How To Survive Torture

Step 1: Give up all hope.

Only in retrospect, these days, have I been appreciating that I grew up in a time that was remarkably hopeful and brimming with ideals. When I was a teenager, my dream was to be a human rights lawyer. I learned about the pro-democracy movements in China and Burma while I was in high school and, by the time I was in college, I was actively working with refugees and former political prisoners from Burma, and built a school for internally displaced children there.

I remember learning about the global human rights regime in my college courses, and marveling at how it was still being formed. Statutes and agreements were being negotiated, and new international rights frameworks were being defined in real time. I found it immensely compelling that the rule of law and the inalienability of certain rights were in no way set in stone, they were not historical fact. In truth, they were emerging normative structures that were coming into existence out of sheer political will, and humanity’s ability to imagine and believe in a future that was better than the past.

Now, I am looking backwards from a very different moment and realize how full of stability, creative possibility, and progress the late 1990s and early 2000s were.

It is not hard to want to compare where we are now to then, or to any other time when our geopolitics felt more normal and sane.

In such a state of comparative reflection, I scrolled through the news and social media, and my heart pounded as I read about yet another shooting by federal authorities carrying out illegal immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota. From the comfort of Honolulu, I saw the photo of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy who was detained by ICE, and immediately, I felt the deepest muscles in my core snap with painful tension.

Even if we are very far away and safe, living in this time of turmoil and being inundated with the news of rising authoritarianism from all corners can be so painful and pervasive that it can feel like torture. Many people are asking themselves and one another why this is all happening and how we’re supposed to get through it.

So, I have been remembering, of late, a social media post by Sam McKnight, an archaeology graduate student and documenter of human rights atrocities, who shared his advice for surviving torture “as someone who was subjected over two and a half years to 16 different continuously applied enhanced interrogation techniques.” He elaborates in the caption that this advice is also meant to be useful for those experiencing anxiety, chronic illness, or just a tough time.

The first step to surviving torture, Sam says, is to give up all hope. That makes for good social media content, but, to me, step one is more boring and simple, though not at all easy: acceptance.

At its core, it means accepting that what is happening is actually happening. Dumbfounded disbelief is not useful. Regardless of whether it’s wrong or right, just or unjust, we must see the conditions we live in for what they are. This means without the overlay of judgment, regret, or wishing for something different, because these actually block our ability to see what’s right in front of us. It takes energy away from the core function of observing and paying attention. And if we cannot see the terrain, players, and obstacles in front of us with clarity and fidelity, it’s impossible for us to navigate them effectively.

Living “one day, one hour, one minute, one moment at a time” is the second step.

Human beings are gifted with the ability to remember the past and imagine the future in ways that other animals cannot. It is our greatest strength and achievement as a species, and also a double edged sword, since these same gifts can trap us in rumination and worry. So, in the toughest of times—and these qualify for many of us as such—we need to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Certain kinds of meditation, physical labor, dance, and martial arts can be very helpful in cultivating the concentration and ability to pay close attention to the present moment.

Being present can facilitate the third step, which is to find oneself in the small things. I try to list the things I’m grateful for on my drive to work each morning, and the most powerful things are usually surprisingly small, like a new song I’m listening to or a pleasant scent. Whenever I remember to, I stop to appreciate the sunshine, enjoy food, and delight in friendly exchanges. Sometimes, these are the moments that most affirm my humanity and goodness.

“Bend, but don’t break,” is Sam’s final step. “Do what you have to to survive. Change your ideology, align yourself with your captors and torturers if you have to. But don’t let them break you. Even as your own thoughts become alien to you, still remain yourself.”

The era we live in is prone to snap judgments and prejudice. We don’t want to see the people who hurt us as multidimensional, complicated, or even redeemable. Others may think us crazy for having curiosity about those who do us harm, but, in order to defeat our opponents, we have to know them as well as we know ourselves.

And the end goal shouldn’t be to obliterate the people who disagree with, fight, and persecute us. The true objective must be to find a future that we can share. We’ve seen what happens when this kind of understanding and empathy are absent, and when people concretize an identity as victims and survivors, setting in stone the dualism of self and other. At the end of that scenario is an apartheid state where the persecuted have become the persecutors.

The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is that there is suffering. It is a feature, not a bug, of human experience. But that doesn’t mean that suffering is the end of the story.

Physical, emotional, and spiritual strength, and wisdom can grow out of our struggles. In a reciprocal fashion, when we approach challenges and torments as opportunities to more deeply know ourselves and the universe, it is the opposite of being nihilistic or defeatist. It is, instead, a celebration of the wonder of this life that includes such ranges of joy and pain.

“Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death,” psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl, wrote. “Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”

Suffering is not a good thing, per se. Injustice is not a good thing. But we can acknowledge that they are real and go toward them. If, as Sam suggests, we give up all hope, if we accept that this suffering is here, unavoidable, and a feature of our existence, then we stand a chance of doing much more than just surviving. We have a chance to realize something absolute and universal: That to defend, love, and treasure life is to defend, love, and treasure all of it. Sincerely, all of it, the whole package in the largest sense imaginable.

Then, there is no need to compare where we are to how things could or should be. Instead, we can embrace that the only thing to do is to engage the life in front of us fully. Living life thusly may not only reveal the meaning in life we seek. It may prove to be the meaning of life, itself.