In the 1930s, the government paid writers to interview 80- and 90-year-old former slaves, and I read those accounts. I came away realizing - not surprisingly - that many slave masters were sadists who spent a lot of time thinking up creative ways of hurting people.
Torture is abominable, things like ripping out someone's nails, or burning someone with a blowtorch. And those who practice it feel a certain power but it's suicidal. They will never get over what they've done. And it creates sadists.
The Palm is a joint for sadists to entertain masochists.
Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it. . . In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.
Once, in a three-day taping that included several sadists, the material was so overwhelming that both the film crew and I got sick - I with a sinus infection, and the entire film crew with a flu so severe they had to delay their departure from the motel. Our immune systems had weakened, I believe, from the beating out souls had taken.
