16 / CHRONICLESnbeyond all others; when first to say “no,” when first tonknowingly force the commissar’s hand to carry out hisnthreats and impose physical torture. This great turningnpoint almost always takes place in a frenzied moment withnthe new prisoner awash in a sea of guilt and fear. The guiltnmay well have come from his having “gone along” with thencommissar’s demand for a little of this and a little of that,nwhile in the fashion of most of us well-brought-up Americannboys he had chosen “the middle way” (to his nowndevastating regret) as he took preliminary measure of hisnpredicament. And the fear! It will likely surpass any he willnever experience again. Arthur Koestler described his initialnfear of torture (in a Fascist prison in Spain) as “not a healthynfear, but the obsessional and morbid variety … the neuroticntype of anxiety . . . the irrational anticipation of thenunknown punishment.”nNo men avoid this initial terrible fear that only theirnimaginations can generate, and few if any avoid the initialnhesitant step of giving ground grudgingly while taking thenmeasure of their predicament. But having taken that stepnand then finding himself sinking into the quagmire ofncomplicity, hardly a man exists who does not wish he hadnstood up and declared “enough’s enough” sooner than hendid. For self-respect, and in the long-term sense for mentalnhealth, the sooner, the better.nIf a person had delivered up your body to somenpasser by, you would certainly be angry. And donyou feel no shame in delivering up your mind tonany reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?nIt is better to die of hunger, exempt from guilt andnfear, than to live in affluence with perturbation.nIf a man’s sense of honour, his good faith, and hisnprudence are not destroyed, then he too isnpreserved; but if any of these perish or be taken bynstorm, then he too perishes with them.nOnce he has entered the swim of physical resistance, andnour neophyte political prisoner realizes that pain in being isnin no way as bad as pain in anticipation, and particularlynwhen the fact sinks into him that he is finally fully engaged,na kind of equanimity and pride comes over him. He nownknows that it is the unpunished complicity, not the torturedncompliance, that tears a man apart. He has cast aside thenerror of depending on “what is not up to him,” on another’snsympathy, another’s gullibility, another’s price for making an”deal.” He has used both the rational and irrationalnelements of his soul (they are both part of the same to thenStoic) to see his proper role in the unfolding drama. He hasnaccommodated himself to fate. He has made a declarationnto himself and to the prison regime that in what is up tonhim, he is now “free.” He has arrived at the point where then”strategic” side of Stoicism, i.e., accommodation to fatenand mind over matter, can bring him peace.nTo the Stoics, God and the visible universe are twonaspects of the same thing. God’s Soul is The Mind, and thenvisible universe (Nature) is his body. The Mind is the divinenreason, immanent in the universe, whose nature revealsnitself in the imperturbable and lawlike behavior of Nature.nAs humans, we are all a part not only of the visiblennnuniverse, but our minds are also a part of The Mind. ThenMind, the universal, divine, all-embracing consciousness,nis like a flame, and our individual consciousnesses arensparks in it. Each of us has a divine element in him. Just asnGod’s Soul or The Mind is the active principle of thenuniverse, and his body (Nature) is passive, so are our mindsnthe active principle in us, and our bodies passive. Mindnover matter; it all happens up here, don’t worry about yournbody. Also, there is no chance in the Stoic ordering ofnthings. All that happens is inevitable, proceeding fromnGod’s nature. By using the divine elements in us, we cannknow how nature proceeds from God’s Mind by divinennecessity. A free man is one who understands this andnaccommodates himself to fate. The good man plays well thenpart fate has dealt him.nStoicism is certainly not for everybody, and it is not fornme in every circumstance, but it is a philosophical expressionnof the human search for purpose in what we have everynright to see as a purposeless world. This is certainly thenworld of those who find themselves in that ever-proliferatingnhuman institution, the political prison. But Stoicism hasnapplication well beyond that population. It speaks for menneverywhere who persist in competing in what they see as anbuzz-saw existence, their backs to the wall, their livesnhaving meaning only so long as they fight for pride withncomradeship and joy rather than capitulate to either tyrannynor falseness.nIn recent years I have been working on books that arenheavily focused on the 10 years I spent in Vietnam.nPublishers always ask writers to think through questionsnlike, “What in your background can you connect with thisnor that impulsive action?” or ” . . . this or that decision?”nI’ll have to say that I date most of the dramatic, intuitivenstuff back to the frustrations or fears or guilts I incurred as anvery young boy. The intellectual inputs (decisions) arenharder to place, but the liberal arts (“as much of thenhumanities as I could pack in”) at Stanford undoubtedlynallowed me to be more comfortable writing my own rulenbook as I dealt with unusual circumstances, than had Instuck with high tech all the way. But it was Epictetus whonplayed the unique part in preparing me for all this. I walkednin his shoes throughout. Particularly in the prison scene, henwas a guide of ethics of course, but more importantly, anguide to outlook, to psychology, to will. One of the mostnvaluable memories I had was that of recalling, even ifnfaintly, that serious scholarship existed about a breed ofnmen devoted to a Principle of Life of staying off the hooknand with pride and joy prevailing against all odds in anhopeless world.nSo it was in Hanoi that after each of us in his solitudenbrought about his crucial rite of passage from the neuroticnanxiety of the vestibule to the comforting pain of the starnchamber, he joined a brotherhood of Stoics, dedicated firstnand foremost to keeping high the spirits of each other, whilenlocked in combat against hopeless odds, under the bannern”stick it in their ear.” We flaunted the trip-wire, made themntorture us, and prevailed in establishing a civilization ofnmen held together by a network of clandestine wall-tapncommunication. This civilization matured rapidly (as do allnthings in the hot and pressurized hermetic), and took on allnthe usual binding elements of a culture: its own (tap code)n