We all go through different stages in life, but some people change at a shocking, even puzzling pace, though it seems perfectly natural to them. It’s not that they’re only responding to different information or stimuli but that there’s something always in flux inside of them. And no matter that they take wildly divergent views at different times, each one feels like the truth to them.

Here Eric Sevareid comments in 1975 on Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver returning to the U.S. after seven uncomfortable years living as a fugitive in communist countries. Cleaver renounced his militant ways but never stopped experiencing revolutions within, later becoming a Mormon, a conservative Republican and a crack addict, among other things.