How Tommaso Campanella kept his life and his ideas under the Inquisition, as Greene reads it.
Robert Greene's framework, from 48 Laws of Power, pp. 474 to 486.
Feign madness
Present dangerous beliefs as the result of unsoundness of mind, to disavow responsibility.
Write the opposite book
Publish a work promoting orthodoxy to show conversion in the boldest manner.
Disguise your ideas while insinuating them
Pretend to refute dangerous ideas while giving them vivid expression for those who understand the irony.
From chapter: LAW 38, pp. 474–486
Flaunting unconventional ideas makes people think you want attention and look down on them, so think as you like but behave like others. Pausanias adopted Persian dress and manners and was starved to death in a temple, and Jonas Salk's disregard for scientific protocol isolated him, whereas Campanella survived torture by feigning madness, writing a book that praised the Spanish monarchy, and hiding his real ideas in the heretics' arguments in Atheism Conquered. Greene points to the Marranos and Brecht as models of outward conformity with inner freedom, and says to be all things to all people. The reversal is that you may stand out only once your position is unshakable, and there is always room for a gadfly like Oscar Wilde.
