As a navy ship was dedicated in memory of the late James Stockdale, perhaps best known as Ross Perot's running-mate in 1992, Steve Chawkins' commemorative story (LATimes) especially focuses on his philosophical response to imprisonment by the North Vietnamese.
By all accounts, he was brilliant. A Naval Academy graduate who studied philosophy at Stanford, he was an avid follower of the Stoics, ancient Greeks who taught that free will enables people to rise over the most adverse circumstances. It was an ethos that proved invaluable in prison, where his shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his knee was broken twice, he was forced to wear leg irons for two years, and he was tortured at least 15 times.
Charlie Plumb, a former prisoner of war who helped organize the ceremony, said in an interview that Stockdale encouraged others by spreading the ideas of the philosopher Epictetus, secretly disseminating them on sheets of toilet paper in an ink he made from brick dust. Plumb said the effort helped men overcome their shame for buckling under torture.
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