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 64 of 216 · 20 per page

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I shrug, trapped. I don’t want to lose him. In spite of all his demands, his need to control, his scary vices, I have never felt as alive as I do now. It’s a thrill to be sitting here beside him. He’s so unpredictable, sexy, smart, and funny. But his moods… Oh—and he wants to punish me. He says he’ll think about my reservations, but it still scares me. I close my eyes. What can I say? Deep down I would just like more—more affection, more playful Christian, more…love. He squeezes my hand. “Talk to me, Anastasia. I don’t want to lose you. This last week—” We’re coming to the end of the bridge, and the road is once more bathed in the neon glimmer of the streetlights so his face is intermittently in the light and the dark. And it’s such a fitting metaphor. This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight—or the dark knight, as he said. He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light? “I still want more,” I whisper. “I know,” he says. “I’ll try.” I blink up at him, and he relinquishes my hand and pulls at my chin, releasing my trapped lip. “For you, Anastasia, I will try.” He’s radiating sincerity. And that’s my cue. I unbuckle my seat belt, reach across, and clamber into his lap, taking him completely by surprise. Wrapping my arms around his head, I kiss him, long and hard, and in a nanosecond, he’s responding. “Stay with me tonight. If you go away, I won’t see you all week. Please,” he asks. “Yes,” I acquiesce. “And I’ll try, too. I’ll sign your contract.” And it’s a spur-of-the-moment decision. He gazes at me. “Sign after Georgia. Think about it. Think about it hard, baby.” “I will.” And we sit in silence for a mile or two. “You really should wear your seat belt,” Christian whispers disapprovingly into my hair, but he makes no move to shift me from his lap. I nuzzle up against him, eyes closed, my nose at his throat, drinking in his sexy Christian-and-spiced-musky-bodywash fragrance, my head on his shoulder. I let my mind drift, and I allow myself to fantasize that he loves me. Oh, and it’s so real, tangible almost, and a small part of my nasty harpy subconscious acts completely out of character and dares to hope. I’m careful not to touch his chest but just snuggle in his arms as he holds me tightly. All too soon, I’m torn from my impossible daydream. “We’re home,” Christian murmurs, and it’s such a tantalizing sentence, full of so much potential. Home, with Christian. Except his apartment is an art gallery, not a home.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  The screen saver on Amy’s computer was of crystallizing fractals. When on the phone, she had developed the mindless habit of following the formations as they appeared, bouncing her eyes off the slight irregularities in the pattern. “Yeah, okay, I understand. But listen. There’s an orientation tonight. Omar is going to tell his sister that we’re coming. A new director at the agency has been pushing for trans and genderqueer foster homes, because so many of the kids in the system are queer. If we move soon, Omar’s sister could introduce 9 us. “When’s the orientation?” “At seven at a Unitarian church. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I'll take the rest of the day off. We can get ready for it together.” “T can’t. I have work.” “What? Take off work! We’ve been talking about a chance like this for years!” “My work is just as important as yours, Amy.” Amy sighed. She had accidentally poked right at that sore spot, hadn’t she? “I never said it wasn’t. I’m suggesting that I take off work too.” “Well, how about we meet at home at like four?” What was going on? She had figured Reese would be rushing home already. Not this grudging response. Reese knew the situation as well as Amy did: Most of the private adoption agencies, the ones that procured babies from faraway countries, charged an adoption fee in excess of twenty thousand and up to forty thousand dollars. That was just the beginning of the costs. Amy calculated that if she and Reese went to the fanciest agencies and paid the fees, such a show of money might work like in expensive boutiques. As if their transness were merely an eccentric outcropping of a refined taste. But Amy hadn’t saved forty thousand dollars, and might not any time soon, especially not supporting Reese. She’d drain her bank account putting together half that, leaving nothing to raise the baby, much less the miscellaneous expenses and travel that two of her older coworkers had explained to her came with their own efforts to adopt. This left adoption through the foster care system. And while foster care certainly allowed for LGBTQ parents by law, in practice, the heavy oversight and rights of the natal parents in the foster system meant that fewer queers than straights made it to the adoption phase. And until today, Amy had never heard of a double-trans couple getting anywhere at all. But okay, whatever. Of course she could meet Reese at four.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Let me know if you’re okay. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Jeez, why is he so worried about my Beetle? It has given me three years of loyal service, and José has always been on hand to maintain it for me. Christian’s next email is from today. From: Christian Grey Subject: Soft Limits Date: May 26 2011 17:22 To: Anastasia Steele What can I say that I haven’t already? Happy to talk these through anytime. You looked beautiful today. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. I want to see him. I hit reply. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Soft Limits Date: May 26 2011 19:23 To: Christian Grey I can come over this evening to discuss if you’d like. Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: Soft Limits Date: May 26 2011 19:27 To: Anastasia Steele I’ll come to you. I meant it when I said I wasn’t happy about you driving that car. I’ll be with you shortly. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Holy crap…he’s coming over now. I have to get one thing ready for him—the first edition Thomas Hardy books are still on the shelves in the living room. I cannot keep them. I wrap them in brown paper, and I scrawl on the wrapping a direct quote from Tess from the book: “I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only—only—don’t make it more than I can bear!” Chapter Fifteen“Hi.” I feel unbearably shy when I open the door. Christian is standing on the porch in his jeans and leather jacket. “Hi,” he says, and his face lights up with his radiant smile. I take a moment to admire the pretty. Oh my, he’s hot in leather. “Come in.” “If I may,” he says, amused. He holds up a bottle of champagne as he walks in. “I thought we’d celebrate your graduation. Nothing beats a good Bollinger.” “Interesting choice of words,” I comment dryly. He grins. “Oh, I like your ready wit, Anastasia.” “We only have teacups. We’ve packed all the glasses.” “Teacups? Sounds good to me.” I head into the kitchen. Nervous, butterflies flooding my stomach, it’s like having a panther or mountain lion all unpredictable and predatory in my living room. “Do you want saucers as well?” “Teacups will be fine, Anastasia,” Christian calls distractedly from the living room. When I return, he’s staring at the brown parcel of books. I place the cups on the table. “That’s for you,” I murmur anxiously. Crap…this is probably going to be a fight. “Hmm, I figured as much. Very apt quote.” His long index finger absently traces the writing. “I thought I was d’Urberville, not Angel. You decided on the debasement.” He gives me a brief wolfish smile. “Trust you to find something that resonates so appropriately.” “It’s also a plea,” I whisper. Why am I so nervous? My mouth is dry. “A plea? For me to go easy on you?” I nod.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 presents the basic elements of a two- systems approach to judgment and choice. It elaborates the distinction between the automatic operations of System 1 and the controlled operations of System 2, and shows how associative memory, the core of System 1, continually constructs a coherent interpretation of what is going on in our world at any instant. I attempt to give a sense of the complexity and richness of the automatic and often unconscious processes that underlie intuitive thinking, and of how these automatic processes explain the heuristics of judgment. A goal is to introduce a language for thinking and talking about the mind. Part 2 updates the study of judgment heuristics and explores a major puzzle: Why is it so difficult for us to think statistically? We easily think associatively, we think metaphorically, we think causally, but statistics requires thinking about many things at once, which is something that System 1 is not designed to do. The difficulties of statistical thinking contribute to the main theme of Part 3, which describes a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight. My views on this topic have been influenced by Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan. I hope for watercooler conversations that intelligently explore the lessons that can be learned from the past while resisting the lure of hindsight and the illusion of certainty. The focus of part 4 is a conversation with the discipline of economics on the nature of decision making and on the assumption that economic agents are rational. This section of the book provides a current view, informed by the two- system model, of the key concepts of prospect theory, the model of choice that Amos and I published in 1979. Subsequent chapters address several ways human choices deviate from the rules of rationality. I deal with the unfortunate tendency to treat problems in isolation, and with framing effects, where decisions are shaped by inconsequential features of choice problems. These observations, which are readily explained by the features of System 1, present a deep challenge to the rationality assumption favored in standard economics. Part 5 describes recent research that has introduced a distinction between two selves, the experiencing self and the remembering self, which do not have the same interests. For example, we can expose people to two painful experiences. One of these experiences is strictly worse than the other, because it is longer. But the automatic formation of memories—a feature of System 1—has

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

  Th e tale of Taïsia’s repentance is handed down among the chain of tradi- tions about the earliest generations of monks, principally from the site of Scetis. Th e Sayings of the Desert Fathers preserve a number of memories about the colorful ascetic John the Dwarf, who fl ourished in the last de- cades of the fourth century and the fi rst de cade of the fi fth. Most of the sto- ries and sayings focus on monastic pioneers from the mid- fourth to the early fi fth century. In the earliest days these memories were transmitted orally, and characteristic traces of oral transmission remain in the collections. Th e story of Taïsia passed through only a few generations of oral transmission before  FROM SHAME TO SIN its redaction in the Sayings, which seems to have taken shape as a text in the second half of the fi fth century, probably in Palestine. A Palestinian origin for the redaction would add poignancy to the humbling fi nale of Taïsia’s story. Th e heavenly voice that affi rms her salvation reminds us of nothing so much as an aphorism of Rabbi Judah ha Nasi that recurs throughout Avo- dah Zarah, uttered after the repentance of the most condign sinners. “One may acquire eternal life after many years, another in one hour!”  In the desert, “the air is more pure, the heavens are more open, and God is nearer.” Th e fi gure of the penitent prostitute fi rst took shape in the sands of Egypt, in the earliest monastic traditions, because she so radically con- densed the cosmic possibilities of repentance, metanoia. In the pioneer phases of Egyptian monasticism, fallen women begin to populate the land- scape as avatars of temptation and repentance. Taïsia belongs to this most primitive stratum. Th e trials and ecstasies she experienced were not hers alone. In another early legend an anonymous monk discovers that his sister has fallen into prostitution. He leads her to repentance, and as they walk into the desert, she expires. In the tale that was destined to have the most extravagant afterlife, a monk named Serapion passes through a “village of Egypt” and sees “a prostitute standing in her cell.” When dusk falls, he goes in with her. He chanted the psalms and prayed to God that she would “re- pent and be saved.” Th e prostitute realizes that he has come to save her soul. She cries and asks Serapion to lead her away. When they arrive at a monas- tery of virgins, he gives the abbess instructions to be gentle with her. After a few days, the former prostitute told the abbess, “I am a sinner.

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

  Her parents attended one of my communication workshops for family members and asked me to help. They told me they wished they had had the workshop’s guidance before their trip to the Philippines, or even that they had taken me along. I told them to keep learning all they could about the group: its buzzwords, lifestyle and beliefs. To this end I put them in touch with several former members. I also encouraged them to continue practicing the communication techniques I taught them. Within a year, Margaret contacted them from Mexico and asked if they could come to visit again. I sat down with the Rogers family and discussed the options. How could they get me to her, keep the husband away as long as possible, and evoke a minimum of suspicion—all at the same time? We concluded that the parents should not make the trip at all. They represented the clearest threat to Margaret’s cult involvement. Instead, only her two sisters and brother would go, for a week. I would go, too, posing as her sister Lisa’s boyfriend. We manufactured a story that Margaret’s father was under doctor’s orders not to take such a trip—he had a problem with his heart. His wife was unable to get time off from work and felt obliged to stay close to home to help her husband, if necessary. Margaret’s brother Bob called up his company’s branch office in Mexico City and talked them into giving a job interview to Margaret’s husband, who, the family knew, was looking for a way to earn some legitimate, steady money. Bob convinced the husband to accept the offer of a job interview. Bob would accompany him to Mexico City for a few days to give us time alone with Margaret. The plan was to assess Margaret’s state of mind and try to convince her to come back to the United States, with her children. We hoped that after the previous visit, she might be homesick. Also, if she didn’t really love her husband, as we all suspected, we had a good chance of success. Everything started out smoothly. When we arrived, Margaret and her husband showed little or no sign of anxiety. We all spent the first day together. None of us indicated that we were bothered by Margaret’s lifestyle. We went out to eat lots of good food, went shopping, bought the whole family new clothes, and generally had a good time. Margaret and her husband did not try to sell the group to us in any way. Bob left with Margaret’s husband the next day, and we invited Margaret to our hotel, where we took a room for her and the kids. We volunteered to take the kids out, and recommended that she lie down and catch up on some sleep in the meantime.

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

  Much can be done to stop the spread of cults and undue influence. Here is a brief checklist of practical steps that people can take: Everyone Learn more about cults, mind control and undue influence. Many wonderful documentaries have just been done—including HBO’s Going Clear (on Scientology), Truth Be Told 222 (on Jehovah’s Witnesses), and Prophets Prey (on Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints [FLDS] cult). Watch them! Visit websites such as icsahome.com (International Cultic Studies Association) and Families Against Cult Teachings (familiesagainstcultteachings.org). Please visit my website, freedomofmind.com. Read widely. You may appreciate my other books Releasing the Bonds and especially the more recent Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs. Stay up-to-date with our social media. Follow us on Twitter(@CultExpert) and Facebook (facebook.com/FOMinc). Read the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and share it widely.223 Share these resources with others. Discuss one of them in your book or movie group. Tweet about them. Put up relevant articles on your blog. Write reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com Protect yourself—research any potential organization carefully before agreeing to attend its events. When in doubt about an organization, ask the questions provided in Chapter 7. Don’t give out personal information of any kind to anyone until they have demonstrated that they are trustworthy. Do not put personal information up on the Internet. If someone enters your life with “psychic” powers, you should assume they found your personal information online. Lobby your politicians—local, state and federal. Set up appointments to tell them your concerns. Ask them to stand up for human rights. If you suspect that someone you know is under the sway of a group or individual and may be a victim of undue influence, don’t turn a blind eye. Act quickly. Express your concerns to the person’s friends and family. If you know a former cult member whose involvement kept them from gaining a formal education or employment, please go out of your way to help find them a job or re-enter the educational system. Do whatever you can to help them integrate into society. If you are a former member, help de-stigmatize the whole area of cult involvement. Tell people your story. Help them understand that those of us who were in a cult do not have something “wrong” with us. Help the public see that we were unduly influenced. If you are in a position to help the efforts to assist current members to reevaluate their life and exit to freedom, please do! If it is prudent not to do so publicly, there is much you can do behind the scenes to help people who are actively setting up websites, social media campaigns, contacting authorities, hiring attorneys and private investigators to find out vital background information. Government: Federal and State Ask the Surgeon General—or some other high-ranking and credible government official—to state definitively that undue influence exists and that destructive cult mind control is bad for public health.

• From The Lover (1984)

  I’m at a state boarding school in Saigon. I eat and sleep there, but I go to classes at the French high school. My mother is a teacher and wants her girl to have a secondary education. “You have to go to high school.” What was enough for her is not enough for her daughter. High school and then a good degree in mathematics. That was what had been dinned into me ever since I started school. It never crossed my mind I might escape the mathematics degree, I was glad to give her that hope. Every day I saw her planning her own and her children’s future. There came a time when she couldn’t plan anything very grand for her sons any more, so she planned other futures, makeshift ones, but they too served their purpose, they blocked in the time that lay ahead. I remember my younger brother’s courses in bookkeeping. From the Universal Correspondence School—every year, every level. You have to catch up, my mother used to say. It would last for three days, never four. Never. We’d drop the Universal School whenever my mother was posted to another place. And begin again in the next. My mother kept it up for ten years. It wasn’t any good. My younger brother became an accountant’s clerk in Saigon. There was no technical school in the colonies; we owed my elder brother’s departure for France to that. He stayed in France for several years to study at the technical school. But he didn’t keep it up. My mother must have known. But she had no choice, he had to be got away from the other two children. For several years he was no longer part of the family. It was while he was away that my mother bought the land. A terrible business, but for us, the children who were left, not so terrible as the presence of the killer would have been, the child-killer of the night, of the night of the hunter.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Ana! He likes you. No doubt about it.” Her tone is emphatic. “Kate, he’s just trying to be nice.” But even as I say the words, I know they’re not true—Christian Grey doesn’t do nice. He does polite, maybe. And a small, quiet voice whispers, Perhaps Kate is right. My scalp prickles at the idea that maybe, just maybe, he might like me. After all, he did say he was glad Kate didn’t do the interview. I hug myself with quiet glee, rocking from side to side, entertaining the possibility that he might like me. Kate brings me back to the now. “I don’t know who we’ll get to do the shoot. Levi, our regular photographer, can’t. He’s home in Idaho Falls for the weekend. He’ll be pissed that he blew an opportunity to photograph one of America’s leading entrepreneurs.” “Hmm… What about José?” “Great idea! You ask him—he’ll do anything for you. Then call Grey and find out where he wants us.” Kate is irritatingly cavalier about José. “I think you should call him.” “Who, José?” Kate scoffs. “No, Grey.” “Ana, you’re the one with the relationship.” “Relationship?” I squeak, my voice rising several octaves. “I barely know the guy.” “At least you’ve met him,” she says bitterly. “And it looks like he wants to know you better. Ana, just call him,” she snaps and hangs up. She is so bossy sometimes. I frown at my cell, sticking my tongue out at it. I’m just leaving a message for José when Paul enters the stockroom looking for sandpaper. “We’re kind of busy out there, Ana,” he says without acrimony. “Yeah, um, sorry,” I mutter, turning to leave. “So, how come you know Christian Grey?” Paul’s voice is unconvincingly nonchalant. “I had to interview him for our student newspaper. Kate wasn’t well.” I shrug, trying to sound casual and doing no better than him. “Christian Grey in Clayton’s. Go figure,” Paul snorts, amazed. He shakes his head as if to clear it. “Anyway, want to grab a drink or something this evening?” Whenever he’s home he asks me on a date, and I always say no. It’s a ritual. I’ve never considered it a good idea to date the boss’s brother, and besides, Paul is cute in a wholesome all-American boy-next-door kind of way, but he’s no literary hero, not by any stretch of the imagination. Is Grey? my subconscious asks me, her eyebrow figuratively raised. I slap her down. “Don’t you have a family dinner or something for your brother?” “That’s tomorrow.” “Maybe some other time, Paul. I need to study tonight. I have finals next week.” “Ana, one of these days you’ll say yes.” He smiles as I escape to the store floor. “But I do places, Ana, not people,” José groans. “José, please?” I beg. I pace the living room of our apartment, clutching my cell and staring out the window at the fading evening light.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  The British Library? I touch the icon and a menu appears: HISTORICAL COLLECTION. Scrolling down, I select NOVELS OF THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY. Another menu. I tap on a title: The American BY HENRY JAMES. A new window opens, offering me a scanned copy of the book to read. Holy crap—it’s an early edition, published in 1879, and it’s on my iPad! He’s bought me the British Library at a touch of a button. I exit quickly, knowing that I could be lost in this app for an eternity. I notice a “good food” app that makes me roll my eyes and smile at the same time, a news app, a weather app, but his note mentioned music. I go back to the main screen, hit the iPod icon, and a playlist appears. I scroll through the songs, and the list makes me smile. Thomas Tallis—I’m not going to forget that in a hurry. I heard it twice, after all, while he flogged and fucked me. “Witchcraft.” My grin gets wider—dancing around the great room. The Bach Marcello piece—oh no, that’s way too sad for my mood right now. Hmm. Jeff Buckley—yeah, I’ve heard of him. Snow Patrol—my favorite band—and a song called “Principles of Lust” by Enigma. How Christian. Another called “Possession”… oh yes, very Fifty Shades. And a few more I have never heard. Selecting a song that catches my eye, I press play. It’s called “Try” by Nelly Furtado. She starts to sing, and her voice is a silken scarf wrapping around me, enveloping me. I lie down on my bed. Does this mean Christian’s going to try? Try this new relationship? I drink in the lyrics, staring at the ceiling, trying to understand his turnaround. He missed me. I missed him. He must have some feelings for me. He must. This iPad, these songs, these apps—he cares. He really cares. My heart swells with hope. The song ends and tears spring to my eyes. I quickly scroll to another—“The Scientist” by Coldplay—one of Kate’s favorite bands. I know the track, but I’ve never really listened to the lyrics before. I close my eyes and let the words wash over and through me. My tears start to flow. I can’t stem them. If this isn’t an apology, what is it? Oh, Christian. Or is this an invitation? Will he answer my questions? Am I reading too much into this? I am probably reading too much into this. I dash my tears away. I have to email him to thank him. I leap off my bed to fetch the mean machine. Coldplay continues as I sit cross-legged on my bed. The Mac powers up and I log in. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: IPAD Date: June 9 2011 23:56 To: Christian Grey You’ve made me cry again. I love the iPad. I love the songs. I love the British Library App. I love you. Thank you. Good night. Ana xx From: Christian Grey Subject: iPad

• From The Lover (1984)

  I’ll do it again. My mother will be informed. She’ll come and see the head of the boarding school and ask her to let me do as I like in the evenings, not to check the time I come in, not to force me to go out with the other girls on Sunday excursions. She says, She’s a child who’s always been free, otherwise she’d run away, even I, her own mother, can’t do anything about it, if I want to keep her I have to let her be free. The head agrees because I’m white and the place needs a few whites among all the half-castes for the sake of its reputation. My mother also said I was working hard in high school even though I had my freedom, and that what had happened with her sons was so awful, such a disaster, that her daughter’s education was the only hope left to her. The head let me live in the boarding school as if it were a hotel. Soon I’ll have a diamond on my engagement finger. Then the teachers will stop making remarks. People will guess I’m not engaged, but the diamond’s very valuable, no one will doubt that it’s genuine, and no one will say anything any more, because of the value of the diamond that’s been given to this very young girl.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Introduction Every author, I suppose, has in mind a setting in which readers of his or her work could benefit from having read it. Mine is the proverbial office watercooler, where opinions are shared and gossip is exchanged. I hope to enrich the vocabulary that people use when they talk about the judgments and choices of others, the company’s new policies, or a colleague’s investment decisions. Why be concerned with gossip? Because it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable, to identify and label the mistakes of others than to recognize our own. Questioning what we believe and want is difficult at the best of times, and especially difficult when we most need to do it, but we can benefit from the informed opinions of others. Many of us spontaneously anticipate how friends and colleagues will evaluate our choices; the quality and content of these anticipated judgments therefore matters. The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism, more powerful than New Year resolutions to improve one’s decision making at work and at home. To be a good diagnostician, a physician needs to acquire a large set of labels for diseases, each of which binds an idea of the illness and its symptoms, possible antecedents and causes, possible developments and consequences, and possible interventions to cure or mitigate the illness. Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language. The hope for informed gossip is that there are distinctive patterns in the errors people make. Systematic errors are known as biases, and they recur predictably in particular circumstances. When the handsome and confident speaker bounds onto the stage, for example, you can anticipate that the audience will judge his comments more favorably than he deserves. The availability of a diagnostic label for this bias—the halo effect—makes it easier to anticipate, recognize, and understand. When you are asked what you are thinking about, you can normally answer. You believe you know what goes on in your mind, which often consists of one conscious thought leading in an orderly way to another. But that is not the only way the mind works, nor indeed is that the typical way. Most impressions and thoughts arise in your conscious experience without your knowing how they got

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  sake will so overwhelm their emo- tions, they won't notice anything else. Never appear discouraged by people's resistance, or complain. Instead, meet the challenge by doing something ex- treme or chivalrous. Conversely, spur others to prove themselves by making yourself hard to reach, unattain- able, worth fighting over. Seductive Evidence Anyone can talk big, say lofty things about their feelings, insist on how much they care for us, and also for all oppressed peoples in the far reaches of the planet. But if they never behave in a way that will back up their words, we begin to doubt their sincerity—perhaps we are dealing with a charlatan, or a hypocrite or a coward. Flattery and fine words can only go so far. A time will eventually arrive when you will have to show your victim some evidence, to match your words with deeds. Love is a species of warfare. Slack troopers, go This kind of evidence has two functions. First, it allays any lingering elsewhere! \ It takes more doubts about you. Second, an action that reveals some positive quality in than cowards to guard \ you is immensely seductive in and of itself. Brave or selfless deeds create a These standards. Night-duty in winter, long-route powerful and positive emotional reaction. Don't worry, your deeds do not marches, every \ Hardship, have to be so brave and selfless that you lose everything in the process. The all forms of suffering: these appearance alone of nobility will often suffice. In fact, in a world where await \ The recruit who expects a soft option. people overanalyze and talk too much, any kind of action has a bracing, se- You'll often be out in \ ductive effect. Cloudbursts, and bivouac It is normal in the course of a seduction to encounter resistance. The on the bare \ Ground. . . . more obstacles you overcome, of course, the greater the pleasure that awaits Is lasting \ Love your ambition? Then put away you, but many a seduction fails because the seducer does not correctly read all pride. \ The simple, the resistances of the target. More often than not, you give up too easily. straightforward way in may First, understand a primary law of seduction: resistance is a sign that the be denied you, \ Doors bolted, shut in your face — other person's emotions are engaged in the process. The only person you \ So be ready to slip down cannot seduce is somebody distant and cold. Resistance is emotional, and from the roof through a can be transformed into its opposite, much as, in jujitsu, the physical resis- lightwell, \ Or sneak in by an upper-floor window.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  because of some quirks of our minds, yours and mine. A sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an agent (System 2) does than if it describes what something is, what properties it has. In other words, “System 2” is a better subject for a sentence than “mental arithmetic.” The mind—especially System 1 —appears to have a special aptitude for the construction and interpretation of stories about active agents, who have personalities, habits, and abilities. You quickly formed a bad opinion of the thieving butler, you expect more bad behavior from him, and you will remember him for a while. This is also my hope for the language of systems. Why call them System 1 and System 2 rather than the more descriptive “automatic system” and “effortful system”? The reason is simple: “Automatic system” takes longer to say than “System 1” and therefore takes more space in your working memory. This matters, because anything that occupies your working memory reduces your ability to think. You should treat “System 1” and “System 2” as nicknames, like Bob and Joe, identifying characters that you will get to know over the course of this book. The fictitious systems make it easier for me to think about judgment and choice, and will make it easier for you to understand what I say. Speaking of System 1 and System 2 “He had an impression, but some of his impressions are illusions.” “This was a pure System 1 response. She reacted to the threat before she recognized it.” “This is your System 1 talking. Slow down and let your System 2 take control.”

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  He began to pace and then to dance up and down the platform. His words came faster until he was shouting into the microphone. “There’s comin’ a revival, a dead-raising revival!” Family members, tense and silent, shifted in their seats. “It’s a revival that will restore everything the devil has stolen, a revival that will return everything that’s been lost . . . everything that’s been corrupted, everything you’ve lived without.” They jumped to their feet, waved their hands, and danced and danced. They understood that life takes it all, your last dime, your last hope, your last breath. They understood, and they laughed and shouted and careened about the church, drunk on faith. My husband, one of the most reserved and cerebral men I have known, had his hands in the air. My sister’s husband shouted “amen” until his face turned red. The funeral had turned into a revival meeting for everyone except Brother Terrell’s children, who sat red-eyed and rigid in the middle of the church facing the coffin. With the congregation in his thrall, Brother Terrell abruptly stopped preaching and handed the microphone to one of his associates. As the amens and hallelujahs softened, the associate minister waved forward a group of preachers. One of them carried a bottle of olive oil. They walked down the ramp to the casket. The church went silent. My sisters glanced over their shoulders, eyes wide. One of Pam’s younger sisters buried her face in her hands. The minister who had been Randall’s friend took the bottle of oil and tilted it onto a white handkerchief. He put the cloth on Randall’s forehead and spoke while the others laid hands on the corpse. “Brother Randall, in the name of Jesus, if you want to come back, then go ahead and come on. In the name of Jesus. We’d be glad to have you.” After what must have been one of the shortest prayers in Holy Roller history, the preachers stepped away from the body. Shoulders relaxed in the family section. Randall would remain dead and his body would stay in the coffin. The organ music swelled and Brother Terrell moved to the side of the coffin. The audience lined up to shake his hand as they had years earlier. As they filed by, they gripped his arm, pulled him close, and offered their condolences. “So sorry for your loss.” “We’re praying for you every day.” “Don’t give up. God’s gonna see you through.” After everything they knew about Brother Terrell, after all the affairs and lies and moneygrubbing, these people had only soft words for him. I brought my

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The two exceptions to this are childhood and those mo- ments when we are in love. In both cases, our emotions are more engaged, more open and active. And we equate feeling emotional with feeling more alive. A public figure who can affect people's emotions, who can make them feel communal sadness, joy, or hope, has a similar effect. An appeal to the emotions is far more powerful than an appeal to reason. Eva Perón knew this power early on, as a radio actress. Her tremulous voice could make audiences weep; because of this, people saw in her great charisma. She never forgot the experience. Her every public act was framed in dramatic and religious motifs. Drama is condensed emotion, and the Catholic religion is a force that reaches into your childhood, hits you where you cannot help yourself. Evita's uplifted arms, her staged acts of charity, her sacrifices for the common folk—all this went straight to the heart. It was not her goodness alone that was charismatic, although the appear- ance of goodness is alluring enough. It was her ability to dramatize her goodness. You must learn to exploit the two great purveyors of emotion: drama and religion. Drama cuts out the useless and banal in life, focusing on mo- ments of pity and terror; religion deals with matters of life and death. Make your charitable actions dramatic, give your loving words religious import, bathe everything in rituals and myths going back to childhood. Caught up in the emotions you stir, people will see over your head the halo of charisma. The deliverer. In Harlem in the early 1950s, few African-Americans knew much about the Nation of Islam, or ever stepped into its temple. The Na- tion preached that white people were descended from the devil and that someday Allah would liberate the black race. This doctrine had little mean- ing for Harlemites, who went to church for spiritual solace and turned in practical matters to their local politicians. But in 1954, a new minister for the Nation of Islam arrived in Harlem. The minister's name was Malcolm X, and he was well-read and elo- quent, yet his gestures and words were angry. Word spread: whites had lynched Malcolm's father. He had grown up in a juvenile facility, then had survived as a small-time hustler before being arrested for burglary and spending six years in prison. His short life (he was only twenty—nine at the time) had been one long run-in with the law, yet look at him now—so confident and educated. No one had helped him; he had done it all on his own. Harlemites began to see Malcolm X everywhere, handing out fliers, addressing the young.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  prevent ecstasy. If I am sympathy for anyone who fomented civil war. His one concern was to present only in a letter, make France a modern power. And so, when he went to Algiers, he had a then she can easily cope long-term plan: weaken the right-wingers by getting them to fight among with me; to some extent, she mistakes me for a more themselves, and work toward Algerian independence. His short-term goal universal creature who had to be to defuse the tension and buy himself some time. He would not dwells in her love. Then, lie to the colonials by saying he supported their cause—that would cause too, in a letter one can more readily have free rein; trouble back home. Instead he would beguile them with seductive oratory, in a letter I can throw intoxicate them with words. His famous "I have understood you" could myself at her feet in superb easily have meant, "I understand what a danger you represent." But a jubi-fashion, etc. — something lant crowd expecting his support read it the way they wanted. To keep that would easily seem like nonsense if I did it in them at a fever pitch, de Gaulle made emotional references—to the French person, and the illusion Resistance during World War II, for example, and to the need for "disci-would be lost. . . . • On pline," a word with great appeal to right-wingers. He filled their ears with the whole, letters are and will continue to be a promises—a new government, a glorious future. He got them to chant, priceless means of making creating an emotional bond. He spoke with dramatic pitch and quivering an impression on a young emotion. His words created a kind of delirium. girl; the dead letter of writing often has much De Gaulle was not trying to express his feelings or speak the truth; he more influence than the was trying to produce an effect. This is the key to seductive oratory. living word. A letter is a Whether you are talking to a single individual or to a crowd, try a little ex-secretive communication; one is master of the periment: rein in your desire to speak your mind. Before you open your situation, feels no pressure mouth, ask yourself a question: what can I say that will have the most from anyone's actual pleasant effect on my listeners? Often this entails flattering their egos, presence, and I do believe a assuaging their insecurities, giving them vague hopes for the future, sympa-young girl would prefer to be alone with her ideal. thizing with their travails ("I have understood you"). Start off with some- — S Ø R E N KIERKEGAARD, thing pleasant and everything to come will be easy: people's defenses will THE SEDUCER'S DIARY, go down. They will grow amenable, open to suggestion. Think of your TRANSLATED BY HOWARD V.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  She also had a peasant's earthy common sense. She had surely heard descriptions of Charles on the road to Chinon; once at court, she could Amongst the surplus population living on the margin of society [in the Middle Ages] there was always a strong tendency to take as leader a layman, or maybe an apostate friar or monk, who imposed himself not simply as a holy man but as a prophet or even as a living god. On the strength of inspirations or revelations for which he claimed divine origin this leader would decree for his followers a communal mission of vast dimensions and world-shaking importance. The conviction of having such a mission, of being divinely appointed to carry out a prodigious task, provided the disoriented and the frustrated with new bearings and new hope. It gave them not simply a place in the world but a unique and resplendent place. A fraternity of this kind felt itself an elite, set infinitely apart from and above ordinary mortals, sharing also in his miraculous powers. —NORMAN COHN, THE PURSUIT OF THE MILLENNIUM 104 • The Art of Seduction have sensed the trick he was playing on her, and could have confidently picked out his pampered face in the crowd. The following year, her visions abandoned her, and her confidence as well—she made many mistakes, leading to her capture by the English. She was indeed human. We may no longer believe in miracles, but anything that hints at strange, unworldly, even supernatural powers will create charisma. The psy- chology is the same: you have visions of the future, and of the wondrous things you can accomplish. Describe these things in great detail, with an air of authority, and suddenly you stand out. And if your prophecy—of pros- perity, say—is just what people want to hear, they are likely to fall under your spell and to see later events as a confirmation of your predictions. Ex- hibit remarkable confidence and people will think your confidence comes from real knowledge. You will create a self-fulfilling prophecy: people's be- lief in you will translate into actions that help realize your visions. Any hint of success will make them see miracles, uncanny powers, the glow of charisma. The authentic animal. One day in 1905, the St. Petersburg salon of Countess Ignatiev was unusually full. Politicians, society ladies, and courtiers had all arrived early to await the remarkable guest of honor: Grigori Efi- movich Rasputin, a forty-year-old Siberian monk who had made a name for himself throughout Russia as a healer, perhaps a saint. When Rasputin arrived, few could disguise their disappointment: his face was ugly, his hair was stringy, he was gangly and awkward.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Even though you construct your emotional experiences, they can still bowl you over in the moment. However, you can take steps now to influence your future emotional experiences, to sculpt who you will be tomorrow. I don’t mean that in some vague, pseudo-spiritual, let’s-illuminate-your-cosmic-soul kind of way, but in a very real, predicting-brain way. Everything you’ve read so far about interoception, affect, body budgets, prediction, prediction error, concepts, and social reality has broad and deep practical implications for who you are and how you live your life. That’s our theme as we enter the final part of this book, which begins here with emotional well-being and then continues to health (chapter 10), the law (chapter 11), and non-human animals (chapter 12). For the remainder of the book, we’ll apply our new view of human nature, especially the porous boundary between the physical and the social, to architect a recipe for living. The major ingredients in that recipe are your body budget and your concepts. If you maintain a balanced body budget, you’ll feel better in general, so that’s where we’ll start. And if you develop a rich set of concepts, you’ll have a toolbox for a meaningful life. ... Typical self-help books focus on your mind. If you think differently, they say, you will feel differently. You can regulate your emotions if you try hard enough. These books, however, don’t give much consideration to your body. If there’s one thing that (I hope) you’ve learned from the past five chapters, it’s that your body and your mind are deeply interconnected. Interoception drives your actions. Your culture wires your brain. 1 The most basic thing you can do to master your emotions, in fact, is to keep your body budget in good shape. Remember, your interoceptive network labors day and night, issuing predictions to maintain a healthy budget, and this process is the origin of your affective feelings (pleasantness, unpleasantness, arousal, and calmness). If you want to feel good, then your brain’s predictions about your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, temperature, hormones, metabolism, and so on, must be calibrated to your body’s actual needs. If they aren’t, and your body budget gets out of whack, then you’re going to feel crappy no matter what self-help tips you follow. It’s just a matter of which flavor of crap. Modern culture, unfortunately, is engineered to screw up your body budget. Many of the products sold in supermarkets and chain restaurants are pseudo- food loaded with budget-warping refined sugar and bad fats. Schools and jobs require you to wake early and go to sleep late, leaving over 40 percent of Americans between the ages of thirteen and sixty-four regularly sleep-deprived, a condition that can lead to chronic misbudgeting and possibly depression and other mental illnesses.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  48 Your choice of words has a huge impact on this process, as those words shape other people’s predictions. Parents who ask a child, “Are you upset?” instead of the more general question, “How are you feeling?” are influencing the answer, co-constructing emotion and honing the child’s concepts toward being upset. Doctors who ask a patient, “Are you feeling depressed?” likewise make a positive response more likely than if they’d said, “Tell me how you’ve been.” These are leading questions, the same sort that attorneys utilize (and object to) with witnesses on the stand. In everyday life, as in the courtroom, you need to be mindful of influencing people’s predictions by your words. Likewise, if you want someone else to know what you’re feeling, you need to transmit clear cues for the other person to predict effectively and for synchrony to occur. In the classical view of emotion, the responsibility is all on the perceiver’s end because emotions are supposedly displayed universally. In a construction mindset, you also bear the responsibility to be a good sender. 49 ... Suppose you hadn’t read this book, and someone said to you, “Pssst! Wanna be the master of your emotions? Then eat less junk food and learn lots of new words.” I admit, it sounds unintuitive. But healthful eating leads to a body budget that is easier to balance and to more calibrated interoceptive predictions, and new words seed new concepts that are a basis for constructing emotional experiences and perceptions. Many things that seem unrelated to emotion actually have a profound impact on how you feel, because of the porous boundary between the social and the physical. You are a remarkable animal who can create purely mental concepts that influence the state of your body. The social and the physical are intimately linked via your body and your brain, and your ability to move effectively between social and physical depends on a set of skills that you can learn. So grow your emotion concepts. Cultivate opportunities for your brain to wire itself to the realities of your social world. If you feel unpleasant in the moment, then deconstruct or recategorize your experiences. And realize that your perceptions of others are just guesses and not facts. Some of these new skills are supremely difficult to cultivate. It’s one thing for a scientist like me to tell you, “That’s how the brain works.” It’s another thing entirely to up-end your whole lifestyle to take advantage of the science.