Relief

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 Bestiary (2020)

  I spoke down to him: We’re going home. You will not follow us. His face was stunned flat as a run-over penny. We walked and he watched our backs, my brother’s shirt sheer with his sweat. My skin was soaked like a dress, a wet weight draped over my bones, so heavy I wanted to kneel down on the pavement. At the bus stop, we waited for three hundred breaths until it arrived, exhaust unspooling from its rear end. Night came sudden as a sheet thrown over a cage. My brother turned to me and said we had no money. He was looking at me between the legs instead of at my face, as if my tail would descend now and speak for me. I laughed, giddy with what I knew it could do, thinking suddenly of the monkey that had pissed through the gap in its cage, the way a rainbow had refracted through it. The bus doors opened. The driver was Asian and tired and looked down the steps at us. At my brother’s collar of thumbprints. He let us on for free. _ It was raining when we got home, and our mother was standing outside the house, wet hair like guohua, one strand striping her collarbone, the other rain-pasted to the arc of her cheek, the rest coiled around her neck. My brother and I were wet too, having walked from the nearest bus stop. The piss was rinsed from his legs, replaced by rain. I’ve been waiting, she said. She looked behind us for our father, as if he were shielded by our shadows, playing hide-and-seek with our shoulder blades. At home, she wrapped my brother and me both in her floral comforter, breathing onto our scalps with her mouth while the hair dryer warmed up. She asked what happened, where is he, did he leave you, never looking directly at the bruises cuffing my brother’s arms, at the way my knees migrated together, sealing my tail away from the light, her eyes.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  That’s what Ryan and Grace had been doing for eight of the ten years they were together, when they told themselves it wasn’t the right time to get engaged . . . or to break up. Eventually something had to change because the pain of purgatory became too great. If it hasn’t become clear at this point, let me revisit it. You can handle pain. You can handle the sting of a job change. You can handle the bite of a broken relationship. You can live with the loss of what you hold dear if it’s going to move you toward something that’s a better fit. Grace and Ryan sat with the pain and it ultimately benefited them greatly. When they were brave enough to sit with the sorrow, they found peace, and dare I say relief, on the other side. It’s not just about knowing that you can handle pain, though. You also need to know that you can handle joy. So many of us rob ourselves of truly living a life of fulfillment because we feel we don’t deserve to be happy or we’re too afraid to find out what it actually is that will bring us meaning. Or we think even if we do find happiness, it will never last—so what’s the point of having it in the first place? We tell ourselves to settle for what we have because this is “as good as it gets.” We feel that it’s safer to stick with the status quo so we continue chugging along in our discontent because it’s what we know best. For many of us, joy is an unknown box that we’re too afraid to open. I’m not saying to make a change in your life just because. And I’m also not saying that you should expect to be happy all the time. If you fall for this narrative that joy means you’re thriving 100 percent of the time, you’re constantly going to be cycling out of relationships and jobs as soon as the honeymoon phase ends. You’ll peace out the moment there’s conflict, boredom, or dissatisfaction. That’s not what I’m talking about when I’m referencing this pursuit of unabashed joy. What I’m referring to is how in alignment you are presently. Are you living out the values that matter to you? Are you with someone who sees a similar path ahead or are you hoping and praying that someday you’ll get lucky and they’ll change their mind on a nonnegotiable, like Grace and Ryan were? Are you absolutely miserable with the work that you do —and have been for years—but you tell yourself this is just how it is going to be? You don’t have to settle. And you don’t have to keep waiting. If you have the power to change your situation, even if only by 1 percent, and it will move you that much closer to the values that you want in your life, do it.

• From The Art of Memoir

  ended with acceptance and relief. For the more haunted among us, only looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past. How does telling the truth help a reader’s experience, though? Let’s say you had an awful childhood—tortured and mocked and starved every day—hit hard with belts and hoses, etc. You could write a repetitive, duller-than-a-rubber-knife misery memoir. But would that be “true”? And true to how you keep it boxed up now, or to lived experience back then? Back then, those same abusers probably fed you something, or you’d have died—and maybe you felt grateful for their crumbs, or furious, or even unworthy. No doubt you were either given false hope, or you cooked up futile schemes to win them over, to improve your lot. Or you fought back and rebelled. Or you disassociated much of the time. Or some awful part of you admired their strength, and you fantasized about being as strong yourself. It’s the disparities in your childhood, your life between ass-whippings, that throws past pain into stark relief for a reader. Without those places of hope, the beatings become too repetitive—maybe they’d make a dramatic read for a while, but single-note tales seldom bear rereading. The most fastidious writers do overhaul their versions based on later information. When Jon Krakauer was stumbling around oxygen- deprived and brain-damaged on Mount Everest, he misidentified people he ran into in a blinding blizzard—mistakes he corrected in later versions of Into Thin Air (1997). I also know Krakauer drives his publishers crazy revamping stories decades old, as he recently did when he spent ten years learning organic chemistry well enough to revise his idea of what seed poisoned the protagonist of Into the Wild (1996). Krakauer spends more time rechecking and revising than almost any nonfiction writer I know, which says much about his devotion to getting things right. My friend Frank McCourt’s mother denied stuff like sleeping with her own cousin, but who wouldn’t? Certainly that outrage didn’t make or break Angela’s Ashes. Way worse in terms of maternal malfeasance was letting an underfed girl die in bed, which Mother McCourt never denied. What would motivate Frank, who loved his

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

  His successor, Galienus, revoked the legislation, and Christians enjoyed forty years of peace. Clearly Valerian had been troubled by the Church’s organizational strength rather than by its beliefs and rituals. The Church was a new phenomenon. Christians had exploited the empire’s improved communications to create an institution with a unity of structure that none of the traditions we have discussed so far had attempted. Each local church was headed by a bishop, the “overseer” who was said to derive his authority from Jesus’s apostles, and was supported by presbyters and deacons. The network of such near-identical communities seemed almost to have become an empire within the empire. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons (c. 130–200), who was anxious to create an orthodoxy that excluded aggressive sectarians, had claimed that the Great Church had a single Rule of Faith, because the bishops had inherited their teaching directly from the apostles. This was not only a novel idea but a total fantasy. Paul’s letters show that there had been considerable tension between him and Jesus’s disciples, and his teachings bore little relation to those of Jesus. Each of the Synoptics had his own take on Jesus, and the Johannines were different again; there were also a host of other gospels in circulation. When Christians finally established a scriptural canon—between the fourth and sixth centuries—diverse visions were included side by side. Unfortunately, however, Christianity would develop a peculiar yearning for intellectual conformity that would not only prove to be unsustainable but that set it apart from other faith traditions. The rabbis would never attempt to create a single central authority; not even God, much less another rabbi, could tell another Jew what to think. 130 The Buddha had adamantly rejected the idea of religious authority; the notion of a single rule of faith and a structured hierarchy was entirely alien to the multifarious traditions of India; and the Chinese were encouraged to see merit in all the great teachers, despite their disagreements. Christian leaders would make the Church even more threatening to the authorities during the forty peaceful years after Valerian’s death. When Diocletian finally established his palace in Nicomedia in 287, a Christian basilica was clearly visible on the opposite hill, seeming to confront the imperial palace as an equal. He made no move against the Church for sixteen years, but as a firm believer in the Pax Deorum at a time when the fate of the empire hung in the balance, Diocletian would find the Christians’ stubborn refusal to honor the gods increasingly intolerable. 131 On February 23, 303, he demanded that the presumptuous basilica be demolished; the next day he outlawed Christian meetings and ordered the destruction of churches and the confiscation of Christian scriptures. All men, women, and children were required on pain of execution to gather in the empire’s public squares to sacrifice to the gods of Rome.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The principles of harm reduction shaped my own substance use in ways I believe have kept me functional, moderate, and intentional in spite of my inherited legacy of, and tendency toward, addiction. They’ve also shaped the way I think of inviting other people into change and transformation. Here are some of the key principles of harm reduction from the Harm Reduction Coalition, which shaped my thinking: Accepts for better and or worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them.… Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm.… Affirms drugs users themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use, and seeks to empower users to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their actual conditions of use. Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination and other social inequalities affect both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm.71 I want to acknowledge early and often that pleasure is that “I’m alive” feeling that can intersect with addiction, control, coping, escape, trauma, and so many other experiences of harm. In my twenties, I lived in the grip of a stealthy depression that hid itself well. I did too much of everything and hid my true intake of drugs, alcohol, sugar, and tobacco. Even when I couldn’t find the right Alice in Wonderland cocktail, even when I was paranoid or lonely in my high, I was grateful for the options.72 I was and am so deeply moved by the Harm Reduction Coalition’s approach of nonjudgement, of dignifying humans responding to the harmful choices of our species, and the understanding that each person has to determine their own power and choose their own harm-reduction practices. Harm reduction is personal and can include active use or twelve-step abstinence. One time when I was high, as a young pothead, a new friend noticed the terror in my face and helped me break with the paranoia I used to experience by reciting this quote popularly attributed to Mark Twain: “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” They told me to put my thoughts on what I wanted to happen. Since then, most of my high experiences have been amazing. If I notice paranoia or anxiety creeping in, I remind myself that my mind is not the world and the future hasn’t happened yet. I notice if I need to step away from others and recalibrate. I smoke much-higher-quality weed. And if all of that doesn’t work, I turn and ask the paranoia what it needs me to attend to.

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

  There was, of course, a world of difference between the two: Daoists deplored rulers who forced their subjects to conform to an unnatural fa; their sage king meditated to achieve selflessness, not to “get results.”112 But the same ideas and imagery informed the thinking of political scientists, military strategists, and mystics. People could have the same beliefs yet act upon them very differently. Military strategists believed that their brutally pragmatic writings came to them by divine revelation, and contemplatives gave strategic advice to kings. Even the Confucians now drew on these notions: Xunzi believed that the Way could be comprehended only by a mind that was “empty, unified, and still.”113 [image file=image_rsrcDZA.jpg] Many people must have been relieved when Qin’s victory put a stop to the endless fighting and hoped that the empire would keep the peace. But they had a shocking introduction to imperial rule. Acting on the advice of Prime Minister Li Si, the First Emperor became an absolute ruler. The Zhou aristocracy—120,000 families—were forcibly moved to the capital and their weapons confiscated. The emperor divided his vast territory into thirty-six commanderies, each headed by a civil administrator, a military commander, and an overseer; each commandery was in turn divided into counties governed by magistrates, and all officials answered directly to the central government.114 The old rituals that had presented the Zhou king as head of a family of feudal lords were replaced by a rite that focused on the emperor alone.115 When the court historian criticized this innovation, Li Si told the emperor that he could no longer tolerate such divisive ideologies: any school that opposed the Legalist program must be abolished and its writings publicly burned.116 There was a massive book burning, and 460 teachers were executed. One of the first inquisitions in history had therefore been mandated by a protosecular state. Xunzi had been convinced that Qin would never rule China because its draconian methods would alienate the people. He was proved right when they rose up in rebellion after the death of the First Emperor in 210 BCE. After three years of anarchy, Liu Bang, one of the local magistrates, founded the Han dynasty. His chief military strategist, Zhang Liang, who had studied Confucian ritual in his youth, embodied Han ideals. It was said that a military text was revealed to him after he had behaved with exemplary respect toward an elderly man, and even though he had no military experience, he led Bang to victory. Zhang was not a bellicose man. He was a Daoist warrior: “not warlike,” weak as water, frequently ill, and unable to command on the field. He treated people with humility, practiced Daoist meditation and breath control, abstained from grains, and at one point seriously considered retiring from politics for a life of contemplation.117

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

  Under Umar’s leadership, the Arabs burst out of the peninsula, initially in small local raids but later in larger expeditions. As they expected, they met little opposition. The armies of both the great powers had been decimated, and the subject peoples were disaffected. Jews and Monophysite Christians were sick of harassment from Constantinople, and the Persians were still reeling from the political upheaval that had followed Khosrow II’s assassination. Within a remarkably short period, the Arabs forced the Roman army to retreat from Syria (636) and crushed the depleted Persian army (637). In 641 they conquered Egypt, and though they had to fight some fifteen years to pacify the whole of Iran, they were eventually victorious in 652. Only Byzantium, now a rump state shorn of its southern provinces, held out. Thus, twenty years after the Battle of Badr, the Muslims found themselves masters of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. When they finally subdued Iran, they fulfilled the dream that had eluded both the Persians and Byzantines and re-created Cyrus’s empire.45 It is hard to explain their success. The Arabs were accomplished raiders but had little experience of protracted warfare and had no superior weapons or technology.46 In fact, like the Prophet, in the early years of the conquest period, they gained more territory by diplomacy than by fighting: Damascus and Alexandria both surrendered because they were offered generous terms.47 The Arabs had no experience of state building and just adopted Persian and Byzantine systems of land tenure, taxation, and government. There was no attempt to impose Islam on the subject peoples. The people of the book—Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians—became dhimmis (“protected subjects”). Critics of Islam often denounce this arrangement as evidence of Islamic intolerance, but Umar had simply adapted Khosrow I’s Persian system: Islam would be the religion of the Arab conquerors—just as Zoroastrianism had been the exclusive faith of the Persian aristocracy—and the dhimmis would manage their own affairs as they had in Iran and pay the jizya, a poll tax, in return for military protection. After centuries of forcible attempts by the Christian Roman Empire to impose religious consensus, the traditional agrarian system reasserted itself, and many of the dhimmis found this Muslim polity a relief.

• From Philosophy and Religion in the West (1999)

  6. “Legalism” is then the name for the attempt to justify oneself by performing works of the Law rather than relying simply on faith in the Gospel. D. The Gospel’s Sacramental Efficacy 1. The key philosophical concept in Luther’s doctrine of justification is that the Gospel is a Word of promise which has the power to give the grace and forgiveness it promises. 2. Thus for Luther the power of the Gospel is sacramental in the medieval sense: it is an external sign which confers the grace it signifies. 3. As in the sacraments, what Christ ultimately gives in His Word is nothing less than Himself, so that those who believe the Gospel have Christ in them. 4. Here lies an epistemology more Biblical than Platonist: a person can give himself to others through his external speech. III. Calvin and the Problem of Predestination A. Calvin on Sacraments 1. While Luther seeks salvation in the sacraments, many other Protestants see them as offering a magical or ritualistic alternative to faith. 2. The difference can be seen in Calvin, who used Augustinian inwardness to criticize medieval notions of the power of the sacraments: we must not “cling too tightly to outward signs.” 3. Hence the form of Protestantism that has been most influential in modernity has been a religion of Augustinian inwardness contrasting itself with the medieval “superstition” of Rome. B. The Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination 1. The whole Augustinian tradition, including Aquinas and Luther as well as Calvin, affirms a doctrine of predestination—for salvation is by grace and God knows eternally to whom he will give grace. 2. The religious problem this poses for Luther and Calvin is not about free will but about the assurance of salvation. 3. The problem stems from the most profoundly Biblical aspect of Augustine’s doctrine of grace: God chooses to give grace to some and not others. 4. This is called (following Paul, Romans 11:5) the “election of grace,” i.e., God’s choice of whom to favor. ©1999 The Teaching Company. 84

• From The Art of Memoir

  In the two-plus years I was writing, I kept the pages to myself, but occasionally I rang Mother to check out a fact—usually a date—or to take her temperature on how she felt about certain details going public. God bless her, she never blinked. As for how I handled interpretative differences, it may not work for everybody. If somebody’s view wholly opposed mine, I mentioned it in passing, yet never felt duty-bound to represent it. For instance, my blond sister adored our fair grandmother, who loved Lecia’s blond ass back. I baldly showed my own scorn for the old lady (who thought my dark hair made me look Mexican—a blight) yet allowed as how my sister tatted lace with her and more or less sucked up. I also mentioned that my grandmother was dying of cancer in her fifties, which can’t do much for your disposition, and a tumor the size of a grapefruit in her brain no doubt warped her disposition. In any event, I doubt the reader accepts my hatred of her as just or fair, only that it was my view. Here’s another such mitigating passage: Lecia contends I started screaming, and that my screaming caused Mother to wheel around. . . . (Were Lecia writing this memoir, I would only appear in one of three guises: sobbing hysterically, wetting my pants in a deliberately inconvenient way, or biting somebody, usually her, with no provocation.) In short, I tried to lay out my prejudices and gesture there might be another opinion. Once the manuscript was done, I flew Mother up to Syracuse, where she sat reading pages on the back porch. Off and on, she cried, “I was such an asshole,” which shattered me in one way, but (I have to confess it) also satisfied me in another. Ultimately, she said something that rattled me to my core: “I didn’t know you felt this way.” I also met Lecia in Colorado to do what we called the Child Abuse Tour. She flipped pages while I drove around old haunts, double- checking physical details. It shocked me how she wolfed the book down. “How did you remember all this shit?” She’d phoned my editor

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

  arrival of the emperor on the 14th of June. They closed on the 25th of July, the anniversary of the accession of Constantine; though the members did not disperse till the 25th of August.1319 They were held, it appears, part of the time in a church or some public building, part of the time in the emperor’s house. The formal opening of the council was made by the stately entrance of the emperor, which Eusebius in his panegyrical flattery thus describes:1320 "After all the bishops had entered the central building of the royal palace, on the sides of which very many seats were prepared, each took his place with becoming modesty, and silently awaited the arrival of the emperor. The court officers entered one after another, though only such as professed faith in Christ. The moment the approach of the emperor was announced by a given signal, they all rose from their seats, and the emperor appeared like a heavenly messenger of God,1321 covered with gold and gems, a glorious presence, very tall and slender, full of beauty, strength, and majesty. With this external adornment he united the spiritual ornament of the fear of God, modesty, and humility, which could be seen in his downcast eyes, his blushing face, the motion of his body, and his walk. When he reached the golden throne prepared for him, he stopped, and sat not down till the bishops gave him the sign. And after him they all resumed their seats." How great the contrast between this position of the church and the time of her persecution but scarcely passed! What a revolution of opinion in bishops who had once feared the Roman emperor as the worst enemy of the church, and who now greeted the same emperor in his half barbarous attire as an angel of God from heaven, and gave him, though not yet even baptized, the honorary presidency of the highest assembly of the church! After a brief salutatory address from the bishop on the right of the emperor, by which we are most probably to understand Eusebius of Caesarea, the emperor himself delivered with a gentle voice in the official Latin tongue the opening address, which was immediately after translated into Greek, and runs thus:1322 "It was my highest wish, my friends, that I might be permitted to enjoy your assembly. I must thank God that, in addition to all other blessings, he has shown me this highest one of all: to see you all gathered here in harmony and with one mind. May no malicious enemy rob us of this happiness, and after the tyranny of the enemy of Christ [Licinius and his army] is conquered by the help of the Redeemer, the wicked demon shall not persecute the divine law with new blasphemies. Discord in the church I consider more fearful and painful than any other war.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  That, I suppose, is why I was so surprised to find we all do it: I simply assumed without thinking that I was as alone in my discovery as I’d been alone while growing up, with my other female thoughts about my femaleness. Logically, I accepted my similarity to other women—why should I be different?—but emotionally I was as uncertain as to how I stood on the subject of masturbation as I was on whether I was oversexed. No one talked about girls masturbating, it was not a part of the prescribed myth of innocence, of growing up, of becoming a woman. Actually, I don’t think there is a female version of that popular myth: neither Heidi, Nancy Drew, or the Little Women masturbated; there is no female equivalent to Studs Lonigan and Huck Finn. I’ll tell you some things I’ve learned about women and masturbation. Despite their long training to reticence, once you’ve engaged their confidence, women talk about it easily. Once they realize they aren’t the only ones, they admit to masturbation as readily as to sex, they accept it and, unlike men, seem to feel no less a woman for doing it. You could reduce this to a sign of our times, to the nature of my research or of the women who would talk to me. But it’s more than that; it’s the essence of what all this research boils down to: that women, once opened up and allied to other women, are indeed less ashamed, more adventurous, more accepting sexually than men. If books like mine help women to be more trusting with each other, to talk, to explore, we may find that the whole chapter on sex in our permissive age has not been written. Only half. Here is some incidental data on the subject of fantasy and masturbation that I found interesting: Most of the women I talked to remember their first sexual fantasies and their first masturbation to have occurred at about the same time, usually between seven and eleven (for reasons I don’t understand, these two ages, seven and eleven, are the specific years most often mentioned). Also, when they do masturbate they don’t fantasize about the same things that they do during sex.

• From My People (2022)

  They were not getting the usual positive vibrations from Hosea, who looked haggard and weary. Then, suddenly, as if he’d blown in on a fresh breeze, there stood Jesse Jackson, who has been described as being closer than anyone else to Dr. King in charisma and in his acceptance of nonviolence as a way of life. Jackson was wearing a white turtleneck sweater, and he towered above the crowd. Reaching for the bullhorn, he began, “Brothers and sisters, we got business to take care of.” “Sock soul, brother!” “We got a lot of work to do on this thing, and we gonna march now on over to the church where they’re having the rally to help take care of this business.” Corky looked stunned. Hosea looked relieved. And the crowd of demonstrators obediently lined up and marched away. The conflict between the causes of the Mexican-Americans and those of the blacks had come to a head. The relationship had been strained all along, but the SCLC and Tijerina had kept it going in the interest of unity and solidarity. Tijerina’s lieutenant, Corky Gonzales, had demanded that Hosea support the demonstration at the Justice Department, and really didn’t seem interested in much else. Hosea didn’t mind being arrested. In fact, he wanted to be arrested. But this cause—the release in California of a small group of Mexican-Americans charged with conspiracy—just didn’t seem broad enough. Corky thought otherwise. Jackson was not only fresher than Hosea that night—not having been on the demonstration in the hot sun all day—but he was better equipped to deal with Corky, whose orientation was closer to that of the urban hustlers Jesse Jackson was used to dealing with. The around-the-clock demonstrations at the Agriculture Department were perhaps the most strenuous ordeals for the demonstrators. More people than usual were asleep during the day at RC because they had been up all night sitting on the steps of the department. And they remained there, regardless of the weather. One morning, as a weary group stood waiting to be replaced, the sky grew gray and a slight cool wind began to blow. As a heavy downpour of cold rain began, most of the group huddled together under army blankets and started singing. The last demonstration I attended was on Solidarity Day. In that great mass of fifty thousand or more people, I looked for the faces that I had come to know over the last few weeks. I saw only a few, and concluded that the veteran residents of RC just happened to be in places that I was not. Later, as the program dragged on and I became weary from the heat, I walked back into the city, expecting to find it empty. Instead I saw the people I had been looking for outside. JT and Leon and many others. Harry Jackson, a cabinetmaker from Baltimore, sat in his usual place—inside the fenced-in compound of the Baltimore delegation.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  And that’s why Wittgenstein is so important to our reflections. One way of making progress in philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is to loosen and finally escape from ‘the grip of simplifying “pictures” or conceptual templates that attempt to generalise beyond their contextually specific sphere of applicability.’ 25 How might this be done? One way of applying Wittgenstein’s critical method is to look at the world through a series of potential informing ‘pictures’ or ‘worldviews’. We cannot dispense with these pictures; we can, however, ask which is the most reliable and appropriate. For Wittgenstein, a ‘picture’ changes the ways in which we see things. We can look at reality through a range of such pictures, and ask which of them offers the best rendering of our world. As Gordon Baker points out, Wittgenstein sets out ‘a kind of homeopathy’ in which ‘pictures are to be treated with pictures’. 26 His philosophical therapy involves a willingness on our part to explore comparisons, leading to a ‘conversion to a new way of seeing things’. How well does it make sense of what we observe? What does it tell us about ourselves, and other human beings? Does it promote fulfilment? Or does it trap us in a limited and limiting world, such as Max Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of rationalism? The first step to securing freedom is to realise that alternative ways of seeing the world are available. Wittgenstein’s critical analysis is invaluable for those who find themselves shackled to a bad philosophical system or individual ‘bad beliefs’, 27 and want to break free from their thrall. As with the approach of Alcoholics Anonymous, Wittgenstein’s first step is to force us to realise that we are ‘captive’ – that we have trapped ourselves within a limiting worldview, and need to break free from its constraints and distortions (Wittgenstein is particularly helpful to those recovering from the existential nihilism of scientism). Some worldviews offer us reassurance that the world is coherent and existentially inhabitable. Yet others are often constructed to justify the marginalisation, exclusion or even persecution of others. The most familiar example of this is the dehumanising racial ideology of National Socialism, which treated Jews, Roma, Poles and Serbs as Untermenschen (‘sub-humans’). However, similar racial ideologies became influential in the United States after the First World War.

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

  Oh, Madame, I shall not attempt to represent the infamies of which I was at once victim and witness. This monster's pleasures were those of the executioner; his unique joy consisted in decapitating. My luckless companion... oh, no! Madame... no! do not require me to finish... I was about to share her fate; spurred on by Dubois, the villain had decided to render my torture yet more horrible when both experienced a need to revive their strength; whereupon they sat down to eat.... What a debauch! But ought I complain? for did it not save my life? Besotted with wine, exhausted by overeating, both fell dead drunk and slumbered amidst the litter that remained from their feast. No sooner do I see them collapse than I leap to the skirt and mantle Dubois had just removed in order to appear more immodest in her patron's view; I snatch up a candle and spring toward the stairway: this house, divested, or nearly so, of servants, contains nothing to frustrate my escape, I do encounter someone, I put on a terrified air and cry to him to make all haste to relieve his master who is dying, and I reach the door without meeting further obstacles. I have no acquaintance with the roads, I'd not been allowed to see the one whereby we had come, I take the first I see... 'tis the one leading to Grenoble; there is nothing denied us when fortune deigns momentarily to smile upon us; at the inn everyone was still abed, I enter secretly and fly to Valbois' room, knock, Valbois wakes and scarcely recognizes me in my disordered state; he demands to know what has befallen me, I relate the horrors whereof I was simultaneously an observer and object. "You can have Dubois arrested," I tell him, "she's not far from here, I might even be able to point out the way.... Quite apart from all her other crimes, the wretch has taken both my clothing and the five louis you gave me." "O Therese," says Valbois, "there's no denying it, you are without doubt the unluckiest girl on earth, but, nevertheless, my honest creature, do you not perceive, amidst all these afflictions which beset you, a celestial arm that saves you? may that be unto you as one additional motive for perpetual virtuousness, for never do good deeds go unrewarded. We will not chase after Dubois, my reasons for letting her go in peace are the same you expounded yesterday, let us simply repair the harm she has done you: here, first of all, is the money she stole from you. In an hour's time I'll have a seamstress bring two complete outfits for you, and some linen. "But you have got to leave, Therese, you must leave this very day, Bertrand expects you, I've persuaded her to delay her departure a few hours more, join her...."

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

  Because of all this I had strayed away from the path I had seen, but having taken careful note of its position, I found it again, and began to run. Before day-break I reached the forest's edge and was soon upon that little hill from which, six long months before, I had, to my sorrow, espied that frightful monastery; I rest a few minutes, I am bathed in perspiration; my first thought is to fall upon my knees and beg God to forgive the sins I unwillingly committed in that odious asylum of crime and impurity; tears of regret soon flowed from my eyes. Alas! I said, I was far less a criminal when last year I left this same road, guided by a devout principle so fatally deceived! O God! In what state may I now behold myself! These lugubrious reflections were in some wise mitigated by the pleasure of discovering I was free; I continued along the road toward Dijon, supposing it would only be in that capital my complaints could be legitimately lodged.... At this point Madame de Lorsange persuaded Therese to catch her breath for a few minutes at least; she needed the rest; the emotion she put into her narrative, the wounds these dreadful recitals reopened in her soul, everything, in short, obliged her to resort to a brief respite. Monsieur de Corville had refreshments brought in, and after collecting her forces, our heroine set out again to pursue her deplorable adventures in great detail, as you shall see. By the second day all my initial fears of pursuit had dissipated; the weather was extremely warm and, following my thrifty habit, I left the road to find a sheltered place where I could eat a light meal that would fortify me till evening. Off the road to the right stood a little grove of trees through which wound a limpid stream; this seemed a good spot for my lunch. My thirst quenched by this pure cool water, nourished by a little bread, my back leaning against a tree trunk, I breathed deep draughts of clear, serene air which relaxed me and was soothing. Resting there, my thoughts dwelled upon the almost unexampled fatality which, despite the thorns strewn thick along the career of Virtue, repeatedly brought me back, whatever might happen, to the worship of that Divinity and to acts of love and resignation toward the Supreme Being from Whom Virtue emanates and of Whom it is the image. A kind of enthusiasm came and took possession of me; alas! I said to myself, He abandons me not, this God I adore, for even at this instant I find the means to recover my strength. Is it not to Him I owe this merciful favor? And are there not persons in the world to whom it is refused? I am then not completely unfortunate because there are some who have more to complain of than I....

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

  The division lasted two years longer, till at last a sort of compromise was effected. John of Antioch sent the aged bishop Paul of Emisa a messenger to Alexandria with a creed which he had already, in a shorter form, laid before the emperor, and which broke the doctrinal antagonism by asserting the duality of the natures against Cyril, and the predicate mother of God against Nestorius.1588 "We confess," says this symbol, which was composed by Theodoret, "that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and body subsisting;1589 as to his Godhead begotten of the Father before all time, but as to his manhood, born of the Virgin Mary in the end of the days for us and for our salvation; of the same essence with the Father as to his Godhead, and of the same substance with us as to his manhood;1590 for two natures are united with one another.1591 Therefore we confess one Christ, one Lord, and one Son. By reason of this union, which yet is without confusion,1592 we also confess that the holy Virgin is mother of God, because God the Logos was made flesh and man, and united with himself the temple [humanity] even from the conception; which temple he took from the Virgin. But concerning the words of the Gospel and Epistles respecting Christ, we know that theologians apply some which refer to the one person to the two natures in common, but separate others as referring to the two natures, and assign the expressions which become God to the Godhead of Christ, but the expressions of humiliation to his manhood."1593 Cyril assented to this confession, and repeated it verbally, with some further doctrinal explanations, in his answer to the irenical letter of the patriarch of Antioch, but insisted on the condemnation and deposition of Nestorius as the indispensable condition of church fellowship. At the same time he knew how to gain the imperial court to the orthodox side by all kinds of presents, which, according to the Oriental custom of testifying submission to princes by presents, were not necessarily regarded as bribes. The Antiochians, satisfied with saving the doctrine of two natures, thought it best to sacrifice the person of Nestorius to the unity of the church, and to anathematize his "wicked and unholy innovations."1594 Thus in 433 union was effected, though not without much contradiction on both sides, nor without acts of imperial force.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  Just now in recounting this fantasy to you, another upon similar lines has entered my consciousness. In this one we are in a Nazi camp. There is a fiendish woman torturing the men. She makes them hold their urine until they burst. She has a machine into which she inserts their penises. This machine keeps on stimulating them so that they have constant orgasms. I remember trying to conclude that particular torture, and couldn’t think of anything except that their organs became flaccid and so another torture had to be devised to follow that one—which I can’t remember. The women in the camp were all very young girls and were being raped by a mad professor. Their sexual apparatus was very immature and he always managed to kill them. He adopted all sorts of techniques, but I only remember this ward full of girls, each tied into a position whereby he could examine their sexual apparatus and choose which one was going to be his that day. By the way, most of these fantasies are things I have read about and very little is invented. Other events take place in these fantasies, but all along those same sadistic lines. I told my husband of the jungle one and I think he was a little taken aback, but it made me laugh when bringing it out into the open. I certainly didn’t feel guilty about it, for although I might be a perverted sadist somewhere down deep, it doesn’t seem to show in my daily life; in fact, I am a gentle person, so I could afford to laugh, feeling secure in the fact that I have disciplined this part of myself. As I say, I had difficulty remembering these fantasies, mainly because I felt them to be a threat, and so I only indulged in them two or three times and quickly suppressed them. Never because I felt guilty about them, but because I feel it a lack of self-discipline to overindulge oneself in anything. [Letter] RANDOM ASSOCIATIONSThings women see turn them on. It’s a simple proposition, but I’ve spent a lot of time on it because it is so often denied. Even a magazine as comparatively uninhibited as Cosmopolitan, when it recently published its female reply to Playboy’s naked “Playmate of the Month,” went along with the myth that women think the sight of the male body ugly or frightening; the male model was nude all right—but his oh-so-casually-placed hand and wrist masked what one would have assumed was the very point of the proceedings. This simple denial of the sources of women’s fantasies is almost as endless as the fantasies themselves, even though these sources are so obvious that just to name them is to recognize how easily they can serve as the start of a fantasy.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  Diamond combs through theories on the biological roots of sexual orientation, studies of genetics and of prenatal hormone exposure. Though no one yet agrees on a clear biological basis for sexual orientation, she notes that female homosexuality seems to have different paths of causation from male homosexuality. If this is so, it makes sense, then, that same-sex sexuality would unfold differently for women and men over their lifespans—and not only because of biology, but because women and men encounter wildly differing social and cultural contexts as their sexuality develops.49 Among those who are not heterosexual, Diamond found few features of development that were not differentiated by gender. It’s common in studies of sexual orientation for gay men to report feeling “different” in childhood, as well as having early attractions to other men. But in Diamond’s study, fewer non-heterosexual women recall similar experiences. Women also show greater variability in the age at which they notice same-sex attractions, question their sexuality, pursue sex with other women, and first identify as non-heterosexual. And not all women are equally fluid. The same way that women might have different baseline orientations, Diamond found them differently sensitive to situations that could lead to attraction,50 differently impacted by outside factors that could, depending on one’s disposition, speed up or slow down the expression of fluidity.51 In addition to the passages I’d sent to Matthew, I texted a barrage of Diamond quotes to a gay male friend. I knew he felt he was born gay, but he’d been sympathetic to my experience. This reinforces an idea that I have, he wrote back, which is that sexuality and gender are highly individualistic in many ways. We try to make everyone who is “queer” fit some idea of what we think that means. But queerness should really make us realize that the common thread is only that we are all unique. And our sexuality is personal and specific, and it can evolve, just as we do in non-sexual ways. Whatever a person makes of Diamond’s binary read on gender, her findings feel necessary. Rigorous data about female sexuality is still rare, and young women need and deserve accurate information. “Many of the women in this study,” Diamond writes, “expressed embarrassment when explaining changes in their sexual feelings, relationships, or identities because they had internalized the prevailing cultural message that such experiences were highly atypical.”52 Many non-heterosexual women end up feeling “doubly deviant, their experiences reflecting neither mainstream societal expectations nor perceived norms of ‘typical’ gay experience.”53

• From Manhunt (2022)

  A ragged cheer came from Zia and the others, but Beth didn’t feel like cheering. Everything since Sylvia and Corinne had only wound her tighter and tighter until she felt like a spring about to crack and split apart under the pressure stored inside her body. She kept looking at the dead women lying further down the ramp by the blinking, growling golf cart. And then Indi limped into view below, another woman trailing after her. Beth flew down the echoing corridor and crashed breathlessly into her friend, gathering the shorter woman into her arms and crushing her close. “I thought you were dead.” She hadn’t realized until she said it. “Indi, I thought you were dead.” “They hurt you,” Indi cried against her chest. “They hurt you because of me. I was trying—I thought…” She gripped the back of Beth’s flannel tight in both fists. “I’m sorry I brought us here. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The other woman gave Beth a nod as she passed by. She had something under her arm. A Ziploc, and inside it, a grisly little sphere trailing wisps of nervous tissue and a hand cradling it, its fingers limp, sheared off at the wrist—Beth closed her eyes. She held Indi close and rocked her gently, taking as much of her weight as she could. “It’s all right. You can just sew me back up again. Don’t cry, Indi. It’s all right.” Zia and her friends, or coconspirators, or fellow trans militia, or whatever they were, had come prepared. They went into dry storage with surgical precision, empty duffel bags over their shoulders, as others emerged fully laden. A short way down the Screw, the other half of the crew were looting the weapons lockers while Robbie and a short, squat woman with a shotgun kept watch over the central avenue and the half dozen guards lined up shivering against the opposite wall in underwear and sports bras. A few people had come out of the residential threads to watch, mostly in silence, some shouting questions. “It’s okay,” Beth said again, stroking Indi’s hair and planting a bloody kiss on her friend’s forehead. “It’s okay. We’re getting out of here. We’ll go get Fran. “We’re going to be okay.” Ramona stood and stared at the two women making out on the picnic table while Elton John sang about lying down on linen sheets. Viv doesn’t know, she thought, her drunken mind chewing its way reluctantly through the unpleasant thought. She doesn’t know, or else she’s playing with her. She took half a step toward the shadowed couple, then paused as Fran broke the suction of their kiss. “Wait,” said Fran, reaching down to take Viv’s hand off her thigh. Ramona’s heart flew up into her throat. “Wait, wait. I can’t do this. Stop.”

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

  Monsieur de Corville was unable to hold back his own; aware of the overpowering significance of this affair and sensing his involvement in it, he moves into an adjoining room, sits down and writes a letter to the Lord Chancellor, with fiery strokes, in ardent ciphers he paints in all its horror the fate of poor Justine, whom we shall continue to call Therese; he takes upon himself responsibility for her innocence, he will guarantee it under oath; he asks that, until the time her case has been finally clarified, the allegedly guilty party be confined to no other prison but his chateau, and Corville gives his word he will produce her in court the instant the Chief Justice signals his desire to have her appear there; he makes himself known unto Therese's two guards, entrusts his correspondence to them, makes himself answerable for their prisoner; he is obeyed, Therese is confided to him; a carriage is called for. "Come, my too unfortunate creature," Monsieur de Corville says to Madame de Lorsange's interesting sister, "come hither; all is going to be changed; it shall not be said your virtues ever remained unrewarded and that the beautiful soul you had from Nature ever encountered but steel; follow us, 'tis upon me you depend henceforth...." And Monsieur de Corville gave a brief account of what he had just done. "Dearly beloved and respectable man," said Madame de Lorsange, casting herself down before her lover, "this is the most splendid gesture you have performed in your life, it is such as comes from one who has true acquaintance with the human heart and the spirit of the law which is the avenger of oppressed innocence. There she stands, Monsieur, behold, there is your captive; go, Therese, go, run, fly at once and kneel down before this equitable protector who will not, as have all others, abandon you. O, Monsieur, if those attachments of love which have bound me to you have been cherished, how much more so are they to become now that they are strengthened by the most tender esteem...."