Sadness

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.

Page 200 of 212 · 20 per page

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Here we have a fact of equal historical significance, but unrelieved by the idealism of the monastic vow. Education can only train the gifts with which a child is endowed at birth. The intellectual standard of humanity can be raised only by the propagation of the capable. Our social system causes an unnatural selection of the weak for breeding, and the result is the survival of the unfittest. When the family is small, the influence of brothers and sisters on the formation of character is lacking. When the father has to work long hours and then spend additional time in travelling between his home and his work, the element of fatherhood in the home is reduced to a minimum. If the mother, too, goes out to work, the children are left to “the street,” which is an educator of rather doubtful value. If boarders and roomers are taken in to help in paying the rent, an alien and often a demoralizing element enters the family. Thus the economic situation everywhere saps family life. One family to one house is the only normal condition. When twenty families live in one tenement, twenty souls inhabit one body. That was the condition of the demoniac of Gadara, in whom dwelt a legion. He was crazy. To be a home in the fullest sense, it must be loved with the sense of proprietorship. As cities grow, home ownership declines. A semi-vagrancy from one flat to the next grows up. In the borough of Manhattan only six per cent of the homes are owned by those who live in them; in Philadelphia, a city of small houses, only twenty-two per cent own their homes. Rochester is an almost ideal city for the development of homes, and the popular assumption is that nearly everybody owns his home. Yet the census of 1900 showed that of the 33,964 homes in the city only 12,290 were owned by the tenants, and half of these were mortgaged. The condition of the home determines the condition of woman. If girls are eagerly sought in marriage, they can choose the best. If few men can afford a good home, girls must take what offers or go without. If a man can easily make a living for a family, he can afford to be indifferent to anything but the person of the woman he loves. As the economic pressure tightens and social classes grow more clearly defined, American men, too, will begin to inquire what property comes to them with their bride. We shall have love modified by the “ dot .” Our optimists treat it as a sign of progress that “so many professions are now open to women.” But it is not choice, but grim necessity, that drives woman into new ways of getting bread and clothing. The great majority of girls heartily prefer the independence and the satisfaction of the heart which are offered to a woman only in a comfortable and happy home.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I never knew when a nugget was coming, so I kept a notes doc on my phone to capture each word, typing with a mixture of inspiration and desperation, not wanting to forget even a syllable. In the beginning, he weaved these bombs into relevant conversations, which made them easier to process. But as his time grew shorter, the bombs became more frequent, more urgent, and definitely more unexpected, totally catching me off guard. Naturally, these bombs could set off a chain reaction of feelings I had been trying to quell. But the last thing I wanted was to burst into tears at the mere suggestion that I “consider a car trade-in after 50,000 miles.” I mean, maybe the guy just wanted to talk about cars. No big life lessons. No trying to squeeze in as much fatherly advice while he still could—just cars (and common sense). Next thing he knows, he’s comforting a hysterical daughter, when he is the one who needs comforting in the form of a normal conversation that has nothing to do with dying. I’d get so angry with myself for my inability to contain my emotions, especially if my waterworks were triggered by something as harmless as a TV commercial (unless it was for the ASPCA and featured a senior collie named Wags who desperately needed a home—those are impossible to survive without tears streaming down your face). One such occasion was when my parents came to our home for a visit. As I was helping Dad bring their luggage upstairs to our guest room, he paused to catch his breath and drop a wisdom bomb while he was at it. “You know, love, sometimes the golden years are for shit.” Oh sweet Jesus, here we go. “Look at this bag,” he said, pointing to a small suitcase. “You know what’s in it? Medications! This entire bag is filled with our pills. Everyone works so hard so things can be better later, but we’ve got it all backward. You have to live your life now, love. Make now your golden years. Slow down and give yourself more of the good stuff along the way. Sometimes I worry that you’re following in my footsteps and missing too many of the moments that matter.” His words hit me hard. Not only could I feel his regret, but there was a reason he was saying this to me. As one of the few people who really knew how I was wired, he was highlighting the code I hadn’t yet cracked, the one I was uncomfortable discussing, even with him. There was only one way to respond. DEAD MOUSE! That’s right. When a sudden onset of feelings triggers a tidal wave of overwhelm, sadness, or regret, one of the ways I dam them up is by conjuring awful images in my mind, stuff like eating anchovies or, say, a dead mouse in my sink. (It’s a useful technique. You’re welcome.)

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  In the book of Jubilees, the corruption of creation is due to the fal , which has repercussions for the natural world.13 One of the effects is that the normal human lifespan is shortened ( Jub. 4:30; 23:12). Most frequently, sin brings to the world corruption, disease, death, decay, suffering, and sorrow. The story of the fall of the flood in Jubilees expresses the idea that it is the fall in the superhuman or semi-divine realm that most readily explains the presence of evil in the world. Wintermute suggests that “the author of Jubilees teaches us three things about evil: (1) It is superhuman; 12 The Book of Jubilees may also be understood in the context of Jewish/Judean self-definition in and around the Maccabean Crisis. One might find it also helpful to read Jubilees in concert with later works such as 2 Bar. and 4 Ezra regarding the fall and Torah. 13 See later for more precision. 63 New Creation Motif 63 (2) but it is not caused by God; (3) therefore it comes from the angelic world, which has suffered a breach from God’s good order.” 14 Sin also brings about major disruptions in the orderly operation of the natural world. Animals’ original nature change and so they began to rebel against humans and lose the ability to speak. Jubilees 3:28 reads: “On that day the mouth of all the beasts and cattle and birds and whatever walked or moved was stopped from speaking because all of them used to speak with one another with one speech and one language (τὰ θηρία καὶ τὰ τετράποδα καὶ τὰ ἑρπετὰ … ὁμόφωνα εἶναι πρὸ τῆς παραβάσεως τοῖς πρωτοπλάστοις· διότι … ὁ ὄφις ἀνθρωπίνῃ φωνῇ ἐλάλησε τῇ Εὔᾳ).” 15 The earth itself was corrupted by the fall as a result of increasing sin. Jubilees further reads: “Behold, the land itself will be corrupted on account of all their deeds, and there will be no seed of the vine, and there will be no oil because their works are entirely faithless” ( Jub. 23:18). Cosmic irregularities occur during times of extensive sin, such as during the pre-flood era and in the last days. These cosmic changes include earthquakes, widespread crop failure, plagues, birth defects, and disturbances among animals. Some of these changes in the natural world are based on Gen. 3:16-19, which discusses the pain of women in childbearing. The curse on the ground requires hard labor to grow crops ( Jub. 3:25; 4:28) and death is the certain human fate ( Jub. 4:3). Jubilees 23:13–14 describes the increasing futility of life due to the deterioration of the world from human sin:

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  There’s a complicated sky of cold-front ragged cloud under swathes of high cirrostratus, and a headwind that sends larks up like chaff as we walk through the fields. Clouds of linnets bounce, half-midges, half musical notation, along the hedges surrounding my old home, and all is out of sorts as far as that notion of home lies because my father isn’t here. It is late winter and I’m back at my mother’s house. Things are better now, I know, and I’ve been coming here more often, but each time I forget how hard it will be. The winter fields are shorn, yellowed into stalky, rabbit-grazed sward spotted with foraging rooks. I can hawk with Mabel all the way across this land until it ends in a slumpy hedge so wide it’s almost a wood, furrily iced with old-man’s-beard. Beyond it is someone else’s land; a terra incognita, holding the suppressed fascination we all have for places just beyond where we know, or are supposed to be. I stand at the top of the field, change her jesses, remove her leash, thread the swivel onto it, double back the leash, and stuff it deep into my pocket. I hold my arm high, wait for her to look about, and cast her off my fist into the gusty wind. She glides down to the far hedge and swings up into a small ash, shaking her tail. I follow her down and we start hawking proper, looking for rabbits in a tangle of broken, open woodland. This line of trees is not designed for human thoroughfare. There are elder bushes, green twigs and branches starred with lichen. There are fallen oaks, clumps of vicious brambles, screens of hazel, and ivy clambering and covering stumps and extending a hand up to the trees above to scramble into the light, so the whole place is umbrous and decorated with shiny scales of ivy leaves. The air tastes of humus and decay. Each footfall breaks twigs and has that slightly uncertain, oddly hollow quality of walking on thick woodland soil. Mabel is being extraordinary. I’ve mostly flown her in open country before. She has grasped how woodland hawking works, and is hugely attentive. More than attentive. Flying a goshawk in a scape of obstacles and broken sight-lines makes the connection between us hugely manifest. She breaks through twigs to come down to my fist when I whistle, and she follows me as I walk, moving above me like a personal angel whenever I’m out of sight. I look up and see her crouching, staring at me with round eyes, pupils dilated with excitement and attention, crayon-yellow toes gripping dead ash branches. Or floating above me, above the branches, flickering through, sending submarine ripples behind her.

• From The City of God

  When, therefore, the Roman republic was such as Sallust described it, it was not "utterly wicked and profligate," as he says, but had altogether ceased to exist, if we are to admit the reasoning of that debate maintained on the subject of the republic by its best representatives. Tully himself, too, speaking not in the person of Scipio or any one else, but uttering his own sentiments, uses the following language in the beginning of the fifth book, after quoting a line from the poet Ennius, in which he said, "Rome's severe morality and her citizens are her safeguard." "This verse," says Cicero, "seems to me to have all the sententious truthfulness of an oracle. For neither would the citizens have availed without the morality of the community, nor would the morality of the commons without outstanding men have availed either to establish or so long to maintain in vigour so grand a republic with so wide and just an empire. Accordingly, before our day, the hereditary usages formed our foremost men, and they on their part retained the usages and institutions of their fathers. But our age, receiving the republic as a _chef-d'œuvre_ of another age which has already begun to grow old, has not merely neglected to restore the colours of the original, but has not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general outline and most outstanding features. For what survives of that primitive morality which the poet called Rome's safeguard? It is so obsolete and forgotten, that, far from practising it, one does not even know it. And of the citizens what shall I say? Morality has perished through poverty of great men; a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason, but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime. For it is through our vices, and not by any mishap, that we retain only the name of a republic, and have long since lost the reality."

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  This view, which I call the theory of constructed emotion, offers a very different interpretation of the events during Governor Malloy’s speech. When Malloy’s voice caught in his throat, it did not trigger a brain circuit for sadness inside me, causing a distinctive set of bodily changes. Rather, I felt sadness in that moment because, having been raised in a certain culture, I learned long ago that “sadness” is something that may occur when certain bodily feelings coincide with terrible loss. Using bits and pieces of past experience, such as my knowledge of shootings and my previous sadness about them, my brain rapidly predicted what my body should do to cope with such tragedy. Its predictions caused my thumping heart, my flushed face, and the knots in my stomach. They directed me to cry, an action that would calm my nervous system. And they made the resulting sensations meaningful as an instance of sadness. In this manner, my brain constructed my experience of emotion. My particular movements and sensations were not a fingerprint for sadness. With different predictions, my skin would cool rather than flush and my stomach would remain unknotted, yet my brain could still transform the resulting sensations into sadness. Not only that, but my original thumping heart, flushed face, knotted stomach, and tears could become meaningful as a different emotion, such as anger or fear, instead of sadness. Or in a very different situation, like a wedding celebration, those same sensations could become joy or gratitude. If this explanation doesn’t make complete sense or even sounds counterintuitive so far, believe me, I am right there with you. After Governor Malloy’s speech, as I came back to myself, wiping my tears, I was reminded that no matter what I know about emotions as a scientist, I experience them much as the classical view conceives them. My sadness felt like an instantly recognizable wave of bodily changes and feelings that overwhelmed me as a reaction to tragedy and loss. If I were not a scientist using experiments to reveal that emotions are in fact made and not triggered, I too would trust my immediate experience. The classical view of emotion remains compelling, despite the evidence against it, precisely because it’s intuitive. The classical view also provides reassuring answers to deep, fundamental questions like: Where do you come from, evolutionarily speaking? Are you responsible for your actions when you get emotional? Do your experiences accurately reveal the world outside you?

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  As the governor spoke the last two words, “protecting students,” his voice caught in his throat ever so slightly. If you weren’t paying close attention, you might have missed it. But that tiny waver devastated me. My stomach instantly knotted into a ball. My eyes flooded. The TV camera panned to the crowd where other people had started to sob too. As for Governor Malloy, he stopped speaking and was gazing downward. Emotions like Governor Malloy’s and mine seem primal—hardwired into us, reflexively deployed, shared with all our fellow humans. When triggered, they seem to unleash themselves in each of us in basically the same way. My sadness was like Governor Malloy’s sadness was like the crowd’s sadness. Humanity has understood sadness and other emotions in this way for over two thousand years. But at the same time, if humanity has learned anything from centuries of scientific discovery, it’s that things aren’t always what they appear to be. The time-honored story of emotion goes something like this: We all have emotions built-in from birth. They are distinct, recognizable phenomena inside us. When something happens in the world, whether it’s a gunshot or a flirtatious glance, our emotions come on quickly and automatically, as if someone has flipped a switch. We broadcast emotions on our faces by way of smiles, frowns, scowls, and other characteristic expressions that anyone can easily recognize. Our voices reveal our emotions through laughter, shouts, and cries. Our body posture betrays our feelings with every gesture and slouch. Modern science has an account that fits this story, which I call the classical view of emotion. According to this view, the waver in Governor Malloy’s voice launched a chain reaction that began in my brain. A particular set of neurons—call it the “sadness circuit”—leaped into action and caused my face and body to respond in a certain, specific way. My brow furrowed, I frowned, my shoulders stooped, and I cried. This proposed circuit also triggered physical changes inside my body, causing my heart rate and breathing to speed up, my sweat glands to activate, and my blood vessels to constrict.* This collection of movements on the inside and outside of my body are said to be like a “fingerprint” that uniquely identifies sadness, much like your own fingerprints uniquely identify you. The classical view of emotion holds that we have many such emotion circuits in our brains, and each is said to cause a distinct set of changes, that is, a fingerprint. Perhaps an annoying coworker triggers your “anger neurons,” so your blood pressure rises; you scowl, yell, and feel the heat of fury. Or an alarming news story triggers your “fear neurons,” so your heart races; you freeze and feel a flash of dread. Because we experience anger, happiness, surprise, and other emotions as clear and identifiable states of being, it seems reasonable to assume that each emotion has a defining underlying pattern in the brain and body.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The various branches of the Shiah traced the divine succession differently. “Twelver Shiis,” for example, venerated twelve descendants of Ali through Husayn, until in 939 the last Imam went into hiding and disappeared from human society; since he had no descendants, the line died out. The Ismailis, known as the Seveners, believed that the seventh of these Imams had been the last. A messianic strain appeared among the Twelvers, who believed that the Twelfth or Hidden Imam would return to inaugurate a golden age. These were obviously dangerous ideas. Not only were they politically subversive, but they could easily be interpreted in a crude, simplistic way. The more extreme Shiis developed an esoteric tradition, therefore, based on a symbolic interpretation of the Koran, as we shall see in the next chapter. Their piety was too abstruse for most Muslims, who regarded this incarnational idea as blasphemous, so Shiis were usually found among the more aristocratic classes and the intellectuals. Since the Iranian revolution, we have tended in the West to depict Shiism as an inherently fundamentalist sect of Islam, but that is an inaccurate assessment. Shiism became a sophisticated tradition. In fact, Shiis had much in common with those Muslims who attempted to apply rational arguments systematically to the Koran. These rationalists, known as Mutazilis, formed their own distinctive group; they also had a firm political commitment: like the Shiis, Mutazilis were highly critical of the luxury of the court and were frequently politically active against the establishment. The political question inspired a theological debate about God’s government of human affairs. Supporters of the Ummayads had rather disingenuously claimed that their un-Islamic behavior was not their fault because they had been predestined by God to be the kind of people they were. The Koran has a very strong conception of God’s absolute omnipotence and omniscience, and many texts could be used to support this view of predestination. But the Koran is equally emphatic about human responsibility: “Verily, God does not change men’s condition unless they change their inner selves.” Consequently the critics of the establishment stressed free will and moral responsibility. The Mutazilis took a middle road and withdrew (i’tazahu, to stand aloof) from an extreme position. They defended free will in order to safeguard the ethical nature of humanity. Muslims who believed that God was above mere human notions of right and wrong were decrying his justice. A God who violated all decent principles and got away with it simply because he was God would be a monster, no better than a tyrannical caliph. Like the Shiis, the Mutazilis declared that justice was of the essence of God: he could not wrong anybody; he could not enjoin anything contrary to reason.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Title : How Emotions Are Made Author: Barrett, Lisa Feldman [image "title page" file=image_rsrc7A8.jpg] ContentsTitle Page Contents Copyright Dedication Introduction: The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Assumption The Search for Emotion’s “Fingerprints” Emotions Are Constructed The Myth of Universal Emotions The Origin of Feeling Concepts, Goals, and Words How the Brain Makes Emotions Emotions as Social Reality A New View of Human Nature Mastering Your Emotions Emotion and Illness Emotion and the Law Is a Growling Dog Angry? From Brain to Mind: The New Frontier Acknowledgments Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Bibliography Notes Illustration Credits Index Sample Chapter from SEVEN AND A HALF LESSONS ABOUT THE BRAIN Buy the Book About the Author Connect on Social Media Footnotes First Mariner Books edition 2018 Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Feldman Barrett Illustrations by Aaron Scott All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007. marinerbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Barrett, Lisa Feldman, author. Title: How emotions are made : the secret life of the brain / Lisa Feldman Barrett. Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Identifiers: LCCN 2016038354 (print) | LCCN 2017004323 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544133310 (hardback) | ISBN 9780544129962 (ebook) ISBN 9781328915436 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Emotions. | Emotions—Sociological aspects. | Brain. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Emotions. | PSYCHOLOGY / Neuropsychology. | SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects. | SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Neuroscience. Classification: LCC BF561 .B337 2017 (print) | LCC BF561 (ebook) | DDC 152.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038354 Cover design by David Drummond Cover image based on © Shutterstock Author photograph © 2017 Mark Karlsberg v8.0921 For Sophia Introduction: The Two-Thousand-Year-Old AssumptionOn December 14, 2012, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six people inside the school, including twenty children, were massacred by a lone gunman. Several weeks after this horror, I watched the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, give his annual “State of the State” speech on television. He spoke in a strong and animated voice for the first three minutes, thanking individuals for their service. And then he began to address the Newtown tragedy: We have all walked a very long and very dark road together. What befell Newtown is not something we thought possible in any of Connecticut’s beautiful towns or cities. And yet, in the midst of one of the worst days in our history, we also saw the best of our state. Teachers and a therapist that sacrificed their lives protecting students.1

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Speaking of harmful societal ideas, there’s also a belief that we should just run out and replace what’s lost in order to be whole again, as if it were a missing Tupperware lid. While well-intentioned (no one wants to see us in pain), these practices often make grieving and healing harder to achieve—for ourselves and for our loved ones. Someone or something unique and special to us can never be substituted. Instead, a full range of pain and challenges will occur in life, no matter how healthy, conscious, resourceful, or spiritual we happen to be. In that way, acceptance grounds us and prepares us for the good times and the storms. It teaches us the bone-deep wisdom found in the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The opposite of acceptance is resistance. Fighting against the truth: Maybe he’ll come back. Fighting with our egos: I’m not the kind of person who falls apart. Fighting against what we know we need to do, say, or feel: Maintain a stiff upper lip. And fighting with each other, instead of coming together: It’s all their fault. While I can’t change what happened (I got sick, my dad got sick and eventually passed, life changed in ways I didn’t want it to, and old traumas emerged as a result of these ruptures), I can change what I do now—how I proceed moving forward, how I grow and make the most of the precious, never-guaranteed time I have with my loved ones, with my dreams, and most importantly, with myself. For many of us, resistance is our go-to mode. We’d rather deny, avoid, or brawl than face the truth of how our lives are changing or even what we’ve been through. But as the saying goes, “What we resist persists,” keeping us stuck in pain and frozen in time. Learning to live with cancer was my first big experience with acceptance. Learning to live with loss was my second. Like it or not, I couldn’t change either situation. But I could use both of these experiences as catalysts for a more connected way of living. If you are wrestling with fire-breathing dragons like this in your own life, this next story might help you expand your perspective. HEALING VS. CURINGAt many cancer hospitals, there’s a beautiful closing ceremony and rite of passage for patients who make it to the other side of sick. The staff gather on the patient’s last day of treatment to applaud them and ring a congratulatory bell, celebrating a clean bill of health, while honoring the team effort it took to get there. At long last, the patient is able to check the coveted “survivor” box—even if just temporarily.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  VMulling back over it, generally the denizens of the Venus seemed a bit more colorful than those from the Capri: the extremely handsome Hispanic young man who would rush into the theater at ten after five, obviously just off from work, drop down in the first row, pull out his genitals and a serious looking pair of handcuffs, bind his scrotum up in them, their hasp ratcheting through the catch, masturbate, and then, putting himself and the whole metallic contraption back in his pants, rush from the theater equally fast (as far as I could tell, he must have kept the key at home); or the various fellows—those who did not lean suddenly forward to spill on the back of the chair before them or on the cement floor in front of the cracked red seat—who, a moment after coming, would fall asleep, pants still gaping, genitals still loose, semen glimmering on their brown or black bellies in the light from the screen; the several midgets; the countless drag queens; the dozen who, off in the darkest parts of the theater, would strip completely naked before masturbating. . . . Between the Venus and the Capri was the Eros I: Unlike the Venus and the Capri, the Eros showed gay porn films. After performing on stage, male dancers came out to walk the aisles and hustle the audience (“You want a private show—thirty-five dollars, downstairs?”)—but for me the whole thing was too mercenary, too formalized, and—like hustlers—go-go dancers in general aren’t my thing. This essay’s purpose is to present a vernacular periplum of what might be found in the Times Square gay cruising venues and the culture that grew up around them, as well as to suggest an overview of what went on in Manhattan straight pornographic theaters encouraging gay sex over those years. I believe I’ve done that, and done it honestly. But it would be untrue to leave you with the sense that I never saw any psychologically troubling events. A homeless man at least in his late seventies, possibly in his eighties, slept in a right-hand seat of the Venus’s balcony. I saw him every time I went into the theater, over more than a five-year period. Finally I realized, quite outside any of the sex or drugs, he lived there—permanently. He left the theater only for the few hours during the night it closed for cleaning. He was there three days before the door of the Venus was boarded over and chained. Three weeks later I saw him in his tweed cap and ragged jacket, wandering along the street, eyes squinting in his wrinkled face, as though the wan Eighth Avenue sun was simply and permanently too bright.

• From The City of God

  Now, if these were the days in which the Roman republic shows fairest and best, what are we to say or think of the succeeding age, when, to use the words of the same historian, "changing little by little from the fair and virtuous city it was, it became utterly wicked and dissolute?" This was, as he mentions, after the destruction of Carthage. Sallust's brief sum and sketch of this period may be read in his own history, in which he shows how the profligate manners which were propagated by prosperity resulted at last even in civil wars. He says: "And from this time the primitive manners, instead of undergoing an insensible alteration as hitherto they had done, were swept away as by a torrent: the young men were so depraved by luxury and avarice, that it may justly be said that no father had a son who could either preserve his own patrimony, or keep his hands off other men's." Sallust adds a number of particulars about the vices of Sylla, and the debased condition of the republic in general; and other writers make similar observations, though in much less striking language. However, I suppose you now see, or at least any one who gives his attention has the means of seeing, in what a sink of iniquity that city was plunged before the advent of our heavenly King. For these things happened not only before Christ had begun to teach, but before He was even born of the Virgin. If, then, they dare not impute to their gods the grievous evils of those former times, more tolerable before the destruction of Carthage, but intolerable and dreadful after it, although it was the gods who by their malign craft instilled into the minds of men the conceptions from which such dreadful vices branched out on all sides, why do they impute these present calamities to Christ, who teaches life-giving truth, and forbids us to worship false and deceitful gods, and who, abominating and condemning with His divine authority those wicked and hurtful lusts of men, gradually withdraws His own people from a world that is corrupted by these vices, and is falling into ruins, to make of them an eternal city, whose glory rests not on the acclamations of vanity, but on the judgment of truth? 19. _Of the corruption which had grown upon the Roman republic before Christ abolished the worship of the gods._

• From A History of God (1993)

  Unfortunately, as in Christianity, the religion was later hijacked by the men, who interpreted texts in a way that was negative for Muslim women. The Koran does not prescribe the veil for all women but only for Muhammad’s wives, as a mark of their status. Once Islam had taken its place in the civilized world, however, Muslims adopted those customs of the Oikumene which relegated women to second-class status. They adopted the customs of veiling women and secluding them in harems from Persia and Christian Byzantium, where women had long been marginalized in this way. By the time of the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258), the position of Muslim women was as bad as that of their sisters in Jewish and Christian society. Today Muslim feminists urge their menfolk to return to the original spirit of the Koran. This reminds us that, like any other faith, Islam could be interpreted in a number of different ways; consequently it evolved its own sects and divisions. The first of these—that between the Sunnah and Shiah—was prefigured in the struggle for the leadership after Muhammad’s sudden death. Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s close friend, was elected by the majority, but some believed that he would have wanted Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and son-in-law, to be his successor (kalipha). Ali himself accepted Abu Bakr’s leadership, but during the next few years he seems to have been the focus of the loyalty of dissidents who disapproved of the policies of the first three caliphs: Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab and Uthman ibn Affan. Finally Ali became the fourth caliph in 656: the Shiah would eventually call him the first Imam or Leader of the ummah. Concerned with the leadership, the split between Sunnis and Shiis was political rather than doctrinal, and this heralded the importance of politics in Muslim religion, including its conception of God. The Shiah-i-Ali (the Partisans of Ali) remained a minority and would develop a piety of protest, typified by the tragic figure of Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali, who refused to accept the Ummayads (who had seized the caliphate after the death of his father Ali) and was killed with his small band of supporters by the Ummayad Caliph Yazid in 680 on the plain of Karbala, near Kufa in modern Iraq. All Muslims regard the immoral slaughter of Husayn with horror, but he has become a particular hero of the Shiah, a reminder that it is sometimes necessary to fight tyranny to the death. By this time, the Muslims had begun to establish their empire. The first four caliphs had been concerned only to spread Islam among the Arabs of the Byzantine and Persian empires, which were both in a state of decline. Under the Ummayads, however, the expansion continued into Asia and North Africa, inspired not by religion so much as by Arab imperialism.

• From Quiet (2012)

  He attributes his own style to the demands of writing and to having been raised mostly as an only child, and then says that he and Michelle have learned over the years to meet each other’s needs, and to see them as legitimate. It can also be hard for introverts and extroverts to understand each other’s ways of resolving differences. One of my clients was an immaculately dressed lawyer named Celia. Celia wanted a divorce, but dreaded letting her husband know. She had good reasons for her decision but anticipated that he would beg her to stay and that she would crumple with guilt. Above all, Celia wanted to deliver her news compassionately. We decided to role-play their discussion, with me acting as her husband. “I want to end this marriage,” said Celia. “I mean it this time.” “I’ve been doing everything I can to hold things together,” I pleaded. “How can you do this to me?” Celia thought for a minute. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking this through, and I believe this is the right decision,” she replied in a wooden voice. “What can I do to change your mind?” I asked. “Nothing,” said Celia flatly. Feeling for a minute what her husband would feel, I was dumbstruck. She was so rote, so dispassionate. She was about to divorce me—me, her husband of eleven years! Didn’t she care? I asked Celia to try again, this time with emotion in her voice. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do it.” But she did. “I want to end this marriage,” she repeated, her voice choked with sadness. She began to weep uncontrollably. Celia’s problem was not lack of feeling. It was how to show her emotions without losing control. Reaching for a tissue, she quickly gathered herself, and went back into crisp, dispassionate lawyer mode. These were the two gears to which she had ready access—overwhelming feelings or detached self-possession. I tell you Celia’s story because in many ways she’s a lot like Emily and many introverts I’ve interviewed. Emily is talking to Greg about dinner parties, not divorce, but her communication style echoes Celia’s. When she and Greg disagree, her voice gets quiet and flat, her manner slightly distant. What she’s trying to do is minimize aggression—Emily is uncomfortable with anger—but she appears to be receding emotionally. Meanwhile, Greg does just the opposite, raising his voice and sounding belligerent as he gets ever more engaged in working out their problem. The more Emily seems to withdraw, the more alone, then hurt, then enraged Greg becomes; the angrier he gets, the more hurt and distaste Emily feels, and the deeper she retreats. Pretty soon they’re locked in a destructive cycle from which they can’t escape, partly because both spouses believe they’re arguing in an appropriate manner. This dynamic shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the relationship between personality and conflict resolution style.

• From The City of God

  Again, I presume it was due to this natural equity and virtue, that after the expulsion of King Tarquin, whose son had violated Lucretia, Junius Brutus the consul forced Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Lucretia's husband and his own colleague, a good and innocent man, to resign his office and go into banishment, on the one sole charge that he was of the name and blood of the Tarquins. This injustice was perpetrated with the approval, or at least connivance, of the people, who had themselves raised to the consular office both Collatinus and Brutus. Another instance of this equity and virtue is found in their treatment of Marcus Camillus. This eminent man, after he had rapidly conquered the Veians, at that time the most formidable of Rome's enemies, and who had maintained a ten years' war, in which the Roman army had suffered the usual calamities attendant on bad generalship, after he had restored security to Rome, which had begun to tremble for its safety, and after he had taken the wealthiest city of the enemy, had charges brought against him by the malice of those that envied his success, and by the insolence of the tribunes of the people; and seeing that the city bore him no gratitude for preserving it, and that he would certainly be condemned, he went into exile, and even in his absence was fined 10,000 asses. Shortly after, however, his ungrateful country had again to seek his protection from the Gauls. But I cannot now mention all the shameful and iniquitous acts with which Rome was agitated, when the aristocracy attempted to subject the people, and the people resented their encroachments, and the advocates of either party were actuated rather by the love of victory than by any equitable or virtuous consideration. 18. _What the history of Sallust reveals regarding the life of the Romans, either when straitened by anxiety or relaxed in security._

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  When White died of heart failure in January 1964, far from home in a cabin on the SS Exeter in Greece, his friends were concerned for his reputation. There were things in his journals they did not want to come to light, matters relating to his sexuality that if spoken of at all, had to be handled with rare delicacy. They needed to find a suitable biographer. They chose Sylvia Townsend Warner, because she had corresponded with White, and he had liked her books. And for another reason: she was gay. ‘You will be sympathetic to his character,’ Michael Howard informed her. ‘If it is a sufficiently bad character I should certainly be sympathetic to it,’ she replied. She travelled to Alderney and there, walking about White’s house, she found her subject. He was there, in his possessions. She wrote to her friend William Maxwell: His sewing basket with an unfinished hawk-hood, his litter of fishing-flies, his books, his awful ornaments presented by his hoi polloi friends, his vulgar toys bought at Cherbourg Fairs, his neat rows of books on flagellation – everything was there, defenceless as a corpse. And so was he, suspicious, morose, and determined to despair. I have never felt such an imminent haunt. An imminent haunt. Her phrase gives me pause. Because that was what White was doing as I trained my hawk; he was there even as I dreamed of the vanishing gos. Haunting me. Not in the tapping-on-the-window white-sheet ghost-in-the-corridor way, but it was a haunting all the same. Ever since I’d read The Goshawk, I’d wondered what kind of man White was and why he had tied himself to a hawk he seemed to hate. And when I trained my own hawk a little space opened, like a window through leaves, onto this other life, in which was a man who was hurt, and a hawk who was being hurt, and I saw them both more clearly. Like White I wanted to cut loose from the world, and I shared, too, his desire to escape to the wild, a desire that can rip away all human softness and leave you stranded in a world of savage, courteous despair.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  One other observation was critically important: All of the early writing studies relied on people who were physically healthy. If this method is good for people’s health, he asked, why haven’t any researchers looked at people suffering from chronic disease? When Josh’s meta-analysis was published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, in 1998, it had an immediate impact. Researchers around the world realized that there might be something to this expressive writing and began conducting an array of innovative and interesting studies. Within the next several years, a surge of study findings were published that included wildly broad and diverse samples—people with a variety of acute and chronic disease, with major and minor mental health problems. Other studies employed people who were quite healthy but who were trying to master new skills, do better in college, or exhibit greater creativity. The net effect of Josh’s meta-analysis is that it demonstrated the potential value of expressive writing. His paper, however, challenged researchers at the time to explain why it worked. Clearly, when people wrote about emotional upheavals, something important was happening. But what? What precisely happens when people are given the opportunity to disclose their secrets and emotions to others? Try Expressive Writing Find a quiet time and place for this next writing exercise. Write for 20 to 30 minutes, focusing on your deepest emotions and thoughts about a stressful or upsetting experience in your life. Whatever you choose to write about, it is critical that you really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts. Write continuously, and don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or style. Warning: Many people report that after writing, they sometimes feel somewhat sad, although this typically goes away in a couple of hours. If you find that you are getting extremely upset about a writing topic, simply stop writing or change topics. CHAPTER 3What’s on Your Mind?HEALTH BENEFITS OF VERBAL AND WRITTEN DISCLOSUREA therapist recently told the following story of his client, “Barbara”: “After a late dinner with friends, Barbara got into her car and, after locking the doors, heard the voice of a strange man from the backseat. Holding a knife, he ordered her to drive to a particular city park where, he said, he intended to rape her. As Barbara drove to the park, she started to accelerate. Between sobs, she lied that she had cancer and would soon be dying. Speeding up to 70 mph on the deserted city streets, she noted that she might as well kill them both. As she approached a busy intersection, Barbara warned the man that if he wanted to live, he had better jump out while he could. He jumped from the car as she slowed to make a turn.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Meaning what? Talk plainly,” said Merges, who had stopped grooming his belly and now sat on his haunches. “Meaning that you seem so fearful of death that you refrain from entering into life. It’s as though you fear using up life. Remember what you taught me just a few minutes ago about essential catness? Tell me, Merges, where now is the territory you defend? Where are the toms you battle? Where are the lustful, howling females you subdue? And why,” Ernest asked, emphasizing each word, “do you allow your precious Merges sperm seeds to rot unused?” As Ernest spoke, Merges’s head bowed low. Then, somewhat mournfully, he asked, “And you have only one life? How far are you into it?” “About halfway through.” “How can you stand it?” Suddenly Ernest felt a sharp pang of sadness. He reached for one of the napkins from the Chinese dinner and dabbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” said Merges, unexpectedly gently, “to have caused pain.” “Not at all. I was prepared. This turn in our conversation was inevitable,” Ernest said. “You ask how I can stand it? Well, first of all, by not thinking about it. And more, sometimes I even forget about it. And at my age that’s not too hard.” “At your age? What does that mean?” “We humans go through life in stages. As very young children, we think about death a great deal; some of us even obsess about it. It’s not hard to discover death. We simply look around and see dead things: leaves and lilies and flies and beetles. Pets die. We eat dead animals. Sometimes we’re privy to the death of a person. And before long we realize that death will come to everyone—to our grandma, to our mother and father, even to ourselves. We brood about this in private. Our parents and teachers, thinking it’s bad for children to think about death, keep silent about it or give us fairy tales about a heaven and angels, eternal reunion, immortal souls.” Ernest stopped, hoping Merges was following his words. “And then?” Merges was following all right. “We comply. We push it out of our minds, or we openly defy death with great feats of daredevilry. And then, just before we become adults, we brood a great deal about it again. Although some cannot bear it and refuse to go on living, most of us blot out our awareness of death by immersing ourselves in the tasks of adulthood—building a career and family, personal growth, acquiring possessions, exercising power, winning the race. That’s where I am now in life. After that stage, we enter the later era of life, where awareness of death emerges again, and now death is distinctly menacing—in fact, imminent. At that point, we have the choice of thinking about it a great deal and making the most of the life we still have or pretending in various ways that death is not coming at all.”

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  At first, Augustine could view little of the Rome he had come to love in Virgil. While still suffering from his sea trip, he fell into a deeper illness. Luckily, his Manichean connections supplied him with a patron who took in the patient and his household, Una and Godsend, and their servants. Though Augustine, disillusioned with Manicheism, teased his host over some of the sect’s farfetched tenets (T 5.19), he continued to profit by association with it. Manicheans, aware of their vulnerability should the government act on their outlaw status, cultivated important figures. More serious than Rome’s native nobility, more disciplined than the populace, the Manicheans recruited people like Augustine. They had reason to align themselves with the few serious pagans of the old school, who were also waging a war of nerves with the Christian imperial court in Milan. Such a pagan was Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, famous for his oratory. Symmachus belonged to a circle of scholars and poets which included commentators on Virgil like Servius and Macrobius. It is intriguing to reflect that Augustine might have met such celebrants of his favorite poet when he dealt with Symmachus—for Symmachus, by virtue of his rhetorical reputation, had the power to choose the court orator for the Emperor Valentinian, and he favored Augustine. At the time when Augustine came to know him, Symmachus was not only a senator from a distinguished line; he had just been appointed prefect of the city of Rome, despite his clash with a former emperor over the removal of an altar of Victory from the Senate chamber. In his new office, he sent to Milan an eloquent plea to have the altar restored, as a symbol of Rome’s antiquity and power. Milanese courtiers are said to have been moved by the way Symmachus imagined Rome herself pleading with the emperor to recognize her historic identity, “which gave the world its laws” (Relatio 3).

• From Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense (2018)

  One could just as easily say that parents are valuable to children for their labor. If the parents don’t provide, the kids don’t eat, but that hardly sums up children’s feelings toward or relationships with their parents. As for in-laws, well, some, like mine, are terrific, but there must be a reason for mother-in-law jokes. Of course, many matches have involved property, and still do. The superrich sure seem to marry one another. But rich or poor, love was always a factor too. For centuries, at least in Europe, mutual consent was the rule for marriage. In the twelfth century, Pope Alexander III called marriage “a free union of two hearts” and decreed that parental consent was not necessary to validate a marriage.35 In Romeo and Juliet, the Capulets are determined to force Juliet to marry Paris. Some parents have always been insensitive to their children’s needs, sometimes justly, sometimes not; that’s what makes the play compelling literature. But Shakespeare made Juliet one of drama’s most sympathetic reluctant brides, and in the course of the play, her parents come to regret their insensitivity. Generations of theatergoers have come away feeling that the Capulets were wrong to ignore their daughter’s wishes. The play’s final couplet tolls the price: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Feminist Jessie Bernard regarded marriage as hopelessly exploitative when she wrote in 1972, “To be happy in a relationship which imposes so many impediments on her, as traditional marriage does, a woman must be slightly mentally ill.”36 In The Future of Marriage, Bernard argues that it was not a loss for women that it was becoming easier to withdraw from a marriage than from an auto payment plan. Women would be forced to change their expectations. They would learn “that marriage was not the be-all and end-all of their existence.” If, she writes, “it is good for men to be saved from normlessness by hemming them in, it is good for women to be forced out of their security.”37 Feminists felt it was their duty to deny women security that they, the feminists, regarded as fraudulent. Bernard was not alone. Feminists agitated for the reform of divorce laws.38 David Frum, author of How We Got Here, a history of the 1970s, describes how California’s divorce laws (later adopted by forty-six other states) were changed in 1969 to erase the distinction between contested and uncontested divorce: “The usual new rule was that an unhappy spouse need only remove himself from the house and wait a few months,…” Frum writes. “Nor did the law’s tilt against the unwilling spouse halt there. The 1969 California divorce reform put an end to the old bias in favor of maternal custody.”39