to empower people or to enslave them. Severe depression affects millions of Americans and robs them of their ability to enjoy life. It may be possible to teach these people some helpful mind control techniques (like psychiatrist David Burns teaches essential cognitive-behavioral strategies in his seminal book Feeling Good) to support or hasten their recovery.210 One such simple technique involves repeatedly imagining a better future. Such a technique is effective and ethical, but only when someone freely makes the choice to use it and the locus of control is within oneself.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  This became a daily routine for me. In the weeks that followed I began to make new friends. Many, like myself, had been paralyzed in Vietnam, guys like Marty Stetson and Willy Jefferson, Woody and Nick, Danny Prince and Jake Jacobs, or Jafu as he liked to be called, who used to be a bodybuilder before he joined the marines. Jafu, I learned from Marty, was wounded in Operation Starlite on August 23, 1965, while participating in America’s first major offensive of the Vietnam War. He was shot in the chest, paralyzing him from his waist down. From what Marty told me, Jafu’s squad got caught in a horseshoe ambush, and though gravely wounded, Jafu continued to return fire with his M60 machine gun until reinforcements arrived. For this he was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart. Nick Enders shares a completely different story, though, telling me Jafu was actually paralyzed while on R&R in Hawaii. Some guy caught him sleeping with his wife and in a jealous rage threw him out of the sixth-floor window of his hotel room, paralyzing Jafu for life. I don’t know which story is true but I try not to ask too many questions. In a place like this, those things don’t seem to matter. Of the new friends I’ve made at the hospital, Jafu is probably the quietest of the bunch, saying very little and letting his grunting and groaning down in the physical therapy room speak for itself. A runner-up in the Mr. Universe contest before the war, Jafu could bench press 250 pounds and now boasts he will soon be lifting three hundred pounds as a paraplegic. He has an incredible physique. From his waist up, his bulging muscles remind me of a championship boxer or wrestler. In high school he ran the hundred-yard dash in 9.7 seconds and set a school record. Jafu refuses to accept the fact that his paralysis is permanent. He is convinced that given enough time, determination, and effort he will be able to overcome his injury. He talks about it all the time and has even hired a Chinese herbalist on the outside who says he can help. The man prescribes herbal medicines, everything from devil’s claw to capsaicin, arnica to coca leaves. Jafu takes all sorts of vitamins and supplements, convinced his spine can be fused together through a proper diet and physical regimen. He speaks of experiments with rats in Canada that he has read about in Reader’s Digest where, miraculously, the animals’ severed spines have been regenerated. Like everyone else in this place, Jafu has his hopes and dreams.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  reinforcements arrived. For this he was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart. Nick Enders shares a completely different story, though, telling me Jafu was actually paralyzed while on R&R in Hawaii. Some guy caught him sleeping with his wife and in a jealous rage threw him out of the sixth-floor window of his hotel room, paralyzing Jafu for life. I don’t know which story is true but I try not to ask too many questions. In a place like this, those things don’t seem to matter. Of the new friends I’ve made at the hospital, Jafu is probably the quietest of the bunch, saying very little and letting his grunting and groaning down in the physical therapy room speak for itself. A runner-up in the Mr. Universe contest before the war, Jafu could bench press 250 pounds and now boasts he will soon be lifting three hundred pounds as a paraplegic. He has an incredible physique. From his waist up, his bulging muscles remind me of a championship boxer or wrestler. In high school he ran the hundred-yard dash in 9.7 seconds and set a school record. Jafu refuses to accept the fact that his paralysis is permanent. He is convinced that given enough time, determination, and effort he will be able to overcome his injury. He talks about it all the time and has even hired a Chinese herbalist on the outside who says he can help. The man prescribes herbal medicines, everything from devil’s claw to capsaicin, arnica to coca leaves. Jafu takes all sorts of vitamins and supplements, convinced his spine can be fused together through a proper diet and physical regimen. He speaks of experiments with rats in Canada that he has read about in Reader’s Digest where, miraculously, the animals’ severed spines have been regenerated. Like everyone else in this place, Jafu has his hopes and dreams. As soon as he gets out of the hospital he plans to move to Hawaii and open a weightlifting gym on Waikiki Beach where he will continue his journey toward walking again. I have often seen him sitting in his wheelchair alone in the hallway, staring off into the distance, seeming terribly lost and deep in thought. I want to go up to him but I hesitate. There are just some things a man needs to figure out for himself. While most of us here have accepted our fate and know our wounding in the war is permanent, Jafu refuses to believe that he will never walk again. For the most part we support him, encouraging him, even if we all know it’s just his way of coping. A person has a right to keep on hoping; no one wants to take away Jafu’s dreams. In a place like this, there must be hope, and even Jafu’s stubbornness and denial give us all something to believe in. I understand why Jafu feels the way he does. When I was at the Bronx VA in

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

  After graduating from Princeton, Bernard worked in banking before pursuing his law degree. He had been preparing for a traditional legal career until he came down to work with us one summer and became fascinated by the issues that death penalty cases presented. He and his girlfriend, Mia, moved to Montgomery and were intrigued by life in Alabama. Bernard’s quick immersion in the McMillian case intensified his cultural adventure more than he could have ever imagined. The community’s presence at the hearing got people talking about what we had presented in court, and that encouraged more people to come forward with helpful information. All sorts of people were contacting us with wide-ranging claims of corruption and misconduct. Only a few things here and there were useful to us in our efforts to free Walter, but all of it was interesting. Bernard and I continued to track leads and interview people who had insights to share about life in Monroe County. The threats we received made me worry about the hostility that Walter would face if he was ever released. I wondered how safely he could live in the community if everyone was persuaded that he was a dangerous murderer. We began discussing the idea of reaching out to a few people who might help us publicly dramatize the injustice of Mr. McMillian’s wrongful conviction as a way of setting the stage for his possible release. If the public could only know what we knew, it might ease his re-entry into freedom. We wanted people to understand this simple fact: Walter did not commit that murder. His freedom wouldn’t be based on some tricky legal loophole or the exploitation of a technicality. It would be based on simple justice—he was an innocent man. On the other hand, I didn’t think media attention would help win the case now pending in the Court of Criminal Appeals. In fact, the chief judge on the court, John Patterson, had famously sued The New York Times over their coverage of the Civil Rights Movement when he was Alabama’s governor. It was a common tactic used by Southern politicians during civil rights protests: Sue national media outlets for defamation if they provide sympathetic coverage of activists or if they characterize Southern politicians and law enforcement officers unfavorably. Southern state court judges and all-white juries were all too willing to rule in favor of “defamed” local officials, and state authorities had won millions of dollars in judgments this way. More important, the defamation lawsuits chilled sympathetic coverage of civil rights activism. In 1960, The New York Times printed an advertisement titled “Heed Their Rising Voices” that attempted to raise money to defend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. against perjury charges in Alabama. Southern officials responded by going on the offensive and suing the newspaper. Public Safety Commissioner L. B. Sullivan and Governor Patterson claimed defamation. A local jury awarded them half a million dollars, and the case was appealed to the U.S.

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

  Th e Christians of THE WILL AND THE WORLD  the second and third centuries invented the notion of free will. Against the threat of gnostic determinism, amid a pop u lar culture increasingly ad- dicted to astrology, and in opposition to a philosophical culture with ever more sophisticated accounts of moral causation, the Christians entered the fray with a message that was jarringly simple and distinctive. Th e individ- ual, what ever his or her condition, was a moral agent with unqualifi ed ca- pability and responsibility. Th ese crystalline notions of freedom and re- sponsibility came to focus on the realm of moral behavior whose wellsprings might seem most inscrutable: sex.  Th e Symposium of Methodius can be regarded as the last text of early Christianity. It refl ects the authority of Paul’s words as a benchmark of Christian sexual morality. It gives poetic expression to an ascetic theology forced, begrudgingly, to accommodate marriage as an acceptable institu- tion. It treats sexuality as a prime domain of moral exercise and sees hu- mans as suffi ciently equipped always to choose righ teousness. But for Meth- odius, the freedom of the sexual will was still an intellectual problem rather than a social or psychological one. In this regard Methodius is much closer to the self- styled phi los o phers of second- century Christianity than to many of his own contemporaries, who would survive into the heady age of Chris- tian triumph. In the work of Methodius, moral autonomy is a cosmological postulate, a statement about the place of man before the eyes of God. His Symposium is untroubled by the possibility of material constraints on hu- man volition or even by dark undercurrents of the self that required exter- nal grace to enable moral freedom. Methodius is one of the last Christians to write in an apologetic voice, as the spokesman of a philosophy distinctly apart from the machinery of society. On June 20 of AD 312, that machin- ery turned against him. Methodius was tried— perhaps before the Roman emperor himself— and executed, in one of the very fi nal spasms of state vio- lence faced by the early Christians.  Th is chapter attempts to summarize the sexual code which took shape in the unruly world of early Christianity and to take stock of how the new religion’s outlook on sex diff ered from mainstream values and philosophi- cal attitudes toward the body. It has been very much doubted that there was anything like a consensus within the early church on questions of sexual comportment. Indeed, the discovery of the fi erce internal struggles that took place within the Christian movement has been a revelation, for it re- stores some of the urgency and depth to the ancient debates.

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

  C H U R C H , S O C I E T Y, A N D S E X I N T H E A G E O F T R I U M P H  ate in discussions about the nature and origin of the soul; the perduring tensions between ascetic elitism and ordinary piety, which fl ared in the Jovinianist controversy, lurked within a religion that extolled virginity as an ideal; the orthodox exegesis of Genesis, especially the nature of the Fall, remained an open question. But the spark that was to ignite the confl agration was the ideal of perfection. Pelagius argued that the very existence of divine commandment implied the capacity for complete fulfi llment. At the heart of Pelagian doctrine is the optimistic idea that man is always capable of doing good or evil, according to his will. Th e capacity for total obedience to God’s law was, for Pelagius, intrinsic to human nature. “Whenever it falls to me to speak about the rules of morality and the maintenance of the holy life, it is my custom to demonstrate, fi rst of all, the power and quality of human nature and to show what it has the capacity to eff ect, and only then to encourage the spirit of those listening toward the face of virtue, lest it be without profi t to be called to those things which might seem impossible to them.” For Pelagius, each human enjoyed the same plenitude of freedom experienced by Adam and Eve in paradise, and each human reenacted the fateful choice to disobey God. Th e possibility of individual perfection carried high stakes: “Pelagius wanted every Christian to be a monk.” Pelagius off ered a particularly severe vision of how Christianity might relate to society: by transforming it. It is no coincidence that the Pelagians produced some of the most honest and acute social criticism of the late empire. Th e Pelagians envisioned a church that stood apart from society, pure through and through. Th e Pelagian movement carried within it ancient strains of Christian separatism, but in an age of Christian accommodation. Th e consequences of Pelagian attitudes for sexual morality are most apparent in the thought of Julian of Eclanum, the ablest exponent of Pelagian doctrines and the fi ercest holdout against Augustinianism. Julian held that the very shape of morality required humans to be naturally endowed with free will. “For if justice does not lay blame unless there existed the freedom to abstain, and, before baptism, there is a necessity to do evil, because, as you have said, the will is not free to do good and therefore it cannot do anything but evil, then the will is exonerated from the disgrace of doing evil by the very necessity which it suff ers.” Th us, for Julian, humans were capable of obeying all of God’s sexual commandments. Th ere was nothing inherently

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

  To leave the township for work in the city, or for any other reason, you had to carry a pass with your ID number; otherwise you could be arrested. There was also a curfew: After a certain hour, blacks had to be back home in the township or risk arrest. My mother didn’t care. She was determined to never go home again. So she stayed in town, hiding and sleeping in public restrooms until she learned the rules of navigating the city from the other black women who had contrived to live there: prostitutes. Many of the prostitutes in town were Xhosa. They spoke my mother’s language and showed her how to survive. They taught her how to dress up in a pair of maid’s overalls to move around the city without being questioned. They also introduced her to white men who were willing to rent out flats in town. A lot of these men were foreigners, Germans and Portuguese who didn’t care about the law and were happy to sign a lease giving a prostitute a place to live and work in exchange for a steady piece on the side. My mom wasn’t interested in any such arrangement, but thanks to her job she did have money to pay rent. She met a German fellow through one of her prostitute friends, and he agreed to let her a flat in his name. She moved in and bought a bunch of maid’s overalls to wear. She was caught and arrested many times, for not having her ID on the way home from work, for being in a white area after hours. The penalty for violating the pass laws was thirty days in jail or a fine of fifty rand, nearly half her monthly salary. She would scrape together the money, pay the fine, and go right back about her business. — My mom’s secret flat was in a neighborhood called Hillbrow. She lived in number 203. Down the corridor was a tall, brown-haired, brown-eyed Swiss/German expat named Robert. He lived in 206. As a former trading colony, South Africa has always had a large expatriate community. People find their way here. Tons of Germans. Lots of Dutch. Hillbrow at the time was the Greenwich Village of South Africa. It was a thriving scene, cosmopolitan and liberal. There were galleries and underground theaters where artists and performers dared to speak up and criticize the government in front of integrated crowds. There were restaurants and nightclubs, a lot of them foreign-owned, that served a mixed clientele, black people who hated the status quo and white people who simply thought it ridiculous. These people would have secret get-togethers, too, usually in someone’s flat or in empty basements that had been converted into clubs. Integration by its nature was a political act, but the get-togethers themselves weren’t political at all. People would meet up and hang out, have parties.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Putting two and two together one might even infer from such jolly behavior that now and then he enjoyed getting a little piece of tail—always in moderation, to be sure. That was the word that was balsam to the old man’s lacerated soul—“moderation.” It was like discovering a new sign in the zodiac. And though he was still too ill to attempt a return to even a moderate way of living, nevertheless it did his soul good. And so, when Uncle Ned, who was continually going on the water wagon and continually falling off it again, came round to the house one evening the old man delivered him a little lecture on the virtue of moderation. Uncle Ned was, at that moment, on the water wagon and so, when the old man, moved by his own words, suddenly went to the sideboard to fetch a decanter of wine every one was shocked. No one had ever dared invite Uncle Ned to drink when he had sworn off; to venture such a thing constituted a serious breach of loyalty. But the old man did it with such conviction that no one could take offense, and the result was that Uncle Ned took a small glass of wine and went home that evening without stopping off at a saloon to quench his thirst. It was an extraordinary happening and there was much talk about it for days after. In fact, Uncle Ned began to act a bit queer from that day on. It seems that he went the next day to the wine store and bought a bottle of sherry which he emptied into the decanter. He placed the decanter on the sideboard, just as he had seen the old man do, and, instead of polishing it off in one swoop, he contented himself with a glassful at a time—“just a thimbleful,” as he put it. His behavior was so remarkable that my aunt, who was unable to quite believe her eyes, came one day to the house and held a long conversation with the old man. She asked him, among other things, to invite the minister to the house some evening so that Uncle Ned might have the opportunity of falling under his beneficent influence. The long and short of it was that Ned was soon taken into the fold and, like the old man, seemed to be thriving under the experience. Things went fine until the day of the picnic. That day, unfortunately, was an unusually warm day and, what with the games, the excitement, the hilarity, Uncle Ned developed an extraordinary thirst. It was not until he was three sheets to the wind that some one observed the regularity and the frequency with which he was running to the beer keg. It was then too late. Once in that condition he was unmanageable. Even the minister could do nothing with him.