The Human Mind-Fuck

My father used to quote Vince Lombardi (I think, as he got older, it was with more and more irony), that "when the going gets tough, the tough get going." Yeah well, just when it looks like it's really getting dark, there's a little shaft of light to give you a fleeting hope. At least that's how it's always been for me. If things get bad, you start thinking how it could be so much worse. Sometimes the converse is true too, things are good, you start thinking how things could be so much better, or no, I mean worse, I mean, when things are good, they're just good, but you know it won't last, and you think how everything could turn bad in a blink. So no matter what, good or bad, it could always be worse. I guess there's some kind of comfort in that idea. Cold comfort.

Lombardi also said, "run to daylight." This seems like a good idea. Running in daylight is a good idea too. Running in the darkness...well, that seems like a good metaphor or something, right?

So yesterday, I'm thinking about being tortured, and I'm wondering how quickly I'd be shouting: "I'll say anything you want me to say...just make it STOP!" Does this mean that I'm weak? If under torture I agreed that 2+2 = 5, that yes, up really is down, that really I think President Bush is a courageous leader, that I really do love Big Brother, would I be less of a "good person"? If I was willing to denounce my loved ones to make the torture stop, would I be unprincipled? A coward? A raving bowl of jello?

In my heart of hearts would I still be me? Am "I" defined what I say? Under duress? What if what "I" say is contrary to what I believe - but really only I know what I believe - and just how did I start believing in what I believe? Is that what we call education or indoctrination, or brain-washing? How much pain would make me believe whatever the torturer wants me to believe? Would I be broken, a tortured husk, that even I couldn't trust? And how about the torturer? Would he really be a monster? Or just a guy with a job, a kind of shitty job, that well, when he gets home, after a couple beers and a session with the boob tube, and maybe he can just forget about it all and go to sleep just like a little baby.

Being a human is just such a mind-fuck...