144 Humane Stoicism: How To Resist Taming

To be "tamed" is to be conditioned to be more fearful, less free, or weaker in some way. There are many "taming forces" in modern society that can affect us in this way if we're not well equipped. This episode covers how to resist such forces. We draw lessons from a man who successfully resisted his captors while in a literal brainwashing prison. Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

In the late 1950s,

A psychiatrist named Robert J.

Lifton went to Hong Kong to work with 25 individuals who had just left a thought reform program.

They were just released from mainland China in what the Communist Party would call a re-education program.

But in the West,

We would say that they got out of prison.

And this re-education program is what we would typically call brainwashing.

Now Lifton categorized his subjects into basically three types of people.

This was a group of both Westerners and native Chinese people who were,

At least from a Western perspective,

Abducted,

Imprisoned,

And underwent immense psychological and physical torture as well.

And they ended up in one of three ways.

The first group were the apparent converts.

These were people for whom the thought reform actually worked.

They were,

For the most part,

Reformed.

They left behind their old identity,

Their old ideology.

And even though they were released back into the Western world,

I mean,

Many of them were Americans or Europeans,

They saw themselves as Chinese.

They saw themselves as communists.

They had distrust of the Western world.

And they basically had dissociated from their previous personality.

Now the second group was the most common group,

Which were the confused.

These were people for whom the brainwashing ordeal maybe worked halfway on them.

They still had parts of their old identity,

But they also had this new identity and it was this big cognitive clash for them.

They had a hard time assimilating into society because they had these two competing worldviews slash identities inside of them.

And then there were the third group,

Which was the smallest of these three groups,

Which were the apparent resistors.

Now nobody could go through a thought reform program,

To go through a brainwashing prison for multiple years without being affected at all.

But there were a couple of people who,

For the most part,

Were able to preserve their previous identity,

Were able to,

In a sense,

Defeat the brainwashers.

We'll put quotes around the word defeat because,

Of course,

Everyone was affected.

But these were people who,

To the day that they were released,

Even after years of imprisonment,

They still didn't change their values,

They didn't change their identity,

They for the most part preserved themselves.

So I'm reading Robert J.

Lifton's book right now,

Published in the 1960s,

Titled Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.

It's basically the book,

Or one of the first books,

Written on brainwashing.

This is actually something I didn't know until this book,

That the term brainwashing is actually a direct translation of a Chinese word that I'm not going to try to pronounce,

But the direct translation is to clean the mind.

So that could probably have positive connotations if spoken by someone putting someone through such a program,

But of course it has negative connotations in the West.

And in Lifton's book,

Not only does he tell the stories of these 25 individuals,

He also speaks about who they were as people and what maybe led them to fall in the either converted category,

Confused category,

Or the resistor category.

And there's one particular case study in Hannah's book that I found extremely inspiring.

In fact,

I'm sure Lifton also was inspired because he spoke very highly of this person.

It was a 70-year-old man,

He was a Catholic missionary,

A bishop,

His name was Hans Barker,

Who was imprisoned.

He was,

I think,

A 70 when he was first imprisoned,

And better than anybody else of the 25 people that he worked with and did therapy with after they had been released,

More than anyone else,

He seemed to essentially have defeated the brainwashers,

Right?

Like he basically outplayed them,

And as much as a prisoner could outplay the prison guards,

He did it.

And the big thing was that even after going through psychological torture and physical torture,

Because he was beaten,

He was shackled,

Just like all the other prisoners were,

To different degrees,

Even through all of that,

And he was in prison for multiple years,

I think two and a half years.

He was able to preserve his identity,

And he left not a broken man with very low signs of trauma and still a generally positive outlook,

Which is shocking and inspiring and amazing.

So I found this really interesting.

And this actually,

This piece that he left with low trauma is a key thing,

And I had to ponder this from like an ethical perspective,

Because you know,

Certainly as we've been thinking about semantics and accurate thinking on the podcast lately,

I really wanted to check that I wasn't looking at things from a purely Western perspective,

Right?

Because like,

From the perspective of,

Let's say,

The Communist Party,

At least the individuals who were doing this thought reform program and imprisoning people,

You know,

At this time in history,

The 1950s,

What they publicized,

What they said,

And I'm sure what they believed to some degree,

Is that they were helping people.

They were helping people by imprisoning them.

I mean,

They didn't call it prison,

They called it reform school,

But they were re-educating people to think correctly,

Correctly being hopefully the more accurate way of looking at the world that leads to more happiness or collective happiness or whatever.

And even the people they converted would probably agree with that.

I mean,

Some of those,

You know,

They would change their ways after coming back to America or Europe,

But you know,

Then you see this,

You know,

In any situation where someone is converted to a new ideology.

You can see this in born-again Christians,

You can see this in,

You know,

People who've joined the woke movement.

I mean,

The term woke suggests that they have some information or they have some view of the world that's more accurate than everyone else.

They've been awoken,

They've been awake to something.

A lot of spiritual groups have used the same type of terminology.

The cult I was in called it waking up,

You could call it enlightenment,

Whatever.

You see this in like online type cults like QAnon.

They always feel like they have the right information and everyone else is wrong.

And they'll even say that the way that I used to think before I became enlightened or whatever was the right way.

So I had to ponder this because who's to say that,

You know,

Especially,

I mean,

Let's just for sake of argument discount the imprisonment and the beatings and the shacklings,

Right?

Let's actually discount that for a second and just say like who's to say that the people who were converted weren't actually better off,

Right?

Who's to say that the communist worldview is not correct and,

You know,

What we in the West think is wrong.

The key difference,

The key,

You know,

If there's any ethical point,

Any ethical line that I drew for myself and one could is that the people who were converted lived essentially an extreme fear and suspicion,

Right?

It wasn't like they,

You know,

Were like,

Oh,

You know,

I'm a communist now and life is better or I see the world more accurately,

You know,

Things are somehow more true.

No,

They became actually less sure of themselves.

They were fearful.

They were suspicious,

Very untrusting of the world,

You know,

And to use other language views on the podcast,

They were living in a contracted state essentially.

Whereas someone who is a resistor like Bishop Barker and this is not to say that his ideology,

Which happened to be,

You know,

Christianity inspired,

Not to say that his ideology was superior,

But he left not contracted.

He left without trauma despite an experience that most people consider traumatic.

So this is not a question of like,

Well,

I would actually say just this personal opinion,

Any ideology that has its subjects live in a contracted fearful state is not a good one,

Even though I try not to use the word it's good and bad.

But most importantly for everyone,

Regardless of your ideology,

Even if you are a communist,

Let's say,

Is that we could all use skills,

Techniques,

The ability to essentially resist anything imposed on us that would cause us to be fearful.

And this type of influence that,

You know,

Would cause someone to be a smaller,

Weaker,

Less powerful,

Less confident state,

We could call taming.

I'll define taming as being put into a weaker state by an ideology or environmental forces.

While most of us,

All of us,

Hopefully will never be in a brainwashing prison,

All of us are exposed at times to forces that we could call taming forces.

They could be things from our social environment.

They could be a society level ones.

We've spoken about a few in different episodes in different contexts.

For example,

There are various anti-masculinity memes in our society.

I used to pick on feminism,

But I'm not even going to pick on feminism because that's actually an inaccurate way to abstract it.

There are positive things to feminism,

Certainly,

But I'll specifically say anti-masculinity memes that are sometimes associated with feminism have led to many men experiencing what we would call taming or we could call it nice guy syndrome,

Anxiety,

Etc.

Memorism,

Another abstraction that I like to attack,

Leads to isolation,

Anti-fulfillment,

Various levels of unnatural stress in people.

That's another taming force.

Here in the pandemic,

And I promise this episode will not get political at all.

This is the one thing I'm going to say about the pandemic,

But various forces,

Various ideologies that have sprung up,

Let's say,

And divided people has put people into more fearful states and in that sense,

We could say they are again taming forces.

Certainly,

Nobody consciously wants to be tamed.

Nobody wants to be put into a weaker,

Less confident,

More fearful state,

Which is why I think it's so useful to learn some things that can prevent taming.

This Bishop Hans Barker,

The 70-year-old man who basically survived brainwashing camp better than anybody else has a few lessons for us,

I think.

He has some traits about his – he has elements to his ethos,

Traits that we all can cultivate,

But he also did a few things specifically that we could call self-preservation techniques or maybe anti-brainwashing techniques.

The combination of these traits and these actions that he took are things that we all can adopt to essentially protect our minds,

Protect our minds from dysphoria,

From confusion,

From insanity,

But also stay in the more grounded,

Untamed state of being confident and feeling agency in our lives that we all are striving for.

So,

In this episode,

We're going to explain this and we're going to use Robert J.

Lifton's term to describe Bishop Barker's values.

He named it humane stoicism.

So we're going to use that because I think it's a cool term,

But also useful ideology.

Right now,

You're listening to episode 144,

Humane Stoicism,

How to Resist Taming.

So Lifton was a Freudian-trained psychiatrist and in his profiling of the 25 people he worked with,

He described them with kind of causal relationships from their childhood to their adulthood.

So he would say,

Oh,

This such and such person experienced this through their high school years.

This is why they were more susceptible to having their identity changed later on.

This is why they converted.

Or this person,

They experienced these sort of things.

This is why they're confused.

So he did the same thing with Bishop Barker and basically highlighted a bunch of reasons why this man,

This 70-year-old man,

Was able to be so strong in the face of this psychological adversity.

And there's one line that he wrote about Bishop Barker that is actually the line that made me want to do this episode.

I ended up highlighting it and circling it.

It was a couple of sentences that Lifton said about Barker,

And I'm going to read here his quote.

From the age of three to 70,

The direction of his life and his worldview never changed.

It only expanded.

He was one of those fortunate men who could achieve the unachievable to live out fully during his adult life the imagined fantasies of his childhood,

The only true form of happiness.

And I was like,

Damn,

That's a cool way to be described by someone,

Especially a psychiatrist.

You know,

There's two things in that.

His worldview never changed,

It only expanded.

That's a key point.

And in his adult life,

He could actually live out the imagined fantasies of his childhood,

The only true form of happiness.

And I thought those two ideas were pretty cool.

I was like,

Man,

This is a cool heroic guy.

And these are basically two pieces that we're going to return to because what Lifton basically did because he was also amazed by this guy,

The 70-year-old Bishop Barker,

Who was able to survive all these brainwashing attempts,

Basically broke down five things that Barker did that allowed him to work.

So we're going to go through these five things throughout this episode,

Both with the technique that he used.

And these are things that obviously if it worked in a thought reform prison,

It should have some validity as a normal communication technique to resist taming.

But what I think is more interesting and more useful actually is the traits,

The parts of his character,

The parts of his ethos that allowed him to organically use these techniques.

I mean,

I highly doubt that Bishop Barker,

Well,

Actually we don't know,

But I doubt that he really went in thinking,

Hey,

I'm going to game the system or this is how I'm going to school these brainwashers.

I mean,

Maybe he did have those thoughts,

But I doubt he was highly trained in psychology,

But he did do some things.

I think he did a lot of them organically because he had these very strong traits.

And one key thing in the quote that I just read that I want to highlight again in these two pieces,

The fact that his worldview never changed,

It only expanded,

And then he as an adult was able to live out the fantasies of his childhood.

A lot of this,

And this is kind of the way Lifton viewed all of his subjects,

Which was if they lived a really good life beforehand,

If they live really well,

They lived with high emotional security,

Going after what they want,

Basically being a solid person,

They were less susceptible to psychological stress when imprisoned.

They were less likely to have their identity messed with.

And these are these two key things of being basically sure of yourself,

But also doing what you wanted and doing what you wanted specifically for your inner child,

Even though Lifton doesn't use that language,

Seemed to be like two core character traits that Bishop Barker had.

So the question,

Of course,

Is,

Well,

How,

Which is why we're going to go through these five traits that Lifton identified,

Along with,

Of course,

My own personal commentary.

So the first one was that Barker had a theory of the game.

Going into prison,

He immediately came up with ideas and essentially created a model for what was going on.

Some of the people who were most stressed in the prison were stressed because they constantly felt like everything was super random,

Which meant they never could let their guard down,

They never knew what was going on.

And we spoke about this in the physiological toughness episode that came out last year on how when you're in a new situation,

This is actually true for any animal.

I mean,

They they've done studies with rats,

Like you put a rat in a new situation,

Even if there's no threats,

The rat's cortisol levels go up for the simple reason that it allows the rat to focus.

Same thing happens with humans.

You're in a new situation,

Even a positive one.

You know,

You're at a fun party,

But it's totally new to you.

Your cortisol levels actually go up.

Now compound that with things that do seem dangerous and being in an uncertain situation for really long periods of time,

Eventually that cortisol starts to wear and tear on your body.

And of course,

If you're just in a new situation where you have no control over your environment and things are seemingly random,

Of course it's going to freak you out.

Now having a theory of the game,

And even though Barker wasn't always correct with his ideas of what and why his captors were doing things to him,

He always was guessing their motives.

He was always constructing some sort of theory,

Some sort of model,

So that he could basically live with lower uncertainty.

Now it wasn't like he could tell the future,

But he,

You know,

Essentially one way to put it was he wasn't naive,

But another way is that he was very active with his mind and trying to figure out the motives of everybody.

Because even when he was wrong,

This gave him a sense of control.

This gave him some sense of predictability where he's like,

Okay,

The person's asking me this because they want this kind of response.

Okay,

I can choose to do this or I could choose to do that.

And he always had something like that.

He had some answer to himself to basically explain why.

Because one of the experiences that is extremely stressful for people,

And actually why people turn to ideologies,

Especially religious ones,

Is to answer the questions like,

Why do things happen?

Right?

And what do we do to get a certain result,

Whether it's get into heaven or just live a happy life?

These types of things allow us to feel less fear day to day because we at least have some model for the future.

And I'll also say from my own personal anecdotal experiences,

When I was in a cult,

One thing that was interesting about my cult,

And I've only been in one,

So I don't know about what they do in other ones,

But a lot of the things that we could call brainwashing techniques or identity reform,

Anything,

Thought reform that they did to us,

They also kind of advertised.

And this is something I've thought about a lot since,

Obviously.

A lot of times they would kind of say,

Oh,

There's a game beneath the game,

Which is essentially alluding to this whole thing of like,

Oh,

There's a method to the madness,

But you need to figure it out for yourself.

They would actually encourage us.

They would actually hint this to us.

And not to say that I was the best at reading the game all the time.

I got better and better as I rose up in the ranks of one taste.

But I actually attribute one of the reasons why I,

For the most part,

Wasn't traumatized when I left and I had certainly a net positive experience being in a cult,

Whereas some of my peers had extremely terrible experiences where their identity was shattered and they needed to basically go through trauma therapy for years and years,

Even though we were kind of exposed to similar things.

One of the reasons was that they didn't realize that there was a game.

They didn't realize there was a game beneath the game.

They couldn't really read the motives.

They couldn't essentially read between the lines.

I mean,

There's people who did this way better than me as well.

But the people who really suffered,

Almost to the degree that they suffered was the degree that they were naive to recognizing people's motives,

Recognizing the politics and the doublespeak and stuff,

Whereas someone like myself kind of recognized things and I still got brainwashed.

I still had my identity melded and certainly had some unpleasant experiences as well.

But I would often reference things of like,

Oh,

Yeah,

Okay,

They're using this.

I took psych.

I took a few psych classes in college.

They're like,

Oh,

Yeah,

They're using these Cialdini principles of persuasion or such and such.

Even though I still got my mind melded or melted in some ways because of course knowing how alcohol works doesn't stop you from getting drunk if you're consuming it.

Just having a model and understanding did help a lot.

There's one thing on that note.

When I first moved into the cult house,

The woman who would eventually be essentially my cult mom or cult mentor looked me straight in the eyes and said,

I'm going to stop and slowly take away your independence.

She straight up told this to me and I just laughed because when I was like a 23-year-old man,

I was like,

There's no way someone could just take away my independence.

And she's telling me like,

How could this be possible?

But of course,

It was still possible.

And I actually think in my cult,

They often told us what they were going to do to us before they did it for a couple of reasons.

I've always wondered like why this was a thing.

One,

I think it helped them justify to themselves the ethics of manipulating people.

They're like,

Well,

We're telling you what we're doing before we're doing it.

So it's not like it's done sneakily.

Of course,

All of these things happen covertly.

But the other thing is I think it was like a way to flex power.

Like it was just like to be like,

It's like looking someone in the eyes and like,

I'm going to checkmate you in four moves and then you do it.

Or I'm going to think of any confrontational thing where you're just like flexing on someone.

I'm going to do something.

You can't do anything about it.

And actually,

If you're wondering,

How was it that someone – because what happened when I was in the cult was I entered,

I was kind of what they call the control problem.

Their terminology was someone who doesn't like get on board with the program immediately.

And when my cult mentor said,

I will take away your independence,

Of course,

I thought there's no way that could happen.

And you might be wondering,

Well,

How does one's independence get taken away?

What actually happened?

Because within six months of her telling me that and me like rolling my eyes at her or just laughing,

She actually did.

I mean,

She succeeded in taking away my independence.

I became super dependent on her and super immersed in the ideology.

And I bring up this because it actually leads us into the next principle that Bishop Barker did very well and I didn't,

Which was he avoided emotional attachments.

When I was in the cult,

I mean,

It was partly there to learn how to be vulnerable.

So in that sense,

I don't regret it.

But one thing that caused me to essentially lose my independence and basically buy into the group identity and in many ways detach from my old identity was that I became super emotionally attached with people.

And we were kind of in this cult,

We were in this like urban ashram,

Essentially.

So I had lovers in the house,

I was constantly hanging out with these people,

I was living with them,

I was doing the classes with them.

So just being around them all the time and of course,

You form bonds made it harder for me to think differently because this is kind of dog brain stuff.

And somehow Bishop Barker got the sense that this was true.

In fact,

Actually,

I think Lifton quoted him a couple of times saying that he knew that if he became friends with the other converts or certainly became friends with his captors,

I mean,

The one thing that they did in the prisons was that a lot of the reforming wasn't done directly by the guards or like the,

I think they were called teachers,

But they were essentially prison guards.

A lot of it was done by other prisoners.

Like they would put people into prison groups where there'd be basically someone who had been in the prison a few more years and they were kind of like,

They were called the cell chief and it was their job to teach the communist ideology to everyone else along with other emotional manipulation techniques.

Like the forced confessions were a big thing.

It's also listed in Robert Cialdini's Persuasion of Influence.

Like that was the big thing in prison,

In the communist prison.

They essentially had to confess to something they hadn't done and they basically had to keep confessing until they actually felt guilty.

One of the ways that the emotions were able to change was that by bonding with the people who are already converted and feeling that group affinity and being driven by the natural dog brain instincts to have herd security,

To be part of a group rather than isolated,

One's mind can actually change,

Right?

Like you might think it's absolutely nuts that some people think that believe the earth is flat.

But if you were in some situation,

If somehow you moved to a new country,

Where you're cut off from your old friends because of some,

I don't know,

Imagine some situation and you kept hanging out with these people who were really nice to you,

They were your only friends in this area and they all 100% believed in flat earth,

Over time you'd be very likely to start to believe in their ideology,

Even if you thought it was ridiculous,

Right?

It might start as like,

Oh yeah,

You know,

I think these guys are kind of crazy but they're so nice,

Let me just like nod and smile and we go to dinner and they're talking about the flat earth thing.

But over time,

If these are really the people that become your reference group that you get your emotional security from,

That you laugh with,

That you bond with,

Where you get that essentially the sense of herd security,

Eventually you start to think like them.

It's like a natural process,

Right?

Which is why it's very important to monitor the stuff you consume because if you start clicking on certain things on social media,

The algorithm is going to send you a lot more of that stuff and you're going to start to see,

Even though you know,

Even if you might know this fact,

It's going to be very hard not to think that your Facebook feed represents reality.

And you know,

A bunch of flat earth stuff's popping up,

Everyone you know is talking about flat earth,

Which maybe is only a couple of people,

It's going to be hard for you to resist that.

And even if you do,

Of course some people can,

It's going to require a lot of energy,

Which is why a lot of people,

I think a majority of people will switch ideologies to whatever is popular.

And I mean,

This is something that you see in political,

When political ideologies shift a lot.

So Barker,

Perhaps through intuition,

Just recognized that if he became friends with them,

He would lose his identity.

And you know,

He was a missionary.

So in a sense,

He was a thought reformer too,

Right?

He went to China,

From Germany,

I believe,

To convert people to Catholicism.

So maybe that's actually where he got his insight from.

He just knew what the other side was like.

But yeah,

He had the intuition to not make friends.

So he was polite with everyone,

But he didn't make friends,

Essentially with the enemy.

And this is,

You know,

How we would translate this into everyday life is essentially being very selective of who you bond with,

Right?

It's not that you should cut people off or,

You know,

Not hang out with a certain kind of person,

But just recognizing that whoever you spend time with reflects to you a sense of normality,

Right?

I'm sure you've heard your income is an average of the five people you hang out with the most,

Right?

Whether that's true or not,

It does highlight a true principle that,

Of what I just said,

Which is,

You know,

Your social reality is determined by people,

Right?

If everyone feels a certain way,

It's going to be hard not to feel that way.

So in order to preserve his pre-brainwashed identity,

Barker basically made a point,

Even though it's tempting,

Right?

Like you're in prison by yourself,

Right?

It feels good to have some sort of friendship with the people that are suffering with you.

But he made a point not to.

He made a specific point not to be friendly with anybody or not to bond with anybody who was in his eyes too far gone.

And Lipton actually quoted Barker saying that he did this to preserve his private symbology,

Which in his case was the less fear-based,

Less tame reality,

Which is,

You know,

His Catholic beliefs.

This is not to say that Catholicism is better or worse than communism,

But this is the ideology that actually led to him feeling good and feeling sane and feeling empowered.

Instead of bonding with the other people,

He basically spent this time praying.

So how this translates into real life is basically you should prioritize your attention to people and things that actually reflect the way you want to be and the way you want to see the world,

Right?

Which is not necessarily in beliefs,

But I would say selecting for traits,

Right?

If you hang out with insecure people,

Even if you're very secure yourself,

It's going to be hard not to take on insecure feelings.

I actually noticed I used to have a lot of broke friends,

And I noticed that when something good happened to me financially,

I didn't want to share it with them because I didn't want to make them feel bad,

Right?

But when I got a big bill or a parking ticket or something,

Oh,

That I would share with my friends,

Right?

Because that kind of like at least we could find some common ground.

But of course I was reinforcing – I mean,

This is maybe the roots of why your income is the average of your five closest friends is that we want to feel close to some people,

To somebody.

So be selective of who that is.

So of course in lieu of friendship,

He prayed,

Which brings us to principle three,

Which is identity reinforcement.

So in the brainwashing situation,

Of course the captors were trying to basically atrophy his old ideology,

Break his old identity.

And a lot of the people they imprisoned,

Barker wasn't the only Catholic missionary.

There were actually many profiled in Lifton's book.

I mean,

They're probably prime targets by the Communist Party,

Them being anti-religion,

Of course,

Against missionaries who essentially were there to thought reform the Chinese people.

So it makes sense that they were all imprisoned.

But not all Catholic missionaries fared as well as Barker.

There were some that actually,

You know,

They didn't necessarily drop their Catholic beliefs,

But they did leave feeling very guilty,

Let's say,

About what the Church did.

I mean,

One thing that the communists used against the Catholic priests was the idea,

Which is actually a legitimate idea,

That Western imperialists essentially used Catholic missionaries to soften the culture so that when they rolled in with their military or commercial takeovers,

It was more seen as friendly because essentially the Catholic missionaries made everybody pro-West.

Which is true,

Actually.

That is a thing that happened even though it wasn't the motive of any priest.

You know,

They were just trying to spread the word of their God.

They essentially were used for imperialism.

So some Catholic priests actually were like wildly overcome with guilt over this realization and essentially ended up in this confused category where they weren't really sure of what they believed in anymore.

Now aside from reinforcing his old identity by prayer and private this,

One thing that Barker did that really worked was that instead of fighting,

You know,

The idea of what was going on,

Right,

Instead of resisting the situation,

In a sense,

He actually got off on it.

And he did this by—one thing that he did was replace all the communist terminology with Catholic terminology.

This is called synchronization.

This is what the Roman Empire did when they took over a new culture.

They said,

Oh,

Your love God is actually Venus,

Right?

The same thing with different names.

So like,

You know,

Your God of War,

You know,

Your Thor is our Zeus,

Like that kind of thing.

And it was a way of essentially not antagonizing the other ideology and actually in a sense absorbing it.

And this goes back to that piece that we read about Barker,

Written by Lifton,

That Barker's worldview never changed.

And like throughout his life,

According to Lifton,

Barker never had to go against his Catholic beliefs.

He actually just—any time he learned new information about the world,

He absorbed it and somehow incorporated it into his existing ideology.

So he never had that internal conflict.

He never had that oh shit moment of like,

Oh,

Maybe I'm on the wrong team or maybe I'm leaving the wrong thing.

And he did this—and this was especially useful when in prison because,

You know,

The captors were trying to impose a new ideology.

So what we could take from this is that when we're confronted with some new worldview that might be used to tame us or just get us confused whether it's intentional or not,

It's actually very useful to recognize the meanings behind things.

So in Barker's case,

You know,

I'm forgetting the terms exactly,

But any time the communists would bring up a value or an ideal,

He would basically just replace it.

He would match it up to a Catholic term.

Like confession,

You know,

They wanted a confession from him.

He kind of framed it as if getting Catholic confession,

Which was something that he could relate to.

And that's what reminded me of my religious upbringing.

I was raised both Buddhist and Catholic,

I have a Buddhist father,

A Catholic mother,

And they tried to do the progressive thing of exposing me equally to both religions.

And it kind of seems like they were in some way competing because I had to go to Buddhist vihara every Saturday night,

Which is kind of like Sunday school,

And then I would go to Sunday school the next morning.

And as you would expect,

Some of the things I learned Saturday night from the Buddhist monks directly contradicted what was learned from the priest in Sunday school.

But one thing that made it make sense for me is I essentially just did the same thing.

I synchronized terms and that removed the cognitive dissonance of like,

Why are all my authority figures saying different things?

Because that's kind of a scary thing for a child,

Right?

It removes the sense of security and sanity.

So you know,

I just paired up terms.

So I was like,

Okay,

Heaven and nirvana are basically the same thing or,

You know,

A saint and a bodhisattva are basically the same thing.

And that helped me get through it.

But also,

I think,

Helped me recognize that,

Recognize the meanings beneath symbols,

Even though of course,

It wasn't thinking necessarily in this way.

It just allowed me to recognize what people really mean behind a word.

And one of the reasons why this is useful,

Especially in resisting taming,

Was that is that this allows one to preserve the identity that he or she has already as opposed to having to question it.

That questioning thing is often what leads to feelings of fear and uncertainty.

And one thing that really stressed out prisoners,

I mean,

This probably stresses out anybody in a prison type situation,

And actually stresses out a lot of people when bad things happen to them,

Is essentially it going against their worldview,

Right?

I'm sure you've heard this question about or by religious people of why do bad – if God is so loving,

Why do bad things happen to good people,

Right?

If someone has the worldview,

The belief that God would prevent bad things from happening to good people,

And then they see that happen,

Of course,

That's like – that's bad modeling,

Right?

To believe that is just – you're going to find some contradictions there.

You're going to find that that's not a true model.

And then that,

Of course,

Causes stress in people,

Right?

This even happened to some of the missionaries.

They were like,

I'm here doing all this good,

Spreading the word of the Lord,

Why am I suffering?

Why was I just put in chains?

But Barker,

Essentially he justified his experience with a personal meaning.

He incorporated it into his existing worldview because he viewed his experience and all his suffering as an opportunity for martyrdom.

He did not question why has this happened to me.

He was like,

Okay,

All right,

God,

You've given me a chance to prove myself and be a martyr.

And this ties to that second piece of the quote we read where he got to live out as an adult the imagined fantasies of his childhood.

This guy from,

I think,

From the age of four or five,

He actually – from the age of three,

According to Lifton,

He idolized martyrs,

Christian martyrs,

Catholic martyrs.

He wanted to be one actually from a very young age.

He thought it was the coolest thing to die in the name of God.

So the fact that he was imprisoned as a seven-year-old going through this immense suffering,

Being beaten,

He was like,

Oh,

God is testing me.

And he basically switched from cowering and being in a contracted,

You know,

Pray mode state to switching into,

You know,

Hard to see someone as a predator or being in predator psychology when they're literally a prisoner.

But he essentially,

He did that.

He was like,

He welcomed the challenge.

He was like,

Well,

Bring it on.

Like,

Let me prove to God how strong I am in his name,

Right?

And you know,

Obviously,

Regardless of what you believe,

To be able to frame things in a way that bring you back to agency and still sync up with your previous belief of the world can improve sanity or it can increase a sense of confidence as opposed to being like,

Oh,

My God,

I thought God was always going to look out for me.

Woe is me now that this bad thing is happening to me,

Which of course would cause someone to contract and perhaps lose their mind.

Another way to put this is that Barker was always looking at a bigger game.

He was always looking at a deeper reality.

He was like,

Okay,

This prison stuff,

It's not the end all be all of things,

Right?

There's a world outside of it,

Right?

And even it's kind of,

You know,

He was a spiritual man,

Obviously.

Sure,

He believed in heaven,

Literal heaven,

That he saw that this whole lifetime wasn't even all there was to it,

Right?

He was like,

How I perform in this lifetime is going to be how,

You know,

What my experience of heaven is going to be like.

So whether or not you believe in that stuff,

Obviously,

I mean,

And you do see this,

People who have spiritual beliefs tend to be happier whether or not they're true.

And even if you aren't a religious person or you don't have supernatural beliefs about anything like that,

Simply seeing the bigger game,

Right?

Or looking at the infinite game of like,

Where does this not matter?

Or where is there something bigger than this that I'm going to trust in more that's going to make this experience not seem so bad?

It's essentially,

We discussed this in the Fool archetype episode of seeing or perceiving a deeper reality beyond this thing that seems so serious.

It's essentially being able to see that things aren't that serious,

Which of course,

You know,

Might seem crazy when you're in prison and you're being beaten and you're being psychologically tortured.

But this is just a testament to how strong this man's mind was and his faith,

Right?

He really believed in something.

He really had a connection to the divine.

Which brings us to the part four,

The fourth principle,

Which I think is the most important thing of all of these things,

Which is that Barker had a sense of humor.

There's a number of things in the case study about him where he basically turned things that would cause most people to break into a joke.

But they weren't antagonistic jokes,

Right?

He wasn't trying to drop the mic on his captors or make fun of other people.

He didn't antagonize people.

He made jokes that were somewhat self-deprecating that allowed for collective sympathy,

Right?

They were non-antagonistic jokes,

Right?

There was one that I'm remembering mentioned that someone who was trying to reeducate him,

I think a fellow prisoner who was more reformed already,

You know,

Had been converted more,

Was calling him a cow.

Or they're saying that because Barker was resisting the communist ideas and they were saying basically he was stupid.

They were saying that he was,

It was like playing music to a cow because he was so dense.

He couldn't understand the Marxist ideology.

So Barker,

It became a recurring joke in prison where Barker would essentially say,

Oh,

Well,

It's like playing music to a horse now,

Right?

I kind of get it.

I mean,

The joke isn't landing here,

But I'm sure it was funny in prison,

Right?

Maybe in Chinese because they were all speaking Chinese.

Maybe it made more sense.

But essentially he was poking fun at the situation.

And it's not to say,

You know,

You have to learn how to crack jokes to be secure and resist taming.

It's more that what allows someone to have a sense of humor,

What allows someone to take things lightly,

Even in stress,

In my interpretation from both reading his work,

But also life,

Is that he faced his demons early in life.

And this is something that Lifton goes into when he goes through Barker's life.

Like he basically took on his insecurities when he was very young so that for most of his adult life,

Like if you look at someone's like ultimate hero's journey where they develop into a hero person as opposed to a fearful person,

He did that really young.

He did that,

I think,

You know,

By the time he was a young man,

He was basically very secure.

So he didn't have any of these traumas.

He didn't have any traumas.

He didn't contract.

He wasn't fearful of things.

He didn't take things too seriously.

He didn't get butthurt if someone made fun of his religion.

You know,

He was just very pleased with himself.

He was just very happy,

Which meant that he was able to see the lighter side of things even in a really shitty situation.

And this,

Of course,

Is something that we all appreciate.

I mean,

Basically every action hero,

I mean,

Indiana Jones stands out as someone who can crack jokes in dangerous situations.

Like it's just proof that you can handle the stress,

Right,

If you can see the humor in things.

As we discussed in the Myth of Identity episode,

Insecurities is what makes us vulnerable to negative influence.

For an example of times that I've been influenced,

Perhaps against my will,

It's actually more embarrassing that – I'm not embarrassed about being an occult at all,

But I am embarrassed about what I'm about to share,

Which has been a bunch of times in my life where I ended up in relationships with women I didn't want to date.

And if I look at every time that I ended up dating someone I didn't want to date,

Almost always something in my insecurity got hit that made me vulnerable to influence.

Like at one point when I was younger,

Especially if a woman would accuse me of basically criticizing my masculinity,

Which of course I was insecure about as a younger man.

If she was like,

Oh,

If you were man enough,

You would commit to me.

If you were man enough,

Or something like that,

Right?

I'm embarrassed to say that worked on me quite a few times.

Or even more recently,

In a more recent relationship that I didn't really want to be in,

My button really got pushed on her accusing me of not being caring enough.

It's like,

Oh,

If you were caring enough,

You wouldn't cause me this pain by not wanting to date me.

I've spoken about that in other episodes.

Essentially,

That was a remnant of nice guy syndrome in me,

A remnant of people pleasing that I hadn't really fully dealt with even though I thought I did,

But it made me vulnerable to an influence that got me to do something I didn't want to do.

I've been looking at this culturally and ideologically.

Right now,

I'm on an island in Thailand where there's a really big Russian community.

As the first time I've been around a lot of Russian people basically being Russian.

Obviously,

I have limited interaction.

I don't speak Russian.

This might be just an incorrect perception from the outside.

Something I appreciate about at least the Russian people I've been around is that it seems to be a very low trauma culture.

I've been in the gym and stuff where jokes will be made that you wouldn't expect to hear in mixed company,

For instance.

No one seems to get triggered.

No one seems to contract or see it as a threat.

Everyone kind of laughs,

Which is kind of a sign of low trauma.

Whereas if you look at some other cultures,

There's some really high trauma subcultures.

The woke movement is the big one.

Everything is traumatizing.

If you're not traumatized,

Somehow you're wrong.

There's always this encouragement of contraction to things or being upset about something.

Of course,

What is one of the big topics in woke culture?

It's not laughing at certain things.

I haven't really kept track of whatever's going on with I think Chappelle had some sort of controversy.

I've only heard it from other people.

But there's a whole thing about you can't laugh at certain things.

But that is just a sign,

Certainly in my opinion,

Of some sort of trauma.

Not to say that it should be okay to make people feel bad about jokes,

But to be trigger-happy essentially,

To be quick to be contracted,

To not be able to laugh about something is kind of a sign that there is trauma,

Contraction,

And therefore susceptibility to negative influence.

In fact,

That culture itself is a negative influence.

Whereas when you can truly laugh about everything,

It means you fully accept things.

It doesn't mean that you're okay with things.

In fact,

A lot of things that make us laugh are taboo or make us uncomfortable.

But that you're recognizing,

Okay,

Things are actually okay.

On some level,

They're okay.

It's another version of seeing the bigger game of like,

Okay,

This little incident,

This little situation is not the end-all be-all.

We can laugh at it.

And Barker basically turned this into a technique where no matter what they did to him,

Like there's the example of them trying to essentially appeal to an insecurity of him being stupid.

They're calling him a cow.

But Barker,

For whatever reason,

Didn't have that insecurity.

He wasn't insecure about being stupid,

So he could laugh about it.

Whereas someone who maybe was insecure about their intelligence,

Maybe that would have worked against them.

And Barker essentially adopted the Christian adage or advice maxim,

That's the word,

Of turn the other cheek.

Every time they—I mean,

Even when they literally beat him,

He didn't complain.

He didn't show pain.

Or maybe he showed pain,

But he didn't go into prey mode.

And this is actually something he explained to Lifton when they did their therapy later,

Is that he wanted to make sure that he was essentially showing non-aggressive superiority.

This is kind of the crux of humane stoicism,

Right?

Because he said something—Barker said this,

That the captors were tragedies.

They kind of fed off tragedy.

They wanted to put you into a state of tragedy.

And a smile,

As long as you could smile,

You're protected.

And this kind of reminds me of—this may be a weird and dark example,

But in the first Sin City movie,

There's a scene in the movie where this evil character abducts a woman to torture her and rape her.

And some—I forget exactly how this information passed to her,

But one of the heroes or one of the allies of the woman passed on to the information that this guy,

The evil guy,

Can only get it up if you scream because he gets off on your torture.

And if you can make sure not to make a sound,

He won't rape you.

That was essentially—I mean,

That's essentially what happened in the movie.

And this is a dark image,

Obviously.

But it does point to essentially what happens when someone is in an aggressive position due to their dog brain,

Right?

When we spoke about this in the dog brain episode,

There are two things that make someone aggressive based on our dog brain programming.

And humane stoicism is essentially a way to counteract these things,

Right?

The stoicism part is to be unaffected because one thing that increases aggression in someone is when you show that you're the prey,

When you show weakness.

You know,

The classic example is when it comes to literal dogs.

If you run from a dog,

Even if you're,

You know,

Way bigger than the dog,

It makes the dog feel—you're basically signaling to the dog that he is the predator and you're prey and he should become aggressive to you.

In fact,

You know,

A dog that would never bite you facing you might bite you if you run from it because you're signaling that to them.

Humans are the same way,

Right?

If Barker somehow intuitively knew that if he showed that he was becoming emotionally crippled,

It would only justify and encourage his captors to beat him more.

Because when he basically took literal beatings and psychological beatings without showing pain or immense fear—I mean,

I'm sure he showed some pain—but without crumbling,

There were moments where his captors actually felt bad.

I mean,

This is mostly the other prisoners,

The reformed prisoners who would like beat him and psychologically,

You know,

Stress him.

Sometimes they actually felt guilty about it and that was like a huge victory for him.

But there's also the humane part,

Right?

The stoicism is to be unaffected.

The humane part is to not be antagonistic.

I mean,

The other thing that triggers aggression to our dog brain is of course confrontation,

Right?

If you step on a dog's territory,

They actually will—actually if you step on a dog's territory,

It actually increases the testosterone levels of the dog,

Right?

It's male or female because that dog now has to protect his territory.

Same thing happens with humans,

Right?

If someone pushes you,

Well,

Your testosterone would probably spike too because now you want to push back.

You know,

Same thing happens verbally.

We spoke about this,

I think,

In the first semantics episode of why intellectually arguing with people doesn't work,

Right?

Trying to convince someone why they're evil and racist or anti-racist or whatever your ideology is never actually works because it only inspires the other person to get more aggressive with you.

There is—and certainly if you're in prison,

They hold all the cards,

But Barker had a couple of like huge moral victories by essentially deflating the aggression in the other people by not being affected but also not backing down.

And he didn't fight back.

It was essentially,

In a sense,

What Gandhi did as well.

Now,

The fifth and final thing that Barker did is actually something that Lifton would call a pseudo-strength.

And actually,

In some parts in the book,

Lifton says Barker had four—of the five things,

Four were strengths and one was actually a weakness,

But the weakness helped him.

And this was a view of totalism.

This is actually something that we discussed that is a not good way to look at life by making things black and white,

Drawing a line in the sand of good and evil.

But in this case,

And this is an extreme case,

Specific,

I would say,

Well,

Certainly in a prison situation,

Barker basically framed in his mind the communists as evil.

And he had different justifications for it because in his Catholic worldview,

Obviously religion was good,

Communists didn't like religion,

And there's some other things,

Right?

And then,

You know,

Of course there's the violence they committed that was easy to justify as evil regardless of your ideology.

But the reason why this is a pseudo-strength or a weakness is that it actually—well,

One,

It was semantically inaccurate,

Right?

Like,

You know,

Actually,

Even though,

If you can't tell,

I'm kind of anti-communist,

But there are positive things to communism and Marxism.

You can't just say all of it is evil.

That would be inaccurate,

Just like saying anything in your ideology is fully evil,

Right?

Equality is not all good or all evil,

Regardless of,

You know,

Yeah,

That's just the truth,

And neither are people.

Now the reason why Lifton saw this as a weakness or a pseudo-strength wasn't from the sense from the lens of semantic accuracy.

You know,

He was,

Of course,

A psychiatrist.

He was saying that this view of totalism,

Which did help Barker,

Did help him be like,

All right,

I need to fight the demons,

And perhaps can help us at certain times,

It causes dissociation in the self.

This is why—and this is why it was seen as dangerous to Lifton.

He wasn't really concerned about semantic accuracy,

Because the fact was,

Even though Barker did better than maybe anybody else at that time in regards to the communist thought reform,

Some part of him was affected,

Right?

He did have some sort of connection to other people in the prison,

Even though he tried to avoid emotional attachment.

He did start to see like,

Oh,

Well,

Some of the things that the communists are bringing up is legit,

Right?

I mean,

These were—the education program was well thought out by,

I'm sure,

Communist psychiatrists or,

You know,

People who had some expertise in psychology,

Right?

They were just throwing bullshit out.

They were creating well-formulated arguments to convince people of that.

So of course,

Barker was affected,

Right?

And he was there for two-plus years,

Right?

Of course he was affected.

So some parts of him certainly did see things the communist way.

But because he was so steadfast in his ideology,

He essentially dissociated from those parts.

And when he left prison,

He became actually the most aggressive,

You know,

According to Lifton,

Who had,

You know,

Of course worked with him for some time.

He became overly aggressive in Lifton's worldview,

Whereas later on,

You know,

Months after he left the prison camp,

Barker,

Who is a Catholic missionary,

Right,

He certainly wasn't for war-margering,

He basically—he was quoted by various newspapers saying that the communists are all evil,

We have to kill them,

Right?

And this was a Catholic bishop saying,

Like,

We have to kill them.

I don't know if he used these exact words,

But he was just like,

You can't—there's a line that he said,

You can't sit down and negotiate with the devil.

You have to kill him,

Right?

So and in Lifton's eyes,

This aggression towards the communists was actually a sign that on some part of him did actually find affinity with them.

But because he didn't agree with that,

Because he dissociated from that part,

And because he drew this line of like good versus evil,

He had to demonize 100% that other group.

Now we see ourselves do this—people do this all the time in other situations where,

You know,

You probably heard this as a common self-help cliche that you tend to resent people who have the traits you want,

Right?

Like I think actually Patrick,

Who was on a few weeks ago,

Said like he used to judge any guy who would date around without being serious with a woman,

Right?

He would say like,

Oh,

Those men are—I don't remember what he said exactly,

But like he would criticize those men as being like immature or whatever,

Because that's actually what he wanted to do,

Right?

A lot of people might criticize a very outspoken person because they want to be outspoken,

Or they criticize a person who,

You know,

I don't know,

Pick your personality trait.

Very often when we're particularly critical of someone is because they have—we actually are in a sense are jealous or envious of them and want that trait.

So in this case,

You know,

Barker became overly aggressive and over maybe—I mean,

He was in prison,

So it does make sense that he was angry.

But in Lifton's eyes,

He took it to an extreme because he was trying to deny the part of himself that actually did see some things the communist way.

And of course,

You know,

This good versus evil,

Black and white view is semantically inaccurate.

But,

You know,

It was—we did make this list of the five things that held Barker because perhaps at times really when you really have to resist taming,

It's actually sometimes useful to put things in black and white categories for the sake of maintaining your sanity.

Just know that this fifth piece,

It comes with a cost,

Right?

And,

You know,

I'm trying to check myself too when I rant about something,

Right?

I said this in the intro.

I don't want to blanket criticize feminism because then I'm—because that's one that's not accurate.

It's not fair.

There's various positive things with an ideology like that.

But there are negative elements and I want to isolate the negative instead of just,

You know,

Criticizing the whole thing.

In fact,

There's positive things about consumerism too,

Right?

I have a smartphone.

You know,

I'm not complaining about that even though I don't like where it came from.

But it can be challenging,

Right?

It can—as we spoke about in the semantics episode,

It takes a lot more brainpower to hold what seems like paradoxes and recognize,

You know,

All the details and nuances of a situation.

Sometimes it's a lot—actually most times it's a lot easier on your brainpower to just put things in boxes.

Because of course the purpose of all of this,

This whole idea of resisting taming is to have a worldview,

To have an identity,

A perceived identity that leads to feeling expanded and not contracted and confident and feel like you have agency in the world.

I mean that's why we care about any of this.

I hope no one has to use these in a natural prison camp but that it can be used,

You know,

Because there are a lot of influences.

Now more than ever are there influences,

Ideological influences,

Social influences that are still essentially are—not to say that they're all trying or they were created to tame people but the effect is that they do tame people.

And the more that we can resist this is the more that we can maintain our sanity,

Personal serenity and personal power.

So I hope that was useful.

We're going to do a recap.

These five principles are to have a theory of the game,

Avoid emotional attachments with those of the less useful ideology,

Let's put it that way.

In other words,

Be selective of who you spend time with and choose people that actually have the traits that you want to embody and the worldview that you want to embody yourself.

The third is identity reinforcement which is done of course by,

You know,

Renewing activities,

Practices.

I mean for him it was praying.

But the thing that I think is more actionable and useful for most of us is that he incorporated everything that he experienced into essentially a hero's journey framework,

Right?

He didn't complain or lament of like,

Oh,

Woe is me.

Why was I imprisoned unjustly?

He was like,

All right,

This is part of my life challenge.

Bring it on.

The fourth principle was having a sense of humor which of course wasn't necessarily him being particularly funny.

It was that he faced his demons early in life.

He did not have insecurities that were easy to trigger,

Right,

Which made him less susceptible for influence.

Like the fact that he could laugh about things was more a sign that he was secure.

It was not that,

You know,

Not to say that learning a bunch of jokes is going to make you more secure.

It was that he learned how to be secure and one of the byproducts of that was humor.

This is kind of the crux of humane stoicism which was to be unaffected by the opposition in a non-antagonistic way.

This basically deflates the opposition and takes the wind out of the sails of anybody who's trying to tame you.

And the fifth thing which is a pseudo strength or a weakness,

Something that can be employed for this purpose of resisting taming but with a cost,

Which is a view of totalism of good versus evil.

Not necessarily,

Certainly not semantically accurate.

There are negatives to,

You know,

Antagonizing another ideology as opposed to finding a way to accept it.

But of course in certain situations this can be useful.

Hope that was useful to all of you guys.

If you enjoyed this episode and you know anybody who might want to listen to episode on resisting taming,

Please send it to that person.

Thanks for listening.

I don't know when the next episode is going to be out because still awaiting my baby to be born at the moment of this recording.

But thanks for listening.

And if you haven't rated my episode or rated this podcast,

I'd appreciate it if you did.

All right.

Goodbye.

This has beenۢ