TYRANNY—WHAT A POWERFUL WORD. A WORD THAT CAN MEAN anything from totalitarian despots ruling citizens with an iron hand to the imposition of inherited diseases on innocent victims to the frustration of wily computers ruling our daily lives. And in between? The tyranny of self-doubt, self-recrimination, a family history of criticism, our own recurring patterns of failure.
Today the shelves of bookstores buckle under the weight of the many self-help books that provide strategies to overcome all those self-imposed or received beliefs about ourselves. But even so, the cruelty of dictators (or bosses or spouses or even whole cultures) or the apparent oppression of disease can feel overwhelming—challenges too big to overcome alone.
To those suffering under such tyranny, the only solution often seems to lie in some long-term resolution (revolution, war, a coup) or in future discoveries in the medical world to combat genetic or inherited conditions.
