The Primal Sin: Modern Egypt, Ancient Greece, and the Madness of the Mob

Mask of a Maenad - icon of unconsciousness

Plato believed the source of evil lay in ignorance. The worst sort of evil arises from the blindest ignorance, what Carl Jung called "the primal sin"--the sin of unconsciousness. "Wherever unconsciousness reigns," he wrote, "there is bondage and possession." And in no place does it reign with greater sway than in a mob.

My novel, Night of the Furies, was constructed on this premise. While cruising the islands of Greece, two Americans encounter a secret Dionysian cult of maenads. A chaotic orgy ensues. They surrender themselves to unconscious impulse and experience an exhilarating freedom. But it's a false freedom, a slavery to the flesh, a "bondage and possession" that ends in violence.

True freedom comes only in a state of full awareness, when motives are examined, and choices consciously made. We call it "free will."

Such freedom is a burden as well as a gift, as the ancient Greeks discovered. Much like the modern Egyptians, they had long lived in a conformist society based on a restrictive religion, where the longing for freedom was routinely suppressed and decisions were left to tradition. All that changed with the dawning of democracy and the birth of individual freedom. As the scholar E.R. Dodds explains, "Individual freedom brought the terrifying burden of daily responsibility and the irresistible urge to abandon it." And so the Dionysian cults flourished.

I thought of this today when I read the terrible news about the "60 Minutes" reporter, Lara Logan.

On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a "60 Minutes" story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.

Ms. Logan returned to the United States the following morning and is currently in the hospital recovering. Our thoughts and prayers are with her. May she regain her admirable spirit and courage, and return to the struggle of all free people, battling the primal sin.