Part One. Essay 1: Man’s Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Argumentation, Refutation
Essay based on Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Argumentation, Refutation
In a 1,000-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that compares the spiritual death of Dexter Green in "Winter Dreams" or in Nikolai in "Gooseberries" (great commentary here) with the life and death lessons we learn in Man's Search for Meaning. Consider the existential vacuum, misguided meaning quests, and Death in Tehran, a parable Frankl uses in his book.
Here is my blog's analysis for "Gooseberries."
The Trap of Frankl Lite: Confusing Your Desires for Meaning
There's the trap of believing you don't need "meaning" so much as you need the basic human needs:
One. We need to believe in something larger than ourselves so we don't become crushed by the weight of our inclination for self-centeredness and narcisissism.
We can't believe in just anything. There's a huge caveat or condition: This "thing" we believe in should be good, conducive to our maturity and dignity and the dignity and respect of others.We can't, for example, believe in killing others to achieve some political goal motivated by a lust for power. Then we are monsters like Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler.
If this thing is good, it doesn't necessarily create meaning. For example, if we develop an interest in martial arts, math, chess, bicycling, swimming, etc., all these things are good and help us get the focus of our self, but they aren't the Holy Grail of Meaning.
Two. We need self-awareness, AKA the Third Eye or metacognition so that we can make more intelligent and moral choices rather than being dragged down by the reptilian, primitive, irrational part of our brain. But this too falls short of meaning.
Three. We need humility to learn from our mistakes so we can become stronger and wiser. Again, humility is great, but not the same as meaning.
Four. We need a good job that uses our skills and makes us feel needed and pays us so we can buy stuff we want and feel secure and comfortable. This is good, too, but it isn't meaning.
Five. We need reproductive success. This means finding a mate whom we find desirable and attractive and a complement to our existence. This is great, but it isn't meaning.
Six. We need a sense of belonging and meaningful friendships. This too is great, but it is not meaning.
Seven. We need free time to play and enjoy recreation as a counterbalance to our hard work. Again, this is a need, but it isn't meaning.
Eight. We need moral character, the kind that compels us to have respect for others and ourselves and to have a reverence for life. In fact, we don't find meaning outside of ourselves. Meaning is born from our moral character.
We can have all these 8 things and achieve a certain satisfaction in our growth, maturity, and success and still not have meaning or at least not the heroic kind evidenced by Viktor Frankl in his book.
As a result, we can have the 8 Essential Things and go through life happy enough without having meaning. Our life is full enough based on our moral growth, our work, our love life, our friendships, and our human connections that we don't seek any meaning beyond this.
However, some of us can attain the 8 Essential Things and still suffer, to some degree or other, the existential vacuum, the sense of emptiness and restlessness that "life is good but there must be something More."There is a sense of the Beyond, of Mystery, and Enchantment.
Some people seek this More in religion.
Others seek this More in creativity, such as writing or the arts.
Others seek this More with drugs, LSD, mushrooms, marijuana, etc.
Others say there is no More, that we are biological creatures who can be reduced to sexual and survival instincts.
Viktor Frankl says there is meaning in terms of our moral position, which is that we must fight to help others at the expense of our own safety and convenience. This is a morality rooted at the heart of his religion.
His religion states that we must fight to help others at the expense of our safety and convenience; otherwise, we will become self-preservational animals, losing our souls to our most primitive urges. The consequence of not following the moral dictate described by Frankl in his book is that we will suffer moral dissolution and the existential vacuum.
The challenge is that throughout human history something like less than 1 percent of the human race have chosen to live as heroically as Viktor Frankl.
Most of us pacify ourselves sufficiently with the 8 Essential Things but fall short of Meaning as described by Viktor Frankl. For Frankl, meaning is an absolute. For most people meaning is relative to the 8 Essential Things.
Full Potency Frankl goes further:
It's about sacrificing personal comforts and material success to serve others with a joyful attitude. Some would argue you can't serve two masters. You can't serve material success on one hand and meaning, as defined by Frankl, on the other. But that is a debatable claim, one worth addressing in your essay.
To sum up, Frankl Lite refers to a life of comfort by achieving the basic needs; Full Potency Frankl refers to a life of sacrifice to help others with no regard for creature comforts.
Do I Believe in Full Potency Frankl or Frankl Lite? What is McMahon's position?
I've struggled with this book over the years, sometimes being a believer, a nonbeliever, and an agnostic.
As I write this, I'm part believer (I'll show you how I don't believe later), but I need to qualify my position.
I think the book should have a different title: Man's Search for Character.
Why? Because we can't find meaning, as Frankl himself argues. Meaning finds us. But meaning only finds us if we have character unless we experience a miracle.
Apparently, meaning doesn't find everyone. I don't know why some people find meaning and others do not.
Of course, if given the choice, in the face of adversity I'd rather choose heroism than cowardice.
If heroism is meaning, so be it, I agree with Frankl's thesis.
What is character? We see that that Dexter Green and Nikolai are both spiritually diseased and they become more and more disconnected from life, people, and meaning.
Courage and heroism (Malachi Andrews)
Integrity (refund on eBay)
Discipline (doing what you have to do even when you don't feel like it), honesty, compassion (serve the underdog or "serving the least among us" because it's easy to be a sycophant and serve high and popular people), empathy, listening, passion, and last but not least, we need the Third Eye, the ability to stand back and analyze our actions with unflinching honesty and even analyze the way we analyze our actions (metacognition).
Why do I emphasize character over meaning? Because the latter suggests Something Out There that comes to us on a silver platter.
Example of a Man with Meaning from his compassion (serving the least of us)
I know a man who is a world champion savate fighter (French boxing) and he could live in luxury and isolation but he spends all his time at his underprivileged youth facility on the border of Compton and Long Beach. He gives young people discipline, passion, and structure for no profit except what he receives in his heart: meaning. He sometimes gives demonstrations in the boxing room right next to my office. He's my hero.
Without these qualities that make up character, we can have no purpose or meaning.
The matter of meaning is further complicated by the old riddle of what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Or what comes first, meaning or character?
Meaning feeds character and character feeds meaning so the answer is both.
But the point is, as I reread Frankl's book over and over, meaning and character are the same thing or they are inextricably linked.
The more I read Frankl's book, the more I realize the book is not about finding meaning Somewhere Out There but about building character so that meaning can find us.
When we lose character, we lose meaning. When we cheat, violate our values, we kill the part of ourselves we value and we fall down a rabbit hole.
Think of the cop who steals drug money and the stealing gets easier and easier as he loses his soul.
Or think of Deb, Dexter's sister from the Showtime program Dexter. After she commits a murder to cover up for her brother, she goes into a depression, drinking alcohol and we realize she's lost herself and her reason for living. She wants to die.
She lives in what Frankl calls the "existential vacuum."
Frankl says we need meaning; otherwise, we will languish in the "existential vacuum."
What is the "existential vacuum"?
It's a wasted life and the sick feeling of emptiness that comes from knowing deep down you're living a wasted life. If you're spending more than 5 minutes a day on Facebook playing stupid games like Bubble Shooter, Trollface Launch, or Whack Your Boss, you're most definitely wasting your life and therefore languishing inside the existential vacuum.
It's the anxiety you suffer when in the back of your mind you know you're wasting your life and that life is passing you by.
A wasted life is mindless reptition of the same mistakes over and over again. And this is the definition of insanity.
Some couples break up and re-unite for ten years until they finally get married to get a divorce.
Americans typically go on 10 diets in a lifetime and get fatter every time but this failure doesn't stop them from going on a new diet.
A wasted life is dedicated to materialism, a form of egotism.
A wasted life is dedicated to superficial distractions.
Maybe I shouldn't teach this book. Not all the time, but sometimes I enjoy the existential vacuum.
Louis C.K. says he has chosen the existential vacuum over meaning:
"I drive an expensive car. I could sell it, by a cheap car, and use the leftover money to feed the poor, but I don't."
Some would argue only people whose lives are rich in meaning and who totally believe in Frankl's book are qualified to teach it.
But I disagree. Sometimes a cynical, highly-flawed person makes a better teacher than the upright true believe because the cynic makes you see both sides of meaning, the cynic's disbelief and the acolyte's belief. An acolyte is a follower of a doctrine.
Full Potency Frankl Means We Overcome Fear
Examing the Role of Fear as an Obstacle to Meaning
"Death in Tehran" from Man's Search for Meaning
A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.
What does the parable say?
Awareness of death and the challenge of death make us panic. Death is scary in its own right, but so are its implications: As Tolstoy said, "Death demands that we change our life in such a way that death cannot strip the meaning of it." That demand overwhelms many people. The limitations imposed by death also overwhelm many people.
Overwhelmed, many run from death. And it is the running from death that is, paradoxically, the running TO death.
Developing a Thesis About Meaning Requires Specificity
Develop a thesis that shows how Frankl addresses the role of fear as an impediment to meaning in at least 4 ways.
Example:
When we are slaves to fear, as illustrated in the fable "Death in Tehran," our meaning is eviscerated in four major ways, including ______________, _____________, ______________, and _______________.
Develop a thesis about how Frankl's book makes us struggle with the idea of absolute and relative meaning.
Example:
While it is dangerous and erroneous to discuss "meaning" as an abstraction and an absolute, we can argue that our lives become more meaningful, relatively speaking, when we exercise the priniciples of logotherapy. I will provide four different principles of logotherapy and show the four ways they have helped me change my life to make it more meaningful.
Develop a thesis about the dangers of absolute meaning.
Example:
When we strive for absolute meaning, paradoxically, we actually find less meaning in our lives because absolute meaning kills real meaning in four major ways, including _______________, _______________, ____________, and _______________.
A cynical, deterministic attitude toward meaning.
Example:
Of course, Viktor Frankl's life exudes meaning. He is a hero, a saint, a wonder to all of us. His life makes us weep with glory. However, his thesis that anyone can choose a life of meaning is in error, namely the false assumption that we have free will. I will show that free will, especially as it pertains to choosing a life of meaning, is a fallacy by demonstrating ___________, _____________, _______________, and ______________.
Apply Critical Thinking to Man's Search for Meaning
Critical Thinking Defined (from Chapter 1 of From Critical Thinking to Argument by Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau)
One. What distinguishes critical thinking from plain thinking?
Critical thinking is not
Idle daydreaming
Half absorbing data nuggets and images on the Internet or some other screen
Critical thinking is
Searching for hidden assumptions and implicit ideas
Deconstructing common beliefs and assumptions
Questioning our best laid out thoughts
Rethinking our deepest beliefs
The word critical comes from the Greek word krinein, meaning to separate, to choose; we are in essence separating the wheat, the good stuff, from the chaff, the bad stuff.
Perhaps more importantly, critical thinking is not just being skeptical of our opponents’ ideas but our own ideas as well.
A critical thinker sees ideas as being more tentative than absolute. By tentative, those ideas are constantly being tested. Critical thinking, to borrow from a cliché, is more about the journey than the destination.
Critical thinking objects to clichés because they dull the mind. On the other hand, clichés sometimes speak a truth better than another method, so, dammit, we sometimes have to live with the cliché.
Two. How do we generate ideas for an essay?
We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation.
Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children
- Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
- They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
- They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
- They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
- They confuse correlation with causality.
- Why are these parents always rich?
- Are they narcissists?
- Are they looking for simple answers for complex problems?
- Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
- These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.
Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.
Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.
To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”
Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.
There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.
Three. What is the twofold activity of critical thinking? (11)
We rely on analysis and evaluation.
Analysis if finding parts of the problem and then separating them, trying to see how things fit together.
Evaluation is judging the merit of our claims and assumptions and the weight of the evidence in their favor.
Four. How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?
The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.
Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.
Here’s an example:
One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”
Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”
Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:
Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.
Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.
Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.
Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.
Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.
Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”
Here are some pros:
- I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
- I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli and Salmonella.
- I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
- I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
- I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.
Cons
- It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
- Relying on soy is bad for the body.
- My body craves animal protein.
- Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.
Essay Option Four:
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the lifestyle described in Joseph Epstein's essay "The Perpetual Adolescent" is antithetical to the kind of meaning that Viktor Frankl defines in his book Man's Search for Meaning. Use the Toulmin essay model.
Essay Option Five:
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that logotherapy is vastly superior than traditional psychotherapy for achieving the kind of meaning Frankl defines in his book Man's Search for Meaning. Use Toulmin essay model.
English 1C Consistency Project—SLO Assignment
1. Students will express critical viewpoints and develop original thesis-driven arguments in response to social, political, and philosophical issues and/or to works of literature and literary theory. This argumentative essay will be well organized, demonstrate an ability to support a claim using analysis and elements of argumentation, and integrate primary and secondary sources.
2. The paper should use at least three sources and not over-rely on one secondary source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
3. This paper will be approximately 4-5 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. The Works Cited page does NOT count toward length requirement.
4. Within your argument, address issues of bias, credibility, and relevance in primary and secondary sources.
5. Demonstrate understanding of analytical methods and structural concepts such as inductive and deductive reasoning, cause and effect, logos, ethos, and pathos, and the recognition of formal and informal fallacies in language and thought.
6. You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
7. You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
8. You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Old Version with Links
One. Students will express critical viewpoints and develop original thesis-driven arguments in response to social, political, and philosophical issues and/or to works of literature and literary theory. This argumentative essay will be well organized, demonstrate an ability to support a claim using analysis and elements of argumentation, and integrate primary and secondary sources.
Two. The paper should use at least three sources and not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
Three. This paper will be approximately 4-5 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. The Works Cited page does NOT count toward length requirement.
Four. Within your argument, address issues of bias, credibility, and relevance.
Five. Analyze and employ logical structural methods such as inductive and deductive reasoning, cause and effect, logos, ethos, and pathos, and demonstrate understanding of formal and informal fallacies in language and thought.
Six. You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
Seven. You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases (knowing how to introduce quoted material) and analysis or commentary.
Eight. You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Nine. You must turn in two hard copies of the essay to me, so I can submit one to the division, so no email attachments.
English 1C Instructors Use an SLO (Student Learning Outcome) Check Form
SLO 1 (Thesis Support) Essay shows an ability to support a claim using analysis, elements of argumentation, and integration of primary and secondary sources. Acceptable/Unacceptable
SLO 2 (Critical Thinking) Argument reflects an ability to identify and assess bias, credibility, and relevance in their own arguments and in the arguments of others, including primary and secondary outside sources. Acceptable/Unacceptable
SLO 3 (MLA, grammar) Essay is well organized in proper MLA format AND is technically correct in paragraph composition, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and usage. Acceptable/Unacceptable
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