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

  Boniface succeeded by indomitable perseverance, and his work survived him. This must be his vindication. In judging of him we should remember that the controversy between him and his French and Scotch-Irish opponents was not a controversy between Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism (which was not yet born), but between organized Catholicism or Romanism and independent Catholicism. Mediaeval Christianity was very weak, and required for its self-preservation a strong central power and legal discipline. It is doubtful whether in the barbarous condition of those times, and amid the commotions of almost constant civil wars, the independent and scattered labors of the anti-Roman missionaries could have survived as well and made as strong an impression upon the German nation as a consolidated Christianity with a common centre of unity, and authority. Roman unity was better than undisciplined independency, but it was itself only a preparatory school for the self-governing freedom of manhood. After Boniface had nearly completed his work, a political revolution took place in France which gave it outward support. Pepin, the major domus of the corrupt Merovingian dynasty, overthrew it with the aid of Pope Zacharias, who for his conquest of the troublesome Lombards rewarded him with the royal crown of France (753). Fifty years afterwards this political alliance of France and Germany with the Italian papacy was completed by Charlemagne and Leo III., and lasted for many centuries. Rome had the enchantment of distance, the prestige of power and culture, and promised to furnish the strongest support to new and weak churches. Rome was also the connecting link between mediaeval and ancient civilization, and transmitted to the barbarian races the treasures of classical literature which in due time led to the revival of letters and to the Protestant Reformation. § 26. The Pupils of Boniface. Willibald, Gregory of Utrecht, Sturm of Fulda. Boniface left behind him a number of devoted disciples who carried on his work. Among these we mention St. Willibald, the first bishop of Eichstädt. He was born about A.D. 700 from a noble Anglo-Saxon family and a near relative of Boniface. In his early manhood he made a pilgrimage to Rome and to the Holy Land as far as Damascus, spent several years among the Benedictines in Monte Casino, met Boniface in Rome, joined him in Germany (A.D. 740) and became bishop of Eichstädt in Bavaria in 742. He directed his attention chiefly to the founding of monasteries after the Benedictine rule. He called to his side his brother Wunnebald, his sister Walpurgis, and other helpers from England. He died July 7, 781 or 787. He is considered by some as the author of the biography of Boniface; but it was probably the work of another Willibald, a presbyter of Mainz.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  So be it, I repent nothing, I shall never know the least remorse so long as my soul is pure, and may I never be responsible for any evil other than that of having too much heeded the equitable and virtuous sentiments which will never abandon me. I was, however, simply unable to believe that the pursuits and inquiries the Count mentioned were really true, for they seemed highly implausible: it would be so dangerous for him to have me brought into court that I imagined there was far greater reason for him to be frightened at the prospect of having to confront me, than I had cause to tremble before his menaces. These reflections led me to decide to stay where I was and to remain, if possible, until the augmentation of my funds might allow me to move on; I communicated my plan to Rodin, who approved it, and even suggested I keep my chamber in his house; but first of all, before I speak of what I decided to do, it is necessary to give you an idea of this man and his entourage. Rodin was forty years of age, dark-haired, with shaggy eye-brows, a sparkling bright eye; there was about him what bespoke strength and health but, at the same time, libertinage. In wealth he was risen far above his native station, possessing from ten to twelve thousand pounds a year; owing to which, if Rodin practiced his surgical art, it was not out of necessity, but out of taste; he had a very attractive house in Saint-Marcel which, since the death of his wife two years previously, he shared with two girls, who were his servants, and with another, who was his own daughter. This young person, Rosalie by name, had just reached her fourteenth year; in her were gathered all the charms most capable of exciting admiration: the figure of a nymph, an oval face, clear, lovely, extraordinarily animated, delicate pretty features, very piquant as well, the prettiest mouth possible, very large dark eyes, soulful and full of feeling, chestnut-brown hair falling to below her waist, skin of an incredible whiteness... aglow, smooth, already the most beautiful throat in all the world, and, furthermore, wit, vivacity, and one of the most beautiful souls Nature has yet created. With respect to the companions with whom I was to serve in this household, they were two peasant girls: one of them was a governess, the other the cook. She who held the first post could have been twenty-five, the other eighteen or twenty, and both were extremely attractive; their looks suggested a deliberate choice, and this in turn caused the birth of some suspicions as to why Rodin was pleased to accommodate me.

• From Between Us

  Perhaps not in an adult sense (psychologists have found that initial forms of pride still miss many of the adult features). But we, as parents, helped by our visitors, created opportunities for pride. We cultivated an emotion that was culturally valued. The anthropologist Heidi Fung found that Taiwanese mothers cultivated shame in similar manners. They took and created opportunities for children to feel shame. The mother of three-year-old Didi, a Taiwanese toddler, scolded him when he approached the researcher’s camcorder: “Eh, eh, Didi! What has Mama told you? You never [listen] . . . You cannot! I’m going to spank you. You are a child who doesn’t obey rules.” She threatened to ostracize him, and put him aside: “We don’t want you; you stand here.” And she told him to control himself: “Look how ugly your crying will be on tape.” Didi’s sister joined in, calling him “ugly monster” and adding “shame on you.” Fung assures us that shaming was not intended to harm or ostracize the child, but rather to “transmit the cultural values of discretion shame [ . . . ] teaching children how to be part of society, to include them rather than to set them apart.” Just as Oliver’s dad and I created opportunities for Oliver to feel the right emotions at the right time, so did Didi’s mother and sister. Each in our own ways, Didi’s mother and sister and we, Oliver’s parents, nudged our children to feel and express the culturally desired emotions. The emotion in each case was a different one, because we valued different socialization goals. Our family lived in the United States, and we wanted our child to think highly of himself, to take his unique place in the world, and distinguish himself. Didi’s mother wanted to teach her child propriety, as valued in Taiwanese contexts; the norm for Didi was to be aware of his proper place, by feeling shame. We each induced the emotions that made our children valued members of their respective cultures. In short: emotions help us become part of our culture. Raising a Child Who Feels Good about Themselves Anthropologist Naomi Quinn observes that “Small children bask in their parent’s, often public, praise long before they comprehend what feats of accomplishment will be required of them if they are going to continue gaining approval from others and feeling good about themselves.” She was describing American middle-class families who draw attention to anything worthy of pride, such as turning a book right side up.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Habitually, and perhaps unconsciously, Hubbard would fill this gap—between reality and his interpretation of it—with mythology. This was the source of what some call his genius and others call his insanity. WHEN HE WAS TWENTY-TWO, Hubbard married Margaret Louise Grubb, an aspiring aviator four years his senior, whom he called Polly. Amelia Earhart had just become the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic, inspiring many daring young women who wanted to follow her example. Although Polly never gained a pilot’s license, it wasn’t surprising that she would respond to Ron’s swashbuckling personality and his tales of far-flung adventures. They settled in a small town in Maryland, near her family farm. Ron was trying to make it as a professional magazine writer, but by that point—at the end of 1933—he had only half a dozen articles in print. Soon, Polly was pregnant, and Ron had to find a way to make a living quickly. Pulp fiction derives its name from the cheap paper stock used in printing the garish magazines—Weird Tales, Black Mask, Argosy, Magic Carpet—that became popular in Depression-era America. The pay for contributors was miserable—the standard rate was a penny a word. To fill the usual 128 pages, each pulp magazine required 65,000 words, so that the yearly quota to fill the 150 pulp weeklies, biweeklies, and monthlies that crowded the newsstands in 1934 amounted to about 195,000,000 words. Many well-known writers began their careers by feeding this gigantic maw, including Dashiell Hammett, H. P. Lovecraft, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The pulps nurtured genres that were perhaps not new but until then had never been so blatantly and abundantly expressed. Hubbard’s actual life experiences seemed wonderfully suited for such literature. His first pulp story, “The Green God,” published in Thrilling Adventures in 1934, is about a naval intelligence officer (possibly based on Snake Thompson) who is tortured and buried alive in China. “Maybe Because—!,” published in Cowboy Stories, was the first of Hubbard’s forty-seven westerns, which must have drawn upon his childhood in Montana. Soon, however, there were stories about submarines and zombies, tales set in Russia or Morocco. Plot was all that really mattered, and Hubbard’s amazing capacity for invention readily colored the canvas. Success in the pulps depended on speed and imagination, and Hubbard had both in abundance. The church estimates that between 1934 and 1936, he was turning out a hundred thousand words of fiction a month. He was writing so fast that he began typing on a roll of butcher paper to save time. When a story was finished, he would tear off the sheet using a T-square and mail it to the publisher. Because the magazines didn’t want an author to appear more than once in the same issue, Hubbard adopted pen names—Mr.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Everywhere he went, the narrative goes, the teenage Hubbard was preoccupied with a central question: “ ‘Why?’ Why so much human suffering and misery? Why was man, with all his ancient wisdom and knowledge accumulated in learned texts and temples, unable to solve such basic problems as war, insanity and unhappiness?” In fact, Hubbard’s contemporary journals don’t really engage such philosophical points. His trip to China, which was organized by the YMCA, lasted only ten days. His parents accompanied him, although they are not mentioned in his journals. He did encounter monks, whom he described as croaking like bullfrogs. The journals reflect the mind of a budding young imperialist, who summons an unearned authority over an exotic and unfamiliar culture. “The very nature of the Chinaman holds him back,” Hubbard observes on the ship back to Guam. “The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.” The journals provide a portrait of an adolescent writer trying on his future craft by cataloguing plot ideas, such as, “A young American in India with an organized army for rent to the various rajahs. Usual plot complications.” Another idea: “Love story. Goes to France. Meets swell broad in Marseilles.” He is trying uncertainly to find his voice: Rex Fraser mounted the knoll and setting his hat more securely against the wind squinted at the huddle of unpainted shacks below him. “So this,” he said to his horse, “is Montana City.” Hubbard entered the School of Engineering at George Washington University in the fall of 1930. He was a poor student—failing German and calculus—but he excelled in extracurricular activities. He began writing for the school newspaper. A new literary magazine at GWU provided a venue for his first published works of fiction. He became director of the gliding club, a thrilling new pastime that was just catching on (Hubbard’s gliding license was #385). The actual study of engineering was a secondary pursuit, as his failing grades reflected. In September 1931, Hubbard and his friend Philip “Flip” Browning took a few weeks off to barnstorm through the Midwest in an Arrow Sport biplane. “We carefully wrapped our ‘baggage,’ threw the fire extinguisher out to save half a horsepower, patched a hole in the upper wing, and started off to skim over four or five states with the wind as our only compass,” Hubbard writes. By now, he had taken to calling himself “Flash.” Hubbard’s account of this adventure, “Tailwind Willies,” was his first commercially published story, appearing in The Sportsman Pilot in January 1932. It was the launch of an unprecedented career.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  It’s science, boy, science.” He makes a vague reference to the research he’s performing on children. “This hellbroth I cooked up works remarkably well on kids,” he remarks. “Took a scared little kid that was supposed to be stupid and was failing everything and worked on him about thirty-five hours just to make sure. That was last month. So now he turns up this afternoon with all A’s and all of a sudden reading Shakespeare.” He was also noting improvement in himself, both in his work and in his recovered sexual powers. “I am cruising on four hours sleep a night. But the most interesting thing is, I’m up to eight comes. In an evening, that is.” Heinlein was eager for details. Hubbard responded by outlining what he would later call the Tone Scale. It describes the range of human emotional states, from one to four. At bottom, there is Apathy, then Anger. These lower tones were governed by the unconscious, which Hubbard says should be called the “reactive mind.” The third level, which was as yet untitled, is the normal state for most of humanity; and the fourth is a condition of happiness and industriousness. Hubbard’s experimental technique aimed at raising an individual out of the lower tones and into the superior state of the fourth tone. His method, as he described it to Heinlein, was to drain off the painful experiences and associations that an individual has accumulated in his lifetime. Once that’s done, “astonishing results take place.” Asthma, headaches, arthritis, menstrual cramps, astigmatism, and ulcers simply disappear. There is a huge boost in competence. The reactive mind is eliminated, and the rational mind takes over. At the end of April 1949, Hubbard sent a note to Heinlein that he was moving to Washington, DC, for an indefinite stay. There was no word about Sara. Three weeks later, the thirty-eight-year-old Hubbard applied for a license in Washington to marry twenty-six-year-old Ann Jensen. The application was canceled the next day at the request of the bride. Perhaps she had learned that Hubbard was already married to his second wife and had previously committed bigamy. In any case, Ann Jensen’s name disappears from Hubbard’s life story. He and Sara moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where John Campbell, Hubbard’s editor at Astounding Science-Fiction before the war, resided. Campbell visited Hubbard often and became one of his first and most important converts. “Dammit, the man’s got something—and something big,” he wrote excitedly to Heinlein. Campbell underwent the treatment, which employed “deep hypnosis.” In that entranced state, Campbell was able to retrieve traumatic memories of his birth. “I was born with a cord wrapped around my neck, strangling me,” he recounted to Heinlein. The doctor who delivered him, whom Campbell now remembered had a German accent, had barked at Campbell’s mother, saying, “You must stop fighting—you are killing him. Relax!” Later, the doctor put some corrosive medication in the baby’s eyes, and said, “You’ll forget all about this in a little while.”

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Some of the pain inflicted or enjoyed in wild sex is simply a response to escalating passions. Not only might you feel inclined to bite, scratch, pinch, or slap when highly aroused, but at the same time, you’re less likely to be hurt by these activities because your pain threshold actually goes up in the heat of passion. In other words, things that would normally hurt can feel terrific when you’re excited. You may discover extra intense sensation at the changeable boundary between pleasure and pain. This intensity doesn’t necessarily have much to do with S-M. However, if you’ve ever enjoyed the point at which pleasure and pain begin to blur, you’ll probably find it a bit easier to understand how pain can become a turn-on. Like all CETs, S-M scenarios are primarily concerned with the resolution of childhood conflicts and hurt. But instead of addressing hurtful problems in disguised or subtle ways as most CETs do, sadomasochism turns the spotlight on pain and provides two complementary strategies for mastering it. The sadist takes command of his or her psychic wounds by skillfully administering pain to an enthusiastic recipient. The sadist is spared the discomfort of the hurt and is also gratified and subconsciously relieved to observe that the masochist clearly likes it. Old wounds are simultaneously avenged and transformed into an erotic high. The sadist is beyond merely being safe and has the illusion of omnipotence. For many people the allure of masochism is incomprehensible. Yet sexologists have long recognized that more people imagine or play the masochistic role than the sadistic role, a preference that is clearly evident in The Group’s peak turn-ons. What could anyone possibly gain from being hurt or humiliated? And if resolving pain is a chief goal of our CETs, why would someone seek it out? Dr. Stoller explains a crucial piece of the puzzle: Masochism is a technique of control, first discovered in childhood following trauma, the onslaught of the unexpected. The child believes it can prevent further trauma by reenacting the original trauma. Then, as master of the script, he is no longer a victim; he can decide for himself when to suffer pain rather than having it strike without warning.14 The notion that masochistic scenarios help participants seize control of early trauma is supported by the fact that masochists frequently report feeling validated and powerful—just the opposite of what you might expect. Psychologists who have analyzed S-M dynamics have noted that the masochist is the true master, often aggressively choreographing the entire encounter.15 Interestingly, The Group doesn’t report any peak experiences, not even fantasies, in which they enjoy inflicting physical pain on their partners. For reasonably healthy people, actually hurting someone is rarely, if ever, a peak experience. Symbolically hurting them, however, is a different matter altogether. Web: Defiling innocence

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Grenada is their country. I am only a relative. I must listen long and hard and ponder the implications of what I have heard, or be guilty of the same quick arrogance of the U.S. government in believing there are external solutions to Grenada’s future. I also came for reassurance, to see if Grenada had survived the onslaught of the most powerful nation on earth. She has. Grenada is bruised but very much alive. Grenadians are a warm and resilient people (I hear my mother’s voice: “Island women make good wives. Whatever happens, they’ve seen worse”), and they have survived colonizations before. I am proud to be of stock from the country that mounted the first Black english-speaking People’s Revolution in this hemisphere. Much has been terribly lost in Grenada, but not all — not the spirit of the people. Forward Ever, Backward Never 22 is more than a mere whistle in the present dark. Notes 1. P. Tyler, Washington Post, October 10, 1983, p. A14. 2. A. Cockburn, Village Voice, November 8, 1983, p.11. 3. B.D. Ayers, New York Times, October 22, 1983, p. A5 and J. McQuiston, New York Times, October 26, 1983, p. A20. 4. Text of Treaty, New York Times, October 26, 1983, p. A19. 5. S. Taylor, New York Times, October 26, 1983, p. A19. 6. A. Lewis, New York Times, November 3, 1983 and A. Cockburn, Village Voice, November 8, 1983, p. 10. 7. S. Mydans, New York Times, January 15, 1984, p. 9. 8. Christian Science Monitor, November 7, 1983. 9. A. Schlesinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, October 26, 1983. 10. C. Sunshine, ed., Grenada — The Peaceful Revolution (E.P.I.C.A., Washington, D.C., 1982). 11. C. Sunshine, The Guardian, December 28, 1983. 12. E. Ray and B. Schaap, “U.S. Crushes Caribbean Jewel,” Covert Action Bulletin # 20, Winter 1984, p. 11. 13. Ibid., p. 13. 14. Ibid., p. 5. 15. S. Taylor, New York Times, November 6, 1983, p. 20. 16. Ibid. 17. Washington Post, November 21, 1983. 18. CBS Evening News, December 18, 1983. 19. The London Guardian, November 4, 1983. 20. Grenada — The Peaceful Revolution, p. 87. 21. Carriacou — In the Mainstream of the Revolution (Fedon Publishers, St. Georges, Grenada, 1982), pp. 54–57. 22. Slogan of the Grenadian Revolution * I spent a week in Grenada in late December, 1983, barely two months after the U.S. invasion of the Black Caribbean island my parents left some sixty years earlier. It was my second visit in five years. This is an interim essay, a report written as the rest of Sister Outsider was already being typeset. For a current catalog of books from Crossing Press visit our Web site: www.tenspeed.com What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now.

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

  In the year 600 he succeeded his brother in the archiepiscopate of Seville. In this position he became the great leader of the Spanish Church, and is known to have presided at two, councils, the second council of Seville, opened November 13, 619, and the fourth council of Toledo, opened December 5, 633.1009 The first of these was of local interest, but the other was much more important. It was the largest ever held in Spain, being attended by all the six metropolitans, fifty-six bishops and seven bishops’ deputies. It has political significance because it was called by King Sisenand, who had just deposed Suintila, the former king. Sisenand was received by the council with great respect. He threw himself before the bishops and with tears asked their prayers. He then exhorted them to do their duty in correcting abuses. Of the seventy-five canons passed by the council several are of curious interest. Thus it was forbidden to plunge the recipient of baptism more than once under the water, because the Arians did it three times to indicate that the Trinity was divided (c. 6). It was not right to reject all the hymns written by Hilary and Ambrose and employ only Scriptural language in public worship (c. 13). If a clergyman is ever made a judge by the king he must exact an oath from the king that no blood is to be shed in his court (c. 31). By order of King Sisenand the clergy were freed from all state taxes and services (c. 47). Once a monk always a monk, although one was made so by his parents (c. 49) 1010 While compulsory conversion of the Jews was forbidden, yet no Jew converted by force was allowed to return to Judaism (c. 57). Very strenuous laws were passed relative to both the baptized and the unbaptized Jews (c. 58–66). The king was upheld in his government and the deposed king and his family perpetually excluded from power. When Isidore’s position is considered it is a probable conjecture that these canons express his opinions and convictions upon the different matters. Warned by disease of death’s approach, Isidore began the distribution of his property. For the last six months of his life he dispensed alms from morn till night. His end was highly edifying. Accompanied by his assembled bishops he had himself carried to the church of St. Vincent the Martyr, and there, having publicly confessed his sins, prayed God for forgiveness. He then asked the pardon and prayers of those present, gave away the last thing he owned, received the Holy Communion, and was carried to his cell, in which he died four days later, Thursday, April 4, 636.1011 He was immediately enrolled among the popular saints and in the 15th council of Toledo (688) is styled "excellent doctor," and by Benedict XIV. (April 25, 1722) made a Doctor of the Church. Isidore of Seville was the greatest scholar of his day.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  In the next chapter, you will see how lubrication and its application can only increase the pleasure that is related to having fabulous sex without compromising your safety. Safety is essential, but it doesn’t have to ruin the mood or lessen the charge between you and your lover. You should think of the information here as an expression of your respect for yourself, as well as your partner. [image file=image_rsrc1YH.jpg] “Who knew you could accomplish so much with so little?” MALE SEMINAR ATTENDEE, AGE 32 The whole thing happened quite innocently. Early on in her marriage, a woman found she felt drier than she used to because of the birth control she was now using, a method known to cause dryness. After taking a quick shower, she decided to apply some lubricant to herself after her shower and before getting into bed with her husband. They began to kiss and, as will often happen, he slid his hand down to her genital area. Well, he was so proud and turned on by the obvious effect his kisses had on her she couldn’t bear to tell him her wetness wasn’t entirely his doing. Furthermore, he went on to make such mad passionate love to her that night that ten years into their marriage, she’s still secretly applying lubricant to herself before many of their romantic encounters. He still thinks his kisses bring on Niagara Falls and she’s still reaping the benefits. While I’m not, as a rule, a proponent of one lover misleading another, in this particular case it does seem rather harmless, especially since she also keeps a bottle of personal lubricant by the bed at all times, which they use openly whenever they desire. For this reason and many others, I feel personal lubricant is quite simply a treasure. I can’t think of a single store-bought item that does more to enhance the overall pleasure and ease of sexual technique than lubricant. That being so, I am constantly amazed at how many women have yet to discover the amount of joy that can be created from one little bottle. Those of you who have not tried it are in for a treat. As a thirty-nine-year-old male entrepreneur from Sacramento said, “I never knew her hand could feel so good.” Many women in my seminars have said they believe the use of personal lubricant is in some way a poor reflection on them. They tell me they are afraid that if they bring out a bottle of lubricant during lovemaking that their lovers may think they’re incapable of getting excited “naturally.” One woman put it succinctly: “I don’t use it every time, just sometimes to give me a physical jump start when I’m already there mentally.” I’ve also had men tell me that they, too, are afraid to introduce lubricant during sex; from their point of view, they’re afraid we women will think they aren’t exciting enough to get us lubricated. Secret from Lou’s Archives

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  I want to be absolutely clear about the spirit with which this book was written. It was never my intent to sit down and create a book about how to please a man. While there is no point in arguing the fact that the man in your life will be a major beneficiary of the information found here, the real purpose is threefold: to empower you as a woman, heighten the intimacy of your romantic relationship, and enable you and your partner to enjoy yourselves in intense new ways. While biology may have graced us with a basic understanding of how to have sex, we are not necessarily born great lovers. We learn to be great lovers. And I have always believed that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Wouldn’t you agree that the better we are at something, the more we enjoy doing it? Sex is no different. It shouldn’t be an experience just to get through, but rather an experience to be relished from beginning to end. For that to happen, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. I also believe that every woman has the right to be sexually proficient. You’ll find that knowing what to do to your man’s body can provide you with as much power as it does pleasure. And contrary to what we’ve been made to feel in the past, there never has, nor ever will be anything unladylike about being masterful in the bedroom. The truth is, being sexually savvy is no less a part of being a woman than motherhood, and learning how to be a great lover is about excelling in all areas of womanhood. It’s for these reasons, as well as the demand from the women in the seminars, that I decided to write a book that teaches women the art of sex, and I hope to give you extraordinary tools that will enable you to please your lover beyond his wildest expectations. The first place most of us learned about sex was in the company of our girlfriends. It is certainly the first place we laughed about it. Most of us can vividly recall squirming in uncomfortable silence while our mothers struggled to tell us the facts of life, or how we sunk deep into our chairs during health class, praying the teacher would spare us the humiliation of having to discuss the subject out loud. At the same time, we can also remember those wonderful Friday nights, sitting pajama-clad in a circle of five or six of our closest pals, listening intently as the girls with the older sisters shared amazing stories about what they’d seen and overheard through keyholes. We absorbed their tales as if they were gospel, giving far more credence to their words than those of our mothers and teachers. We may have giggled and acted shocked, but secretly we couldn’t wait to experience sex for ourselves. Indeed, sex seemed like a fabulous, exciting adventure.

• From Between Us

  We saw some examples of this in the last chapter. A proud child assumes a strong and independent position in a relationship. Pride is, therefore, encouraged and “right” in a culture that values relational autonomy. It is wrong in cultures that value harmony: a proud child is neither empathic nor deferent. In contrast, shame is “right” in the context of a strong cohesive social network, in which a child needs to fit in. In this context, a child who is ashamed acknowledges that their behavior failed to meet the norms, thus showing deference and assuming their proper place. Shame is “wrong” in a culture that focuses on building a child’s autonomy and self-esteem, as it emphasizes the child’s dependence on others’ judgment and their failure to meet certain norms. Consistently, fear is “right” in a society that emphasizes authority as a basis for relationship, but detrimental when love and encouragement is the relational model. A fearful child is inhibited and avoids punishment (or danger in general), but fear simultaneously hampers the individual responsibility and initiative that is valued in many WEIRD cultures. Similarly, a child feeling amae yields to the care by others. This is “right” in a culture of close interdependence, but “immature” in a culture whose very developmental goal is to not depend on anybody. Finally, an angry child blames someone else for not giving them what they are entitled to. Anger is “right” (or at least condoned) in cultures (and situations) where children are raised to speak up for themselves, but “wrong” in cultures that teach their children the value of adjusting to the wishes and the activities of their community. In these latter cultures, anger is considered the most “immature” emotion of all. In each culture, certain emotions are right and others are wrong. Right emotions help to foster relationships that are valued in the culture and wrong emotions support condemned forms of relating. Right emotions are culturally encouraged and rewarded, and wrong emotions are culturally avoided and punished. This is, very simply speaking, the logic of cultural differences in emotions. Cultural differences in emotions owe their logic to an OURS model of emotions—to what they do in our social and cultural worlds.

• From Between Us

  I now understand a logic to it: cultural differences in emotions are about the types of relationship changes that are either desirable and moral, or undesirable and despised. This logic is more apparent when starting from an OURS model of emotion, from what emotions do between people, than from a MINE model, or how emotions feel. Emotions change relationships. We saw some examples of this in the last chapter. A proud child assumes a strong and independent position in a relationship. Pride is, therefore, encouraged and “right” in a culture that values relational autonomy. It is wrong in cultures that value harmony: a proud child is neither empathic nor deferent. In contrast, shame is “right” in the context of a strong cohesive social network, in which a child needs to fit in. In this context, a child who is ashamed acknowledges that their behavior failed to meet the norms, thus showing deference and assuming their proper place. Shame is “wrong” in a culture that focuses on building a child’s autonomy and self-esteem, as it emphasizes the child’s dependence on others’ judgment and their failure to meet certain norms. Consistently, fear is “right” in a society that emphasizes authority as a basis for relationship, but detrimental when love and encouragement is the relational model. A fearful child is inhibited and avoids punishment (or danger in general), but fear simultaneously hampers the individual responsibility and initiative that is valued in many WEIRD cultures. Similarly, a child feeling amae yields to the care by others. This is “right” in a culture of close interdependence, but “immature” in a culture whose very developmental goal is to not depend on anybody. Finally, an angry child blames someone else for not giving them what they are entitled to. Anger is “right” (or at least condoned) in cultures (and situations) where children are raised to speak up for themselves, but “wrong” in cultures that teach their children the value of adjusting to the wishes and the activities of their community. In these latter cultures, anger is considered the most “immature” emotion of all. In each culture, certain emotions are right and others are wrong. Right emotions help to foster relationships that are valued in the culture and wrong emotions support condemned forms of relating. Right emotions are culturally encouraged and rewarded, and wrong emotions are culturally avoided and punished. This is, very simply speaking, the logic of cultural differences in emotions. Cultural differences in emotions owe their logic to an OURS model of emotions—to what they do in our social and cultural worlds. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to two emotions: anger and shame. Both are considered “right” in some cultures (or positions), but “wrong” in others.

• From Between Us

  I conducted research in Japan, Korea, Turkey, and Mexico, and among immigrants from these countries to the United States, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Many of these individuals talk about emotional events as taking place between people, while de-emphasizing inner feelings—another reason to follow emotion’s tracks outwards. In Between Us , I will introduce you to this radically different way of thinking about our emotions: one that ties them to our position in the world, our relationships with others, and to the sociocultural contexts in which we participate. I will show how your emotions engage you with, and make you part of, the communities in which you live. I will reveal how emotions are OURS as much as they are MINE. Adopting this perspective on emotions will enrich your emotional life, adding to your understanding of your own and other people’s emotions. It will make transparent the many ways in which our feelings make us social and connect us to others. An OURS perspective on emotions does not so much replace as supplement the MINE model of emotion. Perhaps most important is that an OURS model of emotions provides us with tools to understand and navigate the differences in emotions across cultures, genders, generations, ethnic and racial groups, socioeconomic groups, and even between individuals with different personal histories (as was the case for my parents and me). This understanding may have never been more important than it is today. As our societies grow increasingly multicultural, our business organizations, schools, courtrooms, and health institutions are meeting points for different groups and cultures. Emotions are the currency of many of these intercultural encounters, yet we do not all use the same currency. Understanding how the emotions of each of us are tied to our respective social and cultural contexts will allow us to respectfully communicate about, and even resonate with, differences in emotions. Between Us helps to resolve differences—even clashes—between individuals from different groups and cultures. Undeniably, my motivation to write this book was strengthened by growing nationalism, xenophobia, white supremacy, racism, and religious intolerance in the United States, Western Europe, and beyond. But more of an incentive still has been that people with the best intentions—people who want to be inclusive—believe that to say that people from other groups or cultures have different emotions is equivalent to denying their humanity. If you are one of these people, I hope to convince you of the opposite. In Between Us , I’ll take you on the journey that my research took me. I make you part of the discoveries that I made during my research on emotions in different cultures, sharing my findings and surprises, but also recounting my blind spots. Chapter 1 introduces me as a researcher and an immigrant, and situates my work in the field of emotion research.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I thought about all this one year later when Beth and Jonathan, ten and nine, were asked by an interviewer how they thought they had been affected by being children of a feminist. Jonathan said that he didn’t think there was too much in feminism for boys, although it certainly was good to be able to cry if he felt like it and not to have to play football if he didn’t want to. I think of this sometimes now when I see him practising for his Brown Belt in Tae Kwon Do. The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself. And the best way I can do this is to be who I am and hope that he will learn from this not how to be me, which is not possible, but how to be himself. And this means how to move to that voice from within himself, rather than to those raucous, persuasive, or threatening voices from outside, pressuring him to be what the world wants him to be. And that is hard enough. Jonathan is learning to find within himself some of the different faces of courage and strength, whatever he chooses to call them. Two years ago, when Jonathan was twelve and in the seventh grade, one of his friends at school who had been to the house persisted in calling Frances “the maid.” When Jonathan corrected him, the boy then referred to her as “the cleaning woman.” Finally Jonathan said, simply, “Frances is not the cleaning woman, she’s my mother’s lover.” Interestingly enough, it is the teachers at this school who still have not recovered from his openness. Frances and I were considering attending a Lesbian/Feminist conference this summer, when we were notified that no boys over ten were allowed. This presented logistic as well as philosophical problems for us, and we sent the following letter: Sisters: Ten years as an interracial lesbian couple has taught us both the dangers of an oversimplified approach to the nature and solutions of any oppression, as well as the danger inherent in an incomplete vision. Our thirteen-year-old son represents as much hope for our future world as does our fifteen-year-old daughter, and we are not willing to abandon him to the killing streets of New York City while we journey west to help form a Lesbian-Feminist vision of the future world in which we can all survive and flourish. I hope we can continue this dialogue in the near future, as I feel it is important to our vision and our survival. The question of separatism is by no means simple. I am thankful that one of my children is male, since that helps to keep me honest. Every line I write shrieks there are no easy solutions . I grew up in largely female environments, and I know how crucial that has been to my own development.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Audre: But I’m used to associating a request for documentation as a questioning of my perceptions, an attempt to devalue what I’m in the process of discovering. Adrienne: It’s not. Help me to perceive what you perceive. That’s what I’m trying to say to you. Audre: But documentation does not help one perceive. At best it only analyzes the perception. At worst, it provides a screen by which to avoid concentrating on the core revelation, following it down to how it feels. Again, knowledge and understanding. They can function in concert, but they don’t replace each other. But I’m not rejecting your need for documentation. Adrienne: And in fact, I feel you’ve been giving it to me, in your poems always, and most recently in the long prose piece you’ve been writing,* and in talks we’ve been having. I don’t feel the absence of it now. Audre: Don’t forget I’m a librarian. I became a librarian because I really believed I would gain tools for ordering and analyzing information. I couldn’t know everything in the world, but I would gain tools for learning it. But that was of limited value. I can document the road to Abomey for you, and true, you might not get there without that information. I can respect what you’re saying. But once you get there, only you know why, what you came for, as you search for it and perhaps find it. So at certain stages that request for documentation is a blinder, a questioning of my perceptions. Someone once said to me that I hadn’t documented the goddess in Africa, the woman bond that moves throughout The Black Unicorn.* I had to laugh. I’m a poet, not a historian. I’ve shared my knowledge, I hope. Now you go document it, if you wish. I don’t know about you, Adrienne, but I have a difficult enough time making my perceptions verbal, tapping that deep place, forming that handle, and documentation at that point is often useless. Perceptions precede analysis just as visions precede action or accomplishments. It’s like getting a poem … That’s the only thing I’ve had to fight with, my whole life, preserving my perceptions of how things are, and later, learning how to accept and correct at the same time. Doing this in the face of tremendous opposition and cruel judgment. And I spent a long time questioning my perceptions and my interior knowledge, not dealing with them, being tripped by them.

• From Between Us

  A critic could object that Levent and Martin do not so much have different emotions, but rather different ways of talking about them. Is it not possible that Levent feels the same as Martin (e.g., enormously relieved, good), but is merely expressing these feelings in a different way? Does Levent talk about his family because this is the way in which Turkish people are supposed to talk about their emotions? How different from the involvement of Levent’s social environment is the role of Martin’s friends and the people he ran into in the weeks and months after his accomplishment? Back in the late ’80s, you will recall from chapter 1, I myself might have been that critic, as I was writing in the margins of my colleagues’ manuscripts: “This is emotion talk, not emotion itself.” And it’s true, many emotional events have both MINE and OURS features. As the accounts of Levent and Martin show, emotional events often involve both a Mental and a Relational component, and as such take place both INside and OUtside the person. Yet, there is a real cultural difference in the locus of emotions as either inside, in feelings, internal sensations, and bodily symptoms, or outside, in actions, the relationships with other people, and the situation. When your culture’s model of emotions is MINE, this means that what counts as an emotion, what is important about the emotion, what will be noticed or remembered, and what is acted upon are internal feelings and bodily sensations. But when your culture’s model of emotions is OURS, then relational acts and situational norms and requirements may count as emotions, they are noticed, remembered, and acted upon. A MINE cultural model translates into a very different way of doing emotions than an OURS cultural model. Anybody who is used to a MINE model will recognize that Levent’s episode of pride is different than what they are used to. Why would we assume that Levent is just talking about his emotions a certain way because of social convention? Could we just as readily imagine Martin really having emotions like Levent, but talking about them the way he does because that is the cultural convention among the Dutch-majority people? Probably not. Here is another example of OURS emotions from one of my Surinamese-Dutch respondents, an artist named Romeo. Romeo is reporting inconsiderate behavior by someone he was close to, a fellow artist. Central to Romeo’s story is that this fellow artist tries to gain status and resources by denying them to him, Romeo. Romeo describes his own feeling as “bad, really unpleasant,” but the core of the emotional episode is happening between people, as a contest of status and of access to resources:

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The old man, goes the story, wrote a long and learned book, but he became concerned that he had written too much. So he sat himself down for ten years more and reduced the original volume to one-tenth its size. Even then, he was dissatisfied, and he constrained the work even further, to a single line, “which contained everything there was to be known.” He hid the sacred line in a niche in his wall. But still he wondered, Could all human knowledge be distilled even further? Suppose all the wisdom of the world were reduced to just one line—suppose that one line were to be written today and given to you. With it you could understand the basis of all life and endeavor.... There is one line, conjured up out of a morass of facts and made available as an integrated unit to explain such things. This line is the philosophy of philosophy, thereby carrying the entire subject back into the simple and humble truth. All life is directed by one command and one command only—SURVIVE. Hubbard sent excited telegrams to publishers in New York, inviting them to meet him at Penn Station, where he would auction off a manuscript that would change the world. He wrote Polly, “I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all the books are destroyed.” But Excalibur was never published, leading some to doubt that it was ever written. The stories Hubbard later told about the book added to the sense that it was more mythical than real. He said that when the Russians learned of the book’s contents, they offered him money and laboratory facilities to complete his work. When he turned them down, they purloined a copy of his manuscript from his hotel room in Miami. Hubbard explained to his agent that he ultimately decided to withdraw the book from publication because the first six people who read it were so shattered by the revelations that they had lost their minds. The last time he showed Excalibur to a publisher, he said, the reader brought the manuscript into the room, set it on the publisher’s desk, then jumped out the window of the skyscraper. Hubbard despondently returned to the pulps. Five years of torrential output had left him exhausted and bitter. His work was “worthless,” he admitted. “I have learned enough of my trade, have developed a certain technique,” he wrote to Hays. “But curbed by editorial fear of reality and hindered by my own revolt I have never dared loose the pent flame, so far only releasing the smoke.” That same year Hubbard received an offer to write for a magazine called Astounding Science-Fiction. The editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., twenty-seven years old at the time, was to preside over what Hubbard and others would mark as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

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

  87 Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has investigated every suicide attack worldwide between 1980 and 2004 and concluded that “there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any religion for that matter.” For instance, of 38 suicide attacks in Lebanon during the 1980s, 8 were committed by Muslims, 3 by Christians, and 27 by secularists and socialists. 88 What all suicide operations do have in common, however, is a strategic goal: “to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.” Suicide bombing is therefore essentially a political response to military occupation. 89 IDF statistics show that of all Hamas’s suicide attacks, only 4 percent targeted civilians in Israel proper, the rest being directed against West Bank settlers and the Israeli army. 90 This is not to deny that Hamas is as much a religious as a national movement, only that the fusion of the two is a modern innovation. The exalted love of the fatherland, which has no roots in Islamic culture, is now suffused with Muslim fervor. 91 Islamic and nationalist themes alternate seamlessly in the final videotaped messages of Hamas martyrs. Twenty-year-old Abu Surah, for example, began with a traditional Muslim invocation: “It is the day of meeting the Lord of the Worlds and bearing witness to the Messenger.” He then called upon “all the saints and all the mujahidin of Palestine and of every part of the world,” moving unselfconsciously from holy men to Palestinian nationalists before finally shifting to a global perspective. Martyrs shed their blood “for the sake of Allah and out of love for this homeland and for the sake and honor of this people in order that Palestine remain Islamic, and Hamas remain a torch lighting the road of all the perplexed and all the tormented and oppressed and that Palestine be liberated.” 92 Like the Iranians, Palestinians regard their jihad against Israeli occupation as part of a Third World struggle against imperialism. Moreover, they may have fought the secular Palestinian Authority, but both share the same nationalist passions: both regard death for Palestine as a great privilege and hate the enemy with the virulence of any ultranationalist when his country is at war. 93 Highly stylized videos notwithstanding, one can never know what goes through the mind of suicide bombers at the moment when they drive trucks into a building or detonate bombs in a crowded marketplace. To imagine they do this entirely for God or that they are impelled solely by Islamic teaching is to ignore the natural complexity of all human motivation. Forensic psychiatrists who have interviewed survivors found that the desire to become a hero and achieve posthumous immortality was also a strong factor.

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

  This monarch, who found in his councillor, Aeneas Sylvius, an enthusiastic biographer, but who, by the testimony of others, was weak and destitute of martial spirit and generous qualities, was the first of the Hapsburgs to receive the crown in the holy city, and held the imperial office longer than any other of the emperors before or after him. With his coronation the emperor combined the celebration of his nuptials to Leonora of Portugal. Frederick’s journey to Italy and his sojourn in Rome offered to the pen of Aeneas a rare opportunity for graphic description, of which he was a consummate master. The meeting with the future empress, the welcome extended to his majesty, the festivities of the marriage and the coronation, the trappings of the soldiery, the blowing of the horns, the elegance of the vestments worn by the emperor and his visit to the artistic wonders of St. Peter’s,—these and other scenes the shrewd and facile Aeneas depicted. The Portuguese princess, whose journey from Lisbon occupied 104 days, disembarked at Leghorn, February, 1452, where she was met by Frederick, attended by a brilliant company of knights. After joining in gay entertainments at Siena, lasting four days, the party proceeded to Rome. Leonora, who was only sixteen, was praised by those who saw her for her rare beauty and charms of person. She was to become the mother of Maximilian and the ancestress of Charles V.726 On reaching the gates of the papal capital, Frederick was met by the cardinals, who offered him the felicitations of the head of Christendom, but also demanded from him the oath of allegiance, which was reluctantly promised. The ceremonies, which followed the emperor’s arrival, were such as to flatter his pride and at the same time to confirm the papal tenure of power in the city. Frederick was received by Nicolas on the steps of St. Peter’s, seated in an ivory chair, and surrounded by his cardinals, standing. The imperial visitor knelt and kissed the pontiff’s foot. On March 16, Nicolas crowned him with the iron crown of Lombardy and united the imperial pair in marriage. Leonora then went to her own palace, and Frederick to the Vatican as its guest. The reason for his lodging near the pope was that Nicolas might have opportunity for frequent communication with him or, as rumor went, to prevent the Romans approaching him under cover of darkness with petitions for the restoration of their liberties.727 Three days later, March 19, the crown of the empire was placed upon Frederick’s head.728 With his consort he then received the elements from the pope’s hand. The following week Frederick proceeded to Naples.729 Scarcely in any pontificate has so notable and long-forecasted an event occurred as the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks, which took place May 29, 1453. The last of the Constantines perished in the siege, fighting bravely at the gate of St. Romanos. The church of Justinian, St.