Humiliation

Passages

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

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• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  huge losses, but he could not. He had literally run out of money. Not only did he agree to put a stop to his campaign, but he had to sell to Rockefeller the lion’s share of his refineries, storage tanks, steamships, and pipelines. Scott would never recover from this humiliating and rather sudden defeat: a year later he suffered a stroke, and within a few years he died at the age of fifty-eight. — Although it appeared that Rockefeller’s control of the oil business was now complete, a businessman and engineer named Byron Benson had an idea about how to poke a hole in his expanding empire. Rockefeller could call the shots with his immense resources, but he could not compete with technological progress. What gave Rockefeller an advantage was that pipelines were relatively short, at most thirty miles long. He could dominate by creating pipeline networks all across Pennsylvania and by controlling many of the railroads operating between the refineries and the pipelines. Even if someone had an independent pipeline, at some point he would depend on Standard Oil to transport the oil the rest of the way. What if, however, Benson could design something new—one long, continuous pipeline that would run from the oil fields of western Pennsylvania to the Eastern Seaboard? In that way he could deliver oil directly to the few independent East Coast refineries that remained and guarantee low prices for them, bypassing Rockefeller’s network. This would halt Rockefeller’s momentum, and with more of these long-range pipelines, rivals to Standard Oil could begin to compete on fairer terms. It would not be easy. The pipeline would require some novel engineering to make the oil flow upward over the hills and mountains that would inevitably be in the way, but Benson had been working on this. And because Rockefeller had made so many enemies and so many feared his growing monopoly, Benson was able to raise very large sums of money from investors, more than enough to cover the high cost of building such a pipeline. Benson named his enterprise the Tidewater Pipeline Company, and in 1878 construction began. But almost immediately he had to deal with an insidious campaign to halt the work on the pipeline. Benson depended on railroad tank cars to transport the heavy materials to the construction site, but it seemed that over the years Rockefeller had bought up the lion’s share of such cars and had virtually cornered the market. Wherever he turned to find tank cars, Benson ran into Standard Oil subsidiaries that controlled them. Benson had to find other means of moving the material, and this added to his costs and wasted valuable time. All of this only made him more determined to finish the job and outwit Rockefeller. This, however, was only the beginning. Benson needed to make his route to the sea as easy as possible, to save money, and that would mean running it through Maryland. But now word reached him

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In the end, they would have to take the castle from her by force, and she was more than prepared to die in defense of it, sword in hand. As she listened to Borgia address her, it was clear he had come to flatter and flirt—everyone knew his reputation as a devilish seducer, and many in Italy thought Caterina had rather loose morals. She listened and smiled, occasionally reminding him of her past deeds and her reputation as a Sforza—if he wanted her to surrender, he would have to do better. He persisted in his courtship and asked to parley with her personally. She appeared to finally succumb to his charm; she was a woman, after all. She ordered the drawbridge to be lowered and started walking toward him. He continued to press his case, and she gave him certain looks and smiles that indicated she was falling under his spell. Now only inches away, he reached for her arm, and she playfully withdrew it. They should discuss matters in the castle, she said with a coy expression, and began to walk back, inviting him to follow. As he stepped onto the drawbridge to catch up with her, it began to rise, and he leaped back to the other side just in time. Enraged and embarrassed by the trick she had tried to play, he swore revenge. During the next few days he unleashed a torrent of cannon fire at the castle walls, finally opening a breach. Borgia’s troops flooded in, led by the more experienced French. It was now hand-to-hand combat, and at the front of her remaining troops was Caterina. The head of the French troops, Yves d’Allegre, stared at her in amazement as the beautiful countess—her ornamented cuirass over her dress—charged at his men from the front line, handling her sword deftly, without a trace of fear. She and her men were about to withdraw further into the castle, hoping to prolong the battle for days, as she had planned, when one of her own soldiers grabbed her from behind and, his sword at her throat, marched her over to the other side. Borgia had put a price on her head, and the soldier had betrayed her for the reward. The siege was over, and Borgia himself took possession of his great prize. That night he raped her and kept her confined in his rooms, trying to make it seem to the world that the infamous warrior countess had willingly succumbed to his charms. Even under duress she refused to sign away her domain, and so she was brought to Rome and soon thrown into the dreaded prison at Castel Sant’Angelo.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Picard looks up. He is unshaven, unkempt, covered in a glaze of sweat. His face is a rapidly shifting picture of bafflement and denial, of confusion and agony. “How many? How many lights?” Madred repeats. Off-screen, a door opens, and Madred’s face gets a little frantic. “This is your last chance. The guards are coming. Don’t be a stubborn fool. How many?” It is the first time he’s seemed weak; exhibited a real need. Something in Picard’s face shatters. He screams: “There—are—four—lights!” Every time I watch this climax, something inside me grinds a little, like the unglazed edges of a broken mug being shoved together. It is not a triumphant scream. It is broken, humiliating. It cracks like a boy’s. The final word, lights, is practically oatmeal in his mouth. Later, safe on the Enterprise, Picard talks with Counselor Troi about his experience. “What I didn’t put in the report,” he tells her, “was that, at the end, he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights when, in fact, there were only four.” “You didn’t say it?” Troi asks. “No. No,” he says. “But I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.” His gaze rests, lost, in the middle distance. Dream House as Cosmic HorrorEvil is a powerful word. You use it once, and it tastes bad: metallic, false. But what other word can you use for a person who makes you feel so powerless? Lots of people in the world have made you feel powerless. Run-of-the-mill bullies; both of your parents, and most adults, when you were a child; unflinching bureaucrats at the DMV, the post office. A doctor who didn’t believe you were sick, approximately two minutes before you projectile vomited against the wall. A cadre of nurses who pried your arms away from your body to take your blood when they thought you had cancer. (You didn’t have cancer, but they never did figure out why you spent so much of your childhood cramping with agony.) But did any of them seem to enjoy it? Did any of them make you feel complicit in your own suffering? You’ve outgrown parents and bullies. You’ve railed against the everyday tyrants to friends; you chastised the doctor while dropping a long line of sour saliva down to the floor; you fought those nurses as hard as if they were trying to murder you.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  evening, the fire spread quickly from ship to ship. The Spanish galleons tried to regroup farther out to sea, but their formation was loose and scattered, and the fast English ships fired at them like ducks in the water. As the winds changed again, the Spanish were forced to retreat northward, into the stormiest parts of the North Sea. Trying to round England and retreat to Spain, they lost most of their ships and over twenty thousand Spanish soldiers died. The English had lost no ships and had only around a hundred casualties. It was one of the most lopsided victories in military history. For Philip, it was the most humiliating moment in his life. He retired into his palace, where he holed himself up for months contemplating the disaster. The armada had left Spain utterly bankrupt, and in the years to come England would prosper while Spain became the second-rate power. Somehow Elizabeth had outwitted him. To the other leaders in Europe who hated her, she now seemed invincible and a ruler to be feared. Pope Sixtus V, who had excommunicated her and had given his blessing to the armada, now exclaimed, “Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all!” — Now in England there arose a veritable cult around the Virgin Queen. She was now referred to as “Her Sacred Majesty.” To catch a glimpse of her riding through London or passing on her barge on the Thames seemed like a religious experience. One group, however, proved less susceptible to this powerful aura—the new generation of young men now filling the royal court. To them, the queen was showing her age. They respected her accomplishments, but they saw her more as a domineering mother figure. England was a rising power. These young men yearned to make a name for themselves on the battlefield and so earn public acclaim. Yet Elizabeth continually thwarted this desire. She refused to finance a large-scale campaign to finish off Philip, or to aid the French in their fight against the Spanish. They saw her as tired and felt it was time for their spirited, masculine generation to lead England. And the young man who came to epitomize this new spirit was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Born in 1566, Essex was handsome and high-strung. He knew the queen had a weakness for young men, and he quickly charmed her, becoming her new favorite. He genuinely liked and admired her, but at the same time he resented the power she possessed over his fate. He began to test her: he asked for favors, mostly money. She gave these to him. She seemed to enjoy spoiling him. And as the relationship progressed, Essex began to see her as a woman he could manipulate. He started to criticize her rather boldly in front of

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  But as it became clear what he was up to, Rockefeller’s response was totally unexpected and rather shocking: Standard Oil shut down almost all its Pennsylvania refineries, giving Scott’s pipelines and railroads virtually no oil to ship. If they managed to get their hands on some oil, Rockefeller rigorously undersold them to any refineries outside his system, and he seemed to not care how low the price would go. He also made it hard for Scott to get his hands on the oil the company needed to lubricate train engines and wheels. Pennsylvania Railroad had overextended itself in this campaign and was losing money at a rapid rate, but Rockefeller had to be losing just as much. He seemed to be aiming for mutual suicide. Scott was in too deep to back out of this war, and so he was forced to cut costs by firing hundreds of railroad workers and reducing wages for those who remained. Scott’s workers retaliated with a general railroad strike that quickly turned violent and bloody, as workers spread throughout the state destroying thousands of Pennsylvania Railroad freight cars. Scott retaliated brutally, but the strike persisted and the shareholders in the Pennsylvania Railroad were growing quite nervous. All the while, Rockefeller seemed unperturbed and continued with his pressure campaign, as if he had nothing to lose. Scott had had enough. Somehow Rockefeller could absorb these huge losses, but he could not. He had literally run out of money. Not only did he agree to put a stop to his campaign, but he had to sell to Rockefeller the lion’s share of his refineries, storage tanks, steamships, and pipelines. Scott would never recover from this humiliating and rather sudden defeat: a year later he suffered a stroke, and within a few years he died at the age of fifty-eight. — Although it appeared that Rockefeller’s control of the oil business was now complete, a businessman and engineer named Byron Benson had an idea about how to poke a hole in his expanding empire. Rockefeller could call the shots with his immense resources, but he could not compete with technological progress. What gave Rockefeller an advantage was that pipelines were relatively short, at most thirty miles long. He could dominate by creating pipeline networks all across Pennsylvania and by controlling many of the railroads operating between the refineries and the pipelines. Even if someone had an independent pipeline, at some point he would depend on Standard Oil to transport the oil the rest of the way. What if, however, Benson could design something new—one long, continuous pipeline that would run from the oil fields of western Pennsylvania to the Eastern Seaboard? In that way he could deliver oil directly to the few independent East Coast refineries that remained and guarantee low prices for them, bypassing Rockefeller’s network.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  “In spite of all you have done to me,” Picard says with clarity, “I find you a pitiable man.” Madred’s cordial attitude vanishes. “What are the Federation’s defense plans for Minos Korva?” he shouts. “There are four lights!” Picard says. Gul Madred turns on the device, and Picard begins writhing. “How many do you see now?” Picard screams, weeps, sings. On the bridge of Avignon , we’re all dancing , we’re all dancing . Back on the Enterprise , the crew has negotiated Picard’s release. In the final scene between Picard and Madred, Picard grabs the device that controls the pain, smashes it against a table. Madred calmly tells him it doesn’t matter; he has many more. “Still,” Picard says, “it felt good.” “Enjoy your good feelings while you can. There may not be many more of them.” Madred goes on to explain that a battle has commenced, and the Enterprise is “burning in space.” Everyone will assume you’ve died with them, Madred says, and so you will stay here forever. “You do, however, have a choice. You can live out your life in misery, held here, subject to my whims. Or you can live in comfort with good food and warm clothing, women as you desire them, allowed to pursue your study of philosophy and history. I would enjoy debating with you; you have a keen mind. It’s up to you. A life of ease, of reflection and intellectual challenge. Or this.” “What must I do?” Picard says. “Nothing, really,” Madred says. He glances upward, like he’s looking for rain before stepping out from under an awning. “Tell me … how many lights do you see?” Picard looks up. He is unshaven, unkempt, covered in a glaze of sweat. His face is a rapidly shifting picture of bafflement and denial, of confusion and agony. “How many? How many lights?” Madred repeats. Off-screen, a door opens, and Madred’s face gets a little frantic. “This is your last chance. The guards are coming. Don’t be a stubborn fool. How many?” It is the first time he’s seemed weak; exhibited a real need. Something in Picard’s face shatters. He screams: “There—are—four—lights!” Every time I watch this climax, something inside me grinds a little, like the unglazed edges of a broken mug being shoved together. It is not a triumphant scream. It is broken, humiliating. It cracks like a boy’s. The final word, lights , is practically oatmeal in his mouth. Later, safe on the Enterprise , Picard talks with Counselor Troi about his experience. “What I didn’t put in the report,” he tells her, “was that, at the end, he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights when, in fact, there were only four.” “You didn’t say it?” Troi asks. “No. No,” he says. “But I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  forever. “You do, however, have a choice. You can live out your life in misery, held here, subject to my whims. Or you can live in comfort with good food and warm clothing, women as you desire them, allowed to pursue your study of philosophy and history. I would enjoy debating with you; you have a keen mind. It’s up to you. A life of ease, of reflection and intellectual challenge. Or this.” “What must I do?” Picard says. “Nothing, really,” Madred says. He glances upward, like he’s looking for rain before stepping out from under an awning. “Tell me ... how many lights do you see?” Picard looks up. He is unshaven, unkempt, covered in a glaze of sweat. His face is a rapidly shifting picture of bafflement and denial, of confusion and agony. “How many? How many lights?” Madred repeats. Off-screen, a door opens, and Madred’s face gets a little frantic. “This is your last chance. The guards are coming. Don’t be a stubborn fool. How many?” It is the first time he’s seemed weak; exhibited a real need. Something in Picard’s face shatters. He screams: “There—are—four—lights!” Every time I watch this climax, something inside me grinds a little, like the unglazed edges of a broken mug being shoved together. It is not a triumphant scream. It is broken, humiliating. It cracks like a boy’s. The final word, lights, is practically oatmeal in his mouth. Later, safe on the Enterprise, Picard talks with Counselor Troi about his experience. “What I didn’t put in the report,” he tells her, “was that, at the end, he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights when, in fact, there were only four.” “You didn’t say it?” Troi asks. “No. No,” he says. “But I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.” His gaze rests, lost, in the middle distance.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  130 Lecture 30: Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground of the horror and misery of her life. She unexpectedly takes him up on his offer to rescue her, humiliates him by catching him in a squalid and absurd argument with his servant, and winds up comforting him. Triply humiliated, he takes her sexually in brutal fashion and then pays her for her services. She leaves his À at, leaving the money behind. The satire is directed against a vague Romantic humanitarianism which allows people to feel superior by dreaming Faustian dreams of helping humanity but always in the abstract. The Underground Man spends much of his time in his mouse hole reading Romantic literature and dreaming Quixotic or Bovary-like dreams of saving the world. Confronted with a situation in which he might actually be able to help someone (since she has believed the Romantic clichés he has given to her) he recognizes that their roles are reversed: she has become the Romantic heroine and he the one who needs saving. He feels some remorse at what he’s done but decides that suffering will be good for her. At the end of the novel, the Underground Man returns to his solitude. Liza’s capacity for selÀ ess love will be the alternative to the egocentric and self-destructive efforts of the Underground Man in future Dostoevsky novels. It cannot, however, save the Underground Man in this one. Notes from Underground is important in three major ways. First, it suggests the direction of Dostoevsky’s ¿ ction over the next two decades. The Underground Man and Liza suggest characters in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov . Second, the novel seems prophetic of the increase in violence and carnage in contemporary cities. We live in a world much closer to the ideals of a utopia than Dostoevsky did. Some of this is reÀ ected in the Underground Man’s desire to deliberately violate the laws of enlightened self-interest, just to prove that he is still alive and human. Also, in terms of the course, Dostoevsky has taught us another way to tell a story: inside-out and backwards, using a persona that we have to take ironically. Ŷ If we don’t like the Underground Man, I don’t think that Dostoevsky would be shocked. … But we do need to pay attention to what he says.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Staw pointed to the revelation from the Pentagon Papers, a secret Department of Defense history of that war published over government objection by The New York Times and The Washington Post, that Undersecretary of State George Ball warned LBJ in 1965 of the inevitable entrapment in the conflict, “Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well-nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be so great that we cannot—without national humiliation— stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives—even after we have paid terrible costs.” Johnson, of course, did not follow the warning, and that’s exactly what happened. The Vietnam War cost the United States nearly $200 billion (which, adjusted for inflation, is about $1 trillion). It killed 58,000 American soldiers and injured another 300,000. It ended Lyndon Johnson’s political career, costing him a chance at a second term. The war created a generational distrust in government and authority in general. This problem with escalation of commitment to unwinnable wars is a familiar refrain. Once the United States got into Afghanistan, it took twenty years to get out, despite three different presidents promising to do so. After two decades of involvement and a cost of $2 trillion, the Taliban regained control only days from the time American troops withdrew, revealing the fact that this was a war the United States was never really winning. Staw’s central insight about escalation of commitment is that the phenomenon is not confined to matters like the Vietnam War, a complex geopolitical conflict with national pride wrapped up in it. His laboratory and field experiments show that whether it is on the level of an individual, an organization, or a governmental entity, when we’re getting bad news, when we are getting strong signals that we’re losing—signals that others plainly see—we don’t merely refuse to quit. We will double and triple down, making additional decisions to commit more time and money (and other resources) toward the losing cause, and we will strengthen our belief that we are on the right path. Barry Staw might have only realized it later, but his body of work on escalation of commitment helps us understand how the grit that helped Harold Staw build a business empire could be his undoing, how his father could ignore

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Over the course of therapy, I am repeatedly struck by the force of Joni’s aversion to any expression of need. There’s something extreme about how humiliated and subjugated the need for care leaves her feeling, and I can see how her fantasies of cowboys tap right into this core emotional issue. In her colorful erotic tales, she’s able to be at the mercy of others with none of the debilitating powerlessness she dreads. This particular script (and indeed each of her other fantasies) allows her to circumvent the dangers of dependence: the helplessness, the fury, the humiliations. Moreover—and this is important—she is desired for the very qualities that she most loathes about herself in reality. In the refuge of her mind she transforms passivity into erotic delight; power becomes an expression of care, and risk is reunited with safety. Joni is overcome by the consequences of dependence on all fronts: her own neediness is abject, and the emotional needs of others are likewise overwhelming. She resolves this by peopling her fantasies with caricatures of machismo. These are forceful men who have no weaknesses and need no care. These men don’t ask; they take. Joni is thus relieved of the social imperative of female caretaking, and her own carefree sexual greed is liberated. Behind the Cowboy’s Mask Erotic fantasies have an uncanny ability to resolve more than one issue at a time. While Joni’s fantasies certainly speak to her individual conflicts, they also answer a cultural taboo against women’s sexuality in general. Massive investments have been made throughout history to ensure that female sexual desire is kept in check. To their credit, women have consistently risen to the challenge of overcoming this taboo. With every new injunction, their imagination has grown more resistant. Consciously, Joni identifies with the women in her stories. But she also created the men, and she has every detail in place. In effect, she plays all the parts. She knows what it means to be a sexual predator: she knows about lust and ruthlessness. Vicariously, through her cowboys, she gets to feel aggression, selfishness, and power—all attributes so wrapped up with masculinity in her mind that they can be expressed only through male characters. For many women, simulations of forced seduction provide a safe outlet for sexual aggression. Female sexual aggression so contradicts our cultural notions of femininity that we can unleash it only in these imaginary transpositions. Let him, the invented assailant, express the aggression so many women are reluctant to express themselves. The widespread sexual abuse of women is a chilling backdrop to the now pedestrian rape fantasy, but in these imaginary plots the assault is not real. Few women incorporate a black eye or a split lip into their erotic reveries. The sex therapist Jack Morin makes the point that fantasy rapists are notably nonviolent. In fantasy, violence is subverted by gentleness. Through the gentle man, women can safely experience the joys of “healthy dominance and powerful surrender.” Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Unwilling to confess to any crimes, Li was the first to be paraded through school with the dunce cap and board around his neck. Along the way some students poured a bucket of poster paste over his head. Jianhua followed the parade from a distance, trying to repress his uneasiness at the humiliation of his teacher. Led by Little Bawang, the students imposed the same fate on more teachers, the dunce caps becoming unbearably tall and the boards heavier. Imitating their revolutionary brothers and sisters in Beijing, the students initiated “struggle meetings” in which they forced certain teachers into the jet-plane position—a student standing on either side, pushing teachers to their knees, pulling their hair back with a jerk, then holding their arms out and back, like the wings of a jet plane. It was a most painful position, but it seemed to work, as after an hour or two of this, with students jeering at them, many teachers began to confess. The students were right in their suspicions—the school had been teeming with revisionists, right under their noses! Soon the students’ attention turned to the vice principal, Lin Sheng, who they discovered was the son of a notorious landlord. He was the third-highest official at school, which made this bit of news all the more salacious. Jianhua had been sent to his office once for misbehavior, and Sheng had been quite lenient with him, which he had appreciated at the time. The students locked Lin Sheng in a room, where he was to stay between the struggle meetings, but one morning Jianhua, serving as the guard on duty, opened the room to discover the vice principal had hung himself. Once again Jianhua struggled to repress his discomfort, but he had to admit the suicide made it seem as if Lin Sheng was indeed guilty of something. One day, in the midst of all this, Jianhua ran into Fangpu, who was bursting with excitement. Since his forced public apology over his poster attacking Ding, he had been laying low. He had spent his time devouring the writings of Mao and Marx and plotting his next move. Word had come from Beijing that the work teams were to be withdrawn from all schools. Students were to form their own committee, choose a school official to be its head, and run the school itself through the committee. Fangpu planned on becoming the student leader of the committee. And he was going to wage open revolution against Secretary Ding. Jianhua could only admire his bravery and persistence.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  It is not pretty. I remember walking up to a girl, whose name I can recall with clarity twenty-four years later, and asking her if she would like to dance with me. Those of you who have walked this road know the determination and fortitude it takes to leave the boys’ side, walk across the lunchroom-turned-dance-floor to the girls’ side, and make your request. It takes all that a young man has in him not to buckle under the enormity of the pressure. But I did it. I made it to the other side and asked her if she would like to dance with me. Her response? She burst into tears and ran into the girls’ bathroom, where she spent the rest of the evening. Strange the things we remember, isn’t it? But perhaps there’s a reason certain stories stay with us years later. It’s not just that they’re true in that they actually happened, but they’re true in the sense that they point to something else, to larger truths about how life is. When I asked this girl to dance, I gave her the choice of saying yes or no. I gave her options. If she had said yes, all sorts of new possibilities would have opened up, namely my getting to dance with her. And then maybe another dance. And then maybe a phone call the next week. Perhaps passing some notes in class. Whatever it is that twelve-year-olds do in a “relationship.” But if she said no, then things weren’t going to progress at all. And this was her decision, not mine. By extending myself to her in the invitation to dance, I took a great risk. I risked that she would say no and I would be left standing there on the girls’ side of the cafeteria humiliated. Which is what happened. I had to live with her decision. I was at the mercy of her choice. I had given her the power in the relationship, at least what there was of a relationship. When you make a move toward a person, when you extend yourself to them, when you invite them to do something, when you initiate conversation, you give them power. Power to say yes or no. Power to decide. This is true from junior high dances to marriage proposals to inviting someone for coffee. Everyone who has ever received a no knows exactly what I’m talking about. The Invitation to Risk Anytime we move toward another in any way, we are taking a risk. A risk that she may say no. Our gesture may not get returned. Our invitation may be rejected. Our love may not be reciprocated.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  He had gone insane, I could see that, and it seemed to me that my only chance was to go insane too. Still rolling, we hit the boggy swale at the foot of the bank. He got on top of me, I got on top of him, he got back on top of me. My news bag had armored me well when I was on my feet but now it was heavy with mud and twisted around my shoulders. I couldn’t get off a good swing. All I could do was hold on to Arthur and try to keep him from getting one off at me. He struggled, then abruptly collapsed on top of me. He was panting for breath. His weight pressed me into the mud. I gathered myself and bucked him off. It took everything I had. We lay next to each other, gasping strenuously. Pepper tugged at my pant leg and growled. Arthur stirred. He got to his feet and started up the bank. I followed him, thinking it was all over, but when he got to the top he turned and said, “Take it back.” The other boys were watching me. I shook my head. Arthur pushed me and I began sliding down the bank. “Take it back,” he yelled. Pepper followed me in my descent, yapping and lunging. There hadn’t been a moment since the fight began when Pepper wasn’t worrying me in some way, if only to bark and bounce around me, and finally it was this more than anything else that made me lose heart. It wounded my spirit to have a dog against me. I liked dogs. I liked dogs more than I liked people, and I expected them to like me back. I started up the bank again, Pepper still at my heels. “Take it back,” Arthur said. “Okay,” I said. “Say it.” “Okay . I take it back.” “No. Say, ‘You’re not a sissy.’” I looked up at him and the other two boys. There was pleasure and scorn on their faces, but not on his. He wore, instead, an expression of such earnestness that it seemed impossible to refuse him what he asked. I said, “You’re not a sissy.” He called Pepper and turned away. When I got to the top he was walking toward home. The other two boys were excited, restless, twitching with the blows they’d imagined striking. They wanted to talk about the fight, but I had lost interest in it. My clothes were caked with mud. My news bag, full of mud and ruined papers, pulled down on me. My ear hurt. I trudged homeward. Pearl was sitting on the steps, eating something. She looked me over as I walked up. “You’re in Dutch,” she said. MY MOTHER HAD me undress in the utility room and take a shower. Then she sat me down in the kitchen and dabbed iodine on some scratches I’d picked up, probably from rolling around on the road.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  In his letters, elegance of tone had given way to simple friendliness. I carried the letters around with me and read them with elation. DWIGHT CAME INTO the kitchen one afternoon while Pearl and I were eating some hot dogs I’d cooked up. He noticed a jar of French’s mustard in the garbage pail and fished it out. “Who threw this away?” he asked. I told him I had. “Why did you throw it away?” “Because it was empty.” “Because it was empty? Does this look empty to you?” He held the bottle close to my face. There were a few streaks of mustard congealed under the neck and in the grooves at the bottom. Pearl said, “It looks empty to me.” “I didn’t ask you,” Dwight told her. “Well, it does,” she said. I said that it looked empty to me, too. “Look again,” he said, and pushed the open neck of the jar against my eye. When I jerked away he grabbed me by the hair and shoved my face back down toward the jar. “Does this look empty to you?” I didn’t answer. “Dad,” Pearl said. He asked me again if the jar looked empty. It was hurting my eye, so I said no, it didn’t look empty. He let go of me. “Clean it out,” he said. He handed me the jar. I picked up a knife and began scraping at the mustard while he watched. After a time he sat down across the table. The streaks were hard to get at, especially under the neck where the knife wouldn’t go. Dwight grew impatient. He said, “You’re going to have to do better than that if you think you’re ever going to be an engineer.” Back in the days when Skipper talked of going to engineering school I had insincerely declared the same ambition, hoping to pick up some points by echoing his sober program. The more I said it the more possible it seemed. I had no interest in the specifics of the profession, and no aptitude, but my father was an engineer and I liked the sound of the word. I got out as much of the mustard as I could. It made a brown and yellow smudge where I’d scraped it off on the edge of my plate. “All right,” Dwight said. “Now—was it empty?” “Yes,” I said. He leaned across the table and slapped my face. He didn’t swing hard but the slap was loud. Pearl started yelling at him, and while he was yelling back I got up and left the house. I wandered around feeling sorry for myself. Then I decided to buy a Coke from the machine on the loading ramp of the main warehouse. There was also a phone booth on the ramp, and as I drank the Coke I formed the idea of calling my brother. I didn’t know how to do it, but the operator was amused by my helplessness and steered me through.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  338The History of Christianity II õBut getting rid of the missionaries was not sufficient to squelch Chinese Christianity. The communists saw that to consolidate their hold on this vast country, they needed to win the loyalty, or at least gain great inf luence over, native clergy. From the communist perspective, if they couldn’t extinguish Christianity, then the next best thing would be to herd as many believers as possible into a church controlled entirely by the government. õIn 1951, the party founded a new organization that was eventually called the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. They later set up a different organization to try to control the country’s Catholics, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION õThe ugliest period in modern Chinese history was the Cultural Revolution. Mao had become convinced that capitalists, counterrevolutionaries, intellectuals with Western ideas, and various other “enemies of the people” were lurking all around. õIn 1966, he called for loyal communists to purge these poisons from the country. Young people in particular raced to take up this call— they formed groups of vigilantes called Red Guards. They particularly preyed on professors and intellectuals, often dragging them out of their homes into the street for a “struggle session” that usually turned into torture and public humiliation. õIn 1968 Mao decided the Red Guards had too much power and dismantled the movement. He sent millions of bourgeois intellectuals to labor camps and farms, where the wholesome life of the revolutionary peasant was supposed to purify their minds. õDuring the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, the government banned all religion—even the Three-Self Movement. The journalist David Aikman tracked down a number of Christian survivors of these years and recorded their stories in a book called 339Lecture 34—Chinese Christianity: Missionaries to Mao Jesus in Beijing. He writes about one Christian in Henan province named Zhang Rongliang, who in 1974 was denounced by elders in his own church. õZhang actually got along with the local communist officials, and at first they tried to just talk him into renouncing Christianity so they could let him go free. But he wouldn’t do it. Officials put his trial, or struggle, on closed-circuit television and broadcast it into local schools as a warning to children. The police cuffed him, beat him with batons, charged him with “counterrevolution under the guise of religion,” and shipped him off to a labor camp.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  He felt certain the queen and several ministers were somehow plotting his downfall. He had to test her again—he asked for reinforcements. The queen agreed, but she ordered him to finally find and fight Tyrone. Suddenly the pressure was too much, and he blamed the queen and her envious courtiers for trying to rush him. He felt humiliated by the position he was in, and by the end of the summer he had decided upon a plan that would put an end once and for all to his misery—he would secretly negotiate a truce with Tyrone, then return to England and march on London with his troops. He would force the queen to get rid of his enemies within the court and secure his position as her lead councillor. He would be forceful but respectful of her position; seeing him in person and with his troops, the queen would certainly relent. After a swift march through England, he suddenly showed up one morning in her bedchamber, his uniform caked in mud. The queen, caught by surprise and not knowing if he had come to arrest her and launch a coup, retained her composure. She offered him her hand to kiss and told him they would talk of Ireland later that day. Her calmness discomfited him; it was not what he had expected. She possessed a strange kind of power over him. Somehow the tables had been turned, and now he agreed to postpone their talk to the afternoon. Within hours, he found himself taken by her soldiers and placed under house arrest. Counting on his influence over the queen and how often she had forgiven him, he wrote her letter after letter, apologizing for his actions. She did not respond. This had never happened before, and it frightened him. Finally, in August of 1600, she freed him. Grateful for this and plotting his comeback, he asked just one favor—to restore to him the monopoly he had possessed over the sale of sweet wines in England; he was hopelessly in debt and this was his principal source of income. Much to his chagrin, she refused to honor his request. She was playing some game, trying to teach him a lesson or tame him, but that would never happen. She had pushed him too far. He retired to his house in London and gathered around him all of the disgruntled noblemen in England. Together he would lead them on a march to the queen’s residence and take over the country. He predicted that thousands of Englishmen, who still adored him, would rally to his cause and swell the ranks of his troops. In early February 1601, he finally put his plan into action. To his utter dismay, Londoners stayed in their houses and ignored him. Sensing the foolhardiness of the venture, his fellow soldiers quickly deserted.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I was just a couple of points away from winning the whole top shelf when Smoke pushed the wallet back to me. “You’re a little short, Jackson.” It was empty. I knew the Ballard boys didn’t have any money. Arthur was watching me from the small crowd that had gathered around the booth, but I knew he didn’t have any money either. I asked Smoke if I could have one last deal. “Sorry, Jack. No pay, no play.” “Just one? Please?” His eyes went past me. He smiled at the the kids watching. “You saw it happen right here,” he said. “Man almost walked off with the store. You there, Carrot-top—that’s right, you—don’t be shy, come on up, first game’s on the house. Used to be a Scout myself.” “No free games!” Rusty said. “The boss’ll kill us.” “Please, Smoke,” I said. Still smiling, he shuffled the disks. He didn’t exactly ignore me; I wasn’t even there. “Here,” Rusty said, and shoved something at me. “Take a ride or something.” It was a stuffed animal, a big pink pig with black trotters and a ring in its nose. I carried it up the midway, walking with the Ballard boys but unable to talk for the thickness in my throat. Sounds reached me from a distance. I floated without consciousness of movement. We walked here and there. At some point the Ballard boys climbed on a ride together and I lost them. I never even got their addresses. AFTER THE PARK closed I stood by the gate with some other Scouts from my troop. Except for me, they had driven down to Seattle that morning in groups of five and six with parents who had relatives they could visit until it was time to drive home. Dwight and I had come down by ourselves. While we waited to get picked up I tried to persuade Arthur to drive back with me and Dwight. I knew that Dwight would be drunk, and I didn’t want to be alone with him. But Arthur wouldn’t talk to me. As I spoke he looked away. I begged him shamelessly and at last he said, “Why should I?” I said, “I’d do it for you.” “Hah,” he said. But it was true, and he knew it. After a while he said, “Outstanding performance, Wolff. Truly outstanding.” We were among the last to go. When I saw the car coming I held the pig out to Arthur. I had not been able to think of an explanation for it. “Here,” I said. “You can have it.” “What do I want that thing for?” “Come on, take it. Please.” He said, “Well, we’re being very polite tonight, aren’t we?” But he took it. And that was what Dwight stared at as we walked toward him through the blaze of the headlights, this glowing pink pig carried by the sissy Arthur Gayle.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  1138 00:56:06,796 --> 00:56:09,099 roughly translated, means 1139 00:56:09,199 --> 00:56:13,636 Lord Master of the Obedient Female Compainions. 1140 00:56:13,737 --> 00:56:17,140 DOS is an organization of entirely female members, 1141 00:56:17,240 --> 00:56:18,775 with one exception, 1142 00:56:18,875 --> 00:56:21,277 whose presence in the group is kept secret 1143 00:56:21,378 --> 00:56:23,413 to most of the women entering it. 1144 00:56:23,513 --> 00:56:25,915 And he's the leader of the group--Keith Raniere. 1145 00:56:27,217 --> 00:56:30,286 [Dr. Joseph] It was framed as this sisterhood, 1146 00:56:30,387 --> 00:56:32,355 this secret sorority, 1147 00:56:32,455 --> 00:56:35,058 where only a select few people could join. 1148 00:56:35,158 --> 00:56:36,626 You had to be special. 1149 00:56:36,726 --> 00:56:38,595 You had to be mentored. 1150 00:56:38,695 --> 00:56:42,232 However, you know, the mentorship was really... 1151 00:56:42,332 --> 00:56:47,237 a type of relationship between a slave and a slave owner. 1152 00:56:47,337 --> 00:56:50,306 [Robert] Again, it's a pyramid-designed organization 1153 00:56:50,407 --> 00:56:53,777 in which you have masters and slaves. 1154 00:56:53,877 --> 00:56:58,982 You have eight women who are known as first line masters. 1155 00:56:59,082 --> 00:57:02,318 Each one of those masters has their own slaves. 1156 00:57:02,419 --> 00:57:06,756 And then those slaves are masters to lower-ranking slaves. 1157 00:57:06,856 --> 00:57:09,692 And at the very top of the DOS pyramid is Raniere, 1158 00:57:09,793 --> 00:57:12,495 who is commanding these women to do things 1159 00:57:12,595 --> 00:57:13,997 that affect their everyday. 1160 00:57:14,097 --> 00:57:16,399 Keith Raniere is the quote unquote "grand master" 1161 00:57:16,499 --> 00:57:20,603 at the top of the pyramid. 1162 00:57:20,703 --> 00:57:23,640 [Narrator] Entrée into DOS is invitation only, 1163 00:57:23,740 --> 00:57:26,409 usually at the bequest of Raniere's top recruiter, 1164 00:57:26,509 --> 00:57:28,178 actress Allison Mack, 1165 00:57:28,278 --> 00:57:31,948 herself a first line master. 1166 00:57:32,048 --> 00:57:35,351 Allison even recruits one of NXIVM's only Black members, 1167 00:57:35,452 --> 00:57:40,790 then 26-year-old nonprofit cofounder Michele Hatchette. 1168 00:57:40,890 --> 00:57:43,026 The fact that she was able to get African Americans 1169 00:57:43,126 --> 00:57:47,697 to be a part of this slave/slave master culture 1170 00:57:47,797 --> 00:57:50,967 shows that she was a deeply cruel person. 1171 00:57:51,067 --> 00:57:55,071 And, you know, perhaps this individual felt humiliated 1172 00:57:55,171 --> 00:57:59,209 and ashamed, but the group mentality is just so powerful, 1173 00:57:59,309 --> 00:58:03,146 that it's hard for people to reject these claims 1174 00:58:03,246 --> 00:58:04,414 and these notions because 1175 00:58:04,514 --> 00:58:06,249 they don't wanna be rejected from this group. 1176 00:58:07,083 --> 00:58:08,585 [Narrator] Michele, for her part, declares 1177 00:58:08,685 --> 00:58:10,520 that she entered DOS willingly 1178 00:58:10,620 --> 00:58:13,756 and openly accepts the master/slave roles. 1179 00:58:15,925 --> 00:58:18,294 To ensure a new slave's loyalty, 1180 00:58:18,394 --> 00:58:22,866 they must provide what first line masters call collateral. 1181 00:58:22,966 --> 00:58:26,736 Collateral was things that would be embarrassing or incriminating 1182 00:58:26,836 --> 00:58:28,838 if they were released publicly.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  When they sense that desire is in crisis, they become industrious, and make intentional, diligent attempts to resuscitate it. They know that it is not children who extinguish the flame of desire; it is adults who fail to keep the spark alive. 9 Of Flesh and Fantasy In the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man’s thoughts. —Louis Aragon WHEN CATHERINE HIT PUBERTY SHE was fifty pounds overweight. Sexually invisible, repeatedly rejected, she was the “ugly sidekick” left guarding the door while her girlfriends made out on the other side of it. Today she is a beautiful woman, married for almost fifteen years. She and her husband play out a fantasy in which she is a high-priced prostitute. Men pay top dollar for the pleasure of her company—they want her so much they’re willing to spend a small fortune and risk their jobs and marriages for a little bit of her time. The more outrageous their transgressions, the greater her value. Catherine’s past humiliations are vindicated by the men who now can’t walk past her without marveling. In her theater of the surreal she triumphantly exacts revenge for the pains and frustrations of her adolescence. Daryl’s wife complains, “He can’t even decide on a restaurant, and he wants to tie me up? What’s that about?” The difficulty Daryl feels about asserting himself in his daily life is spectacularly remediated in his domination fantasies. In the highly ritualized and consensual choreography of bondage and domination, Daryl’s aggression finds safe expression. His wants are honored, his fear of going too far is contained, and his masculine power brings others pleasure rather than pain. Lucas, an unabashedly gay man who grew up in a small town in southern Illinois, spent years passing for straight, terrified that he’d be found out. He played high school football and even had sex with a cheerleader because she approached him in a crowd and he knew that turning her down would raise suspicions about his sexuality. Now in his thirties, he says, “I got the hell out of that town so I could be openly gay without it threatening my life. And now I find myself walking the nude beach at Aquinnah pretending to be straight so some guy can try to turn me. I’ll be straight, but on my terms. Today I only act straight when I think it’ll get me laid.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Actually in the bed, its wide featureless face absurdly crowned by a panama hat, lay a full-sized human effigy. It was only the rudimentary dummy that schoolboys make to suggest their sleeping forms in the near-darkness of an abandoned dorm, but in the light of a summer afternoon the bunched-up bedding and clothes of which it consisted were revealed as glaringly offensive. Its lolling pillow of a head was meant not to deceive but to warn. Looped around it, and displayed over the bedcover, was an Old Wykehamist tie, ineptly knotted, which made me remember, for a second, how my mother used to stand behind me at the mirror each morning to knot my tie when I was a little boy. Red rose petals were scattered artistically around, and where the heart of the effigy might have been there was a rust-red stain on the white bedspread that did resemble the colour of long-dried blood. I reached for a little bottle on the bedside table: it was vanilla essence. After we’d looked at it for a bit, I let Charles turn, and sit down on the edge of the bed, and then yanked the doll apart, casting its hat on to an armchair and rolling up the tie. ‘You recognise that tie,’ said Charles, with surprising detachment. I smiled. ‘What a pickle, eh?’ And indeed it was the general state of the room, in which a fight had clearly taken place, that had shocked me when I first entered it. The composition on the bed had been in bizarre, attentive contrast to the slewed pictures, toppled knick-knacks and pillaged drawers of the rest of the room. ‘I can’t take another of these melodramas,’ Charles said. Though I was deeply curious, I felt a strong reluctance to ask Charles what had taken place, or to probe the humiliation he had undergone. I helped him to take off his jacket and shoes, and laid him down on the pillow that had recently imitated his head. As if entranced, he was asleep within seconds. 5The first instalment of Charles’s papers was crammed into an old briefcase. Carrying it on the Underground, I felt like a young schoolmaster, taking home a bag bulging with books and essays. It was heavy, as I lolled in the crowded train, holding it by its charred leather handle, which had been strengthened with black insulating tape and was slightly sticky to the touch.