Pride

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

  to strip pods again. When I stopped, I felt a bit seasick, and so did the others. I napped until four, still in a daze because of those wretched peas. Yours, Anne M. Frank SATURDAY, JULY 15,1944 Dearest Kitty, We’ve received a book from the library with the challenging title What Do You Think of the Modern Young Girl? I’d like to discuss this subject today. The writer criticizes “today’s youth” from head to toe, though without dismissing them all as “hopeless cases.” On the contrary, she believes they have it within their power to build a bigger, better and more beautiful world, but that they occupy themselves with superficial things, without giving a thought to true beauty. In some passages I had the strong feeling that the writer was directing her disapproval at me, which is why I finally want to bare my soul to you and defend myself against this attack. I have one outstanding character trait that must be obvious to anyone who’s known me for any length of time: I have a great deal of self-knowledge. In everything I do, I can watch myself as if I were a stranger. I can stand c across from the everyday Anne and, without being biased or making excuses, watch what she’s doing, both the good and the bad. This self-awareness never leaves me, and every time I open my mouth, I think, “You should have said that differently” or “That’s fine the way it is.” I condemn myself in so many ways that I’m beginning to realize the truth of Father’s adage: “Every child has to raise itself.” Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately, people shape their own characters. In addition, I face life with an extraordinary amount of courage. I feel so strong and capable of bearing burdens, so young and free! When I first realized this, I was glad, because it means I can more easily withstand the blows life has in store. But I’ve talked about these things so often. Now I’d like to turn to the chapter

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

  At the start of his reign, Liu Bang had commissioned the Confucian ritualists (ru) to devise a court ceremonial, and when it was performed for the first time, the emperor exclaimed: “Now I realize the nobility of being a Son of Heaven!”122 The ru slowly gained ground at court, and as the memory of the Qin trauma faded, there was a growing desire for more solid moral guidance.123 In 136 BCE the court scholar Dong Zhongshu (179–104) suggested to Emperor Wu (r. 140–87) that there were too many competing schools and recommended that the six classical Confucian texts become the official state teaching. The emperor agreed: Confucianism supported the family; its emphasis on cultural history would forge a cultural identity; and state education would create an elite class that could counter the enduring appeal of the old aristocracy. But Wu did not make the mistake of the First Emperor. In the Chinese Empire there would be no sectarian intolerance: the Chinese would continue to see merit in all the schools that could supplement one another. Thus, however diametrically opposed the two schools might be, there would be a Legalist-Confucian coalition: the state still needed Legalist pragmatism, but the ru would temper Fajia despotism. In 124 BCE Wu founded the Imperial Academy, and for over two thousand years all Chinese state officials would be trained in a predominantly Confucian ideology, which presented the rulers as Sons of Heaven governing by moral charisma. This gave the regime spiritual legitimacy and became the ethos of the civil administration. Like all agrarian rulers, however, the Han controlled their empire by systemic and martial violence, exploiting the peasantry, killing rebels, and conquering new territory. The emperors depended on the army (wu), and in the newly conquered territories the magistrates summarily expropriated the land, deposed existing landlords, and seized between 50 and 100 percent of the peasants’ surplus. Like any premodern ruler, the emperor had to maintain himself in a state of exception as the “one man” to whom ordinary rules did not apply. At a moment’s notice, therefore, he could order an execution, and nobody dared object. Such irrational and spontaneous acts of violence were an essential part of the mystique that held his subjects in thrall.124

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

  Like the ambitious vaishyas and shudras, Buddhists and Jains were self-made men, reconstructing themselves at a profound psychological level to model a more empathic humanity. Both were also in tune with the new commercial ethos. Because of their absolute rejection of violence, Jains could not engage in agriculture, which involved the killing of creatures, so they turned to trade and became popular in the new merchant communities. Buddhism did not demand complex metaphysics or elaborate, arcane rituals but was based on principles of reason, logic, and empirical experience that were congenial to the merchant class. Moreover, Buddhists and Jains were pragmatists and realists: they did not expect everybody to become a monk but encouraged lay disciples to follow their teachings insofar as they could. Thus these spiritualties not only entered the mainstream but even began to influence the ruling class. Already during the Buddha’s lifetime, there were signs of empire building in the Gangetic plain. In 493 BCE Ajatashatru became king of Magadha; it was said that, impatient for the throne, he had murdered his father, King Bimbisara, the Buddha’s friend. Ajatashatru continued his father’s policy of military conquest and built a small fort on the Ganges, which the Buddha visited shortly before his death; it later became the famous metropolis of Pataliputra. Ajatashatru also annexed Koshala and Kashi and defeated a confederacy of tribal republics, so that when he died in 461, the Kingdom of Magadha dominated the Gangetic plain. He was succeeded by five unsatisfactory kings, all parricides, until the usurper Mahapadma Nanda, a shudra, founded the first non-Kshatriya dynasty and further extended the borders of the kingdom. The wealth of the Nandas, based on a highly efficient taxation system, became proverbial and the idea of creating an imperial state began to take root. When the young adventurer Chandragupta Maurya, another shudra, usurped the Nanda throne in 321 BCE, the Kingdom of Magadha became the Mauryan Empire. In the premodern period, no empire could create a unified culture; it existed solely to extract resources from the subject peoples, who would inevitably rise up from time to time in revolt. Thus an emperor was usually engaged in almost constant warfare against rebellious subjects or against aristocrats who sought to usurp him. Chandragupta and his successors ruled from Pataliputra, conquering neighboring regions that had strategic and economic potential by force of arms. These areas were incorporated into the Mauryan state and administered by governors who answered to the emperor. On the fringes of the empire, peripheral areas rich in timber, elephants, and semiprecious stones, served as buffer zones; the imperial state did not attempt direct rule in these areas but used local people as agents to tap their resources; periodically these “forest peoples” resisted Mauryan dominance. The main task of the imperial administration was to collect taxes in kind. In India, the rate of taxation varied from region to region, ranging from one-sixth to one-quarter of agricultural output.

• From Cultish (2021)

  In the beginning, learning this private terminology makes speakers feel, well, cool. “In the early days, it was really fun . . . or ‘theta,’ as we’d say,” Cathy told me, referencing Scientology’s slang term for “awesome.” Who doesn’t love a secret language? “It made you feel superior, because you had these words that other people didn’t, and you did the work to understand them.” It’s not just religious cult leaders who use language to imbue followers with a false sense of elitism; I’ve noticed similar us-versus-them rhetoric in cultier areas of my own life. For a few years, I was employed as a writer at a cliquey online fashion magazine, and one of the first things I noticed about my chic new colleagues was how they spoke almost entirely in inscrutable abbreviations (or “abbrevs”). They even made up abbreviations that took exactly as long to say as the full-length words (for instance, they always referred to this one website called “The Ritual” as “T. Ritual”), simply because it sounded more exclusive— harder for “uncool people” to understand. To me, it was clear that this language served as a detection system to identify insiders and outsiders. And it was a way of gaining control, of coaxing underlings to learn the lingo, to conform, which they did eagerly, in hopes of being “chosen” for special opportunities and promotions. In Scientology, it was hard to see how a few fun acronyms could cause much harm. But under the surface, these word shortenings were deliberately working to obscure understanding. In any given professional field, specialized jargon is often necessary in order to exchange information more succinctly and specifically; it makes communication clearer. But in a cultish atmosphere, jargon does just the opposite: Instead, it causes speakers to feel confused and intellectually deficient. That way, they’ll comply. This confusion is part of the big trick. Feeling so disoriented that you doubt the very language you’ve been speaking your whole life can make you commit even more strongly to a charismatic leader who promises to show you the way. “We want to make sense of reality, and we use words to explain to ourselves what’s happening,” Steven Hassan explained. When your means of narration are threatened, it’s distressing. By nature, people are averse to such high levels of internal conflict. In states of bamboozlement, we defer to authority figures to tell us what’s true and what we need to do to feel safe. When language works to make you question your own perceptions, whether at work or at church, that’s a form of gaslighting. I first came across the term “gaslighting” in the context of abusive romantic partners, but it shows up in larger-scale relationships, too, like those between bosses and their employees, politicians and their supporters, spiritual leaders and their devotees.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  On the subject of seeking out a contrast between rough surfaces and soft ones, I have just remembered one of the very first times I experienced an erotic emotion as such. My brother and I would be sent to spend a holiday with some friends of my father’s whose numerous grandchildren played with us. One day, the grandfather, who was ill, had to go to bed and I went to see him in his room. As I sat on the edge of the bed, he started to examine my face. Feeling his way with his fingers, he commented that I had a very fine jawbone; when he reached my neck he diagnosed that later in life I might be susceptible to goitre. These contradictory observations worried me. Then, slipping his hand under my blouse, he brushed past my breasts which were barely beginning to bud. And as I stayed there silent and motionless he said that, when I became a woman, I would really like it when people stroked my ‘titties’ in this way. I still didn’t move, or perhaps just my head which I turned towards the wall as if I couldn’t hear what I was being told. The callused surface of his big hand snagged on my skin. I was aware for the first time of the stiffening of my nipple. I listened to the prediction. I was suddenly brought to the threshold of womanhood and I felt a sense of pride. A child forges its power in the enigma of its future life. So, though disconcerted by this gesture for which I had no ready-made response, I turned back to look at this man, who I was fond of, on his bed, I felt sorry for him because his wife was crippled, obese, her legs were covered in suppurating sores which he dressed meticulously morning and evening. At the same time his greyish face and his lumpy nose made me want to laugh. I extricated myself gently. That evening, lying in the bed that I shared with one of his granddaughters, I told her about the episode. He had touched her too. We looked each other right in the eye as we spoke, trying to measure the magnitude of our discovery in the other’s gaze. We were pretty sure the grandfather was doing something forbidden, but the secret that he gave us to share was far more valuable than some moral whose meaning was, anyway, no clearer. When I once decided – again with a sense of pride, almost bravado – to talk about my masturbating in confession, the priest’s reaction was so disappointing (he made absolutely no comment and just gave me a few aves and the odd Pater to recite as usual) that I felt nothing but contempt for him afterwards. So, trying to tell him that I had been stirred because an old man had put his hand on my breast…!

• From Cultish (2021)

  The Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization, or 3HO—a Sikh-derived “alternative religion” founded in the 1970s, which hosts Kundalini yoga classes all over the US. The guy with the beard? Their captivating, well-connected leader, Harbhajan Singh Khalsa (or Yogi Bhajan), who claimed—to much contest—to be the official religious and administrative head of all Western Sikh s, and who was worth hundreds of millions of dollars by the time he died in 1993. The language? Gurmukhi, the writing system of modern Punjabi and Sikh scripture. The ideology? To obey Yogi Bhajan’s strict New Age teachings, which included abstaining from meat and alcohol,* surren dering to his arranged marriages, waking up at four thirty every morning to read scripture and attend yoga class, and not associating with anyone who didn’t follow . . . or who wouldn’t be following soon. As soon as she turned eighteen, Tasha moved to Los Angeles, one of 3HO’s home bases, and for eight years, she dedicated her entire life—all her time and money—to the group. After a series of exhaustive trainings, she became a full-time Kundalini yoga instructor and, within months, was attracting big-name, spiritually curious celebrities to her Malibu classes: Demi Moore, Russell Brand, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody. Even if they didn’t become full-time followers, their attendance was good PR for 3HO. Tasha’s swamis (teachers) praised her for raking in the dollars and allegiances of the rich, famous, and seeking. At the café, Tasha unsheathes her phone from an inky black clutch to show me old photos of her and Demi Moore, garbed in ghost-white short-shorts and turbans, twirling around a desert retreat, backdropped by Joshua trees. Tasha slowly blinks her eyelash extensions as a bewildered smile blooms across her face, as if to say, Yeah, I can’t believe I did this shit, either. Obedience like Tasha’s promised to yield great rewards. Just learn the right words, and they’d be yours: “There was a mantra to attract your soul mate, one to acquire lots of money, one to look better than ever, one to give birth to a more evolved, higher-vibration generation of children,” Tasha divulges. Disobey? You’d come back in the next life on a lower vibration. Mastering 3HO’s secret mantras and code words made Tasha feel separate from everyone else she knew. Chosen. On a higher vibration . Solidarity like this intensified when everyone in the group was assigned a new name. A name-giver appointed by Yogi Bhajan used something called tantric numerology as an algorithm to determine followers’ special 3HO monikers, which they received in exchange for a fee. All women were given the same middle name, Kaur, while men were all christened Singh. Everyone shared the last name Khalsa. Like one big family. “Getting your new name was the biggest deal ever,” Tasha says.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE CONDITIONS FOR INTELLECTUAL, AFFECTIVE, GUT-LEVEL LEARNING There are a few experiences in my professional life that I remember vividly. One is the beautiful, air-conditioned, plush-seated auditorium at the University of Michigan in 1956. Those elements only surprised me—they are not the reason I remember the occasion. I was talking to a highly sophisticated professional audience, and I was advancing a theoretical view—very new, very tentative—as to what conditions were necessary and sufficient to produce change in individuals in one-to-one psychotherapy. I was dimly aware—fortunately, only dimly—that I was challenging almost all of the “sacred cows” in the therapeutic world. I was saying in effect, although not very openly, that it wasn’t a question of whether the therapist had been psychoanalyzed, or had a knowledge of personality theory, or possessed expertise in diagnosis, or had a thorough acquaintance with therapeutic techniques. Rather, I was saying that the therapist’s effectiveness in therapy depended on his or her attitudes. I even had the nerve to define what I thought those attitudes were (Rogers, 1957). It wasn’t a very popular talk. Perhaps because I was frightened of the possible reaction, it was one of the most closely reasoned, carefully stated talks I have ever given. I am still proud of it. And, though not very popular, it has sparked more research than any other talk I’ve ever given. First, a number of studies showed that when these conditions existed in psychotherapy, the self-learning that occurred did promote change. Then I became bolder and postulated that these same attitudinal conditions would promote any whole-person learning—that they would hold for the classroom as well as the therapist’s office. This hypothesis has also sparked research. Before I comment briefly on some of these studies, let me describe these attitudinal conditions as they relate to education, and as I have come to see them over the years. They are attitudes that, in my judgment, characterize a facilitator of learning. I have described them before (see Chapter 6), but I wish to repeat them here, since they relate to learning. Realness in the Facilitator of Learning * Perhaps the most basic of these essential attitudes is realness, or genuineness. When the facilitator is a real person, being what he or she is, entering into relationships with the learners without presenting a front or a façade, the facilitator is much more likely to be effective. This means that the feelings that the facilitator is experiencing are available to his or her awareness, that he or she is able to live these feelings, to be them, and able to communicate them if appropriate. It means that the facilitator comes into a direct, personal encounter with the learners, meeting each of them on a person-to-person basis. It means that the facilitator is being, not denying himself or herself. The facilitator is present to the students. Prizing, Acceptance, Trust

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

  He’s ejaculating straight into her throat, pouring his seed directly into her body, and she’s totally open to him and entirely accepting. She waits till the first two blasts are finished before she pulls her head off his throbbing spear, the thick glans giving her a weird thrill as it passes the portal of her oesophagus. The come hangs in thick strands from her lips as she holds his slime-covered prick poised at her mouth. The next jet misses and the silvery semen arcs up and lands into the black water. She can’t resist it now and she smothers the head of his cock The Cavern 25) with her lips, her hand pumping the silky-hard shaft like a demonic machine, demanding his come. She receives the next bolt on the roof of her mouth, and then the rest of his load spills on to her tongue as she swallows greedily. Sheldon’s head rolls back, his fingers tangled in her hair, as he gasps out the last of his savage pleasure. She drinks him up, with a desperation for his masculine essence that goes beyond the mere sexual. In her life she has denied herself this, has treated the male discharge as something dirty and shameful, but here in the place, surrounded by this feminine darkness, she feeds feverishly at his spurting cock, famished for the taste of his seed, indeed. Sheldon levers her off his cock forcefully, pushing her until she falls back in the bottom of the boat, her pants still open, her face smeared with semen and saliva, a glazed look of desire on her face. His come was like a drug to her, and she’s completely intoxicated, but at the same time his sudden shove brings her back to herself and she looks around in confusion. . “ve never felt anything like that,” he tells her. “I was in your belly, Dominique! What happened to ‘you? Where did you learn that?” She wipes her lip and examines her fingers, looking for any stray drops that might have gotten away. She shudders at her own unexpected depravity. She doesn’t know where she learned it or even how she knew she could do it, but inside her is a wild and wilful pride, the pride of a woman in her own sexuality. After last night’s passive performance, she’s paid him back in kind and shown him that she’s not as helpless and unskilled as he might have thought. And, more importantly, she’s taught herself the same thing. She sits back in the boat and feels the cavern around her like a cloak, tastes his semen in her mouth and still feels him reaching into the darkest part of her body. The Cavern, she thinks, is a very female place, and she feels a kinship now with the mysterious darkness. She belongs here. She is the cavern, ready to engulf her lover again, forever. Honeymoon with Shannon Thom Gautier

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

  Hey, remember, what you look like is less important than what you do. Zoe smiled. This time she knew that voice wasn’t coming from Bobby’s underwear. It was in her head and her flesh, hers to keep. Advanced Corsetry Justine Elyot I fell into this business unintentionally. I started out as an enthusiastic amateur, became a connoisseur and now I am proud to call myself a master — or mistress, I suppose — corsetiére. If you ever want to talk busks, fan-lacing, whalebone or the respective merits of under-and- over bust models, I could be your woman. Of course, should you choose to engage me in conversation on this subject, I must warn you that certain assumptions may be made regarding your personal preferences. These days we get our share of trendy young things surfing the wave of the burlesque revival, but our traditional customer has more personal reasons for favouring this most retro-chic of foundation garments. Few people are better placed than I to appreciate the allure of the corset: her restrictive embrace, her provocative display of the finer feminine features, her fetishistic cross-lacing. You cannot ever forget you are wearing one; like an insatiable lover, she demands your full attention. This is why I often find myself measuring and fitting women who want a little more than the traditional ribboned satin or silk. I have requests for custom-made pieces in rubber, latex or leather; others require additional features, such as delicate chains crossing the breasts, or linking the front and back of the garment between the thighs. One customer even emailed me to request that I add a harness-like leather construction connecting the panels, which could run between the thighs and up the cleft of the buttocks, and to which could be attached various phallic objects. I wish she could have summoned the nerve to request this of me face to face; I always had _a feeling we may have hit it off. I thought, then, I had heard every outré suggestion possible: corsets for fetish balls, corsets for waist restriction, corsets for the bedroom, corsets for lovers of Victorian kink. 62 Fustine Elyot As it turned out, however, things could, and did, get more decadent still. My clients had occasionally come with friends, or even lovers; the intention being to canvass an additional opinion on what suited best, or perhaps to add a little titillation to the experience. The couple I saw on that memorable afternoon were a different proposition entirely.

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

  But when you give things mathematical and mechanical names and call them just so many solids in just such positions, describing just such paths with just such velocities, all is changed. Your sagacity finds its reward in the verification by nature of all the deductions which you may next proceed to make. Your 'things' realize all the consequences of the names by which you classed them. The modern mechanico-physical philosophy of which we are all so proud, because it includes the nebular cosmogony, the conservation of energy, the kinetic theory of heat and gases, etc., etc., begins by saying that the only facts are collocations and motions of primordial solids, and the only laws the changes of motion which changes in collocation bring. The ideal which this philosophy strives after is a mathematical world-formula, by which, if all the collocations and motions at a given moment were known, it would be possible to reckon those of any wished-for future moment, by simply considering the necessary geometrical, arithmetical, and logical implications. Once we have the world in this bare shape, we can fling our net of a priori relations over all its terms, and pass from one of its phases to another by inward thought-necessity. Of course it is a world with a very minimum of rational stuff. The sentimental facts and relations are butchered at a blow. But the rationality yielded is so superbly complete in form that to many minds this atones for the loss, and reconciles the thinker to the notion of a purposeless universe, in which all the things and qualities men love, dulcissima mundi nomina, are but illusions of our fancy attached to accidental clouds of dust which the eternal cosmic weather will dissipate as carelessly as it has formed them. The popular notion that 'Science' is forced on the mind ab extra, and that our interests have nothing to do with its constructions, is utterly absurd. The craving to believe that the things of the world belong to kinds which are related by inward rationality together, is the parent of Science as well as of sentimental philosophy; and the original investigator always preserves a healthy sense of how plastic the materials are in his hands.

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

  The pope with whom Innocent is naturally brought into comparison is Hildebrand. They were equally distinguished for moral force, intellectual energy, and proud assertion of prelatic prerogative. Innocent was Hildebrand’s superior in learning, diplomatic tact, and success of administration, but in creative genius and heroic character he was below his predecessor. He stands related to his great predecessor as Augustus to Julius. He was heir to the astounding programme of Hildebrand’s scheme and enjoyed the fruits of his struggles. Their personal fortunes were widely different. Gregory was driven from Rome and died in exile. To Innocent’s good fortune there seemed to be no end, and he closed his pontificate in undisputed possession of authority. Innocent no sooner ascended the papal chair than he began to give expression to his conception of the papal dignity. Throughout his pontificate he forcibly and clearly expounded it in a tone of mingled official pride and personal humility. At his coronation he preached on the faithful and wise servant. "Ye see," he said, "what manner of servant it is whom the Lord hath set over his people, no other than the viceregent of Christ, the successor of Peter. He stands in the midst between God and man; below God, above man; less than God, more than man. He judges all and is judged by none. But he, whom the pre-eminence of dignity exalts, is humbled by his vocation as a servant, that so humility may be exalted and pride be cast down; for God is against the high-minded, and to the lowly He shows mercy; and whoso exalteth himself shall be abased."

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Please go on,” I cried, “don’t be afraid, I can stand any criticism and profit by it—I hope.” “Your accent is a little English, isn’t it?” he said, “and that prejudices both judge and jury against you, especially the jury: if you had Barker’s accent, you’d be the best pleader in the State—” “I’ll get the accent,” I exclaimed, “you’re dead right: I had already felt the need of it; but I was obstinate, now I’ll get it: you may bet on that, get it within a week” and I did. There was a lawyer in the town named Hoysradt who had had a fierce quarrel with my brother Willie. He had the most pronounced Western American accent I had ever heard and I set myself the task every morning and evening of imitating Hoysradt’s accent and manner of speech. I made it a rule too, to use the slow Western enunciation in ordinary speech and in a week, no one would have taken me for any one but an American. Sommerfeld was delighted and told me he had fuller confidence in me than ever and from that time on our accord was perfect, for the better I knew him, the more highly I esteemed him: he was indeed able, hardworking, truthful and honest—a compact of all the virtues, but so modest and inarticulate that he was often his own worst enemy. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WORK AND SOPHY. Chapter XIV. Now began for me a most delightful time. Sommerfeld relieved me of nearly all the office work: I had only to get up the speeches, for he prepared the cases for me. My income was so large that I only slept in my office-room for convenience sake, or rather for my lechery’s sake. I kept a buggy and horse at a livery stable and used to drive Lily or Rose out nearly every day. As Rose lived on the other side of the river, it was easy to keep the two separate and indeed neither of them ever dreamed of the other’s existence. I had a very soft spot in my heart for Rose: her beauty of face and form always excited and pleased me and her mind, too, grew quickly through our talks and the books I gave her. I’ll never forget her joy when I first bought a small bookcase and sent it to her home one morning, full of the books I thought she would like and ought to read. In the evening she came straight to my office, told me it was the very thing she had most wanted and she let me study her beauties one by one; but when I turned her round and kissed her bottom, she wanted me to stop: “You can’t possibly like or admire that”, was her verdict.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The Fremont House, Kendrick’s hotel was near the Michigan Street Depot. In those days when Chicago had barely 300,000 inhabitants, it was an hotel of the second class. Mr. Kendrick had told me that his uncle, a Mr. Cotton really owned the House, but left him the chief share in the management, adding “What uncle says, goes always.” In the course of time, I understood the nephew’s loyalty; for Mr. Cotton was really kindly and an able man of business. My duties as night-clerk were simple; from eight at night till six in the morning, I was master in the office and had to apportion bedrooms to the incoming guests and give bills and collect the monies due from the outgoing public. I set myself at once to learn the good and bad points of the hundred odd bedrooms in the house and the arrival and departure times of all the night trains. When guests came in, I met them at the entrance, found out what they wanted and told this or that porter or bellboy to take them to their rooms. However curt or irritable they were, I always tried to smooth them down and soon found I was succeeding. In a week Mr. Kendrick told me that he had heard golden opinions of me from a dozen visitors. “You have a dandy night-clerk,” he was told; “Spares no pains … pleasant manners … knows everything ... “_some_” clerk; yes, sir!” My experience in Chicago assured me that if one does his very best, he comes to success in business in a comparatively short time; so few do all they can. Going to bed at six, I was up every day at 1 o’clock for dinner as it was called and after dinner I got into the habit of going into the billiard-room at one end of which was a large bar. By five o’clock or so, the billiard-room was crowded and there was no one to superintend things, so I spoke to Mr. Kendrick about it and took the job on my own shoulders. I had little to do but induce newcomers to await their turn patiently and to mollify old customers who expected to find tables waiting for them. The result of a little courtesy and smiling promises was so marked that at the end of the very first month the bookkeeper, a man named Curtis, told me with a grin that I was to get sixty dollars a month and not forty dollars as I had supposed. Needless to say the extra pay simply quickened my desire to make myself useful. But now I found the way up barred by two superiors, the bookkeeper was one and the steward, a dry taciturn Westerner named Payne was the other. Payne bought everything and had control of the dining-room and waiters while Curtis ruled the office and the bell-boys. I was really under Curtis; but my control of the billiard-room gave me a sort of independent position.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  For leaders of the movement, patriarchal power was at the core of gospel Christianity; in the words of John Piper, God had given Christianity “a masculine feel.”23 For all their emphasis on sin, New Calvinists seemed remarkably unconcerned about the concentration of unchecked power in the hands of men. Roger Olson, a Baptist theologian who opposed the Calvinist insurgency, compared the “young, restless, and Reformed” movement to Gothard’s Basic Youth Conflicts seminar, observing that there was “a certain kind of personality that craves the comfort of absolute certainty as an escape from ambiguity and risk and they find it in religion or politics of a certain kind.” Such people were attracted to an ideology that was “absolutistic, logical (or seemingly so), simple and practical.” The notion of “God’s chain of command” offered precisely this absolutist certainty. Needless to say, white men were at the top of that chain of command, at least in terms of human relationships.24 By 2019, the Acts 29 network founded by Driscoll had planted over 700 churches on six continents, churches committed to upholding “men as responsible servant-leaders in both home and church.” Meanwhile, The Gospel Coalition, founded in 2005 by Tim Keller and D. A. Carson, grew into “a towering, thundering goliath,” a network of nearly 8000 congregations. TGC’s website hosted a battalion of conservative bloggers and garnered around 65 million annual page views on thousands of posts, and TGC organized dozens of conferences that distributed and amplified their message throughout American Christianity and beyond. A hub for the expanding network of conservative evangelical leaders, TGC brought together men like Driscoll, Piper, Mohler, and other men of prominence within American evangelicalism such as Josh Harris, C. J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Denny Burk, and Justin Taylor.25 New Calvinism was aggressively mission-driven. Spreading through online and organizational networks, this Calvinist resurgence united men across generations and denominations. As one blogger put it, “the Internet has done for Reformed theology what MTV did for hip-hop culture.” John Piper, cofounder of CBMW, was “the single most potent factor” in this rise of Reformed theology. Piper’s Passion Conference, a Christian worship conference first held in 1997, introduced the pastor and theologian to a generation of young Christians in America and around the world. Piper’s book Desiring God sold more than 375,000 copies and was “practically required reading for many college-age evangelicals,” and his Desiring God website and conferences served as another focal point of the expanding network. Piper’s imprimatur could help launch careers; after Driscoll was invited to speak at Piper’s conference, he received invitations from Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, and Bill Hybels, pastor of the Chicago-area megachurch Willow Creek.26 In 2006, Dever, Duncan, Mohler, and Mahaney founded Together for the Gospel (T4G), a biennial conference featuring themselves and other celebrity pastors in the conservative theological orbit, most notably Piper, MacArthur, and Sproul. These men had already established themselves on the Christian conference circuit, but T4G amplified their influence.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  For example, Bent asked one night what the proper wage should be of the ordinary workman? I could only answer that the workman’s wage should increase at least in measure as the productivity of labor increased; but I could not then see how to approach this ideal settlement. When I read Herbert Spencer ten years later in Germany, I was delighted to find that I had divined the best of his sociology and added to it materially. His idea that the amount of individual liberty in a country depends on “the pressure from the outside”, I knew to be only half-true. Pressure from the outside is one factor but not even the most important: the centripetal force in the society itself is often much more powerful: how else can one explain the fact that during the world-war, liberty almost disappeared in these States in spite of the First Amendment to the Constitution. At all times indeed there is much less regard for liberty here than in England or even in Germany or in France: one has only to think of prohibition to admit this. The pull towards the centre in every country is in direct proportion to the mass and accordingly the herd-feeling in America is unreasonably strong. If we were not arguing or telling smutty stories, Bent would be sure to get out cards and the gambling instinct would keep the boys busy till the stars paled in the eastern sky. One incident I must relate here, for it broke the monotony of the routine in a curious way. Our fire at night was made up of buffalo “chips” as the dried excrement was called, and Peggy had asked me, as I got up the earliest, always to replenish the fire before riding away. One morning I picked up a chip with my left hand and as luck would have it, disturbed a little prairie rattlesnake that had been attracted probably by the heat of the camp-fire. As I lifted the chip, the snake struck me on the back of my thumb, then coiled up in a flash and began to rattle. Angered I put my right foot on him and killed him, and at the same moment bit out the place on my thumb where I had been stung, and then, still unsatisfied, rubbed my thumb in the red embers, especially above the wound. I paid little further attention to the matter; it seemed to me that the snake was too small to be very poisonous; but on returning to the wagon to wake Peggy, he cried out and called the Boss and Reece and Dell and was manifestly greatly perturbed and even anxious. Reece too agreed with him that the bite of the little prairie rattlesnake was just as venomous as that of his big brother of the woods.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Strangely enough, at that time the idea was generally accepted that a man or woman could only live three days without food. It was years before Dr. Tanner showed the world that a man could fast for forty days or more. Everyone I met acted as if he believed that if he were fully three days without food, he must die incontinently. I laughed at the idea which seemed to me absurd, but so strong was the universal opinion and the influence of the herd-sentiment, that on the third day I too felt particularly empty and thought I had better take my place in the bread line. There were perhaps five thousand in front of me and there were soon fifty or sixty thousand behind me. We were five deep moving to the depot where the bread trains were discharging, one after the other. When I got pretty close to the food wagons, I noticed that the food supply was coming to an end, and next moment I noticed something else. Again and again women and girls came into our bread line and walked through the lines of waiting men, who, mark you, really believed they were going to die that night if they could not get food, but instead of objecting they one and all made way for the women and girls and encouraged them: “Go right on, Madam, take all you want:” “This way, Missee, you won’t be able to carry much, I’m afraid”;—proof on proof, it seemed to me, of courage, good humor and high self-abnegation. I went into that bread line an Irish boy and came out of it a proud American, but I did not get any bread that night or the next. In fact, my first meal was made when I ran across Reece on the Friday or Saturday after: Reece, as usual, had fallen on his feet and found a hotel where they had provisions—though at famine prices. He insisted that I should come with him and soon got me my first meal. In return, I told him and Ford of the cattle I had saved. They were, of course, delighted and determined next day to come out and retrieve them. “One thing is certain,” said Ford, “six hundred head of cattle are worth as much today in Chicago as fifteen hundred head were worth before the fire, so we hain’t lost much.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Why?” he asked, “why!” I only just restrained myself in time or I’d have given him the true reason. “You’ll come much nearer winning the Scholarship”, he said at length, “than any of them guesses.” After the “Exams” came the athletic games, much more interesting than the beastly lessons. I won two first prizes and Jones four, but I gained fifteen “seconds”, a record, I believe, for according to my age I was still in the Lower School. I was fully aware of the secret of my success and strange to say, it did not increase but rather diminished my conceit. I won, not through natural advantages but by will-power and practice. I should have been much prouder had I succeeded through natural gifts. For instance, there was a boy named Reggie Miller, who at sixteen was five feet ten in height, while I was still under five feet: do what I would, he could jump higher than I could, though he only jumped up to his chin while I could jump the bar above my head. I believed that Reggie could easily practice and then outjump me still more. I had yet to learn in life that the resolved will to succeed was more than any natural advantage. But this lesson only came to me later. From the beginning I was taking the highway to success in everything by strengthening my will even more than my body. Thus, every handicap in natural deficiency turns out to be an advantage in life to the brave soul, whereas every natural gift is surely a handicap. Demosthenes had a difficulty in his speech, practising to overcome this, made him the greatest of orators. The last day came at length and at eleven o’clock all the school and a goodly company of guests and friends gathered in the schoolroom to hear the results of the examinations and especially the award of the scholarships. Though most of the boys were early at the great blackboard where the official figures were displayed, I didn’t even go near it till one little boy told me shyly: “You’re head of your Form and sure of your remove.” I found this to be true, but wasn’t even elated. A Cambridge professor, it appeared, had come down in person to announce the result of the “Math” Scholarship.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “In childhood girls are far more precocious; but those little lessons are usually too early to matter.” He wouldn’t have it, but I changed the subject resolutely and Mabel told me some time afterwards that she was very grateful to me for cutting short the discussion: “Aubrey”, she said, “loves all sex things and doesn’t care what he says or does.” I had seen before that Mabel was pretty: I realised that day when she stooped over a flower that her figure was beautifully slight and round. Aubrey caught my eye at the moment and remarked maliciously: “Mabel was my first model, weren’t you, Mabs? I was in love with her figure”, he went on judicially, “her breasts were so high and firm and round that I took her as my ideal.” She laughed, blushing a little, and rejoined, “Your figures, Aubrey, are not “exactly ideal”.” I realised from this little discussion that most men’s sisters were just as precocious as mine and just as likely to act as teachers in the matter of sex. From about this time on, the individualities of people began to impress me definitely. Vernon suddenly got an appointment in a bank at Armagh and I went to live with him there, in lodgings. The lodging-house keeper I disliked: she was always trying to make me keep hours and rules, and I was as wild as a homeless dog, but Armagh was a wonder city to me. Vernon made me a day-boy at the Royal School: it was my first big school; I learned all the lessons very easily and most of the boys and all the masters were kind to me. The great Mall or park-like place in the centre of the town delighted me; I had soon climbed nearly every tree in it, tree-climbing and reciting being the two sports in which I excelled. When we were at Carrickfergus, my father had had me on board his vessel and had matched me at climbing the rigging against a cabin-boy and though the sailor was first at the cross-trees, I caught him on the descent by jumping at a rope and letting it slide through my hands, almost at falling speed to the deck. I heard my father tell this afterwards with pleasure to Vernon, which pleased my vanity inordinately and increased, if that were possible, my delight in showing off. For another reason my vanity had grown beyond measure. At Carrickfergus I had got hold of a book on athletics belonging to Vernon and had there learned that if you went into the water up to your neck and threw yourself boldly forward and tried to swim, you would swim; for the body is lighter than the water and floats.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The next time I went down to bathe with Vernon, instead of going on the beach in the shallow water and wading out, I went with him to the end of the pier and when he dived in, I went down the steps and as soon as he came up to the surface I cried, “Look! I can swim too”, and I boldly threw myself forward and, after a moment’s dreadful sinking and spluttering, did in fact swim. When I wanted to get back I had a moment of appalling fear: “Could I turn round!” The next moment I found it quite easy to turn and I was soon safely back on the steps again. “When did you learn to swim?”, asked Vernon coming out beside me. “This minute”, I replied and as he was surprised, I told him I had read it all in his book and made up my mind to venture the very next time I bathed. A little time afterwards I heard him tell this to some of his men friends in Armagh, and they all agreed that it showed extraordinary courage, for I was small for my age and always appeared even younger than I was. Looking back, I see that many causes combined to strengthen the vanity in me which had already become inordinate and in the future was destined, to shape my life and direct its purposes. Here in Armagh everything conspired to foster my besetting sin. I was put among boys of my age, I think in the lower Fourth, and the form-master finding that I knew no Latin, showed me a Latin grammar and told me I’d have to learn it as quickly as possible, for the class had already begun to read Caesar: he showed me the first declension _mensa_, as the example, and asked me if I could learn it by the next day. I said I would, and as luck would have it, the Mathematical master passing at the moment, the form-master told him I was backward and should be in a lower form. “He’s very good indeed at figures”, the Mathematical master rejoined, “he might be in the Upper Division.” “Really!” exclaimed the Form-master. “See what you can do,” he said to me, “you may find it possible to catch up. Here’s a Caesar too, you may as well take it with you. We have done only two or three pages.”

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  The National Council of Churches urged the president to refrain from a preemptive strike; the Vatican warned that preemptive war would be “a crime against peace.” Conservative evangelicals begged to differ.24 In October 2002, five evangelical leaders sent a letter to President Bush to assure him that a preemptive invasion of Iraq did indeed meet the criteria for just war. Written by Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and signed by fellow evangelicals Charles Colson, Bill Bright, D. James Kennedy, and Carl Herbster, the “Land letter” expressed appreciation for Bush’s “bold, courageous, and visionary leadership” and reassured him that his plans for military action were “both right and just.” Referencing the appeasement of Hitler, they urged Bush to disarm “the murderous Iraqi dictator” and reminded him that “the legitimate authority to authorize the use of U.S. military force” belonged to the United States government, not the UN. Elsewhere, Land cited Romans 13 to argue that “God ordained the civil magistrate” to punish evildoers.25 It wasn’t just the evangelical elite who supported a preemptive strike. In 2002, ordinary evangelical Christians were “the biggest backers of Israel and Washington’s planned war against Iraq”: 69 percent of conservative Christians favored military action, a full 10 percentage points higher than the general population. In 2003, once the war commenced, 87 percent of white evangelical Christians supported Bush’s decision to go to war, compared to 70 percent of Protestant mainliners and 59 percent of secular Americans. As one evangelical parishioner explained, Jesus might have preached a gospel of peace, but the Book of Revelation showed that the suffering Messiah turned into the conquering Messiah; in the Bible, God didn’t just sanction “war and invasion,” God encouraged it. The evangelical parishioner’s pastor concurred, adding that President Bush “would fit right into this church . . . being on the same spiritual wavelength counts for a lot.”26 Steeped in a literature claiming that men were created in the image of a warrior God, it’s no wonder evangelicals were receptive to sentiments like those expressed by Jerry Falwell in his 2004 sermon, “God is Pro-War.” Having long idealized cowboys and soldiers as models of exemplary Christian manhood, evangelicals were primed to embrace Bush’s “‘cowboy’ approach” and his “Lone Ranger mentality.” God created men to be aggressive—violent when necessary—so that they might fulfill their sacred role of protector.27 At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Christian recording artist Michael W. Smith stood on the stage of New York’s Madison Square Garden, declaring his love for his president and his country. He then recounted how, only six weeks after the September 11 attacks, he had found himself in the Oval Office with his good friend, President Bush. They spoke of the firefighters and other first responders who had given their lives trying to save others. “Hey W,” said the presidential “W” to the singer. “I think you need to write a song about this.” Smith did as he was asked.