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 The Great Transformation (2006)

  Every prince found that he needed a team of good ritual consultants, who could ensure that the official sacrifices, the “hosting” (bin) banquets for the ancestors, and the ritual ballets were carried out correctly. The ru helped the princes and ministers to use the rites politically, so that they were not worsted in the feudal assemblies, and would know how a junzi should prepare his case and voice his opposition. The chronicles show that knowledge of the li was vital in diplomacy. On one occasion, the prince of a small city called upon one of the more important princes, who died during his visit. The ministers tried to force the guest to dress the corpse—a calculated move, since this was the job of a vassal. If he obeyed, the guest would forfeit his political independence to the larger state, but how could he in courtesy refuse? His advisers solved the problem. The minor lord went along to dress the body, but took a sorcerer with him. According to the li, this was what a prince did in his own domain when making a condolence call on one of his retainers. This adroit manipulation of the li had completely reversed the situation, and discomfited the scheming ministers. The story shows that despite the apparent humility that they seemed to express, there was really no kenosis in the performance of these rites. The ritualized lifestyle of the nobility did teach aristocrats to behave with apparent reverence and modesty to one another, but the li were usually informed by self-interest. Everything was a matter of prestige. Aristocrats were jealous of their privileges and their honor, and exploited the li to enhance their status.98 The most able and authoritative school of ritual was based in the principality of Lu, which had always regarded itself as the custodian of sacred tradition. There ritualists and scribes gradually developed the Lijing, the ritual code that would become the sixth Chinese classic.99 The Lu ritualists formulated two important principles: first, the efficacy of a ceremony depended upon the perfect performance of every single one of the actions that contributed to it; second, this perfection was possible only when each one of the participants was fully aware of the value and significance of the rite as a whole. In the late sixth century, one of the ritualists of Lu would initiate China’s Axial Age, taking these two principles as his starting point, and would reveal the latent spiritual power of this apparently self-serving and potentially stultifying discipline.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The Zhou king had virtually retired to the royal domain, and was no longer at the forefront of political life. His place had been taken by the princes who ruled the ancient cities, which were collectively known as the jung kuo, “cities of the center.” The prince had taken over many of the ritual attributes of the king.62 He had become a holy figure. His vassals had to fast and purify themselves before they entered his presence, because, as Heaven’s counterpart on earth, he had to be shielded from contamination and impurity. He too possessed the power that had radiated from the king, but—an important point—this daode depended upon and was nourished by his vassals’ faithful performance of the courtly rites. Lu’s ritual reform was based on a principle of far-reaching significance: the li not only transformed the person who practiced the rites; they also enhanced the sanctity of the one who received this ceremonial attention. This was an essentially magical notion, but it was based on a profound psychological insight. When people are consistently treated with the utmost respect, they learn to feel worthy of reverence; they realize that they have absolute value. So in China, the li sacralized relationships and conferred holiness on other people. When the vassals stood before their prince in the prescribed posture—with bodies bent, sashes hanging to the ground, their chins stretched out, like gargoyles on the eaves of a house, and their hands “clasped together, and as low as possible,” their respectful attitude maintained and increased the prince’s virtue.63

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

  It would be easy for me to write pages about this, especially as just describing this painstaking job has already triggered the first signs of excitement. There might even be a distant link between my attention to detail in a blow-job and the care I take over each description in my writing. I will restrict myself to adding that I also like giving up my role as the driving force. I like to have my head held still by two firm hands and to be fucked into my mouth the way I can be fucked in my cunt. In general, I feel the need to take a man into my mouth in the first few moments of a sexual encounter, just to titillate those few millilitres of blood which produce the erection. Either we are standing and I let myself drop down at my partner’s feet, or we are lying down and I quickly make my way under the sheet. It is like a game. I go into the dark looking for the thing I want. And in fact, in these moments, I have a silly tendency to talk like a greedy child. I ask for ‘my big lollipop’ and it gives me a kick. And when I lift my head up, because I do have to relax the muscles sucked in along the insides of my cheeks, I stick to the ‘umm… it’s good’ of someone establishing that their taste buds are enjoying something they are eating. By the same token, I receive all compliments with the same vanity as a good pupil on prize day. Nothing pleases me more than hearing that I ‘give the best blow-job’. Better than that: when, with a view to writing this book, I talk to a friend 25 years after my sexual relationship with him ended and I hear him say that he has ‘never met a girl who could suck a man off so well’, I lower my eyes, in some ways out of modesty, but also to hide my pride. It is not that I have been deprived of other forms of gratification in my personal or professional life but, as far as I can see, there is a balance to be sustained between the acquisition of moral and intellectual qualities which earns the respect of our peers, and a proportional excellence in practices which flout these qualities, brush them aside and deny them. We can demonstrate this ability to such an extent that we wouldn’t mind seeing the admiration it inspires turning to mockery. Éric nearly punched one narrow-minded idiot we met one evening in the club called the Cleopatra. When I was offered something to drink, the idiot – who wasn’t up to appreciating my enthusiasm in a fitting manner – announced that it was about time because the place was beginning to ‘smell of burned rubber’.

• 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)

  Backed by disaffected Persian converts, a new dynasty, claiming descent from Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, challenged Umayyad rule, drawing heavily on Shii rhetoric. In August 749 they occupied Kufa and defeated the Umayyad caliph the following year. But as soon as they were in power, the Abbasids cast aside their Shii piety and set up an absolute monarchy on the Persian model, which was welcomed by the subject peoples but strayed wholly from Islamic principles by embracing imperial structural violence. Their first act was to massacre all the Umayyads, and a few years later Caliph Abu Jafar al-Mansur (754–75) murdered Shii leaders and moved his capital to the new city of Baghdad, just thirty-five miles south of Ctesiphon. The Abbasids were wholly oriented toward the East.70 In the West, the victory of the Frankish king Charles Martel over a Muslim raiding party at Poitiers in 732 is often seen as the decisive event that saved Europe from Islamic domination; in fact, Christendom was saved by the Abbasids’ total indifference to the West. Realizing that the empire could expand no further, they conducted foreign affairs with elaborate Persian diplomacy, and the soldier soon became an anomaly at court. By the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786–809), the transformation of the Islamic Empire from an Arab to a Persian monarchy was complete. The caliph was hailed as the “Shadow of God” on earth, and his Muslim subjects—who had once bowed only to God—prostrated themselves before him. The executioner stood constantly beside the ruler to show that he had the power of life and death. He left the routine tasks of government to his vizier; the caliph’s role was to be a judge of ultimate appeal, beyond the reach of factions and politicking. He had two significant tasks: to lead the Friday prayers and to lead the army into battle. The latter was a new departure because the Umayyads had never personally taken the field with the army, so Harun was the first autocratic ghazi-caliph.71 The Abbasids had given up trying to conquer Constantinople, but every year Harun conducted a raid into Byzantine territory to demonstrate his commitment to the defense of Islam: the Byzantine emperor reciprocated with a token invasion of Islamdom. Court poets praised Harun for his zeal in “exerting himself beyond the exertion [jihad] of one who fears God.” They pointed out that Harun was a volunteer who put himself at risk in a task not required of him: “You could, if you liked, resort to some pleasant place, while others endured hardship instead of you.”72 Harun was deliberately evoking the golden age when every able-bodied man had been expected to ride into battle beside the Prophet. Despite its glorious facade, however, the empire was already in trouble, economically and militarily.73 The Abbasids’ professional army was expensive, and manpower always a problem. Yet it was imperative to defend the border against the Byzantines, so Harun reached out to committed civilians who, like himself, were ready to volunteer their services.

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

  Henry, the first of the proud Plantagenets, was an able, stirring, and energetic monarch. He kept on his feet from morning till evening, and rarely sat down. He introduced a reign of law and severe justice after the lawless violence and anarchy which had disturbed the reign of the unfortunate Stephen.150 But he was passionate, vindictive, and licentious. He had frequent fits of rage, during which he behaved like a madman. He was the most powerful sovereign in Western Europe. His continental dominions were more extensive than those of the king of France, and embraced Maine and Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, reaching from Flanders to the foot of the Pyrenees. He afterwards (1171) added Ireland by conquest, with the authority of Popes Adrian IV. and Alexander III. His marriage to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had been divorced for infidelity from King Louis VII. of France, enriched his realm, but involved him in protracted wars with France and in domestic troubles. Eleanor was jealous of her rivals,151 incited her sons, Geoffrey and Richard, to rebel against their father, was imprisoned in 1173, and released after Henry’s death in 1189 by his successor, Richard I., Coeur de Lion, who made her regent on his departure for the Holy Land. She afterwards retired to the abbey of Fontevrault, and died about 1203. Becket occupied the chancellorship for seven years (1155–1162). He aided the king in the restoration of order and peace. He improved the administration of justice. He was vigorous and impartial, and preferred the interests of the crown to those of the clergy, yet without being hostile to the Church. He was thoroughly loyal to the king, and served him as faithfully as he had served Theobald, and as he afterwards served the pope. Thorough devotion to official duty characterized him in all the stations of his career. He gave to his high office a prominence and splendor which it never had before. He was as magnificent and omnipotent as Wolsey under Henry VIII. He was king in fact, though not in name, and acted as regent during Henry’s frequent absences on the Continent. He dressed after the best fashion, surrounded himself with a brilliant retinue of a hundred and forty knights, exercised a prodigal hospitality, and spent enormous sums upon his household and public festivities, using in part the income of his various ecclesiastical benefices, which he retained without a scruple. He presided at royal banquets in Westminster Hall. His tables were adorned with vessels of gold, with the most delicate and sumptuous food, and with wine of the choicest vintage. He superintended the training of English and foreign nobles, and of the young Prince Henry. He was the favorite of the king, the army, the nobility, the clergy, and the people.

• 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 Cultish (2021)

  Becca never posted Optavia’s name on Facebook, because the company explicitly forbids it. Instead, she was provided scripts to post verbatim that made the program sound like this exclusive mystery, all to keep people from searching it and finding what a Scientologist would call “black PR.” Back in the ’70s, the Moonies referred to their guileful recruiting and fund- raising tactics with the genteelism “heavenly deception.” Similarly, MLMers sweet-talk their friends and family into deceiving others along with them. At Mary Kay, a policy euphemistically termed the “Husband Unawareness Plan” encourages wives to get involved without their husbands’ “permission” and then teaches them how to keep their costs a secret. One Mary Kay Executive Senior Cadillac Sales Director laid out her version of the Husband Unawareness Plan in an instruction manual for her consultants: “If you do wish to shop for things today I want you to know that I accept CASH, Check, VISA, Mastercard, Discover, American Express. I also do interest free payment plans and the husband unawareness program or otherwise known as very creative financing; a little cash, a little on a check and a little on a card. No one will know the total.” Becca was told to withhold all specifics until she got a potential downline on the phone. That’s when she’d conduct her “health intake”—a twenty-point survey featuring intimate questions like: “If you could not fail, how much weight would you like to lose? When was the last time you were there? What has changed between now and then? Do you remember what that felt like? What would it be like if you were there again? Are there any family members you also want to help? Thank you so much for telling me . . . I really believe I have something that can help you reach your health goals; I’m so excited to share it with you.” These intakes weren’t medical examinations conducted by registered dietitians. They were trauma-bonding tactics carried out by regular people, like Becca and her mother-in-law. The company knows what it’s doing by bestowing recruits with titles like coach, senior coach, Presidential Director, and Global Health Ambassador—it fills them with a sense of authority. “I think a lot of these women convince themselves that they really are a health coach,” Becca asserted. “They say you are giving people an amazing gift of life. If your coach gives you a shout-out in our secret Facebook group, people are like, ‘Incredible job! Saving lives!’” Everyone knows deep down that the difference between a coach and a senior coach has nothing to do with nutrition expertise; it’s how many people they were able to add to their downline that month. Yet when the company is love-bombing you with a fancy title and adulating you as a lifesaver, you become conditioned to interpret it that way, if you want to. Nothing gets Optavia’s coaches hyped like its annual leadership retreats and conventions.

• 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 Cultish (2021)

  Court documents reveal that CorePower’s own lawyers discredit karma as a vacant “metaphysical precept” in the same nonsense language category as “soul- rocking.” But for followers, it was loaded enough to retain their allegiance even when they knew the company was screwing them. Kalli left her CorePower career dreams behind to become a registered nurse but continues to take yoga classes at a local CorePower studio. In order to afford her $120 monthly membership (she receives no discount for having gone through teacher training), she works as a cleaner at a different CorePower location once a week. On the side, she teaches “goat yoga” (they really do have everything now) at a small farm in the Minneapolis suburbs. Her bio proudly reads “CorePower Trained Instructor.” vi. Upon finding yourself in a cultish fitness community that may or may not be entirely healthy, here are a few questions worth asking: Is this group genuinely welcoming of all different people? Or do you feel excessive pressure to dress and talk like everyone else (even outside of class)? Are you allowed to participate casually, to dabble in this activity? Or do you find yourself putting all your time and faith in this group alone, basing all your decisions on theirs? Do you trust the instructor to tell you to slow down, maybe even take a few weeks off or try a whole different exercise, if your body needs it? Or will they only tell you harder, faster, more? If you miss a class or quit, what is the exit cost? Pride? Money? Relationships? Your whole world? Is it a price you’re willing to pay? For me, it’s become easier to spot the difference between a warehouse full of five hundred yoga trainees war-crying that it’s their leader’s way or the highway (or a Spin instructor debasing their students as “little sluts”) and a studio of sixteen women, who are dressed how they like and free to cancel their memberships without the threat of shame or worse, joining in a mantra like “I am stronger than I seem.” Both businesses are profiting from the language, but they’re also literally naming whom they want to empower: In one case, it’s the guru, and in the other, it’s the people. “I feel like what ‘cult fitness’ really means is that people are so moved by something that helps them grow and change,” intenSati’s Patricia Moreno concluded.

• 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 A Way of Being (1980)

  struggling to objectify knowledge in a potential field of science that no one else seemed to be concerned about. It was not ambition or hope of any reward that pushed me on. In the empirical research itself there was more than a little desire to prove something to others—clearly not a scientific goal. But in the basic phases of the work—the careful observation, the recorded interviews, the hunches as to hypotheses, the development of crude theories—I was as close to being a true scientist as I ever hope to be. But it was clear, I thought, that my colleagues and I were just about the only ones who knew or cared. So my voice choked and the tears flowed when I was called forth, at the 1956 APA Convention, to receive, with Wolfgang Kohler and Kenneth Spence, the first of the awards for a scientific contribution to psychology. It was a vivid proof that psychologists were not only embarrassed by me, but were to some extent proud of me. It had a greater personal meaning than all the honors that have followed, including the first award for professional contribution, given last year. I did enjoy last year’s citation, especially the honesty of the statement that I was a “gadfly” to the profession—only now that statement promotes me to the status of “respected gadfly.” I liked that expression of the ambivalence. TWO STRUGGLES As I look back over the years, I realize I have engaged in two struggles that have professional significance. Struggle with Psychiatry

• 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)

  Besides, as much of a bitch as Happy was, there was something special about performing for the Revue. The Ba-Ba-Bazoomba Revue traced its lineage back in an unbroken line to Pinky Perry’s Ra-Ra- Revue, the raunchy burlesque troupe that operated out of the Chimera when it was a speakeasy — though the term “speakeasy” implied a level of covertness that really wasn’t necessary in this town back then. At that time, San Esteban was a major staging point for shipments of illegal liquor coming dowmrthe coast to San Francisco and points south. It was also destination fér sophisticates from San Francisco, who would drive up the then challenging coastal roads heading North to enjoy a weekend in a lawless town of drink and debauchery. The local cops were in the pocket of the Syndicate. The mayor and city council were on the payroll. This was way before the University came to town in the sixties, of course — San Esteban was just a sleepy coastal burg before the Syndicate showed up and made it a party town. In this environment, a number of off-color theaters had thrived along Main Street to cater to the stream of visitors from SE Chief among them was Pinky Perry’s Chimera Theater, where drink was served openly and even the Treasury agents looked the other way. Six nights a week, Pinky Perry, née Pino Perelman, could be found greeting guests and wandering through the crowd drinking imported Canadian whisky from a coffee mug, while his guests drank from cocktail glasses. This affectation was in mockery of the coffee cups the other joints served in, as if to drive home the point that Pinky Perry, like everyone in San Esteban’s close-knit underworld, was well above the law. The end of Prohibition had called a halt to the corruption and vice that accompanied the liquor trade in San Esteban as elsewhere, but Perry had soldiered on, reinventing the Chimera as a movie theater and thereafter as kind of a half-assed strip club. But he’d never given 128 Thomas S. Roche up his dreams of burlesque glory for the Chimera. In fact, Pinky Perry had died in this very theater, in 1963 at the age of sixty, during the inaugural performance of the Ba-Ba Revue Revival — swilling Canadian whisky from his coffee mug, an affection he’d continued even 30 years after the repeal of the Volstead act. Reportedly Perry’s last words were “Take it off!”

• 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 Cultish (2021)

  Kalli left her CorePower career dreams behind to become a registered nurse but continues to take yoga classes at a local CorePower studio. In order to afford her $120 monthly membership (she receives no discount for having gone through teacher training), she works as a cleaner at a different CorePower location once a week. On the side, she teaches “goat yoga” (they really do have everything now) at a small farm in the Minneapolis suburbs. Her bio proudly reads “CorePower Trained Instructor.” vi.Upon finding yourself in a cultish fitness community that may or may not be entirely healthy, here are a few questions worth asking: Is this group genuinely welcoming of all different people? Or do you feel excessive pressure to dress and talk like everyone else (even outside of class)? Are you allowed to participate casually, to dabble in this activity? Or do you find yourself putting all your time and faith in this group alone, basing all your decisions on theirs? Do you trust the instructor to tell you to slow down, maybe even take a few weeks off or try a whole different exercise, if your body needs it? Or will they only tell you harder, faster, more? If you miss a class or quit, what is the exit cost? Pride? Money? Relationships? Your whole world? Is it a price you’re willing to pay? For me, it’s become easier to spot the difference between a warehouse full of five hundred yoga trainees war-crying that it’s their leader’s way or the highway (or a Spin instructor debasing their students as “little sluts”) and a studio of sixteen women, who are dressed how they like and free to cancel their memberships without the threat of shame or worse, joining in a mantra like “I am stronger than I seem.” Both businesses are profiting from the language, but they’re also literally naming whom they want to empower: In one case, it’s the guru, and in the other, it’s the people. “I feel like what ‘cult fitness’ really means is that people are so moved by something that helps them grow and change,” intenSati’s Patricia Moreno concluded. Because Moreno’s aim is so transparently to teach her students to reclaim their own personal power, as opposed to asserting her power over them, she’s never felt the need to defend intenSati as not a “real cult.” To me, that lack of defensiveness speaks volumes. By and large, new religion experts are not terribly concerned that the drawbacks of cult fitness stack up to the likes of Scientology, either. “I definitely think some of these workouts are ‘culty,’ but I say that with scare quotes,” commented Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann. The main “cult” symptom Luhrmann finds in fitness buffs is the belief that if they attend classes regularly, their lives will dramatically improve overall. As long as they attend class five times a week and say the mantras, then that will change the way the world unfolds for them.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  consideration and his suggestion to the Department of Psychiatry that they drop their demand, which they did. These are the only two times I engaged in open combat with psychiatrists. For the most part, my strategy has been twofold. I have endeavored to reconcile the two professions in their pursuit of a common goal. I have also tried to move ahead so rapidly and so far that the right of psychologists to practice in a field in which they were preeminent in research, and fully equal in practice and in theory building, could not be challenged. But when pushed into a corner, as on these two occasions, I can fight with all the effectiveness that one develops in a family of six children. People who know only my thoughtful or gentle side are astonished at my attitude and behavior in a situation of all-out war. I should, in warning, have raised the banner of the early Colonies, on which was emblazoned a rattlesnake and the motto, “Don’t tread on me!” In 1957 I went to the University of Wisconsin, where, I am happy to say, my joint appointment in psychology and psychiatry was a pleasant resolution of these struggles. Indeed, I initiated the formation of a group of psychologists and psychiatrists who gradually defused an incipient legal and legislative battle which was splitting the two professions in that state. Struggle with Behavioristic Psychology The other struggle of my professional life has been on the side of a humanistic approach to the study of human beings. The Rogers-Skinner debate of 1956 is one of the most reprinted writings in the psychological world. It would be absurd of me to try to review that continuing difference in any depth. I will simply make a few brief statements as I look back over these years. To avoid misunderstanding, let me say immediately that I concur with the idea that the theory of operant conditioning, its development and its implementation, has been a creative achievement. It is a valuable tool in the promotion of certain types of learning. I do not denigrate the contribution it has made. But this is not the basis of divergence. Let me also say that I have a great personal respect for Fred Skinner. He is an honest man, willing to carry his thinking through to its logical conclusions. Hence, we can differ sharply, without damaging my respect for him. I was invited by several periodicals to respond to Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Skinner, 1971) and declined primarily because I felt he had a right to his views. My one disappointment in regard to Skinner is his refusal to permit the nine- hour confrontation we held at the University of Minnesota in Duluth to be released. It was all taped and is the deepest exploration in existence of the issues