Influence Without Authority Quotes

Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothly, and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience—yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim—except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead. What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature.

Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.

What kind of men, then, does our society need? What is the "social character" suited to twentieth century Capitalism? It needs men who co-operate smoothly in large groups; who want to consume more and more, and whose tasks are standardized and can easily be influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority, or principle, or conscience - yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without friction.

Abraham’s willingness to plunge a dagger through the heart of his young son because God, without any explanation, ordered it. We learn in this story that the correctness of an action was not judged by such considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards, but by the mere command of a higher authority.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787]

Every one has his superstitions. One of mine is that in positions of great responsibility every one should do his duty to the best of his ability where assigned by competent authority, without application or the use of influence to change his position.

As long as a man knows very well the strength and weaknesses of his teaching, his art, his religion, its power is still slight. The pupil and apostle who, blinded by the authority of the master and by the piety he feels toward him, pays no attention to the weaknesses of a teaching, a religion, and soon usually has for that reason more power than the master. The influence of a man has never yet grown great without his blind pupils. To help a perception to achieve victory often means merely to unite it with stupidity so intimately that the weight of the latter also enforces the victory of the former.

People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.

School of Resentment is a term coined by critic Harold Bloom to describe related schools of literary criticism which have gained prominence in academia since the 1970s and which Bloom contends are preoccupied with political and social activism at the expense of aesthetic values.[1] Broadly, Bloom terms "Schools of Resentment" approaches associated with Marxist critical theory, including African American studies, Marxist literary criticism, New Historicist criticism, feminist criticism, and poststructuralism—specifically as promoted by Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The School of Resentment is usually defined as all scholars who wish to enlarge the Western canon by adding to it more works by authors from minority groups without regard to aesthetic merit and/or influence over time, or those who argue that some works commonly thought canonical promote sexist, racist or otherwise biased values and should therefore be removed from the canon. Bloom contends that the School of Resentment threatens the nature of the canon itself and may lead to its eventual demise. Philosopher Richard Rorty[2] agreed that Bloom is at least partly accurate in describing the School of Resentment, writing that those identified by Bloom do in fact routinely use "subversive, oppositional discourse" to attack the canon specifically and Western culture in general.

Under the mellowing influence of good food and good music, Adam relaxed, and I discovered that underneath that overbearing, hot-tempered Alpha disguise he usually wore was a charming, over-bearing, hot-tempered man. He seemed to enjoy finding out that I was as stubborn and disrespectful of authority as he’d always suspected. He ordered dessert without consulting me. I’d have been angrier, but it was something I could never have ordered for myself: chocolate, caramel, nuts, ice cream, real whipped cream, and cake so rich it might as well have been a brownie. “So,” he said, as I finished the last bit, “I’m forgiven?” “You are arrogant and overstep your bounds,” I told him, pointing my clean fork at him. “I try,” he said with false modesty. Then his eyes darkened and he reached across the table and ran his thumb over my bottom lip. He watched me as he licked the caramel from his skin. I thumped my hands down on the table and leaned forward. “That is not fair. I’ll eat your dessert and like it—but you can’t use sex to keep me from getting mad.” He laughed, one of those soft laughs that start in the belly and rise up through the chest: a relaxed, happy sort of laugh. To change the subject, because matters were heating up faster than I was comfortable with, I said, “So Bran tells me that he ordered you to keep an eye out for me.” He stopped laughing and raised both eyebrows. “Yes. Now ask me if I was watching you for Bran.” It was a trick question. I could see the amusement in his eyes. I hesitated, but decided I wanted to know anyway. “Okay, I’ll bite. Were you watching me for Bran?” “Honey,” he drawled, pulling on his Southern roots. “When a wolf watches a lamb, he’s not thinking of the lamb’s mommy.” I grinned. I couldn’t help it. The idea of Bran as a lamb’s mommy was too funny. “I’m not much of a lamb,” I said. He just smiled.

Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all th’ Ethereal Powers And Spirits, both them who stood and them who fail’d; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have giv’n sincere Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, Where only what they needs must do, appear’d, Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil’d, Made passive both, had served necessity, Not mee. They therefore as to right belong’d, So were created, nor can justly accuse Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate; As if Predestination over-rul’d Thir will, dispos’d by absolute Decree Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed Thir own revolt, not I; if I foreknew Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of Fate, Or aught by me immutable foreseen, They trespass, Authors to themselves in all Both what they judge and what they choose; for so I form’d them free, and free they must remain, Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change Thir nature, and revoke the high Decree Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain’d Thir freedom: they themselves ordain’d thir fall.

leading without authority means you need to have a clear understanding of your identity—who you are as a leader, apart from any titles.

But empowering others by giving them your authority has the same effect as sharing information: You haven’t lost anything. You have increased the ability of others without decreasing yourself.

Leaders don’t sit back and point fingers. Leaders lead with the authority of leadership . . . or without it. The authority is largely irrelevant—if you are a leader, you will lead when you are needed.

...fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of "mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At the bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one's own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. These "mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism's foundations: -a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; -the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; -the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external; -dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; -the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; -the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the groups' destiny; -the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason; -the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success; -the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle. ...Fascism was an affair of the gut more than the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all.

Once America was relatively free of class hatred. The progressivists realized that it would be impossible to pit one class against another for political gain, if such classes did not exist, or were without basic antagonism. Dr. George Counts proposed that the schools should disrupt this stabilizing influence in America ... This cruel and cynical admonition to the educators of America to purposefully promote class strife and bitterness was an open acceptance of Lenin's strategy of "incite one against another." Twenty years later, most textbook authors were carefully following Counts advice. Class hatred is induced in students by presenting American history as a prolonged class struggle.

But we all know that positional authority alone does not equate to effective leadership. If a leader does not inspire confidence, he or she will be unable to effect change without resorting to brute force. Influence has always been, and will always be, the currency of leadership. This book is about how to cultivate the influence needed to lead when you’re not in charge.

Faulkner once said that all novels are shipwrecks. Derelicts. and he was right. There is something that falls short of perfection in every book, without exception, something influenced by the age, even something ridiculous; just like everyone without exception, has weaknesses and is trapped in his age and environment, and may even be ridiculous. But if he is an honourable man and if it is an honourable book, no one has the right to ridicule it or heap contempt upon it. Genuine lovers of literature will instead feel sorry that the author was not up to some things, and will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism. Such treasure is there, far more often than the snobs know, or are prepared to admit.

When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man's heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, become the occasion of their hardening. Thus God sends his word and ordinances to men which, by their abuse, prove an occasion of their hardening.

John Ziegler is not a journalist-he is an entertainer. Or maybe it's better to say that he is part of a peculiar, modern, and very popular type of news industry, one that manages to enjoy authority and influence of journalism without the stodgy constraints of fairness, objectivity, and responsibility that make trying to tell the truth such a drag for everyone involved. It is a frightening industry, though not for any of the simple reasons most critics give.

In the democratic, egalitarian spirit of our day, we hold in suspicion positions of social authority, yet we submit to the power of peers. Social anxiety, peer group pressure, and competition all dictate our lives. Many are more afraid of offending their friends than they are of offending figures of authority. We have moved from a culture based upon hierarchy to a peerarchy. Ironically we flee from relational distinctions and boundaries, yet without these traditions and boundaries we become mired in codependency.

The fears of militarization Holbrooke had expressed in his final, desperate memos, had come to pass on a scale he could have never anticipated. President Trump had concentrated ever more power in the Pentagon, granting it nearly unilateral authority in areas of policy once orchestrated across multiple agencies, including the State Department. In Iraq and Syria, the White House quietly delegated more decisions on troop deployments to the military. In Yemen and Somalia, field commanders were given authority to launch raids without White House approval. In Afghanistan, Trump granted the secretary of defense, General James Mattis, sweeping authority to set troop levels. In public statements, the White House downplayed the move, saying the Pentagon still had to adhere to the broad strokes of policies set by the White House. But in practice, the fate of thousands of troops in a diplomatic tinderbox of a conflict had, for the first time in recent history, been placed solely in military hands. Diplomats were no longer losing the argument on Afghanistan: they weren’t in it. In early 2018, the military began publicly rolling out a new surge: in the following months, up to a thousand new troops would join the fourteen thousand already in place. Back home, the White House itself was crowded with military voices. A few months into the Trump administration, at least ten of twenty-five senior leadership positions on the president’s National Security Council were held by current or retired military officials. As the churn of firings and hirings continued, that number grew to include the White House chief of staff, a position given to former general John Kelly. At the same time, the White House ended the practice of “detailing” State Department officers to the National Security Council. There would now be fewer diplomatic voices in the policy process, by design.

If you have quick verbal skills, use humor to deflect attacks. A quip instead of a counterattack can ease tension, reduce the impact of the other person's aggression, and help build the relationship. When in doubt, use self-deprecating humor such as, “Oh, I see, all you want me to do is to cave in, go belly up, and hand you everything you want. I guess I must come across as the weakest player in the universe.” And with tough bargainers, don't give in too soon; otherwise they might worry that they could have gained more and left too much on the table. In such cases, you must let them believe that they have wrested every last concession from you.

As we know, Rilke, under the influence of Auguste Rodin, whom he had assisted between 1905 and 1906 in Meudon as a private secretary, turned away from the art nouveau-like, sensitized-atmospheric poetic approach of his early years to pursue a view of art determined more strongly by the priority of the object. The proto-modern pathos of making way for the object without depicting it in a manner 'true to nature', like that of the old masters, led in Rilke's case to the concept of the thing-poem - and thus to a temporarily convincing new answer to the question of the source of aesthetic and ethical authority. From that point, it would be the things themselves from which all authority would come - or rather: from this respectively current singular thing that turns to me by demanding my full gaze. This is only possible because thing-being would now no longer mean anything but this: having something to say.

you’re a leader with no power over business strategy and no ability to allocate people to important tasks, you’re at best at the mercy of your influence with other executives and managers, and at worst a figurehead. You can’t give up the responsibility of management without giving up the power that comes with it. The CTO who doesn’t also have the authority of management must be able to get things done purely by influencing the organization. If the managers won’t actually give people and time to work on the areas that the CTO believes are important, he is rendered effectively powerless. If you give up management, you’re giving up the most important power you ever had over the business strategy, and you effectively have nothing but your organizational goodwill and your own two hands. My advice for aspiring CTOs is to remember that it’s a business strategy job first and foremost. It’s also a management job.

To anyone who groans in dismay, “A dozen factors are a lot to remember, why don’t you reduce them to just a few?”—I reply: it would be absurd to think that the outcomes of people’s lives, or of nations’ histories, could be usefully reduced to just a few catchwords. If you should have the misfortune to pick up a book claiming to achieve that, throw it away without reading any further. Conversely, if you have the misfortune to pick up a book proposing to discuss all 76 factors influencing crisis resolution, throw that book away also: it’s the job of a book’s author, not of a book’s readers, to digest and prioritize life’s infinite complexity into a useful framework. I found that using a dozen factors offers an acceptable compromise between those two extremes: detailed enough to explain much of reality, without being so detailed as to constitute a laundry list useful for tracking laundry but not for understanding the world.

There must always be a fringe of the experimental in literature--poems bizarre in form and curious in content, stories that overreach for what has not hitherto been put in story form, criticism that mingles a search for new truth with bravado. We should neither scoff at this trial margin nor take it too seriously. Without it, literature becomes inert and complacent. But the everyday person's reading is not, ought not to be, in the margin. He asks for a less experimental diet, and his choice is sound. If authors and publishers would give him more heed they would do wisely. They are afraid of the swarming populace who clamor for vulgar sensation (and will pay only what it is worth), and they are afraid of petulant literati who insist upon sophisticated sensation (and desire complimentary copies). The stout middle class, as in politics and industry, has far less influence than its good sense and its good taste and its ready purse deserve.

You can challenge a leader without challenging his authority, challenge a priest without challenging his integrity, challenge a warrior without challenging his intensity, challenge a scholar without challenging his education, challenge a guru without challenging his counsel, challenge a professor without challenging his lectures, challenge a student without challenging his potentiality, challenge a prophet without challenging his reputation, challenge a teacher without challenging his lessons, challenge a scientist without challenging his discoveries, challenge an inventor without challenging his ingenuity, challenge a preacher without challenging his sermons, challenge a laywer without challenging his strategy, challenge an athlete without challenging his capacity, challenge an artist without challenging his mastery, challenge a general without challenging his command, challenge a ruler without challenging his influence, challenge a president without challenging his government, and challenge a king without challenging his supremacy.

Legitimate” faith must always rest on experience. There is, however, another kind of faith which rests exclusively on the authority of tradition. This kind of faith could also be called “legitimate,” since the power of tradition embodies an experience whose importance for the continuity of culture is beyond question. But with this kind of faith there is always the danger of mere habit supervening—it may so easily degenerate into spiritual inertia and a thoughtless compliance which, if persisted in, threatens stagnation and cultural regression. This mechanical dependence goes hand in hand with a psychic regression to infantilism. The traditional contents gradually lose their real meaning and are only believed in as formalities, without this belief having any influence on the conduct of life. There is no longer a living power behind it. The much-vaunted “child-likeness” of faith only makes sense when the feeling behind the experience is still alive. If it gets lost, faith is only another word for habitual, infantile dependence, which takes the place of, and actually prevents, the struggle for deeper understanding. This seems to be the position we have reached today.

Without friendship, the ring never would have made it, and Middle Earth would have been destroyed. Actually, we never would have imagined Middle Earth in the first place because, without friendship, Tolkien never would have finished writing the story. He said that it was only C. S. Lewis’s steady encouragement that kept him writing. Perhaps this is why the theme of friendship stands out so prominently in the story. In Tolkien’s day, authors only produced “fairy stories” (as they were called) for children, not adults. But Tolkien wrote for adults too. He eventually wrote The Lord of the Rings, but it was only because of his relationship with Lewis. Two years after Lewis died, Tolkien reflected on Lewis’s role in his life: The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought the L. of the R. to a conclusion.13 Lewis and Tolkien experienced true friendship. They knew that their experience was both wonderful and rare in their culture. This is why both men wrote to promote the joys of true friendship in their own day—Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, and Lewis in The Four Loves.

However, it looks somewhat different when viewed not from the personalistic standpoint, i.e., from the personal situation of Miss Miller, but from the standpoint of the archetype’s own life. As we have already explained, the phenomena of the unconscious can be regarded as more or less spontaneous manifestations of autonomous archetypes, and though this hypothesis may seem very strange to the layman, it is amply supported by the fact the archetype has a numinous character: it exerts a fascination, it enters into active opposition to the conscious mind, and may be said in the long run to mould the destinies of individuals by unconsciously influencing their thinking, feeling, and behaviour, even if this influence is not recognized until long afterwards. The primordial image is itself a “pattern of behaviour”4 which will assert itself with or without the co-operation of the conscious personality. Although the Miller case gives us some idea of the manner in which an archetype gradually draws nearer to consciousness and finally takes possession of it, the material is too scanty to serve as a complete illustration of the process. I must therefore refer my reader to the dream-series discussed in Psychology and Alchemy, where he will be able to follow the gradual emergence of a definite archetype with all the specific marks of its autonomy and authority.

IT is worth remembering that the rise of what we call literary fiction happened at a time when the revealed, authenticated account of the beginning was losing its authority. Now that changes in things as they are change beginnings to make them fit, beginnings have lost their mythical rigidity. There are, it is true, modern attempts to restore this rigidity. But on the whole there is a correlation between subtlety and variety in our fictions and remoteness and doubtfulness about ends and origins. There is a necessary relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the 'real' history of that world. I propose in this talk to ask some questions about an early and very interesting example of this relation. There was a long-established opinion that the beginning was as described in Genesis, and that the end is to be as obscurely predicted in Revelation. But what if this came to seem doubtful? Supposing reason proved capable of a quite different account of the matter, an account contradicting that of faith? On the argument of these talks so far as they have gone, you would expect two developments: there should be generated fictions of concord between the old and the new explanations; and there should be consequential changes in fictive accounts of the world. And of course I should not be troubling you with all this if I did not think that such developments occurred. The changes to which I refer came with a new wave of Greek influence on Christian philosophy. The provision of accommodations between Greek and Hebrew thought is an old story, and a story of concord-fictions--necessary, as Berdyaev says, because to the Greeks the world was a cosmos, but to the Hebrews a history. But this is too enormous a tract in the history of ideas for me to wander in. I shall make do with my single illustration, and speak of what happened in the thirteenth century when Christian philosophers grappled with the view of the Aristotelians that nothing can come of nothing--ex nihilo nihil fit--so that the world must be thought to be eternal. In the Bible the world is made out of nothing. For the Aristotelians, however, it is eternal, without beginning or end. To examine the Aristotelian arguments impartially one would need to behave as if the Bible might be wrong. And this was done. The thirteenth-century rediscovery of Aristotle led to the invention of double-truth. It takes a good deal of sophistication to do what certain philosophers then did, namely, to pursue with vigour rational enquiries the validity of which one is obliged to deny. And the eternity of the world was, of course, more than a question in a scholarly game. It called into question all that might seem ragged and implausible in the usual accounts of the temporal structure of the world, the relation of time to eternity (certainly untidy and discordant compared with the Neo-Platonic version) and of heaven to hell.

In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word "Russian" I always differentiate it from the word "Soviet"—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves. You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom....There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.

The tendency to want what has been banned and therefore to presume that it is more worthwhile is not limited to such commodities as laundry soap. In fact, the tendency is not limited to commodities at all but extends to restrictions on information. In an age when the ability to acquire, store, and manage information is becoming increasingly the determinant of wealth and power, it is important to understand how we typically react to attempts to censor or otherwise constrain our access to information. Although much data exist on our reactions to various kinds of potentially censorable material—media violence, pornography, radical political rhetoric—there is surprisingly little evidence as to our reactions to the act of censoring them. Fortunately, the results of the few studies that have been done on the topic are highly consistent. Almost invariably, our response to the banning of information is a greater desire to receive that information and a more favorable attitude toward it than before the ban.112 The intriguing thing about the effects of censoring information is not that audience members want to have the information more than they did before; that seems natural. Rather, it is that they come to believe in the information more, even though they haven’t received it. For example, when University of North Carolina students learned that a speech opposing coed dorms on campus would be banned, they became more opposed to the idea of coed dorms. Thus, without ever hearing the speech, they became more sympathetic to its argument. This raises the worrisome possibility that especially clever individuals holding a weak or unpopular position can get us to agree with that position by arranging to have their message restricted. The irony is that for such people—members of fringe political groups, for example—the most effective strategy may not be to publicize their unpopular views, but to get those views officially censored and then to publicize the censorship. Perhaps the authors of this country’s Constitution were acting as much as sophisticated social psychologists as staunch civil libertarians when they wrote the remarkably permissive free-speech provision of the First Amendment. By refusing to restrain freedom of speech, they may have been attempting to minimize the chance that new political notions would win support via the irrational course of psychological reactance.

You are claiming that the Soviet authorities began and influenced the existence of the Democratic Party [in Iran]. That is the basis of all your statements. The simplest way to discredit your absurd claim si to tell you about Iran, of which you are apparently ignorant. The people of Iran are oppressed, poverty-stricken, and miserable with hunger and disease. Their death rate is among the highest in the world, and their infant mortality rate threatens Iran with complete extinction. They are ruled without choice by feudalistic landowners, ruthless Khans, and venal industrialists. The peasants are slaves and the workers are paid a few pennies for a twelve hour day--not enough to keep their families in food. I can quote you all the figures you like to support these statements, quote them if necessary from British sources. I can also quote you the figures of wealth which is taken out of Iran yearly by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, of which the British Governemtn is the largest shareholder. 200 million pounds sterling have been taken out of Iran by your Oil company: a hundred times the total amount of Iran's national income and ten thousand times the total national income of the working people of Iran. By such natural resources as oil, Iran is by nature one of the wealthiest countries on earth. That wealth goes to Britain, while Iran remains poverty-ridden and without economic stability at all. It has no wage policies, no real trade unions, few hospitals, no sanitation and drainage, no irrigation, no proper housing, and no adequate road system. Its people have no rights before the law; their franchise in non-existent, and their parliamentary rights are destroyed by the corrupt method of election and political choice. The Iranian people suffer the terrors of a police regime, and they are prey to the manipulations of the grain speculators and the money operators. The racial minorities suffer discrimination and intolerance, and religious minorities are persecuted for political ends. Banditry threatens the mountain districts, and British arms have been used to support one tribe against another. I could go on indefinitely, painting you a picture of misery and starvation and imprisonment and subjection which must shame any human being capable of hearing it. Yet you say that the existence of a Democratic Party in Iran has been created by the Soviet authorities. You underestimate the Iranian people, Lord Essex! The Democratic Party has arisen out of all this misery and subjection as a force against corruption and oppression. Until now the Iranian people have been unable to create a political party because the police system prevented by terror and assassination. Any attempt to organize the workers and peasants was quickly halted by the execution of party leaders and the vast imprisonment of its followers. The Iranian people, however, have a long record of struggle and persistence, and they do not have to be told by the Soviet Union where their interests lie. They are not stupid and they are not utterly destroyed. They still posses the will to organize a democratic body and follow it into paths of Government. The Soviet Union has simply made sure that the police assassins did not interfere.... To talk of our part in 'creating' the democratic movement is an insult to the people and a sign of ignorance. We do not underestimate the Iranian people, and as far as we are concerned the Democratic Party...belongs to the people. It is their creation and their right, and it cannot be broken by wild charges which accuse the Soviet Union of its birth. We did not create it, and we have not interfered in the affairs of Iran. On the contrary, it is the British Government which has interfered continuously and viciously in Iran's affairs.

Along with yourself, who else really cares about this issue? (That is by far the best way to ask about other influencers and your contact’s decision-making authority without it coming off as an insult.

These are the “problem children” who are periodically put through the torture of the teachers’ complaints to their parents, and through the helpless despair of seeing their parents side with the torturers. Some of these children are violently rebellious; others seem outwardly timid and passive, but are outside the reach of any pressure or influence. Whatever their particular forms of bearing the unbearable, what they all have in common is the inability to fit in, i.e., to accept the intellectual authority of the pack. (Not all “misfits” belong to this category; there are children who reject the pack for entirely different reasons, such as frustrated powerlust.) The nonconformists are heroic little martyrs who are given no credit by anyone—not even by themselves, since they cannot identify the nature of their battle. They do not have the conceptual knowledge or the introspective skill to grasp that they are unable and unwilling to accept anything without understanding it, and that they are holding to the sovereignty of their own judgment against the terrifying pressure of everyone around them.

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It is an illusion that once upon a time managers could make their direct reports do whatever was needed. Nobody has ever had enough authority—they never have and never will. Organizational life is too complicated for that.

What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin. One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit. (28 January 1956)

When He Needs Direction A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. PROVERBS 16:9 WE ALL NEED DIRECTION from the Lord. In our culture today we encounter so much deception, and without the Holy Spirit leading us we will have a hard time distinguishing the truth from a lie. And how can we make sound decisions without His wisdom? The Holy Spirit is our guide in all things, and it is He who gives wisdom, knowledge, and revelation. “When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come” (John 16:13). We can make all the plans we want, and we do need to do that, but ultimately it will still be the direction of the Holy Spirit that will direct us on the right path. He will usher us into all that is right and true for our lives. Your husband needs knowledge and guidance from the Lord every day, and you can pray that he will have it. Pray he will clearly hear the voice of God speaking to him above all voices—even those of well-meaning people, or those who want to influence him for their own gain, or the voice of the enemy trying to take him off the path God has for him. Pray the same for yourself every time you ask God for direction on behalf of your husband. The Holy Spirit is the only true guide into all that is right for his life, your life, and your lives together. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would guide my husband through this day and in every decision he must make. Enable him to always discern the truth from a lie. Keep him from becoming blinded by deception and led down the wrong path. Teach him to search Your Word so that the truth is in his heart. Give him a fresh flow of Your wisdom. Put in him a holy barometer that has a deception meter ringing loudly in his mind and heart whenever he is about to be swayed away from Your best for his life. Lead him far from all that is not Your will. Enable him to hear Your voice instructing him in the way he should go. Keep him from being influenced by wrong voices who don’t have his best interests at heart. Enable him to hear Your voice above all, telling him the right thing to do. I pray You would guide me as well. Help me to hear Your voice in every decision either of us must make so that I can be a help and support to him. Give him the desire to pray with me about decisions that must be made. Only You, Lord, know what is best for him, and for me, and for us together. And only Your Holy Spirit can guide us in all truth. Enable both of us to know Your truth in our hearts at all times. In Jesus’ name I pray.

It’s a view that goes down especially well in a commercial republic, that quintessentially Western form of society, wherein citizens see themselves as untethered individuals pursuing profitable transactions in a free marketplace.

mobilizing passions": • a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; • the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; • the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external; • dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; • the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; • the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny; • the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; • the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; • the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

Trust, however, is an outcome, not an input.

these four foundations for mindfulness.”3 The four foundations are observing the body as body, feeling as feeling, mind as mind, and mental phenomena as mental phenomena,

Kumbaya” came to symbolize the pseudo-Eastern (but really very Western) view that all interpersonal strife will disappear if we simply resolve to be nice. Sit around the campfire, break out the guitars, and nobody will be mean or nasty ever again. It’s a utopian vision, one whose influence on social justice and personal growth movements has been, in my view, unhelpful.

Sages do not hoard. Having bestowed all they have on others, they have yet more. Having given all they have to others, they are richer still. The way of heaven benefits and does not harm; The way of the sage is bountiful and does not contend.1

In the workday world, complainers will not go far. When someone asks how you are doing, you had better be wise enough to reply "I can't complain." If you do complain, even justifiably, people will stop asking how you are doing. Complaining will not help you succeed and influence people. You can complain to your physician or psychiatrist because they are paid to hear you complain. But you cannot complain to your boss or your friends, if you have any. You will soon be dismissed from your job and dropped from the social register. Then you will be left alone with your complaints and no one to listen to them gratis. Perhaps then the message will sink into your head: If you do not feel good enough for long enough, you should act as if you do and even think as if you do. That is the way to get yourself to feel good for long enough and stop you from complaining for good, as any self-improvement book can affirm. But should you not improve, someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. This is monumentally so if you are a pessimist or a depressive. Should you conclude that life is objectionable or that nothing matters, do not waste our time with your nonsense. We are on our way to the future, and the philosophically disheartening or the emotionally impaired are not going to hinder our progress. If you cannot say something positive, or at least equivocal, keep it to yourself. Pessimists and depressives need not apply for a position in the enterprise of life. You have two choices: Start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsake by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin our fabricated reality or stubbornly insist on... what? That we should mollycoddle non-positive thinkers like you or rethink how the whole world transacts it's business? That we should start over from scratch? Or that we should go extinct? Try to be realistic. We did the best we could with the tools we had. After all, we are only human, as we like to say. Our world may not be in accord with nature's way, but it did develop organically according to our consciousness , which delivered us to a lofty prominence over the Creation. The whole thing just took on a life of its own, and nothing is going to stop it anytime soon. There can be no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no melancholic head-case is going to bad-mouth our catastrophe. The universe was created by the Creator, by damn. We live in a country we love and that loves us back, We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to be overhauled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double-plus-good and never will be. Our lives may not be unflawed, that would deny us a better future to work towards but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. Lighten up or leave us alone. You will never get us to give up our hopes. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. We are not contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox. Such opinions will not be accredited by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity. To lay it on the line, whatever thoughts may emerge from your deviant brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to hang on you, who are only "one of those people." So start pretending that you feel good enough for long enough, stop your complaining, and get back in line.

In Asia, influence is about relational systems of obligation—not power and control, but building social currency. You give people access to others based on your relationship, not necessarily on their performance. Should you later request help from them, they will of course try hard to help you. You reach out into your networks and create opportunities. Business and social are not seen as different; both are about helping people move forward in whatever they’re doing.

Dependent arising is one of Buddhism’s central doctrines. According to scholar John J. Holder, “the catalyst for the Buddha’s enlightenment was his penetrative insight into the dependently arisen nature of all that exists. All existing things are conditioned by other things.

Do you feel well in yourself currently?’. He answered ‘No’. ‘Are you using any substances regularly. If so, what?’. ‘Yes’ was written, though it looked shaky. She could imagine him sitting there in front of Mary, reaching that question, and then looking up, afraid to admit it. She’d seen it before. Too many times. The word ‘Heroin’ was written quickly, as if admitting it was hard and he needed to get it over with. ‘Do you want to receive support with the aim to become a non-user?’  The word ‘Yes’ was written there. Jamie looked over the questions again. Non-permanent residence. Non-user. Those were terms that people who knew how to deal with the homeless used so that they didn’t embarrass them. It was giving the answers without saying I’ve been homeless for this long, or yes, I want help getting clean. Mary knew what she was doing.  At the bottom of the page, there was one final question. ‘Would you like to have a free health check-up by a qualified medical practitioner at this shelter?’  He had written ‘Yes’, and then signed the declaration underneath that said he understood that if he was carrying drugs or under the influence when he arrived that he would be turned away, and that if he appeared to be a danger to himself or others the proper authorities would be called and this information could be provided to them with his permission.  She wondered if he’d read that before he signed. No one ever read the terms and conditions. Jamie sat back and tried to picture Oliver sitting there, and the circumstances that led him to the shelter. She opened Grace’s file quickly and scanned down the same form to her answers for diseases and sexual partners. She’s written the same answers as Oliver.

A memoir in which the author shares his impressive journey of emigrating to the United States to escape a difficult life in an impoverished Nigerian village. Born into an extremely poor family in Nigeria, ‘Deji Ayoade had early memories of wanting to come to America to do better for himself. For years, he dreamed about having a bright future in the United States. At seven, he promised his mother that one day he would be a doctor in America and take her and his siblings away from their dangerous and impoverished existence. By the age of thirty-three, ‘Deji had been in the United States for five years and was living his dream. He had earned a master’s degree, married and had a child, been recruited into the Navy, and become a US citizen. He makes good on the promise to his mother and brings her, his sister, and his sister’s baby to the United States. UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream is a well-structured, compelling memoir written by a determined man with big dreams, ambitious goals, and the strength to never lose sight of where he is headed. Commitment, intelligence, and drive contribute to his fulfilling what he deems to be his purpose in life. His accomplishments in the armed services are nothing short of admirable. Ayoade draws readers into the 1980s culture of the poorer regions of Nigeria with vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of areas in which they lived. His credible recreation of scenes reveals insight into the civilization that had considerable influence on him. Family dynamics also play a significant role in Ayoade’s life. His recollection of his father’s contradictory behaviors both confuse and enlighten him. His fond memories of his grandmother—the family member he trusted the most—are heartfelt and touching. While coming to the United States offers many positive experiences for Ayoade, it doesn’t come without problems, and one that the author talks about with deep emotion and candidness is racism. Thoughtful in the way he acknowledges possible differences of perspectives, he describes how it feels to be looked at differently. One scene in particular demonstrates just how prejudiced and insensitive people can be when it comes to racial biases. Ayoade writes from the heart with emotion and honesty that demonstrate his passion for what he does in life. His ability to weave together a cohesive story from so many disparate fragments is remarkable. His religious faith and commitment to never-ending improvement for himself are inspiring and a basis for being a role model for others. UNDERGROUND: A Memoir of Hope, Faith, and the American Dream–author ‘Deji Ayoade’s reflections on overcoming enormous obstacles and emigrating from Nigeria to the United States–is candid, heartwarming, and inspirational.

It is hard for them to condemn the gerontocratic ideal advocated by Cicero and Cato because that denouncement itself, coming from them, could easily pass, in the guise of preserved or rediscovered youth, as a claim to authority, as a coy claim to wisdom, experience, and power, at the very least the power of influence.

Page 229: The great modern fact is the huge standing army that is a severe custodian of the law, is obedient to the orders of a civil authority and has very little political influence, exercising indirectly at best such influence as it has. Virtually invariable as that situation is in countries of European civilization, it represents a most fortunate exception, if it is not absolutely without parallel, in human history. Only a habit of a few generations standing, along with ignorance or forgetfulness of the past, can make such a situation seem normal to those of us who have lived at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and so find it strange when we chance upon exceptions.

In aristocracies the master often exercises, even without being aware of it, an amazing sway over the opinions, the habits, and the manners of those who obey him, and his influence extends even further than his authority.

Thrown into this mix was the Epoch Times, which also published in Chinese and English. It was founded and largely funded by the Falun Gong, a religious branch group that was devoted to the overthrow of the Communist Party of China and the elevation of the group’s leader, a kind of cross between Jesus, the Dalai Lama and Charles Manson. In New York, Falun Gong was best known for organizing and leading yoga classes in Central Park, and handing out free copies of the Epoch Times near the Port Authority bus terminal. In China, its members were hunted down by PLA squads, swept off the streets and sent, without trial, to re-education camps that had once been the exclusive preserve of Catholic priests. Because of its extreme right-wing (in American terms) slant, the Epoch Times had drawn the attention and interest of American conservatives, including the Trump Administration, which treated it with a courtesy well out of keeping with its influence. Liu read and believed the Epoch Times. Its news fit her beliefs, and that after all, was what a free news media was all about. She had seen a brief item about Qi Qi Dieh on its website months ago, and largely forgotten about it. Now, with the real item sitting in front of her, drinking her tea, Liu began hallucinating about fame and fortune. And, of course, getting the truth out there, too. It took three calls to the newspaper’s

I do two hours’ Classics every afternoon, attend Church every other Sunday — and in every way behave like any admirer of the author of The Christian Year. However, I cannot do without a little touch of heathenism, and so (although I swore to read no English here) I do just occasionally give myself up to Thomas Hardy and am falling more and more under his influence

As a rule, the introduction is where the author explains to the reader what the book is about. Before I do that, however, I will take the liberty of a brief digression of a personal nature. Whenever I’m at some sort of gathering and find I am acquainted only with the host, my interactions with other guests go off “without a hitch”.

A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant; because our people and our country want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.

one cannot begin to understand mind control without realizing the power of behavior modification techniques, as well as the influences of conformity and obedience to authority.

Power involves exercising control or authority over others; status is being respected and admired. In an experiment led by University of North Carolina professor Alison Fragale, people were punished for trying to exercise power without status. When people sought to exert influence but lacked respect, others perceived them as difficult, coercive, and self-serving. Since they haven't earned our admiration, we don't feel they have the right to tell us what to do, and we push back.

Who gives me the strength to suffer? Who denies me the power, and delivers me over to torments? Is it He, the Lord of life and death, Whose wrath I have provoked, when, influenced by the pamphlet The Joy of Dying, I tried to die, and considered myself already ripe for eternal life? Am I Phlegyas doomed to the pains of Tartarus for his pride, or Prometheus, who, because he revealed the secret of the powers to mortals, was torn by the vulture? (While I am writing this, I think of the scene in the sufferings of Christ when the soldiers spit in His face, some buffet Him and others strike Him with rods and say to Him, "Tell us, who is he that smote thee?" Perhaps my old companions in Stockholm remember that orgy when the author of this book played the rôle of the soldier?) Who has struck thee? A question without an answer. Doubt, uncertainty, mystery—there is my hell! Oh that my enemy would reveal himself, that I might do battle with him, and defy him! But that is just what he avoids doing, in order to afflict me with madness and make me feel the scourge of conscience, which causes me to suspect enemies everywhere, enemies, i.e., those injured by my evil will. Indeed, my conscience smites me every time that I come on the track of a new foe.

It is true, the God who is worshipped is not, generally speaking, the God of Nature only, but also the God of some revelation; and the character of the revelation will greatly modify and, it may be, improve the moral influences of the religion. This is emphatically true of Christianity; since the Author of the Sermon on the Mount is assuredly a far more benignant Being than the Author of Nature. But unfortunately, the believer in the christian revelation is obliged to believe that the same being is the author of both. This, unless he resolutely averts his mind from the subject, or practices the act of quieting his conscience by sophistry, involves him in moral perplexities without end; since the ways of his Deity in Nature are on many occasions totally at variance with the precepts, as lie believes, of the same Deity in the Gospel. He who comes out with least moral damage from this embarrassment, is probably the one who never attempts to reconcile the two standards with one another, but confesses to himself that the purposes of Providence are mysterious, that its ways are not our ways, that its justice and goodness are not the justice and goodness which we can conceive and which it befits us to practice. When, however, this is the feeling of the believer, the worship of the Deity ceases to be the adoration of abstract moral perfection. It becomes the bowing down to a gigantic image of something not fit for us to imitate. It is the worship of power only.

It is possible, at one level, to read the omitted passage and to grieve at the fact that America declared its independence without repudiating its “original sin.” The stone that should have been laid at the corner was discarded by the builders, with consequences that still have the power to make the reader tremble. However, Jefferson was perhaps a little naive, as well as a little self-righteous, when he attributed the excision of the above paragraph to the influence of “Georgia and South Carolina, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it.

Second, teachers who influenced or encouraged me in my growing-up years. At Cornell University, professor of European literature Vladimir Nabokov changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea. From constitutional law professor Robert E. Cushman and American Ideals professor Milton Konvitz I learned of our nation’s enduring values, how our Congress was straying from them in the Red Scare years of the 1950s, and how lawyers could remind lawmakers that our Constitution shields the right to think, speak, and write without fear of reprisal from governmental authorities.IV

Intuitive information—unuttered, mind-locked data—does pass from person to person. Energy medicine is largely dependent upon a practitioner getting an image, gut sense, or inner messages that provide diagnostic and treatment insight. Edgar Cayce, a well-known American psychic, was shown to be 43 percent accurate in his intuitive diagnoses in a posthumous analysis made from 150 randomly selected cases.43 Medical doctor C. Norman Shealy tested now well-known intuitive Caroline Myss, who achieved 93 percent diagnostic accuracy when given only a patient’s name and birth date.44 Compare these statistics to those of modern Western medicine. A recent study published by Health Services Research found significant errors in diagnostics in reviewed cases in the 1970s to 1990s, ranging from 80 percent error rates to below 50 percent. Acknowledging that “diagnosis is an expression of probability,” the paper’s authors emphasized the importance of doctor-patient interaction in gathering data as a way to improve these rates.45 A field transfers information through a medium—even to the point that thought can produce a physical effect, thus suggesting that T-fields might even predate, or can at least be causative to, L-fields. One study, for example, showed that accomplished meditators were able to imprint their intentions on electrical devices. After they concentrated on the devices, which were then placed in a room for three months, these devices could create changes in the room, including affecting pH and temperature.46 Thought fields are most often compared to magnetic fields, for there must be an interconnection to generate a thought, such as two people who wish to connect. Following classical physics, the transfer of energy occurs between atoms or molecules in a higher (more excited) energy state and those in a lower energy state; and if both are equal, there can be an even exchange of information. If there really is thought transmission, however, it must be able to occur without any physical touch for it to be “thought” or magnetic in nature versus an aspect of electricity. Besides anecdotal evidence, there is scientific evidence of this possibility. In studying semiconductors, solid materials that have electrical conduction between a conductor and an insulator, noteworthy scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize in 1937, discovered that all molecules forming the living matrix are semiconductors. Even more important, he observed that energies can flow through the electromagnetic field without touching each other.47 These ideas would support the theory that while L-fields provide the blueprints for the body, T-fields carry aspects of thought and potentially modify the L-fields, influencing or even overriding the L-field of the body.48

We both are a pejorative—liberals. Spartak, I believe an active and powerful government is the only counterbalance against rapacious business interests, unprincipled individuals and groups often all too willing to deceive, poison, and ruin in the name of their own liberty. Without us, the powerful face no limits, no scrutiny, pay no price and never face justice. My life’s work is to return integrity and influence to the public sphere. I wear barronial scorn with pride.” He shook his head. “Of course most people think I’m a fool.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Washington Speaking to his niece and then Spartak Jones in a restaurant named after author Ayn Rand, San Francisco, in the year 2115 The Chronicles of Spartak—Rising Son, a novel

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Leading without constraints and giving into unbridled ambition will be the death of any leader because God didn’t intend for our ambition to run wild.

One of the first, and most important of those duties which are incumbent upon us, is fervent and united prayer. However the influence of the Holy Spirit may be set at nought, and run down by many, it will be found upon trial, that all means which we can use, without it, will be ineffectual. If a temple is raised for God in the heathen world, it will not be by might, nor by power, nor by the authority of the magistrate, or the eloquence of the orator; but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.

The most effective pastor wants people to believe they can erase all the ills of their lives while here and even more importantly be welcomed past the pearly gates when they die—but he does not want them merrily strolling away thinking they can do that without him, without returning to church every Sunday and twice on Easter, without tithing.

The assumption that fertility control should be manipulated by authorities without respect for the wishes and dignity of individuals still exists. We see this in societies where political and religious ideologies, demographic concerns and class prejudice influence the supply or withdrawal of contraceptive provision and support for mothering.

Indeed, fascist regimes tried to redraw so radically the boundaries between private and public that the private sphere almost disappeared. Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Office, said that in the Nazi state the only private individual was someone asleep. For some observers, this effort to have the public sphere swallow up the private sphere entirely is indeed the very essence of fascism. It is certainly a fundamental point on which fascist regimes differed most profoundly from authoritarian conservatism, and even more profoundly from classical liberalism. There was no room in this vision of obligatory national unity for either free-thinking persons or for independent, autonomous subcommunities. Churches, Freemasonry, class-based unions or syndicates, political parties— all were suspect as subtracting something from the national will.121 Here were grounds for infinite conflict with conservatives as well as the Left. In pursuit of their mission to unify the community within an all-consuming public sphere, fascist regimes dissolved unions and socialist parties. This radical amputation of what had been normal worker representation, encased as it was in a project of national fulfillment and managed economy, alienated public opinion less than pure military or police repression, as in traditional dictatorships. And indeed the fascists had some success in reconciling some workers to a world without unions or socialist parties, those for whom proletarian solidarity against capitalist bosses was willingly replaced by national identity against other peoples. Brooding about cultural degeneracy was so important a fascist issue that some authors have put it at the center. Every fascist regime sought to control the national culture from the top, to purify it of foreign influences, and make it help carry the message of national unity and revival. Decoding the cultural messages of fascist ceremonies, films, performances, and visual arts has today become the most active field of research on fascism. The “reading” of fascist stagecraft, however ingenious, should not mislead us into thinking that fascist regimes succeeded in establishing monolithic cultural homogeneity. Cultural life in fascist regimes remained a complex patchwork of official activities, spontaneous activities that the regimes tolerated, and even some illicit ones. Ninety percent of the films produced under the Nazi regime were light entertainment without overt propaganda content (not that it was innocent, of course). A few protected Jewish artists hung on remarkably late in Nazi Germany, and the openly homosexual actor and director Gustav Gründgens remained active to the end.

When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, his conservative allies, headed by Deputy Chancellor Franz von Papen, along with those conservative and nationalist leaders who supported von Papen’s Hitler experiment, expected to manage the untrained new head of government without difficulty. They were confident that their university degrees, experience in public affairs, and worldly polish would give them easy superiority over the uncouth Nazis. Chancellor Hitler would spellbind the crowds, they imagined, while Deputy Chancellor von Papen ran the state. Hitler’s conservative allies were not the only ones to suppose that Nazism was a flash in the pan. The Communist International was certain that the German swing to the Right under Hitler would produce a counterswing to the Left as soon as German workers understood that democracy was an illusion and turned away from the reformist social democrats. “The current calm after the victory of Fascism is only temporary. Inevitably, despite Fascist terrorism, the revolutionary tide in Germany will grow. . . . The establishment of open Fascist dictatorship, which is destroying all democratic illusions among the masses and is freeing them from the influence of the Social Democrats, will speed up Germany’s progress toward the proletarian revolution.” Against the expectations of both Right and Left, Hitler quickly established full personal authority. The first period of Nazi rule saw the Gleichschaltung, the bringing into line, not only of potential enemies but also of conservative colleagues. The keys to Hitler’s success were his superior audacity, drive, and tactical agility; his skillful manipulation (as we saw in the previous chapter) of the idea that imminent communist “terror” justified the suspension of due process and the rule of law; and a willingness to commit murder.

fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of “mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one’s own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. These “mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism’s foundations: • a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; • the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; • the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;60 • dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; • the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; • the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny; • the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; • the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; • the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle. The “mobilizing passions" of fascism are hard to treat historically, for many of them are as old as Cain. It seems incontestable, however, that the fevers of increased nationalism before World War I and the passions aroused by that war sharpened them. Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all.

The American sociologist Barrington Moore proposed a longer-term explanation for the emergence of military dictatorship in Japan. Seeking the ultimate roots of dictatorship and democracy in different routes toward the capitalist transformation of agriculture, Moore noted that Britain allowed an independent rural gentry to enclose its estates and expel from the countryside “surplus” labor who were then “free” to work in its precocious industries. British democracy could rest upon a stable, conservative countryside and a large urban middle class fed by upwardly mobile labor. Germany and Japan, by contrast, industrialized rapidly and late while maintaining unchanged a traditional landlord-peasant agriculture. Thereafter they were obliged to hold in check all at once fractious workers, squeezed petty bourgeois, and peasants, either by force or by manipulation. This conflict-ridden social system, moreover, provided only limited markets for its own products. Both Germany and Japan dealt with these challenges by combining internal repression with external expansion, aided by the slogans and rituals of a right-wing ideology that sounded radical without really challenging the social order. To Barrington Moore’s long-term analysis of lopsided modernization, one could add further short-term twentieth-century similarities between the German and Japanese situations: the vividness of the perception of a threat from the Soviet Union (Russia had made territorial claims against Japan since the Japanese victory of 1905), and the necessity to adapt traditional political and social hierarchies rapidly to mass politics. Imperial Japan was even more successful than Nazi Germany in using modern methods of mobilization and propaganda to integrate its population under traditional authority. Moore’s perceived similarities between German and Japanese development patterns and social structures have not been fully convincing to Japan specialists. Agrarian landlords cannot be shown to have played a major role in giving imperial Japan its peculiar mix of expansionism and social control. And if imperial Japanese techniques of integration were very successful, it was mostly because Japanese society was so coherent and its family structure so powerful. Imperial Japan, finally, despite undoubted influence from European fascism and despite some structural analogies to Germany and Italy, faced less critical problems than those two countries. The Japanese faced no imminent revolutionary threat, and needed to overcome neither external defeat nor internal disintegration (though they feared it, and resented Western obstacles to their expansion in Asia). Though the imperial regime used techniques of mass mobilization, no official party or autonomous grassroots movement competed with the leaders. The Japanese empire of the period 1932–45 is better understood as an expansionist military dictatorship with a high degree of state-sponsored mobilization than as a fascist regime.

Now in this sense also, I take it, Peter affirms that believers have been begotten again unto a living hope. In all probability the representation, while applicable to all believers, was influenced to some extent by the apostle’s memory of his own experience. There had been a moment in his previous life when all at once, in the twinkling of an eye as it were, he had been translated from a world of despair into a world of hope. It was when the fact of the resurrection of Christ flashed upon him. Under the two-fold bitterness of his denial of the Lord and of the tragedy of the cross, utter darkness had settled down upon his soul. Everything he expected from the future in connection with Jesus had been completely blotted out. Perhaps he had even been in danger of losing the old hope which as a pious Israelite he cherished before he knew the Lord. And then suddenly, the whole aspect of things had been changed. The risen Christ appeared to him and by his appearance wrought the resurrection of everything that had gone down with him into the grave. No, there was far more here for Peter than a mere resurrection of what he had hoped in before. It was the birth of something new that now, for the first time, disclosed itself to his perception. His hope was not given back to him in its old form. It was regenerated in the act of restoration. Previously it had been dim, undefined, subject to fluctuations; sometimes eager and enthusiastic, sometimes cast down and languishing; in many respects earthly, carnal and incompletely spiritualized. Apart from all of these defects, his previous hope had been a bare one, which could only sustain itself by projection into the future, but which lacked that vital support and nourishment in a present substantial reality without which no religious hope can permanently subsist. Through the resurrection of Christ, all these faults were corrected; all these deficiencies supplied. For Peter looked upon the risen Christ as the beginning, the firstfruits of that new world of God in which the believer’s hope is anchored. Jesus did not rise as he had been before, but transformed, glorified, eternalized, the possessor and author of a transcendent heavenly life at one and the same time, the revealer, the sample and the pledge of the future realization of the true kingdom of God. No prolonged course of training could have been more effective for purifying and spiritualizing the apostle’s hope than this single, instantaneous experience; this bursting upon him of a new form of eternal life, concrete and yet all-comprehensive in its prophetic significance. Well might the apostle say that he himself had been begotten again unto a new hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And, of course, what was true of him was even more emphatically true of the readers of his epistle, who, if they were believers from the Gentiles, before their conversion had lived entirely without hope and without God in the world.

Influence means that other people take the time to listen to you, consider what you have to say, and want to work with you. Having impact is all about having a substantive effect on the organization, by leading without formal authority. Your colleagues know you are adding value to the organization, and to them.

How is the world to be managed?” Came the reply: “Away with you, you boor! What a dreary question!

There was a time when we were told that breaches, by the States, of the regulations of the federal authority were not to be expected; that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members, and would beget a full compliance with all the constitutional requisitions of the Union. This language, at the present day, would appear as wild as a great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience. It at all times betrayed an ignorance of the true springs by which human conduct is actuated, and belied the original inducements to the establishment of civil power. Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.

The Knowledge component is all about how you create and curate content to demonstrate your expertise and attract and retain your ideal customers. In this section, you’ll discover how to quickly pick up knowledge in your expert niche even if you’re starting from scratch. The second component, Authority Architecture, shows you three different pathways to garnering authority—build, borrow, and be. Several people have written about steps and methods to establish authority in your field, including author Steve Scott who mentions the 3 B’s of Authority in his book How to Find a Profitable Blog Topic Idea.4 Most of the strategies and methods surrounding authority can be categorized into these three different pathways. To “be” the authority is the hardest aspect because you've got to have the credentials, achievements, professional qualifications, or years of experience to show for it. Perhaps you’ve built businesses in your expert niche for ten years or worked for Fortune 100 companies. The majority of people don’t start here, which is why I have that portion of the diagram grayed out. Let’s focus on the “build” and “borrow” aspects of the authority architecture. You build authority when you demonstrate your expertise through events such as challenges or live coaching. You also build authority when you share your progress online.

Some Acid Tests to Be Made in Separating Facts from Mere Information or Inference Scrutinise with great care everything you read in books, regardless of who wrote them, and never accept the conclusions of any writer as being conclusive without asking the following questions and satisfying yourself as to the correctness of the answers: 1. Is the writer a recognised authority on the subject on which he writes? 2. Did the writer have an ulterior or selfish motive other than that of imparting accurate information? 3. Is the writer a paid propagandist whose profession is that of organising public opinion for a price? If he is, weigh his conclusions with unusual care. 4. Has the writer a profit interest or other personal interest in the subject on which he writes? If so, make allowance for this in the acceptance of his conclusions. 5. Is the writer a person of sound judgement, and not a fanatic on the subject on which he writes? Fanatics are inclined to exaggerate, even when stating facts, and to colour facts so they may convey misleading impressions. 6. Are there reasonably accessible sources from which the writer’s statements may be checked and verified? If so, consult them before accepting his conclusions. 7. Ascertain, also, the writer’s reputation for truth and veracity. Some writers are careless concerning the truth. Half-truths are frequently the most dangerous truths. 8. Be careful about accepting as facts the statements of overzealous persons who have the habit of allowing their imaginations to run wild. Such people are known as ‘radicals’ and their conclusions may be misleading if relied upon. 9. Learn to be cautious and to use your own judgement, no matter who is trying to influence you. If a statement does not harmonise with your own reasoning power (and you should train your reason to function clearly), if it is out of harmony with your own experience, hold it up for further examination before accepting it as fact. Falsehood has a queer way of bringing with it some warning note, perhaps in the tone of one’s voice, or in the expression on one’s face, if it comes through the spoken word. Train yourself to recognise this warning and to be guided by it. 10. In seeking facts from others, do not disclose to them what facts you expect to find, as many people have the bad habit of trying to please, even if they have to exaggerate or falsify in order to do so. 11. Science is the art of organising

These “mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism’s foundations: • a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; • the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; • the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;60 • dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; • the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; • the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny; • the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; • the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; • the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

I believed in what I had to offer and the money was significant to my business, so I was going to fight for it.” Lisa presented to a large audience despite her fear because of Anna's support.

Sheila realized that pressuring the hotel managers would probably not work, so she changed her ideas about the target: “We need to put the fight where it belongs.” The team told the hotel managers that they “would go to the owners and make the case.” This did the trick, and the managers promised to provide secondary support.

Making clear that there could be a negative outcome—and that you are willing to do whatever is necessary—can not only get the other person's attention but also, in some cases, increase respect for you. Being willing to fight hard for what you believe in often engenders admiration.

Warren had to decide whether to fight for his choice, and once he did, find a way to preserve his relationship while getting the desired result.

One of the authors, then a department head, found that this worked when a colleague was trying to manipulate and bully him (about office space); looking right at the colleague and loudly saying, “Don't mess with me, Jack. I teach negotiations!” made him back off. Jack was much nicer from then on, because he assumed his ploys wouldn't work.

Some professionals will do almost anything for a chance to work on tough tasks.

Three of the leading opponents of behavioral genetics collaborated on a book that set out to deconstruct the new science and reverse the biological tide. The book was Not in Our Genes, and the authors were three of the most vigilant critics of the genetic view: Richard Lewontin, a population geneticist at Harvard; the indefatigable Leon Kamin, who was then at Princeton’s psychology department; and Steven Rose, a neurobiologist at England’s Open University. Although the book had slight impact, it is worth examining as a compendium of the arguments and methods of the opponents of behavioral genetics, arguments that these critics, and their shrinking band of allies, continue to make despite repeated refutations. Throughout the text the authors, with admirable candor, proclaim their Marxist perspective and their “commitment to … a more socially just—a socialist—society.” Few pages go by without references to “dialectics,” “bourgeois society,” and “capitalist values.” The authors’ apparently feel their clean breast about their politics permitted wholesale assumptions about those of their opponents. We are leftists is their implicit claim; but you on the other side of the scientific fence are reactionaries. Liberals, they appeared to be saying, can have only one scientific view, theirs; any other must be right-wing and antiliberal. “Biological determinist ideas,” they say, “are part of the attempt to preserve the inequalities of our society and to shape human nature in its own image.” It must surely have come as unpleasant news to Sandra Scarr, Jerome Kagan, and other liberal psychologists to learn that they were striving to preserve society’s inequalities. In addition, the authors’ nasty assumptions of their opponents’ motives must have been an eye-opener to the hundreds of microbiologists, lab technicians, DNA scanners, rat-runners, statistical analysts, and all the others engaged in behavioral genetics research who learned from the book that they were going to work each day “to preserve the interests of the dominant class, gender, and race.” But the falsity of the authors’ premise goes well beyond slandering a few individuals. Throughout the text, the writers deny the possibility that scientists could exist who place their curiosity about the world ahead of their political agendas. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose deny as well the possibility of any man or woman, including themselves, separating science from politics. (“Science is not and cannot be above ‘mere’ politics.”) They leave no room for the scientist who is so intrigued by new information, in this case gene-behavior discoveries, that he or she is oblivious to alleged political consequences. For the authors, all scientists who seek out biological influences on behavior, from Darwin to Robert Plomin, are willing servants of the status quo, if not promoters of a return to feudalism.

Influence at work requires that you know what you are doing, have reasonable plans, are competent at the task at hand.

Does the person see himself or herself as highly competent or still learning?

I started first by building a skills inventory of each team member (learning about competencies) and worked with them individually identifying their strengths and weaknesses.

Credibility through action. First, he bought himself time to do his homework. Then by terminating the two engineers who weren't competent in their positions, he increased his credibility with Fred as a person who could take action.

The challenge and chance to learn is its own reward. It is usually not difficult to figure out ways of offering challenge. Asking your potential allies to join the problem-solving group or passing them a tough piece of your project are ways to pay in the currency of challenge. (If the person is competent, you probably get back more than expected.)

Quantum theory has unfortunately become a catch-all phrase for trying to prove various kinds of New Age nonsense. It’s unlikely that the authors of the many books making wacky claims of time travel or mind control, and who use quantum theory as “proof ” have the slightest knowledge of physics or could explain even the rudiments of quantum theory. The popular 2004 film, What the Bleep Do We Know? is a good case in point. The movie starts out claiming quantum theory has revolutionized our thinking—which is true enough—but then, without explanation or elaboration, goes on to say that it proves people can travel into the past or “choose which reality you want.” Quantum theory says no such thing. Quantum theory deals with probabilities, and the likely places particles may appear, and likely actions they will take. And while, as we shall see, bits of light and matter do indeed change behavior depending on whether they are being observed, and measured particles do indeed amazingly appear to influence the past behavior of other particles, this does not in any way mean that humans can travel into their past or influence their own history.

A CHANGING SOCIETY What does today’s high incidence of social anxiety tell us about modern society? As we’ve seen, social anxiety is connected to a person’s drive for self-preservation and a feeling of safety. It is natural to withdraw from situations that we expect will lead to pain. Avoidance—while not necessarily healthy—is logical. Because the negative social experience of a growing number of people has caused them emotional pain and suffering, the number of individuals who choose to avoid socializing is increasing at an alarming rate. The sometimes wide distance among family members these days only adds to isolation. And the anonymity of large cities creates a vacuum in which many lonely people co-exist, often leading solitary lives in which they pursue their interests and activities alone. We live in a society in which social fears are perhaps not unjustified. As cities become denser, isolation seems to be the best way to counter urban decay. Consider the dangers of the outside world: Crime rates are soaring. Caution—and its companion, fear—are in the air. As the twentieth century draws to a close, we find ourselves in a society where meeting people can be difficult. These larger forces can combine to create a further sense of distance among people. Particularly significant is the change that has taken place as the social organization of the smaller-scale community gives way to that of the larger, increasingly fragmented city. In a “hometown” setting, the character of daily life is largely composed of face-to-face relations with friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. But in the hustle and bustle of today’s cities, whose urban sprawls extend to what author Joel Garreau has called Edge Cities—creating light industrial suburbs even larger than the cities they surround—the individual can get lost. It is common in these areas for people to focus solely on themselves, seldom getting to know their neighbors, and rarely living close to family. We may call these places home, but they are a far cry from the destination of that word as we knew it when we were children. Today’s cities are hotbeds of competition on all levels, from the professional to the social. It often seems as if only the most sophisticated “win.” To be ready for this constant challenge, you have to be able to manage in a stressful environment, relying on a whole repertoire of social skills just to stay afloat. This competitive environment can be terrifying for the socially anxious person. The 1980s were a consumer decade in which picture-perfect images on television and in magazines caused many of us to cast our lots with either the haves or the have-nots. Pressure to succeed grew to an all-time high. For those who felt they could not measure up, the challenge seemed daunting. I think the escalating crime rate in today’s urban centers—drugs, burglary, rape, and murder—ties into this trend and society’s response to the pressure. In looking at the forces that influence the social context of modern life, it is clear that feelings of frustration at not “making it” socially and financially are a component in many people’s choosing a life of crime. Interactive ability determines success in establishing a rewarding career, in experiencing relationships. Without these prospects, crime can appear to be a quick fix for a lifelong problem.

What the Western world does not understand about Islam is that its adherents’ first and foremost identity is being a Muslim, without the limitations of national boundaries or allegiances. There is no such thing called Sunni dar al-Islam and Shiite dar al-Islam. There is only one dar al-Islam and then there is the rest of the world, dar al-harb, or the house of war. Sunnis and Shiites understand this basic distinction and easily set aside internal conflict to deal with an external power. That is to say, the Sunni-Shiite conflict is secondary only to the Muslim–non-Muslim conflict. According to one author, “One of the myths of modern Islamist terrorism is that Sunni and Shi’a do not get along; but when it comes to common enemies or objectives or using force to replicate the Iranian revolution in other localities, they work together quite frequently.”18 There is no better example of such a display of unity against the Western influence, the external power, than the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The doctrine of jihad against nonbelievers coupled with the model of the Iranian Revolution has been a strong impetus for both Sunni as well as Shiite jihadist organizations.19 Iran sees the United States and Israel as such grave, existential, external threats to Islam that thwarting and ultimately destroying both the United States and Israel are important enough to temporarily put aside theological differences with heretical Sunni organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, making these some of the scariest partnerships in the unholy alliance.

Without challenge, we do not change.

All political power tends to act without barriers and to extend its sphere of influence as far as possible. To control everything, not to leave any room in which things can happen freely without the intervention of the authorities, that is the goal to which every ruler secretly strives. Ludwig von Mises, Economist