I recall that someone posted to Revleft a manual about enduring torture, perhaps from the Irish Republican Army. Having to deal with being tortured might be a concern for at least a few activists who might end up as political prisoners.
Perhaps there are times to escape mentally, such as, for example, if we were experiencing torture of some form. Then we’d strive to immerse that part of our mental phenomena we regard as our ‘selves’ into an imagined reality in which we’re not experiencing torture.
Maybe that could work to some extent by either blocking out the physically painful sensations or, with an equal or even greater exertion of imaginative will, interpreting the theretofore physical pain as pleasure. But how would this work with psychological torture such as knowing that those we love intimately are in great pain?
Police in the US and other countries torture at least a few of the people they arrest and imprison. As for the US government and other governments (which can be referred to as ‘the State’ in their fusion with big corporations) torturing suspected terrorists and other ‘bad guys,’ when we take comfort in the idea that it’s happening to ‘them’ and not ‘us,’ it seems the mentality of enabling bullies. As with bullying, many of us think it’s ok, as long as it doesn’t happen to us. But what makes us so sure our own governments, in their oligarchic aims, won’t sooner or later torture you or me for speaking out or because our alleged associations?
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