School for scoundrels

Lessons from inside

Do you carry your past around with you? Your qualifications and honorary appointments? Your medals and awards? Are your great achievements listed on your CV? What about your failures? Do you present them to those you meet, along with your university degrees?

Who’s your inspiration? Are you a yogi? Do you get inspired by Zen Buddhists marching for peace? Do Ukraine’s kill-zones make you wish that you too were in Kupiansk? Are you a follower of Elon Musk? Jeremy Corbyn? Oprah Winfrey? Graham Norton? Do you seek out self-help websites? Maybe you pay some macho like Andrew Tate huge amounts of money to learn how to become like him? Or, like me, do you sometimes turn to murderers serving a life sentence?

One of my go-to inspirational reading sources is the Marshall Project. Named for the United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, it is a journalistic organisation that reports on inequities and experiences within the United States penitentiary system. It reports on justice and injustice, and gives a voice to incarcerated persons, one of whom is Michael J. Nichols.

Michael J. Nichols was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. At age 19 he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole. Now aged 54, he is currently being held at Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, Missouri.

He was at the very cusp of adulthood when he committed his crime. Until the day he dies, he will be paying for that crime. It is a failure that he cannot hide from anyone. Where he is announces it to the world.

But he does not waste the time that he does. What he writes about the time he has at his disposal care of the Missouri penitentiary system is illuminating. It is a recipe, for whatever you want to make of it.

Andrew Tate will tell you how to be an alpha male. Jamie Oliver will tell you how to be a great cook. Wayvinya Makai will instruct you on Africa’s route out of slavery. But Michael J. Nichols can tell how to survive and improve, without dictating to you what you do that for. The why is survival. The wherefore is up to you.

In what follows, Michael explains his prison situation. It’s unlike anywhere that any of you spend your time. And yet, I can see there a parallel to where I spend my time. Sometimes I hunker down at home, frightened to go out. That was especially so during the pandemic and there are perhaps uncertain times coming when I shall want to hunker down again, and willingly to cut myself off from society. For my own peace, or my own safety, or just because I want to.

---

At Potosi Correctional Center, the Level 5 maximum security prison in Missouri where I’m currently serving life without parole for murder, the hole is typically a 7-by-9-foot cement room. This room has a steel door with a slot for receiving meals and a small window to see outside. Inside there is just a cot, a thin mattress, a toilet and a sink. You can only shower once a week and spend one hour outside each day. Sometimes you can’t receive mail. And while you can yell out to other prisoners, you can’t see them. If you aren’t prepared for these conditions, they can make you crazy.

In early 2022, when I turned 50, I had just spent a year in the hole in another Missouri prison following a riot. Rev. Mary Mitchell, a minister and longtime friend, asked me how I made it. She wanted to share any advice I had with the other prisoners she corresponds with. Now, to reach an even larger audience, I present my top 10 tips on surviving the hole:

• Do the time, don’t let the time do you. For me, that meant getting up after breakfast and staying up. I refused to sleep the day away.

• Exercise will be one of your most productive activities in the hole. Set goals you can actually see and feel based on how long you think you’ll be in there. For instance, I wanted six-pack abs. I started off doing 500 sit-ups and leg lifts every day and gradually increased that number to 3,000. Now I am a unicorn, the rare 50-year-old with a stomach that looks like a Spartan warrior’s.

• Read anything you have access to — the Bible, the Quran, “The Science of Mind” or even the dictionary. The guards — I call them “Demogorgons” — would rather see you driving yourself crazy than reading any type of literature.

• Learn new things, even if they’re small. I increased my vocabulary by studying the dictionary. I also taught myself how to write legibly with my left hand. Every morning I would write down a positive affirmation with my right hand and then rewrite it with my left. Simple things like this can produce beautiful benefits.

• Stay out of frivolous conversations with other captives. For example, discussions about government politics, street politics and prison politics only lead to arguments. Instead, focus on topics that sharpen others, like spirituality, history, business and legal issues.

• Because the Demogorgons often have an agenda to keep you in administrative segregation, they will try different methods to make you angry. Learn to observe but not respond to their antagonism. When a correctional officer jacks you for your recreation or shower time, don’t get mad, act out and end up with 30 more days in the hole. Just do your exercises in your cell and wash up in the sink.

• Always leave the cell when the opportunity allows. Go to the shower. Go to rec. Go to medical. Go anywhere you’re allowed because getting out of that cement box destroys the onset of what I call cell anxiety. This form of anxiety occurs when you avoid leaving your cell because you believe the guards are going to do a search and take something you deem valuable. To be sure, the Demogorgons will take things from you. But when you are always leaving, they tend not to enter your cell because you don’t exhibit the fear that most do.

• Write letters — to your loved ones, to ministers in your faith tradition, to libraries and organizations that send literature to prisoners. Write to the courts about issues you find unfair. Write to legislators about potential laws. Just write.

• File grievances about any legitimate issues. I have filed complaints about live electrical wires hanging out of torn outlets and water coming from the ceiling. I’ve written grievances about how the case managers handled my legal materials while I was in the hole. I’ve also advocated for my right to have a religious text besides The Bible and The Quran. Administrators hate prisoners who file paperwork because it forces them to do something other than torturing you. They may release you more quickly than they would a man who has no complaints about his situation.

• Always practice your faith. Day in and day out, I prayed, meditated and took Bible-related correspondence courses. I also practiced martial arts and breathing techniques, and I worked on improving my foresight. For me, faith is the most important survival tool. Faith is what got me through my worst-of-the-worst times in the hole.

Here’s Michael’s ten-point list reduced to a vade mecum:

1. Don’t sleep the day away.

2. Exercise, preferably according to a regime.

3. Read. Keep your mind busy.

4. Learn anything you can.

5. Stay out of frivolous conversations.

6. Don’t rise to provocation.

7. Get out and about whenever you can.

8. Stay in contact with those you know.

9. Draw attention to the things you feel are wrong.

10. Determine what you believe in, and practise that faith.

These resonate, even if you’re not in prison.

In the 1960 film School for Scoundrels, Ian Carmichael plays a character who is always beaten by the other guy. He gets cheated and elbowed out of the way, refused and rejected. So off he goes to a school that teaches the art of one-upmanship. And it works. He turns the tables on everyone who has bilked him and this time he wins. Until the very end, when he realises that he cannot act a part for the rest of his born days. Only by being himself can he truly achieve his potential. Well, it’s based on a novel, so it’s fiction, but fun fiction if you have the chance to see it. The relevance to Michael’s list is that Michael’s list isn’t dependent on being successful. It’s been honed by him out of failing. That’s why. What it’s for would be up to you.

His list is not fun fiction. It’s an example of how the best advice can sometimes come from those who are the most denigrated in society. From its rejects and its condemned. And not its supposedly great success stories.