The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
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Analyze the manner in which the fable Death in Tehran explains the entire book Man's Search for Meaning. Your thesis should have 4 mapping components, and your essay must have 4 supporting body paragraphs.
Fourth Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Thesis Sample:
Through the lens of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Groundhog Day's universal themes of damnation and salvation become crystal clear. We see that Phil Connors is without meaning a damned man doomed to live in an eternal loop of nothingness and despair. We see that without hope for a meaningful existence, Connors surrenders to his beastly impulses of cynicism and petulant childishness, resulting in his disconnection from himself and the human race. We see that Connors must be redeemed by love, one of the three ways humans find meaning, according to Frankl. Finally, we see that it is only the primary drive for meaning that, like the logotherapy used by Viktor Frankl, can provide the therapy and healing Connors' shrunken soul needs.
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction.
Sample Thesis That Shows How Election is a Refutation of Man's Search for Meaning
The characters in Alexander Payne's masterpiece Election (1999) refute Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in compelling ways. For one, the characters lack the self-awareness to make the kind of choices or show the type of "freedom" that Frankl says we must utilize to find meaning. For two, the characters' earnest attempts to find meaning and structure in their lives prove to backfire and send them down a rabbit hole of moral dissolution and self-destruction suggesting that our most zealous efforts for meaning are contaminated by the unsavory impulses of the unconscious. For three, Tracy Flick's "meaning" and structure proves to be no meaning at all but rather unbridled ambition. Fourth, the movie's symbolism argues for a world governed by determinism through the environment and hard-wiring rather than a world populated by people who can make legitimate choices. Fifth, the movie's very title Election shows the ambiguity of choice: We "elect" to do things while at the same time life elects to place people in their place in the world's soulless machine.
For paragraph 1, summarize Frankl's book.
For paragraph2, summarize the movie Election.
For paragraph 3, write a thesis that presents your argument about meaning as you pit the book against the movie.
Paragraphs 4-10 should support your thesis.
Paragraph 11 will be your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
Things to Consider:
The emptiness of the adults whose conventions lack power, meaning, and soul. They are the blind leading the blind.
Mr. M's swollen eye is like a metaphor of original sin, blindness, and crippling affliction. The closed eye also speaks to his lack of self-awareness.
Tracy Flick is a shark, an ambitious predator with no moral compass who believes, erroneously, that she has a moral compass.
School is a place of cycles, people coming in, people coming out. We also see a lot of garbage in the movie, garbage coming in, and garbage coming out.
The sprinklers seem like metaphors for a deity of Deism, the impersonal mechanized god who does not intervene in human affairs.
Resources:
You may use the short story, "Critical Thinking," I wrote about the conversation I had with a student on this subject.
First Option
Defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Sample Thesis That Shows How Election is a Refutation of Man's Search for Meaning
The characters in Alexander Payne's masterpiece Election (1999) refute Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in compelling ways. For one, the characters lack the self-awareness to make the kind of choices or show the type of "freedom" that Frankl says we must utilize to find meaning. For two, the characters' earnest attempts to find meaning and structure in their lives prove to backfire and send them down a rabbit hole of moral dissolution and self-destruction suggesting that our most zealous efforts for meaning are contaminated by the unsavory impulses of the unconscious. For three, Tracy Flick's "meaning" and structure proves to be no meaning at all but rather unbridled ambition. Fourth, the movie's symbolism argues for a world governed by determinism through the environment and hard-wiring rather than a world populated by people who can make legitimate choices. Fifth, the movie's very title Election shows the ambiguity of choice: We "elect" to do things while at the same time life elects to place people in their place in the world's soulless machine.
Resource:
You may use the short story, "Critical Thinking," I wrote about the conversation I had with a student on this subject.
Third Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Sample Thesis of Student Who Opposes Frankl on Grounds That Frankl Is Religious
Frankl believes in God (he is a theist), and the philosophy that informs his book Man's Search for Meaning is based on Frankl's theism. Take away religious faith and all the precepts of Frankl's book come crashing down like a deck of cards. A close look at the book from an atheist's point of view reveals that the book is full of faith-based aphorisms and homilies that cannot be believed unless one is religious. The notion of meaning is false since no one can prove there is any meaning at all. We have adapted to cooperate with one another and have evolved morality, but these developments do not point to any meaning or any God. Frankl's heroism is not the result of his choice to have the right attitude toward his suffering but rather the result of his hard-wiring and environment. Lots of decent people would not have performed so heroically in Frankl's circumstances, and they should not be ashamed if they are more selfish when faced with such excruciating circumstances. My third point is that if everyone were like Viktor Frankl, a goody two shoes, the world would be a boring place. Many of our most famous comedians who preach cynicism, hopelessness, misanthropy, and life's essential meaninglessness, provide us with therapeutic laughter precisely because they have never found "meaning" or the pious attitude toward life that Frankl would impose on the rest of us. Finally, since the "meaning" of one person with one religious faith collides with the "meaning" of a person who practices a different religious faith, we can conclude that "meaning" is an illusion based on a person's delusion belief in God. Looking at the evidence, we are forced to conclude that Man's Search for Meaning is simply a mouthpiece for religious dogma and does nothing to convince me or anyone that "meaning" exists.
Fourth Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Thesis Sample:
Through the lens of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Groundhog Day's universal themes of damnation and salvation become crystal clear. We see that Phil Connors is without meaning a damned man doomed to live in an eternal loop of nothingness and despair. We see that without hope for a meaningful existence, Connors surrenders to his beastly impulses of cynicism and petulant childishness, resulting in his disconnection from himself and the human race. We see that Connors must be redeemed by love, one of the three ways humans find meaning, according to Frankl. Finally, we see that it is only the primary drive for meaning that, like the logotherapy used by Viktor Frankl, can provide the therapy and healing Connors' shrunken soul needs.
Fifth Option:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should 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.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Overview: The Thirteen Tenets (Principles) from Man’s Search for Meaning
Before we examine disingenuous and sincere nihilism, we should first look at nihilism’s opposite, the belief in meaning as laid out by Viktor Frankl, of which there are thirteen major tenets:
The human condition is suffering and the only viable response to suffering is to find meaning. We must therefore acknowledge that there is a purpose in life, greater than the purpose we find in creative work and passive enjoyment, which “admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.” It is imperative that we are motivated first and foremost by this higher purpose. Without a purpose, our life drags on day after day in a tiring monotony that we try to fill with consumerism, addictions, texting friends, etc.
“Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress” as was endured in the concentration camps. Acknowledging this freedom, we must defy being a “plaything of circumstance” and thus we must understand that “there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man’s ‘nothingbutness,’ the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances.” We are neither pawn nor victim. Rather, we possess an inner freedom that cannot be lost no matter how extreme the circumstances. This inner freedom allows us to be worthy of our suffering. And being worthy of our suffering is the ultimatum life presents us: Either be worthy of our suffering, or not.
Life presents us with the moral imperative to treat our life as something of significance and consequence and the converse is also true: We must not despise our lives and treat our lives as if they were of no consequence at all. As Frankl writes: “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom: which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.”
There are moral absolutes in this world evidenced in part by Frankl dividing the world into two races of people, decent and indecent.
We have to do more than imagine a life of meaning; we must actually live it. Frankl writes: “Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” We are additionally accountable for the responsibilities life demands of us.
We must embrace suffering, the finiteness of life, and death to maximize and complete our life. “Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
We must radically alter our attitude by changing our orientation from “What do I expect from life?” to “What does life expect from me?” This question brings up our number one responsibility in life, to embrace meaning when it knocks on our door. We don’t choose meaning; meaning chooses us.
There is no One Size Fits All Meaning. Every person’s meaning is specific to his or her circumstances.
We must confront the emotions that seem so overwhelming; otherwise those emotions will devour us. Quoting from Spinoza, Frankl writes: “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” It’s another way of saying that when we confront our demons, they often lose their power over us.
We must not abuse and squander freedom by imitating our oppressors. For example, if our boss abuses us, we should not later in life abuse our workers when we ascend to positions of high authority.
Meaning cannot be found within ourselves; it must be found in the world. As Frankl writes: “By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
No matter how despicable and worthless our lives have been, we are called to redeem ourselves by living out the essential rule of logotherapy: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
Only a few people are capable of reaching great spiritual heights but the difficulty and small percentage of people who do reach such great heights does not abnegate our responsibility for pursuing a life of higher meaning.
A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro.
Compliment is a to say something nice about someone. "You look nice in that pumpkin polo shirt. Very nice pumpkin accents."
Complement is to complete or match well with something. "This full-bodied red wine complements the spaghetti."
The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan.
The word should be accepted.
Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers.
Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following:
Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers.
Confusing their and there
There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays.
We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their.
Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause
Terrified of slimy foods, Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster.
In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters, I attended the carnival with my family.
Three. Incomplete documentation
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness.”
It should read:
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness” (277).
Four. Vague Pronoun Reference
Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises.
Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend.
Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings)
No one came forward to bare witness to the crime.
No one came forward to bear witness to the crime.
Every where we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Everywhere we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Six. Mechanical error with a quotation
In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”.
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.”
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Seven. Unnecessary comma
I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations.
You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses:
I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels.
I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine.
You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because:
Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday.
Peaches, that are green, taste hideous.
The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas.
However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas:
Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit.
Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedraremain legal.
We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships.
Nine. Missing word
The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience.
The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience.
Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help.
Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help.
Ten. Faulty sentence structure
The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply.
A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures.
The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy.
I prefer yoga at home to the gym because of privacy.
11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak.
The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak.
A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp.
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient.
Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister.
A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)
Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being.
The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat.
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.
15. Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
16. Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
18. Poorly Integrated Quotation
A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Corrected
In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.
Corrected
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.
Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
This paper looks at fictional and real life examples.
A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen.
The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it.
A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements.
20. Sentence Fragment
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Peer Edit for Typed Essay (First Draft)
First Page
Do you have a salient, distinctive title that is relevant to your topic and thesis?
Do you have your name, instructor’s name, the course, and date (in that order) at the top left?
Format
Are you using 12-point font with Times New Roman?
Are your lines double-spaced?
Is your font color black?
Do you make sure there are no extra spaces between paragraphs (some students erroneously use 4 spaces between paragraphs)
Do you use 1-inch margins?
Do you use block format for quotes of 4 or more lines in which you indent another inch from the left margin?
Introduction
Does your introduction have a compelling hook using an anecdote, a troubling current event, a startling statistic, etc.?
Do you avoid pat phrases or clichés? For example, “In today’s society . . .” or “In today’s modern world . . .” or “Since the Dawn of Man . . .”
Thesis
Do you have a thesis that articulates your main purpose in clear, specific language?
Is your thesis sophisticated in that it makes an assertion that goes beyond the obvious and self-evident?
Is your thesis debatable?
Do you address your opponents with a concession clause? (While opponents of my proposal to raise the minimum wage to $22 an hour make some compelling points, their argument collapses when we consider _____________, _______________, __________________, and ________________. )
Does your thesis have explicit or implicit mapping components that outline the body paragraphs of your essay?
Questions from Your Reader (write on a separate page so you’ll have more room to write)
One. What’s most compelling about the essay so far?
Two. What is most needed for improvement so far?
Three. Something I would like the writer to explain more is . . .
Four. One last comment would be . . .
Five. What is the writer’s thesis?
Six. On a scale of 1-10, how compelling is the thesis and what could make it more compelling?
Seven. On a scale of 1-10, how effective is the title? Could it be improved? How?
Eight. Does the writer have well developed paragraphs with clear topic sentences?
Nine. Does the writer use a diversity of paragraph transitions?
Ten. Does the writer use diverse and appropriate signal phrases?
Analyze the manner in which the fable Death in Tehran explains the entire book Man's Search for Meaning. Your thesis should have 4 mapping components, and your essay must have 4 supporting body paragraphs.
Fourth Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Thesis Sample:
Through the lens of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Groundhog Day's universal themes of damnation and salvation become crystal clear. We see that Phil Connors is without meaning a damned man doomed to live in an eternal loop of nothingness and despair. We see that without hope for a meaningful existence, Connors surrenders to his beastly impulses of cynicism and petulant childishness, resulting in his disconnection from himself and the human race. We see that Connors must be redeemed by love, one of the three ways humans find meaning, according to Frankl. Finally, we see that it is only the primary drive for meaning that, like the logotherapy used by Viktor Frankl, can provide the therapy and healing Connors' shrunken soul needs.
Thesis That Refutes Frankl
Attempts to impose the themes of Man's Search for Meaning on the film Groundhog Day are misguided when we consider that Phil Connors' purgatory-like fable is a fantasy with little relevance to real life. We do not have the luxury of reforming our souls for hundreds of years like Connors did. Second, Connors doesn't find meaning, in the Viktor Frankl sense; he simply adapts to his environment in order that he not go crazy. Third, in the cinematic fantasy, Connors becomes a goody-two-shoes caricature that has no resemblance to the complexities that afflict real human beings. Finally, the tidy resolution of this rom-com does not capture the messiness of real life. To think we can become like Phil Connors is to set up ourselves for disappoint, guilt, and unrealistic expectations. Once again, McMahon, you've chosen a lame movie and a lame writing assignment. Come up with something better, please.
Thesis That Defends McMahon's Essay Assignment
While Groundhog Day is an allegorical fantasy that cannot be construed as a handbook for living out Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, McMahon's assignment does an excellent job of having us compare Connors' plight with the universal struggle Frankl describes in his book. For one, Connors must suffer the existential vacuum and the self-destruction that accompanies it. Second, Connors becomes a nihilistic animal cut off from others and himself. Third, Connors finds a goal and a purpose that shatters his ego and cultivates discipline and self-reform. Fourth, Connors learns to love others and the community, and this connection gives him a form of meaning that abates his toxic egotism. Fifth, Connors undergoes a radical attitude shift, the kind Frankl says we must undergo if we are to conquer the despair of suffering and death.
Thesis That Refutes the Above
While Phil Connors adheres to Frankl's template, we must remind ourselves that the movie is an allegorical slice of life with little bearing on the messiness of human life. Likewise, Frankl's attempt to impose meaning on the evil he witnessed in the concentration camps is a contrived narrative informed by religious and human potential dogma. These dogmas collapse when held under the light of close scrutiny upon which we discover that meaning is an illusion, good people may or may not find "meaning," many evil people find "meaning," much of the world's suffering is, contrary to what Frankl argues, senseless, and many good people do sometimes lose their "inner freedom" to choose their attitude toward suffering.
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction.
Sample Thesis That Shows How Election is a Refutation of Man's Search for Meaning
The characters in Alexander Payne's masterpiece Election (1999) refute Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in compelling ways. For one, the characters lack the self-awareness to make the kind of choices or show the type of "freedom" that Frankl says we must utilize to find meaning. For two, the characters' earnest attempts to find meaning and structure in their lives prove to backfire and send them down a rabbit hole of moral dissolution and self-destruction suggesting that our most zealous efforts for meaning are contaminated by the unsavory impulses of the unconscious. For three, Tracy Flick's "meaning" and structure proves to be no meaning at all but rather unbridled ambition. Fourth, the movie's symbolism argues for a world governed by determinism through the environment and hard-wiring rather than a world populated by people who can make legitimate choices. Fifth, the movie's very title Election shows the ambiguity of choice: We "elect" to do things while at the same time life elects to place people in their place in the world's soulless machine.
For paragraph 1, summarize Frankl's book.
For paragraph2, summarize the movie Election.
For paragraph 3, write a thesis that presents your argument about meaning as you pit the book against the movie.
Paragraphs 4-10 should support your thesis.
Paragraph 11 will be your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
Things to Consider:
The emptiness of the adults whose conventions lack power, meaning, and soul. They are the blind leading the blind.
Mr. M's swollen eye is like a metaphor of original sin, blindness, and crippling affliction. The closed eye also speaks to his lack of self-awareness.
Tracy Flick is a shark, an ambitious predator with no moral compass who believes, erroneously, that she has a moral compass.
School is a place of cycles, people coming in, people coming out. We also see a lot of garbage in the movie, garbage coming in, and garbage coming out.
The sprinklers seem like metaphors for a deity of Deism, the impersonal mechanized god who does not intervene in human affairs.
Resources:
You may use the short story, "Critical Thinking," I wrote about the conversation I had with a student on this subject.
First Option
Defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Sample Thesis
Nikolai from "Gooseberries" provides us a cautionary tale of what happens when we run from meaning and in its place fill the void with egotism, avarice, indolence, and self-centered solipsism.
Sample Thesis That Shows How Election is a Refutation of Man's Search for Meaning
The characters in Alexander Payne's masterpiece Election (1999) refute Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in compelling ways. For one, the characters lack the self-awareness to make the kind of choices or show the type of "freedom" that Frankl says we must utilize to find meaning. For two, the characters' earnest attempts to find meaning and structure in their lives prove to backfire and send them down a rabbit hole of moral dissolution and self-destruction suggesting that our most zealous efforts for meaning are contaminated by the unsavory impulses of the unconscious. For three, Tracy Flick's "meaning" and structure proves to be no meaning at all but rather unbridled ambition. Fourth, the movie's symbolism argues for a world governed by determinism through the environment and hard-wiring rather than a world populated by people who can make legitimate choices. Fifth, the movie's very title Election shows the ambiguity of choice: We "elect" to do things while at the same time life elects to place people in their place in the world's soulless machine.
Resource:
You may use the short story, "Critical Thinking," I wrote about the conversation I had with a student on this subject.
Third Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Sample Thesis of Student Who Opposes Frankl on Grounds That Frankl Is Religious
Frankl believes in God (he is a theist), and the philosophy that informs his book Man's Search for Meaning is based on Frankl's theism. Take away religious faith and all the precepts of Frankl's book come crashing down like a deck of cards. A close look at the book from an atheist's point of view reveals that the book is full of faith-based aphorisms and homilies that cannot be believed unless one is religious. The notion of meaning is false since no one can prove there is any meaning at all. We have adapted to cooperate with one another and have evolved morality, but these developments do not point to any meaning or any God. Frankl's heroism is not the result of his choice to have the right attitude toward his suffering but rather the result of his hard-wiring and environment. Lots of decent people would not have performed so heroically in Frankl's circumstances, and they should not be ashamed if they are more selfish when faced with such excruciating circumstances. My third point is that if everyone were like Viktor Frankl, a goody two shoes, the world would be a boring place. Many of our most famous comedians who preach cynicism, hopelessness, misanthropy, and life's essential meaninglessness, provide us with therapeutic laughter precisely because they have never found "meaning" or the pious attitude toward life that Frankl would impose on the rest of us. Finally, since the "meaning" of one person with one religious faith collides with the "meaning" of a person who practices a different religious faith, we can conclude that "meaning" is an illusion based on a person's delusion belief in God. Looking at the evidence, we are forced to conclude that Man's Search for Meaning is simply a mouthpiece for religious dogma and does nothing to convince me or anyone that "meaning" exists.
Thesis That Defends Frankl
We dismiss Frankl's book as being "too religious" at our peril, for we are all religious in our own particular way or not. The question is does our "religion" point to goodness and meaning? Clearly, Frankl's book points to both and we are well served to follow its universal principles of _____________, _______________, ______________, and ______________.
Fourth Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Thesis Sample:
Through the lens of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Groundhog Day's universal themes of damnation and salvation become crystal clear. We see that Phil Connors is without meaning a damned man doomed to live in an eternal loop of nothingness and despair. We see that without hope for a meaningful existence, Connors surrenders to his beastly impulses of cynicism and petulant childishness, resulting in his disconnection from himself and the human race. We see that Connors must be redeemed by love, one of the three ways humans find meaning, according to Frankl. Finally, we see that it is only the primary drive for meaning that, like the logotherapy used by Viktor Frankl, can provide the therapy and healing Connors' shrunken soul needs.
Fifth Option:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should 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.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
The Four Realms of Meaning Mountain
At the bottom of Meaning Mountain is the bottom-dwelling realm, the land of the sloths, miscreants, narcissists, predatory hedonists, fops, dandies, pathological liars, impostors, grifters, mountebanks, snake oil salesmen, and other members of the Moral Dissolution Club. No fair-minded or decent human aspires to exist in this loathsome realm.
Traveling north up Meaning Mountain, we arrive at the middle realm, the land most people aspire to. Middle Mountain, as it's often called, hosts the world's decent people who do their work, fulfill their responsibilities, remain faithful to their partner and seek a life of security and comfort according to society's social contract.
These individuals seek the 8 Essential Needs, which we will peruse below. The people are "nice" but they tend to be invisible and rarely achieve anything "groundshaking" pertaining to the progress of the planet. For them meaning takes a back seat to comfort and security. They don't "make waves"; they simply get cozy in their cave and put their life on auto-pilot. But they fall short of Frankl because they avoid tension and conflict (105).
Between the middle and the top realm are the creative producers, those who flourish in their passion. They may not pursue Frankl's edict of self-sacrifice, but they do not settle for the mediocrity that pervades the people just below them. Often these people change society with their scientific breakthroughs and innovations. Think Apple and Steve Jobs. More generally, think about comedians, entertainers, actors, writers, musicians, artists, etc. These people cannot bear living without the torment of a struggle to better their work and art. To quit working would be, for them, a death.
Climbing past the cumulus clouds and then the misty shroud, we are now at Realm Four, the peak of Meaning Mountain. We are now in the presence of a rarefied breed of people, those disciples of Full-Potency Frankl. These are brave souls who cast away comfort and comformity to pursue Frankl's edict to take their cross and give up their life for the sake of others, to embrace suffering, theirs and the world's, and to seek what Life demands of them. For the Full-Potency Frankl acolytes, comfort and security take a back seat to meaning, sacrifice, and public service. Most people who change the world for the better come from this hard-to-reach mountain peak.
Looking at the Writing Assignment Through the Dialectical Method (going back and forth between thesis and anti-thesis, support and refutation, to arrive a more informed opinion)
Man’s Search for Meaning Essay Assignment(Expanded)
Viktor Frankl argues in Man’s Search for Meaning that in the face of suffering (the dominant feature of existence), we must use our free will to choose the appropriate attitude toward that suffering. We can either see suffering as cause to be angry animals, looking at life as little more than a place of senseless futility that justifies an attitude of nihilism so that our life is little more than unleashing our beastly, hedonistic passions and live a life of alienated selfishness. Or in the face of suffering we can elevate our humanity by adopting an attitude that says we must find courage, conviction, and moral righteousness through a Higher Purpose or Meaning.
Viktor Frankl witnessed both attitudes in the concentration camps. He observed people either descended into moral dissolution, becoming dehumanized animals who lived a day-to-day existence without purpose, or they found a purpose that preserved and even elevated their humanity. His mission in Man’s Search for Meaning is to persuade us to become Destiny Seekers, people who becoming morally righteous by finding meaning.
However, there is a camp of thinking that is skeptical of the idea of meaning for four reasons.
The first reason that meaning is so subjective, varying from person to person, that to discuss it as an essential life force therefore is absurd.
Secondly, the skeptic will argue that people don’t have any objective meaning. Rather, they pursue some illusion or other that gives them a sense of purpose—perhaps a false one—that gives them motivation. In other words, people motivate themselves by making up all sorts of incentives, but these incentives could be less about “meaning” and more about chimeras.
A third point of skepticism is that there are people who find meaning in very disturbing ways, most notably by being brainwashed and manipulated such as a person who converts to a religious cult or perhaps to some extremist ideology.
The skeptic’s fourth point of contention is that she will argue that we cannot choose meaning because we are not agents of free will; rather, we are agents beholden to forces we cannot control, namely, determinism, the philosophy that states our biology and environment affect our behavior and that “choices” are just an illusion. We say we “chose” to do something after the fact, but in truth, we were hard-wired to act in such a way.
Addressing the skeptic’s points above, support, refute, or complicate Frankl’s argument that we are responsible to be Destiny Seekers and find our own meaning in order that we make the appropriate response to a life of suffering and that failure to find meaning will doom us to the hell of the “existential vacuum.”
Suggested Structure for Idea That Frankl's Book is "Too Religious":
Introduction: Frame the debate or write a compelling anecdote that transitions to your thesis.
Thesis
Paragraphs Address Each of the Skeptic’s Points
One or two paragraphs address the idea that meaning is too individual and subjective.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that meaning is an illusion we use to motivate ourselves.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that “meaning” or a found purpose can be the result of brainwashing and manipulation.
One or two paragraphs that address the idea that we don’t choose meaning; some of us may have a sense of meaning, but only because we are hard-wired to. In contrast, some of us are hardwired to NOT have a sense of meaning and be okay with that.
Two counterargument-refutation paragraphs that address your opponents’ views.
Important Note
If you're refuting the skeptics point by point, the counterargument section is not necessary because your WHOLE essay is a refutation.
Conclusion
Conclusion is a more emotional (pathos) restatement of your thesis.
Skeptic’s First Argument:
Meaning is too subjective, varying from individual to individual, so we cannot speak about meaning. If everything is meaning, then nothing is meaning. Meaning must be distinct from all the motivations people claim to be meaning.
Counterargument
Frankl would agree that meaning must be distinct from greed, ambition, consumerism, and all the other false meanings people claim to be meaning. He would argue that there are common characteristics of real meaning.
Some of those common characteristics are maturity, improved priorities, less egotism, moral integrity, empathy, and acting on social justice. Perhaps most importantly, our individual life experience makes meaning different for all of us.
For example, a young man who was abused in the foster parent system grows up to counsel people who were abused by adults.
A drug addict goes to college to become a counselor for drug addicts.
In the examples above, the meanings are different, but they have common qualities.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal to the Above Counterargument
Even if we concede that all the different “meanings” people discover have commonality in the realm of morality and helping others, we still have the problem of motive.
For example, a mother adopts babies whose mothers are drug addicts. These babies have enormous needs and impose enormous stress on the woman’s two biological children. The biological children condemn their mother as having a martyr’s complex. Her ego hungers for suffering to define herself as a martyr and she enjoys others seeing her in this dramatic role. The children claim that egotism, not empathy and compassion, is the driving force. So the woman’s “meaning” is a false one.
Such false meanings are described in Larissa MacFarquhar's Strangers Drowning, a nonfiction book about "do-gooders."
Frankl Defender’s Counterargument to Skeptic’s Rebuttal
I concede that the mother and people like her may have bad motivations for doing meaningful things. I might even go so far to admit that the majority of people use the wrong motivations to define their meaning and purpose. But these bad examples fail to negate that there are truly good people out there, Viktor Frankl included, who do good deeds that match their good motivations.
If we heed the skeptic’s cynicism, we will be blind to those truly good people who have both good motivations and a higher purpose. These good people are our role models and heroes. The cynic is blind to their deeds and he appears to eager to make us as blind as he is.
Skeptic’s Second Argument:
What we call meaning is simply an illusion. People have all sorts of “meaning,” but they merely create illusions or chimeras to chase and then they call these illusions their “meaning.”
Counterargument
Frankl would concede that there are many people pursuing false meaning, but that fact does not negate that there is real meaning.
Frankl is a moral absolutist who believes in right and wrong and two races of people: decent and indecent. Clearly, if someone’s “meaning” doesn’t have a moral outcome, then Frankl would be the first to admit that that person has not found real meaning at all but is pursuing an illusion.
But like in the first argument, if 95% of people are chasing a false meaning, that doesn’t mean a real meaning does not exist.
It appears that arguments 1 and 2 are very close and in fact may intersect at many levels. I’ll leave it to the students to decide if they should fuse arguments 1 and 2 into one argument or keep them separate.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal
Who is Frankl to be the arbiter to what is real and false meaning? He gives us no ultimate guide in his book. Further, people could pursue a false meaning with a moral outcome.
For example, a man who lives a reckless life as a bachelor, may drink the “let’s get married in the suburbs” Kool-Aid and settle down in some suburban neighborhood.
Clearly, this suburbanite’s existence is morally superior to that of his reckless bachelor days, but he is now simply a sedated, mindless consumer of the middle class, a zombie who’s disappeared into his domestic cave where he watches Netflix and obeys his wife’s shrill commands.
Frankl Defender’s Counterargument to the Skeptic’s Rebuttal
Frankl would concede that this tamed suburban husband leads an empty life. While slightly more moral than his bachelor version of himself, he is still someone who falls short of meaning.
This suburban man needs to find a Higher Purpose.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal
This married man is too extended, barely treading water to make ends meet in a brutal economy. Feeding his wife and children is an almost insurmountable task. The married man does not have the luxury to ponder meaning. When we exert all our energy to make ends meet, we don’t have the time or energy to about things like meaning. We live one day at a time as we try to make ends meet for our family.
I’ll concede that some people, like Viktor Frankl and drug and abuse counselors find some kind of meaning, but Frankl’s book is not universal.
For working stiffs who are barely making it, life is provisional and day to day and all about survival. And it’s NOTHING about meaning and higher purpose.
That’s my problem with Frankl’s book. It’s applicable to some people but not all people. It’s not universal.
A lot of us, through no fault of our own, get in a rut, and there’s no free will that can change that. Life is a treadmill and when the time is up we die.
Sorry, Frankl cheerleaders of the world, I’m a Meaning Skeptic.
Frankl Defender’s Rebuttal to the Above
Frankl would disagree with you. His thesis is that no matter what your circumstances you have the freedom to choose your attitude.
If you’re a working stiff, as you say, barely making it, you have little right to complain in the context of Frankl surviving in the concentration camp.
Therefore, your problem is that you are a whiner. Blame yourself, not Frankl.
Skeptic’s Third Argument
A lot of people find meaning but only through brainwashing and manipulation. What do we say of cult followers who lead extremist lives as they slave for the abusive cult personality? They found “meaning,” but they were brainwashed and manipulated.
Hitler and his followers found “meaning,” but they were evil, psychotic, or both.
Counterargument
Frankl would concede that brainwashing is not meaning. But remember, the meaning Frankl found was not through brainwashing but blood, sweat, and tears.
Let us not use bad examples, to dismiss a legitimate idea. That is a logical fallacy. For every brainwashed person there is a person who found real meaning on his or her own terms.
Skeptic’s Fourth Argument
We don’t choose meaning. We don’t even have free will. We are bound to determinism, the principle that biology and environment govern our actions. Free will is an illusion.
Counterargument
We can concede that biology and environment do indeed hard-wire us to behave in a certain way. But when we find meaning, we transcend our deterministic limitations. Viktor Frankl is the embodiment of this principle.
We can choose our attitude to find meaning in suffering or turn to hedonism and nihilism, which are false balms for the inevitable suffering life throws at us.
Skeptic’s Rebuttal
Frankl had no free will. He was born a good person and his goodness was reinforced by his upbringing. His “choices” were simply the behavior of a man programmed to be good.
Frankl Defender’s Rebuttal
You are wrong, Mr. Skeptic. Free will is a muscle that can be developed. The more you resist temptation and exercise discipline, the stronger your free will becomes. The empirical evidence shows this to be true.
When you choose to eat right, exercise, study, show kindness to others, to name a few examples, you will find rewards that reinforce that good behavior.
Both determinism and free will exist simultaneously.
Skeptic’s Fifth Argument
I know people who don’t have meaning. They’ve never read Viktor Frankl or any religious polemic. They have no religion. They have no “meaning.” However, they lead fulfilled lives because they live in the present and they experience connection with their family, friends, community, and the world at large.
I don’t believe you need meaning, as Frankl defines it, but you do need connection.
Counterargument
I’ll concede that there are people out there who are hard-wired or predetermined to be happy. They are at peace with themselves. They live in the present. They are connected to others.
However, their lives have not been tested. Frankl warns us that everything can be taken from us at any time.
Yes, some of us seem to live a life that appears like “smooth sailing,” but that never lasts forever. Be prepared. Find a higher purpose before it’s too late.
Skeptic’s Sixth Argument
I’ll concede that some meaning exists for some people. However, meaning is not universal. And motivations behind meaning are too complicated. While Frankl is a good man who found meaning, his book fails to be a universal “one size fits all” self-help book.
The book succeeds as a book of inspirational literature in which we can admire the rare man Frankl, a truly exceptional hero.
But his claim that we can all find meaning and choose our attitude toward suffering, is too general and doesn’t fit with all the complexities I’ve described.
Meaning is not either/or. You don’t have meaning or not have it.
Rather, meaning is relative. You have some meaning some of the time, more meaning some of the time, less meaning some of the time, and no meaning some of the time. That’s the human condition for many of us.
Skeptic’s Thesis
While I admire Frankl and concede that many can benefit from heeding the lessons in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, his thesis, that all of us must find meaning as the solution to human suffering, fails to persuade in light of the many good people who simply don’t have the time or energy to find meaning, the unfathomable motivations that drive people’s alleged “meaning,” the deterministic factors, not free will, that determine if we find meaning or not, and some people are simply “connected” and do not need “meaning.”
Frankl Defender’s Thesis
While I concede that Frankl’s book has some flaws that are correctly exposed by his skeptics, the empirical evidence compels us to use our free will to elevate ourselves in the face of suffering and to seek a higher purpose that goes beyond blind consumerism and nihilistic despair.
Logotherapy
One. Why is logotherapy, a variation of psychotherapy, “difficult to hear”?
Unlike psychotherapy, which is retrospective and introspective, focusing on the patient’s past, logotherapy “focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.” Logotherapy is “meaning therapy.”
For Frankl, finding meaning is our primary drive, not materialism, power, or sex. We seek purpose first; everything else second.
If we had all our physical needs met either by an inheritance or the government so that we did not have to work and all we did was lounge around, eat, watch TV, engage in social media, and gossip with friends, what would happen to us?
We would die a slow death. We would plummet into despair. We would become zombies, addicts, empty vessels, lost souls. We need a purpose to lift us up from the mire of emptiness and despair.
In John Gatto’s famous essay “Against School,” he writes that students and teachers alike are afflicted boredom. As we read this essay, it becomes clear that boredom is a disease and a psychological cancer that results from engaging in an institution that does not provide meaning but rather wastes our time by warehousing individuals in a glorified baby-sitting service complete with “busy work” that has no meaning whatsoever. A place where we languish and slog toward nothing is equivalent to hell.
In other words, the patient will not play the role of a victim wounded by past events; rather, the patient is held accountable to be responsible to find meaning that will give his or her life purpose out of the mess of suffering.
Frankl criticizes conventional psychotherapy because it puts us in “all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.”
For Frankl, finding meaning is the way to overcome one’s neuroses, not sinking into one’s past wounds.
Too often, revisiting one’s past wounds is an indulgence, an exercise in victimization and narcissism.
Two. Explain why Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Self-help books promise easy happiness and “10 easy steps.” In contrast, Frankl argues that we shouldn’t even strive for happiness. Happiness is the unintended byproduct of meaning.
Second, Frankl says we should seek struggle, tension, conflict, and embrace our suffering as the source of our meaning.
Frankl writes, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
Three. What is the existential vacuum and what two forces contribute to it?
The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the 20th century. This is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).
A statistical survey recently revealed that among my European students, 25 percent showed a more or less marked degree of existential vacuum. Among my American students, it was not 25 but 60 percent.
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly brining to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time.
Let us consider, for instance, "Sunday Neurosis", that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. Not a few cases of suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. This is also true of the crises of pensioners and aging people.
Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will do meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates into sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
We see from above the following:
One, humans have lost their instincts and no longer have the animal certainty of their behavior, and they are now prone to second-guessing everything and wondering if they’re “right” in their choices and actions.
Second, there are no longer rituals and traditions that make us feel part of something bigger than us. We therefore feel isolated and out of place.
Not knowing what to do and feeling out of place, we rely on conformism or blind obedience to authority. These actions take away our sense of autonomy, freedom, independence, and sense of higher purpose. We’re merely mindless sheep conforming to society’s standards or obeying orders.
Conformity and obedience may help us “fit in,” but most of us will suffer from the acute disease called boredom.
Boredom is not seen in our society for the disease that it really is. Boredom is a pseudonym for more virulent conditions:
Depression
Ennui, bored not with a specific task or event but with life itself.
Acedia, the sluggishness and lethargy resulting from having no higher purpose
Futility, the sense that our actions don’t amount to anything, that all our actions are useless
Learned helplessness
Hopelessness
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.
Frankl writes that boredom causes depression, aggression, and addiction (107).
Four. What “various masks” does the existential vacuum wear?
We read the following:
Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases, that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
We find that all these masks fail to fill the vacuum in part because of the hedonic treadmill: We adapt to pleasure and power so that they are never enough and we grow numb to the stimulus.
Five. Frankl asserts that the only way to cure ourselves of the existential vacuum is to find the meaning of life. How do we find the meaning of life?
We must now take an excerpt from his book:
The Meaning of Life
I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion, “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
The Essence of Existence
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.
Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibleness; and therefore it must leave to him the option for what, to what or to whom, he understands himself to be responsible. That is why a logotherapist is the least tempted of all psychotherapists to impose value judgments on the patient, for he will never permit the patient to pass to the doctor the responsibility of judging. It is, therefore, up to the patient to decide whether he should interpret his life task as being responsible to society or to his own conscience. The majority, however, consider themselves accountable before God; they represent those who do not interpret their own lives merely in terms of a task assigned to them but also in terms of the task-master who has assigned it to them.
Logotherapy is neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is rather that of an eye specialist than of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it, an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists in widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of meaning and values becomes conscious and visible to him. Logotherapy does not need to impose any judgments on the patient; for, actually, truth imposes itself and needs no intervention.
By declaring that man is a responsible creature and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. By the same token, the real aim of human existence cannot be found in what is called self-actualization. Human existence is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all; for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it. For only to the extent to which man commits himself to the fulfillment of his life’s meaning, to this extent he also actualizes himself. In other words, self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side-effect of self-transcendence. The world must not be regarded as a mere expression of one's self. Nor must the world be considered as a mere instrument, or as a means to the end of one’s self-actualization. In both cases, the world view, or the Weltanschauung, turns into a Weltentwertung, i.e., a depreciation of the world.
Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed, (2) by experiencing a value, (3) by suffering. The first, the way of achievement or accomplishment, is quite obvious. The second and third need further elaboration. The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something, such as a work of nature or culture; and also by experiencing someone, i.e., by love.
The Meaning of Love
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By the spiritual act of love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him; which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon (a phenomenon that occurs as the result of a primary phenomenon) of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex but a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.
A third way to find a meaning in life is by suffering.
The Meaning of Suffering
Whenever one is confronted with an inescapable, unavoidable situation, whenever one has to face a fate which cannot be changed, e.g., an incurable disease, such as an inoperable cancer; just then one is given a last chance to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning of suffering. For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves.
Let me cite a clear-cut example: Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Of course, this was no therapy in the proper sense since, first, his despair was no disease; and second, I could not change his fate, I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see a meaning in his suffering. It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.
It goes without saying that suffering would not have a meaning unless it were absolutely necessary; e.g., a cancer which can be cured by surgery must not be shouldered by the patient as though it were his cross. This would be masochism rather than heroism. But if a doctor can neither heal the disease nor bring relief to the patient by easing his pain, he should enlist the patient’s capacity to fulfill the meaning of his suffering. Traditional psychotherapy has aimed at restoring one's capacity to work and to enjoy life; logotherapy includes these, yet goes further by having the patient regain his capacity to suffer, if need be, thereby finding meaning even in suffering. In this context Edith Weisskopf-Joelson, professor of psychology at Purdue University, contends, in her article on logotherapy, that “our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” And in another paper she expresses the hope that logotherapy “may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.”
There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or to enjoy one's life; but what never can be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one for it even includes the potential meaning of suffering.
Let me recall that which was perhaps the deepest experience I had in the concentration camp. The odds of surviving the camp were no more than 1 to 20, as can easily be verified by exact statistics. It did not even seem possible, let alone probable, that the manuscript of my first book which I had hidden in my coat when I arrived at Auschwitz, would ever be rescued. Thus, I had to undergo and to overcome the loss of my spiritual child. And now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! So I found myself confronted with the question whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning.
Not yet did I notice that an answer to this question with which I was wrestling so passionately was already in store for me, and that soon thereafter this answer would be given to me. This was the case when I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had already been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in a pocket of the newly acquired coat one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the main Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael. How should I have interpreted such a “coincidence” other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?
A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, “Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning.” The question which beset me was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance - as whether one escapes or not - ultimately would not be worth living at all.”
Summary of the Above
One. Meaning is not one size fits all.
Two. Meaning is not abstract.
Three. Meaning is concrete. It is a concrete vocation or mission.
Four. Meaning is problem-based. It’s about problem solving. We find a crisis or a problem and we devote our life to overcoming this crisis or problem.
Five. We don’t choose meaning. Life chooses meaning for us because meaning is based on specific circumstances that are occurring in the moment.
Six. Meaning can only be discovered when we embrace the finiteness of life. We must not treat our lives with reckless contempt as if we are never going to die. Death demands that we change our life so that death cannot take away the meaning of our life.
Seven. Logotherapy, the search for meaning, is not about preaching to the patient: It is about helping the patient see his life through a wider lens so that he can be free to make a wiser decision that will point him to his individual meaning (110).
Eight. Meaning cannot be found in isolation, internally, or “within man or his own psyche”; rather, meaning must be found by engaging in the world.
Nine. Meaning is about self-forgetting: “The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”
Ten. We find meaning in 3 ways: our work, our love for others and the connections forged through that love, and the courageous attitude we adopt toward inevitable suffering.
Eleven. When we discover how our suffering has meaning, we embrace our suffering with a changed attitude that allows us to find meaning (113).
Twelve. The belief that we are entitled to be happy makes us less happy and prevents us from finding a life of meaning.
Establishing Credibility in Your Argument (with your readers and your professors)
Acknowledge weaknesses, exceptions, and complexities in your argument.
Example
Although meaning is not absolute or guaranteed in even people of the highest character, the pursuit of meaning as defined by Viktor Frankl is necessary to combat the potential pitfalls of the human condition evidenced by ____________, ___________, ___________________, and ________________.
Use personal experience when appropriate.
As someone who lived in a car for two years while barely living due to various addictions, I can speak firsthand about how essential Frankl’s brand of logotherapy is for combatting the self-destruction that ensues from living inside the existential vacuum.
As someone who worked twenty years in a hospital ward with special needs babies and toddlers whose mothers were drug addicts, I am convinced that there is a lot of suffering in this world that, contrary to Frankl’s claim, is senseless, absurd, and meaningless.
Mention the qualifications of any sources as a way to boost your own credibility.
According to Harold S. Kushner, best-selling author and noted rabbi, a life serving the public as shown him the truth of Frankl’s spiritual insights, especially in four key points: ____________, _____________, ________________, and _______________.
Acknowledge concession to your opponents’ views to show you’ve entertained both sides of a debatable claim thoroughly.
While Writer X makes a compelling case that there is much suffering in this world that is senseless, our acknowledging this fact actually strengthens my conviction that we are well served to follow Frankl’s path of logotherapy evidenced by ____________, __________, ____________, and _______________.
Show your readers you are considerate enough to define important terms that increase understanding of your essay.
We can use definition by synonym.
One way to define meaning is to equate it with having an “ideal” or a “higher purpose.” While synonym is usually inadequate for a rigorous definition, it is a good place to start.
We can define by example.
A second way to define something is to point to an example (called ostensive definition, from Latin ostendere, “to show”).
A former wrestler almost lost his life to alcohol and depression, but he started a yoga support group for other former wrestlers. Their goals are sobriety, physical conditioning, and giving each other moral support. This is an example of a type of meaning--being needed by others--that saved a wrestler from dropping into the abyss.
Definition by stipulation
The thing defined must conform to certain characteristics or conditions.
For example, my twins’ and I must agree on a shared definition of a “clean room.”
They want to simply throw their toys and books in their giant toy baskets. I want them to put their bedding on their bed and their books on the bookshelves. I’ve added stipulations to the notion of a “clean room.” And when they get older, vacuuming will be an added stipulation to that definition.
Viktor Frankl stipulates that meaning is not the same for everyone. Nor can someone give meaning to someone else. Frankl stipulates that meaning must come from within, that it must be defined by our own individual life circumstance, and that it must adhere to a moral code. For example, Hitler who found “meaning” with his self-aggrandizement and pathological power quest did not find “meaning” as stipulated by Viktor Frankl.
A formal definition contains the term, the class, and distinguishing characteristics.
Learned helplessness is a mental disease in which people convince themselves that they can’t do things that, objectively speaking, they can actually do.
The existential vacuum, as defined by Viktor Frankl, is the anxiety we suffer from trying to compensate for a living a life that is painfully absent of meaning.
For Frankl, meaning is a human drive that connects with us when we flourish and at the same time suffer in order to pursue a higher purpose that challenges our talents, our character, and our fortitude.
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Identifying Phrases, Independent Clauses, and Dependent Clauses
An independent clause has a subject, a verb, and is a complete thought:
My elastic waistband makes me feel older than I am.
My encounter with the great white shark compelled me to quit surfing.
Larding my pizza with hundreds of toppings makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth.
A dependent clause has a subject, a verb, and is an imcomplete thought because it has what is called a subordinate conjunction or connecting word.
Because my elastic waistband makes me feel old
Although my elastic waistband makes feel old
Whenever I eat triple-sausage pesto pizza
Although I have a fondness for deep purple
A phrase, like a dependent clause, is an incomplete sentence, but a phrase has neither a subject or a verb.
In front of the restaurant plaza by the Italian fountains
In order to understand Viktor Frankl's principle of meaning as the antidote to the existential vacuum
In spite of my fondness for deep purple
Identify the group of words in bold type as phrase, independent clause, or dependent clause.
One. Toward the monster’s palace, we see a white marble fountain jettisoning chocolate fudge all over the other giants.
Two. Before going to school, Gerard likes to make sure he’s packed his chocolate chip cookies and bagels.
Three. Because Jack’s love of eating pizza every night cannot be stopped, he finds his cardio workouts to be rather worthless.
Four. Maria finds the Lexus preferable to the BMW because of the Lexus’ lower repair costs.
Five. Greg does not drive at night because he suffers from poor nocturnal eyesight.
Six. Whenever Greg drives past HomeTown Buffet, he is overcome with depression and nausea.
Seven. People who eat at Cinnabon, according to Louis C.K., always look miserable over their poor life decisions.
Eight. After eating at Cinnabon and HomeTown Buffet, Gary has to eat a bottle of antacids.
Nine. Towards the end of the date, Gary decided to ask Maria if she’d care for another visit to HomeTown Buffet.
Ten. Whenever Maria is in the presence of a gluttonous gentleman, she withdraws into her shell.
Eleven. Greg watched Maria recoil into her shell while biting her nails.
Twelve. Greg watched Maria recoil into her private universe while she bit her nails.
Thirteen. Eating at all-you-can-eat buffets will expand the circumference of your waistline.
Fourteen. Larding your essay with grammatical errors will result in a low grade.
Fifteen. My favorite pastime is larding my essay with grammatical errors.
Sixteen. Larding my body with chocolate chunk peanut butter cookies followed by several gallons of milk, I wondered if I should skip dinner that evening.
Seventeen. After contemplating the benefits of going on a variation of the Paleo diet, I decided I was at peace being a fat man with a strong resemblance to the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
Eighteen. In the 1970s few people would consider eating bugs as their main source of protein although today world-wide food shortages have compelled a far greater percentage of the human race to entertain this unpleasant possibility.
Nineteen. Because of increased shortages in worldwide animal protein, more and more people are looking to crickets, grasshoppers, and grubs as possible complete protein amino acid alternatives.
Twenty. The percentage of people getting married in recent years has significantly declined as an economic malaise has deflated confidence in the viability of sustaining a long-term marriage.
Twenty-one. Before you decide to marry someone, consider two things: your temperament and your economic prospects.
Twenty-two. To understand the pitfalls of getting married prematurely is to embark on the road to greater wisdom.
Twenty-three. To know me is to love me.
Twenty-four. To languish in the malignant juices of self-pity after breaking up with your girlfriend is to fall down the rabbit hole of moral dissolution and narcissism.
Twenty-five. Having considered the inevitable disappointment of being rich, I decided not to rob a bank.
Twenty-six. Watching TV on a sticky vinyl sofa all day, I noticed I was developing bedsores.
Twenty-seven. While I watched TV for twenty consecutive hours, I began to wonder if life was passing me by.
Twenty-eight. Under the bridge where a swarm of mosquitos gathered, the giant belched.
Assumptions
Show you understand underlying assumptions in your argument or the argument you’re evaluating.
Assumptions are stated or unstated beliefs that we use to create another set of beliefs or premises.
For example, in the abortion debate, some people assume the fetus is not yet human and they tend to be pro-choice. On the other hand, some people assume the fetus is indeed human and they tend to be anti-abortion.
If you argue in support of Viktor Frankl, you assume meaning is a good thing.
But those who refute Frankl’s argument might assume that meaning, the thing that gets people out of bed in the morning (this thing people think is meaning), is not necessarily good. After all, there is a huge laundry list of purposes and meanings out there. There are power quests that drive dictators and their followers. There are bizarre religious cults that abuse and brainwash their followers.
And there are those who equate all religions with bizarre cults and the list of unsavory notions attached to “meaning” is endless. Therefore, we have to be careful about assignming assumptions to meaning when we argue about its worth in the context of VF.
Show logic by using premises and syllogisms.
Premises are stated assumptions used as reasons in an argument. A premise is a statement set down before the argument begins.
The joining of two premises—two statements taken to be true—to produce a conclusion, a third statement, is called a syllogism.
Major premise: All human beings are mortal.
Minor premise: Socrates is a human being.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
The process of moving from a general statement to a more specific one is called deduction.
Deductive reasoning starts with general premises and ends in specific conclusions. This process is expressed in a syllogism: major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Major Premise: All bald men should wear extra sunscreen on their bald head.
Minor Premise: Mr. X is a bald man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Mr. X should apply extra sunscreen.
A sound syllogism, one that is valid and true, must follow logically from the facts and be based on premises that are based on facts.
Major Premise: All state universities must accommodate disabled students.
Minor Premise: UCLA is a state university.
Conclusion: Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.
A syllogism can be valid without being true as we see in this example from Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War:
Bailey earns straight A’s.
Straight A’s are a sign of perfection.
But only God is perfect.
Can Bailey be God? Of course not.
Therefore, Bailey is a cheater and a liar.
In the above example it’s not true that the perfection of God is equivalent to the perfection of a straight-A student (faulty comparison, a logical fallacy). So while the syllogism is valid, following logically from one point to the next, it’s based on a deception or a falsehood (faulty comparison); therefore, it is not true.
When appropriate, use nonrational appeals like satire, irony, sarcasm, and humor.
Jonathan Swift is famous for “A Modest Proposal,” an essay in which he argues ostensibly that the way to cure hunger is to feed the landlords babies. In fact, his real agenda was to write a scathing indictment of the cruel landlords by equating their oppressive policies with the eating of children. Swift used satire to get his message across.
Checklist for Analyzing an Argument (your own or a reading you’re evaluating)
What is the claim or thesis?
What evidence is given, if any?
What assumptions are being made—and are they acceptable?
Are important terms clearly defined?
What support or evidence is offered on behalf of the claim?
Are the examples relevant, and are they convincing?
Are the statistics (if any) relevant, accurate, and complete?
Do the statistics allow only the interpretation that is offered in the argument?
If authorities and experts are cited, are they indeed authorities on this topic, and can they be regarded as impartial?
Is the logic—deductive and inductive—valid?
Is there an appeal to emotion—for instance, if satire is used to ridicule the opposing view—is this appeal acceptable?
Does the writer seem to you to be fair?
Are the counterarguments adequately considered?
Is there any evidence of dishonesty or of a discreditable attempt to manipulate the reader?
How does the writer establish the image of himself or herself that we sense in the essay? What is the writer’s tone, and is it appropriate?
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Most of us don't pursue meaning in the full sense that requires ideals and sacrifice to a higher cause. Rather, we pursue Frankl Lite:
Frankl Lite is the belief that we don't need "meaning" so much as we 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 narcissism.
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. Most of us need reproductive success. This means finding a mate whom we find desirable and attractive and a complement to our existence. Reproductive success enhances our connections to others and our sense of belonging. This is great, but it isn't meaning.
Six. We need a sense of belonging and meaningful friendships. Studies show that people with deep friendships are healthier than those who do not. Friendship 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, integrity, and a reverence for life. In fact, we don't find meaning outside of ourselves. Meaning is born from our moral character. Great character exists in people who deny having any meaning. They will simply say virtue is its own reward.
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.
When I ask students about the 8 Essential Things, about 90% say they are enough; they don't need "Meaning."
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.
Frankl says that even if we have the 8 Essential Things 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.
You live in your mother's basement and spend all day on the Internet while wolfing down Hot Pockets and chimichangas.
The existential vacuum is 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 repetition 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.
Adults get into the same self-destructive, dysfunctional relationships over and over and before they know it they've wasted their life on toxic drama.
A wasted life is often dedicated to materialism, a form of egotism.
A wasted life is dedicated to superficial distractions like stupid relationship drama and texting gossip and worrying about your social media status.
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
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.
The characters in Election, especially Jim McAllister and Tracy Flick, are running toward their death from their own fearful compulsions.
They are victims of their own psychological determinism. They lack the free will described in Man's Search for Meaning. Tracy Flick and Jim McAllister hate each other, yet in many ways they mirror each other's defects: Both are desperate souls animated by fear: Tracy fears being a failure and being deemed "low class"; Jim fears being irrelevant and invisible. Both have lost their souls. Both are lost. Both are disconnected from themselves and others even as they delude themselves otherwise.
Study the Templates of Argumentation
While Frankl’s arguments for meaning are convincing, they fail to consider . . .
While Frankl’s supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Frankl on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
Second Option:
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction.
Sample Thesis That Shows How Election is a Refutation of Man's Search for Meaning
The characters in Alexander Payne's masterpiece Election (1999) refute Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in compelling ways. For one, the characters lack the self-awareness to make the kind of choices or show the type of "freedom" that Frankl says we must utilize to find meaning. For two, the characters' earnest attempts to find meaning and structure in their lives prove to backfire and send them down a rabbit hole of moral dissolution and self-destruction suggesting that our most zealous efforts for meaning are contaminated by the unsavory impulses of the unconscious. For three, Tracy Flick's "meaning" and structure proves to be no meaning at all but rather unbridled ambition. Fourth, the movie's symbolism argues for a world governed by determinism through the environment and hard-wiring rather than a world populated by people who can make legitimate choices. Fifth, the movie's very title Election shows the ambiguity of choice: We "elect" to do things while at the same time life elects to place people in their place in the world's soulless machine.
For paragraph 1, summarize Frankl's book.
For paragraph2, summarize the movie Election.
For paragraph 3, write a thesis that presents your argument about meaning as you pit the book against the movie.
Paragraphs 4-10 should support your thesis.
Paragraph 11 will be your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
Things to Consider:
The emptiness of the adults whose conventions lack power, meaning, and soul. They are the blind leading the blind.
Mr. M's swollen eye is like a metaphor of original sin, blindness, and crippling affliction. The closed eye also speaks to his lack of self-awareness.
Tracy Flick is a shark, an ambitious predator with no moral compass who believes, erroneously, that she has a moral compass.
School is a place of cycles, people coming in, people coming out. We also see a lot of garbage in the movie, garbage coming in, and garbage coming out.
The sprinklers seem like metaphors for a deity of Deism, the impersonal mechanized god who does not intervene in human affairs.
Resources:
You may use the short story, "Critical Thinking," I wrote about the conversation I had with a student on this subject.
Sample Thesis That Refutes the Idea That Election Champions Determinism Over Frankl's Argument for Free Will
While there are deterministic elements in the film Election that suggest we have no free will to pursue meaning, the film actually supports Frankl's warning that we are morally compelled to choose a life of meaning over selfish ends by showing us characters who have fallen in the trap of pursuing Frankl Lite evidenced by the drug of self-centered pursuits that strips us of self-awareness as shown by Jim McAllister, the futility of following conventions as shown by all of the film's adult characters, the loneliness and despair of predatory ambition as shown by Tracy Flick, and the vapidness of "nice guy" hedonism embodied by Paul Metzler.
Sample Thesis That Refutes the Above
While I concede that the characters in Election could represent cautionary tales about the need for meaning and how NOT to behave in life, the notion of finding meaning and rejecting the immorality in Election is based on false premises: One, that we all can have self-awareness when the evidence states otherwise. Two, that there is no absolute meaning. Three, even if the characters in Election read Frankl's book and made earnest attempts to change their lives, the evidence suggests that such actions would be feeble. And fourth, anyone who responds favorably to Frankl's book doesn't do so out of choice or free will but because he or she was hard-wired to act in a "meaningful" way in the first place.
Thesis That Refutes the Above
Of course Election is a nihilistic movie with lost souls who feebly attempt to achieve the American Dream and who fail to find meaning. But just because the director Alexander Payne has given us this tragicomic slice of life doesn't mean his vision represents the whole human condition. Payne's vision is a mere fragment. We drink the Kool-Aid of Payne's dismal, despairing, fragmented vision at our own peril. For just as many people, for reasons they cannot entirely control, fall by the wayside of life does not refute Frankl's powerful vision that for many of us there is still time to allow ourselves to find meaning, to find courage to embrace our suffering, and to change our life so that death cannot take away the meaning of it. For just as there are many Tracy Flicks and Jim McAllisters languishing on Planet Earth, there are also, as the movie Groundhog Day attests, Phil Connor-type people who rise from the ashes and learn to embrace meaning.
Third Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Sample Thesis of Student Who Opposes Frankl on Grounds That Frankl Is Religious
Frankl believes in God (he is a theist), and the philosophy that informs his book Man's Search for Meaning is based on Frankl's theism. Take away religious faith and all the precepts of Frankl's book come crashing down like a deck of cards. A close look at the book from an atheist's point of view reveals that the book is full of faith-based aphorisms and homilies that cannot be believed unless one is religious. The notion of meaning is false since no one can prove there is any meaning at all. We have adapted to cooperate with one another and have evolved morality, but these developments do not point to any meaning or any God. Frankl's heroism is not the result of his choice to have the right attitude toward his suffering but rather the result of his hard-wiring and environment. Lots of decent people would not have performed so heroically in Frankl's circumstances, and they should not be ashamed if they are more selfish when faced with such excruciating circumstances. My third point is that if everyone were like Viktor Frankl, a goody two shoes, the world would be a boring place. Many of our most famous comedians who preach cynicism, hopelessness, misanthropy, and life's essential meaninglessness, provide us with therapeutic laughter precisely because they have never found "meaning" or the pious attitude toward life that Frankl would impose on the rest of us. Finally, since the "meaning" of one person with one religious faith collides with the "meaning" of a person who practices a different religious faith, we can conclude that "meaning" is an illusion based on a person's delusion belief in God. Looking at the evidence, we are forced to conclude that Man's Search for Meaning is simply a mouthpiece for religious dogma and does nothing to convince me or anyone that "meaning" exists.
Example of a Concession Followed by a Refutation Frankl on Religious Grounds
Viktor Frankl is a highly intelligent, sympathetic figure whose meditations on meaning and adopting a heroic attitude toward our suffering have resonated with millions of people all over the world. However, once you strip away the sympathetic surroundings of the book—Frankl surviving in a concentration camp and his helping of those who were fighting for their lives—the book’s value is negligible evidenced by the book’s dependence on religious faith.
For one, the message that we should adopt a positive attitude life, rather than a negative one, is little more than a self-evident truism, almost a statement of fact, and hardly deserves to be venerated as some special insight into the human condition. Frankl's reliance on this familiar platitude is most likely rooted in his religious faith, which compels him to preach a message about having a pious attitude in the face of suffering.
Secondly, Frankl’s assertion that we must find meaning is based on his faith that we live in world of moral absolutes and moral certainty, ideas that are rooted in his faith, not reality.
Finally, the notion that we either live a life of meaning that makes us worthy of our suffering or we live a life of emptiness that inevitably will afflict us with a life of despair and regrets is contention that is both over-simplistic and fallacious, as it takes a page from any compendium of logical fallacies, namely, the either-or fallacy. It's easy to see where he gets this fallacy: From his religion, which states that we are either good or evil.
In fact, we do not live in such an either-or world. Our sense of meaning, or our lack of it, is constantly shifting and relative, so that it would be more valuable to talk about a continuously shifting meaning spectrum. The absolutes contained in Frankl’s dogmatic work fail to address that complexity of the human condition, yet Frankl gets a pass because he is such a justifiably adored figure.
Student Who Defends Frankl
Frankl’s opponent who confidently asserts that Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is an overrated affair sodden with cheap religious clichés, truisms, and glittering generalities appears to be so infatuated with his own rhetoric and Frankl-bashing that he fails to see that his argumentation stumbles at the gates, crashing with a myriad of logical fallacies and other egregious writing errors, including Straw Man, over-simplification, and, perhaps worst of all, gross misinterpretations of Frankl’s key points.
Our Frankl-detractor’s first assertion immediately raises our eyebrows: “For one, the message that we should adopt a positive attitude toward life, rather than a negative one, is little more than a self-evident truism, almost a statement of fact, and hardly deserves to be venerated as some special insight into the human condition.” Our detractor has failed to accurately summarize Frankl’s claim. Contrary to the “positive thinking” made popular by business guru Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Frankl is talking less about “positive thinking” and more about the courage to find meaning, not in consumerism, popularity, or material success, but in embracing suffering and trying to address the needs that the suffering of the world demands us. It appears our Frankl-detractor either has not Frankl’s book or has purposely misread Frankl’s work in order to be the chest-thumping contrarian.
Equally flagrant and insufferable in its inaccuracy is our Frankl-detractor’s contention that “Frankl’s assertion that we all must choose our own meaning is yet another cliché tantamount to the platitude that we should follow our bliss.” Had our Detractor read Frankl’s book with a modicum of focus and understanding, he would know that Frankl claims we all must find meaning for ourselves; however, meaning is not a nebulously defined notion disconnected by a strong moral code. To the contrary, the principles of logotherapy—that we must act more than think, that we must find what life demands of us based on our talents and circumstances, to name a couple—is very specific. It is further the result of Frankl’s hard-fought wisdom that he acquired while enduring the concentration camps and the empirical evidence he gathered while helping patients in his practice of logotherapy.
Our Detractor’s final criticism is that Frankl is guilty of over-simplification by creating a binary world of those Who Have Meaning and those Who Don’t Have Meaning. This, too, is a gross misinterpretation of Frankl’s radical meaning tool, logotherapy, which is based on the idea that all of us are responsible for addressing our suffering as a gateway to meaning and all of us our responsible for embarking upon this Meaning Quest. Frankl has never stated that one is either in a complete state of meaning or in a complete state of non-meaning. That is the Detractor’s red herring and non sequitur that fails to address a clear understanding of logotherapy, which, if utilized accurately and correctly, is an enormous help in our search for meaning and speaks cogently to the human condition. Our Detractor, sadly, is so caught up in his bloated rhetoric and contrarianism that he has failed to see the benefits of Frankl’s wisdom.
Example of Student Refuting Frankl
While I love and admire VF's heroism, I reject his argument for absolute meaning, which is too religious, in favor of relative meaning. First, absolute meaning is not realistic and may trap us into the either/or fallacy of meaning (my life is absolute meaning or it is nothing). It's better to approach meaning from a realistic point of view, not an ideological or religious one. A realistic point of view says it's okay to not have meaning sometimes. It's okay to suffer the existential vacuum here and there. Life is not a constant rich, meaty steak sandwich of meaning every second of our life. That's unrealistic.
Second, we can build our moral and intellectual character toward achieving Life's 8 Essential Needs in a way that creates relative meaning, which is to say, that our life of values and personal growth is more meaningful than a life of moral dissolution. In this regard, we agree with Frankl, at least to some degree.
Third, we need not be religious or meaning absolutists to hunger for Mystery, Enchantment, and More as evidenced by our creative and artistic pursuits. Being creative is not the same as being an ideological moral absolutist.
Fourth, we can, contrary to religious dogma, devote our lives to some meaningful pursuits yet still experience despair, self-doubt and the existential vacuum as part of the natural human condition. The human condition, as I state in my first point, is not always full of meaning. It's often absurd and pointless and it's okay, even natural, at times to feel that way.
Student Who Defends Frankl:
The above writer does not embrace Frankl's definition of meaning because, through Frankl's own words, it's a life that only a tiny remnant will choose. In other words, Frankl is teaching us what the great religions have told us for centuries: That the path to hell is wide and that the path to heaven is narrow. Frankl has given us a narrow path based on self-sacrifice, not comfort and convenience.
Secondly, Frankl never proposes an absolute meaning as the writer erroneously states. Rather, Frankl argues that meaning varies from one individual to another based on particular circumstances.
Third, the argument that creativity will lead to meaning ignores the fact that our creative pursuits do not guarantee the development of our humanity.
How to Transition into Your Thesis: An Example
We love Viktor Frankl, the eloquent spokesperson for meaning. How could we not love him? He is after all a hero who risked his comfort, convenience, safety, and even his life to serve the needs of the suffering during the Holocaust. He is a saint, in fact, a rare human being worthy of our utmost love and admiration. However, his ideologically-based assertion that meaning is absolute and the cure for the existential vacuum contains certain weaknesses and fallacies that we need to address.
First of all, life cannot be one big meaty steak sandwich of meaning, filling us to the brim so that we never experience the existential vacuum. Frankl is presenting us with a dangerous either/or fallacy, what could also be called the mistake of All or Nothing. In fact, meaning is not an all or nothing affair. Life at times is senseless, absurd and meaningless and it is dangerous for us to feel guilty when we don't interpret every significant event of suffering as an occasion for meaning. But we are not entirely without meaning. Some periods of our lives will be more meaningful than others, especially as we mature and achieve greater and greater wisdom.
Second, we can reject VF's assertion that meaning is absolute and ultimate without discarding our morality. In fact, from a purely practical point of view, it is easier to be a moral and decent human being than it is to be a scoundrel and a libertine. Therefore, embracing morality is in our self-interest and gives us relative meaning. We may not have absolute meaning in the sense that VF writes about, but we can have relative meaning and for most of us relative meaning is more realistic goal than absolute meaning.
Third, while I reject that meaning is absolute and a reliable cure for the existential vacuum, I opine that we can pursue relative meaning by striving for Life's 8 Essentials, which I will elaborate on in my essay. Finally, for those who hunger for More, for the Beyond, for Mystery, for Divine Beauty, I have the answer and it is not rooted in the quest for absolute meaning or its related religious dogmas. We pursue the Beyond through the arts, through creativity, and through philosophy, which explores life's painful questions and is never so vain as to think the answers we receive will be neatly packaged and reassuringly absolute.
McMahon's Sample of an Intro That Frames the Debate for Option 3 and a Thesis Paragraph That Uses a Refutation Structure
We’ve been asked to argue if there is this thing in life called “meaning,” if meaning must be based on religious faith, and if this meaning is the cure for the terrifying emptiness, the “existential vacuum,” that haunts us when our lives are empty of meaning. Viktor Frankl tackles this question in his timeless classic Man’s Search for Meaning and while his book’s theme is difficult to comprehend and while there are many flaws in arguments that defend meaning, Frankl’s argument that meaning must be embraced to be saved from the despair of the “existential vacuum” is compelling. One effective way to examine the compelling nature of Frankl’s argument is to study intelligent attempts to dismiss the existence of meaning and argue that Frankl’s book addresses those refutations. The most compelling reasons to not believe in meaning are that it is part of religious dogma; that meaning is relative to the point that to discuss it as a definitive, absolute, “one size fits all” entity is an absurdity; that while some lives, like Frankl’s, are rich in meaning, they don’t choose their meaningful life; rather it is the result of hard-wiring and upbringing so that the idea of “choosing” meaning is to some degree an absurdity; that the chaos, evil and senseless suffering that dominate the world evidence there is no meaning, only absurdity; that a meaningful life is not about meaning per se but, with the risk of relying on semantics, more about attitude and character, so that to argue for meaning misses the point: we should argue about our moral development and attitude and even these things can’t be entirely chosen.
The above refutations against meaning are compelling, but as I will show, Frankl’s masterful book addresses each point and makes a convincing case that there are two kinds of lives we must choose: one that is full of emptiness and despair; the other that is full of meaning and contentment.
The Problem with Meaning Is That the Word Is "Loaded" and We Dismiss All Meaning When We See False Meaning
Examples of False Meaning
People who are delusional and commit acts of evil in the name of an ideology that gives them "meaning" like the white American settlers who wanted to be free from European tyranny but then relied on slavery to fuel their economy under the justification of white supremacy.
People who are vain posers and feel they have "meaning" when they post Facebook photos of themselves "helping the poor" for a weekend.
People who are eager to talk and write about their "meaningful" doctrines but don't live what they speak and are odious hypocrites.
People who find "meaning" supporting their family when in fact they wake up every morning and kiss the giant butt of Blind Ambition. They're superficial.
What Is Real Meaning?
Moral results
Transformative (learned helplessness and self-pity transform into courage and self-reliance, for example)
Redemptive (similar to above)
Meaning must be lived, not spoken
But do we all achieve "Power Meaning" like Frankl or relative meaning through the acquistion of the 8 Basic Human Needs?
Meaning Is a Learned Behavior and Meaning Comes from Moral Character Development
We are not born with meaning. We are born blank, a tabula rasa.
We need to learn boundaries to find meaning. A film about boundaries and the lack thereof is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder. We see in both the film and VF's book that without boundaries we become animals:
August Gloop
Veruca Salt
MF
Stallion
Either we learn and emulate the common life of hedonic pleasures, vanity, and envy, or we learn and emulate the life of moral character, which consists of the following:
1. respect
2. integrity
3. dignity
4. honesty
5. caritas, charity and compassion for others
6. sacrifice
7. fortitude
8. listening for meaning, asking what life demands of us
9. wisdom: being wise enough to see the emptiness and danger of hedonic or hedonistic quests and reject the common life of vanity, envy, and hedonism.
When we have character, our lives are more meaningful, but is "more meaningful" the same as "meaning"?
Part One. Cynic's Argument Against Meaning: Determinism Triumphs over Free Will
The George Carlin Factor: Hardly a day ever passes in which I do not hear a biting quote that the brilliant king of cynicism George Carlin once said during a performance: “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.” What is Carlin telling us? He’s telling us that we’re a doomed species and the best we can do is laugh at our inevitable destruction. When I look at the human race, I often find myself agreeing with Carlin’s cynical pronouncements and the conclusions he draws from them. But at the same time I find myself drawn to Viktor Frankl’s very uncynical Man’s Search for Meaning, which chronicles his survival in the Nazi concentration camps and his observations of the ways we exalt or degrade our humanity in the face of abject cruelty, suffering and evil.
Rodney Dangerfield Factor. When I was in my early twenties, I read a newspaper interview with the comedian Rodney Dangerfield who said you can’t really change who you are. “You never really change. You’re born a certain way and that’s it.” I remember immediately agreeing with him. We are creatures molded at birth and we cannot escape who we are fundamentally. So what’s it matter if we read Man’s Search for Meaning or not? Why do we give a damn about our choices when the end result of who we are is going to be the same?
Sturgeon's Law, which states that 95% of everything in life is crap.
Counterargument
The Viktor Frankl Factor: Frankl bore witness to some of the most abjectly cruel freak shows on earth. He almost died many times in the camps, he suffered the loss of loved ones, including his father, his mother, his brother, and his wife, and he experienced the constant humiliations at the hands of sadistic brutes, “insults” that he described as hurting him worse than the physical pain, yet for all his suffering he would not give the Nazis and his other oppressors the victory of making him evil in their image. Even as other inmates surrendered all their scruples and morals, living like animals so that they might survive in the camps, Frankl believed in preserving his moral code and he was steadfast in his compassion for the victims of evil. Tapping on an inner strength that became more and more prominent during his captivity, he aided others, using his training as a psychiatrist to help people gain their bodily strength and spirit so that they may live to see the outside of those camps and, more importantly, so that they might strengthen their humanity through a life of purpose and meaning.
The Nietzsche Factor: Free will is possible but only if we have a purpose. He says, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Finding meaning and purpose in the midst of life’s cruelty and evil is what Frankl calls “Tragic Optimism.”
Free Will Is Limited and Finite: The free will/determinism debate on both sides is grievously in error, constituting an either/or fallacy: Both positions appear to be entrenched in the absolute idea, wrongly, of free will or determinism. But in fact there are only degrees of free will and determinism and we tend to progress from one pole to the other. We can see this spectrum in the realm of morality. Many years ago I saw a TV program about a corrupt police officer, interviewed from prison, who explained how easy it eventually became for him to steal money during drug busts. He said at first the stealing stung his conscience and he had ulcers and bouts of anxieties from his corrupt behavior. To show the growing effects of his criminal acts on his soul during the interview, he grabbed a sheet of crisp paper and crumpled it. He explained that doing wrong in the beginning was like crumpling the paper. There was a violence to the harsh crushing noise of the action, but after dozens upon dozens of times the paper became tissue thin and the action did not grate on him anymore. It seems in the beginning he had more free will to not steal but as he surrendered to his cravings for easy money, he numbed his conscience and lost more and more willpower, eventually becoming a slave to his own thievery. Thus he traveled from having an abundance of free will to a scarcity of it, until he was at the mercy of determinism. A similar case can be made for an adulterer. He may at first be pained by guilt for his infidelity, maybe even the fourth and fifth time. But after dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, he becomes numb, calloused, and debauched, and thus he loses his free will.
Enjoying self-discipline is a form of free will: We can journey from determinism to free will, going from a weaker to a stronger state. Take the man whose doctor just told him he needs to lose fifty pounds or he may soon die of a stroke or a heart attack. The overweight man knows he cannot resist his junk food temptations but that he can control his environment, so he learns how to keep his kitchen full of healthy foods and he learns how to prepare them in a way that makes him enjoy his nutritious meals. Thus, he misses his favorite junk foods less. As he loses weight and feels better, he feels motivated to stick to his new program. He was once mired in the self-loathing and the malaise of compulsive junk food eating, but he has taken control of his life in a way that makes him feel better about himself. He has in effect journeyed from determinism to free will. Another reason to agree with Frankl’s principle that we are responsible for our actions is that most parents believe in disciplining their children. To discipline someone means to teach someone, a child or a novice, how to behave in a way that produces positive results, which in turn become the reward for motivating good behavior. If you teach a child how to make her bed and how to enjoy the advantages of keeping a clean, well organized room, you have given her a lesson on how to impose her will over chaos to her favor. As she matures, she internalizes these teachings, preferring a clean, organized room to a messy, chaotic one, and she has what is called self-discipline.
Free-will is more difficult to choose than stagnation: Sometimes we don’t take action, not because we cannot, but because we will not. The reasons for not taking action are fairly compelling. Doing what it takes to get out of a bad situation can often entail immense suffering. I had a student, for example, who came here from Japan. She lived with her American boyfriend in a nice Beverly Hills apartment and she confided with me that she no longer loved him as a woman loves a man but as a mother loves a child. She wanted to move out, but it was difficult to do so in mid-semester and to most likely live in a less desirable place. And worse, she did not have the heart to crush him with the truth about her feelings for him. But do so she did. She suffered a lot upfront, as it were, but saved herself, and the man she had been living with, a lot more grief they would have afflicted them had she dragged the relationship out. I admire her courage. The pain to make such a move reminds me of a TV show I watched as a child,Adam 12. In one episode, paramedics were called to save a man who was being crushed by a fallen telephone pole. The victim of the accident was smiling with relief as the pole weighed on his ribs and said, “It’s funny, it doesn’t hurt that much.” But one of the paramedics had bad news: While the pain wasn’t so bad now, he explained, it would become unbearable when the fire department crew lifted the pole off his ribs. Whenever we need to unshackle ourselves from a bad situation or a self-destructive habit, the pain is as overwhelming as having a telephone pole being lifted off our ribs. In the long-run we’re better off, of course, but the immediate pain is so unbearable that many of us choose to stay right where we are. As we slowly die under whatever it is that is crushing us, we lose more and more of our free will until our condition becomes inevitable.
Overview: The Thirteen Tenets (Principles) from Man’s Search for Meaning
Before we examine disingenuous and sincere nihilism, we should first look at nihilism’s opposite, the belief in meaning as laid out by Viktor Frankl, of which there are thirteen major tenets:
The human condition is suffering and the only viable response to suffering is to find meaning. We must therefore acknowledge that there is a purpose in life, greater than the purpose we find in creative work and passive enjoyment, which “admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.” It is imperative that we are motivated first and foremost by this higher purpose. Without a purpose, our life drags on day after day in a tiring monotony that we try to fill with consumerism, addictions, texting friends, etc.
“Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress” as was endured in the concentration camps. Acknowledging this freedom, we must defy being a “plaything of circumstance” and thus we must understand that “there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man’s ‘nothingbutness,’ the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances.” We are neither pawn nor victim. Rather, we possess an inner freedom that cannot be lost no matter how extreme the circumstances. This inner freedom allows us to be worthy of our suffering. And being worthy of our suffering is the ultimatum life presents us: Either be worthy of our suffering, or not.
Life presents us with the moral imperative to treat our life as something of significance and consequence and the converse is also true: We must not despise our lives and treat our lives as if they were of no consequence at all. As Frankl writes: “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom: which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.”
There are moral absolutes in this world evidenced in part by Frankl dividing the world into two races of people, decent and indecent.
We have to do more than imagine a life of meaning; we must actually live it. Frankl writes: “Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” We are additionally accountable for the responsibilities life demands of us.
We must embrace suffering, the finiteness of life, and death to maximize and complete our life. “Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
We must radically alter our attitude by changing our orientation from “What do I expect from life?” to “What does life expect from me?” This question brings up our number one responsibility in life, to embrace meaning when it knocks on our door. We don’t choose meaning; meaning chooses us.
There is no One Size Fits All Meaning. Every person’s meaning is specific to his or her circumstances.
We must confront the emotions that seem so overwhelming; otherwise those emotions will devour us. Quoting from Spinoza, Frankl writes: “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” It’s another way of saying that when we confront our demons, they often lose their power over us.
We must not abuse and squander freedom by imitating our oppressors. For example, if our boss abuses us, we should not later in life abuse our workers when we ascend to positions of high authority.
Meaning cannot be found within ourselves; it must be found in the world. As Frankl writes: “By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
No matter how despicable and worthless our lives have been, we are called to redeem ourselves by living out the essential rule of logotherapy: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
Only a few people are capable of reaching great spiritual heights but the difficulty and small percentage of people who do reach such great heights does not abnegate our responsibility for pursuing a life of higher meaning.
Frankl’s Central Argument in 3 Sentences
One. No matter the circumstances, we all have the free will and therefore the responsibility to choose a dignified, meaningful life in the face of even the worst suffering.
Two. Failure to create a meaningful life for ourselves will result in the existential vacuum or unbearable emptiness.
Three. Without meaning we will try to fill the gnawing void with misguided distractions that will destroy us.
Some might conclude that Frankl's world is binary or either/or: Either we connect to life with meaning or we fail to find meaning and suffer the despair and regret of disconnection.
Others might conclude that meaning, contrary to Frankl, exists on a sliding scale or is relative and that this nuanced view of meaning eludes Frankl's strident message.
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
There are 3 points of view regarding Frankl’s message
Kool-Aid Drinkers or Cheerleaders: We embrace his message without having a specific understanding of it, so all we can do is recycle feel-good clichés and hackneyed truisms about living a meaningful life. People who become cheerleaders for a cause without rigorous questioning are called many things: true believers, homers, Kool-Aid Drinkers, clones, ditto-heads. Such people tend to be mediocrities or ciphers, nonentities, who wish to hide their vapid personalities by losing themselves in a cause that is larger and more glorious than they will ever be on their own.
Cynics or Nihilists: We dismiss the idea of meaning as a fool’s illusion, a societal construction. There is no meaning. We do what makes us happy, what makes us tick, what gets us out of bed in the morning. There is no moral absolute, just doing things relative to our happiness. Many cynics will simply see life as a cruel joke from which we must insulate ourselves with brain-numbing distractions and cheap thrills. Many nihilists will devote their lives to pleasure, hedonism, and egotism because there is no meaning. Some people argue that a lot of nihilists know there is meaning but deny it to justify a lazy, irresponsible, head-in-the-sand life.
Open-Minded Skeptic: With a specific understanding of Frankl’s terms, the OMS may, or may not, accept some of Frankl’s message with certain conditions or caveats. This latter point of view is, in my opinion, the most reasonable and sophisticated for reasons we will now look at:
Evaluating Frankl’s Message Without Being His Cheerleader or a Cynic
The problem isn’t the message. Man's Search for Meaning contains a great message, indisputable in many ways. The problem is threefold:
The Problem of Specificity and Definition
Specificity: dealing with specific notions of meaning, free will, responsibility, to name a few. Without specifics, we’re simply rehashing feel-good clichés. As a result, the level of writing is fifth grade instead of college. We must avoid writing like fifth graders.
When dealing with terms like meaning, free will, responsibility, and other grandiose abstractions, we achieve specificity in several ways. Here are a few:
One.Be skeptical of clichés, overused terms and phrases like “think outside the box,” which is, ironically, so “inside the box.”
Here’s an example of the term meaning being reduced to a cliché: A man says, “My family is my meaning. Taking care of them, providing for them, that is my meaning. So don’t talk to me about meaning.”
This is a cliché that doesn’t mean anything. In fact, this man may work his butt off for his wife and children to the point that his life is one thing: MAMMAP—make as much money as possible. There’s good reason to make lots of money. It’s helpful, but it doesn’t define meaning. In fact, this man may be teaching his family that money is the elixir for all of life’s woes, thus afflicting his family with materialism and greed. In fact, this man may be addicted to work even as he becomes more and more emotionally disconnected from his family.
Here’s another example.
Someone says, “My faith in God gives me meaning.” That’s very possible, since in fact Frankl’s faith in God helped him find meaning in the concentration camps, but too many people engage in religious ritual and carry religious beliefs out of unquestioned habit. Meaning cannot be achieved by repetitious, unexamined behavior. Such behavior is mindless and being mindless cannot forge a path to meaning.
Here’s another example.
I derive meaning from my job, my career. We would be wise to gain meaning from our career, but too often our job title gives us a certain status and identity that becomes a mask.
Take away our job and often we lose our identity; there’s no meaningful core behind the title, just an emptiness. You hear about professional athletes all the time who retire from their sport and then live a life of moral dissolution, becoming drug addicts and alcoholics. You hear of people retiring from any job and going into a depression. A lot of people die shortly after retirement.
So we must be cautious of equating our job with meaning.
Two.Turn away from the absolute and move toward the relative by positioning the term on a scale. In other words, see the gray or nuance of a definition. Don’t use the term meaning in terms of black and white such as your life either has meaning or it has no meaning. Rather, consider the idea of meaning moving up and down a scale.
We get into trouble when we talk about meaning as in Absolute Ultimate Meaning. Now we’ve turned meaning into this elusive Holy Grail, Elixir, or Chimera, a cure-all mirage.
Rather, we should look at meaning as relative on a scale. Instead of saying our life has meaning or does not meaning, we can say we are tending toward meaning or tending away from meaning.
Examples of People Trending Away From Or Toward Meaning
A forty-five-year-old man, living with his mother, who sits in his pajamas all day while surfing the Internet and eating Hot Pockets is probably tending away from meaning.
A woman who has devoted her life to rescuing dogs from cruel puppy mills is probably tending toward meaning. She’s probably trending toward meaning.
A wealthy doctor languishes in his unfurnished house two years after his wife left him, taking all the furniture with her. He’s probably low on the Meaning Scale, that is to say, he is trending away from meaning in his narcissistic self-pity.
Any kind of addictive behavior in which one is seeking oblivion and numbness and disengagement from others is probably tending away from meaning.
Three.To strengthen your definition, put your term in a context or circumstance.
Example:
Meaning: From Sloth to Creativity
When Tennessee Williams the playwright became famous, he gave up writing, holed himself up in a hotel suite and ordered room service, champagne, and prostitutes until about six months into his debauchery he realized he was going crazy. He left the hotel, went to Mexico, and wrote his masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire. For him, meaning was about struggle, hard work, and vocation. He discovered an important truth about meaning: The creative energy inside him to fulfill his artistic gifts had to be used; otherwise it would turn inward and kill him with self-destructive behavior. This is a truth Frankl witnessed in the concentration camps.
Not all suffering leads to meaning
It’s difficult to imagine meaning existing at all in some circumstances. For example, a student came to my office to tell me she didn’t believe in meaning. This is an 18-year-old whose boyfriend drives a BMW M3. She explained that a starving 3-year-old girl in Ethiopia watching her family die of starvation and disease and knows she has just a few months left to live has no meaning. I think we can say that such a person finds little relevance in a discussion about meaning.
While there are no absolute definitions of meaning, or non-meaning, there are extreme circumstances that make us even wonder if meaning exists for everyone.
Four.Use negation, what the term is NOT. Abstractions like meaning, love, fulfillment, etc., can be effectively understood when we examine their negation, fallacies, and misguided definitions.
Examples of Negation:
Meaning is not talking about it.
Why? Because with few exceptions, meaning is not talking about it. As we learned from the people of Thailand, if we live a rich life, we don’t think or talk too much. We’re too busy living. My cousin in Studio City seems like this. He’s a man with little thought or talk about meaning who lives a very full life.
However, Viktor Frankl was forced to think about meaning when he saw people lose or gain their humanity in the concentration camps. Under these extreme circumstances, he felt compelled to meditate on the effects of meaning, or its absence, in people’s lives. In other words, he’s earned the right to talk about meaning.
Indeed, meaning is often not talking about meaning. Meaning is living life in a way that gives us hope for a better future and purpose.
Meaning is not happiness and success.
Happiness and success can be taken from us at any time. As Frankl tells us, meaning is having the moral character to embrace suffering with courage.
In his book Frankl explains what meaning is NOT:
Meaning is not a panacea handed to you on a silver platter that instantly changes your life.
Meaning is not something your therapist can give you.
Meaning is not ONE THING that everyone finds.
Meaning is not something everyone is going to agree upon. The God of your religion that gives you meaning might very well be at war with the God of someone else’s religion.
Writing Against Frankl's Argument That We Must Find Meaning to Escape the Despair of the Existential Vacuum
McMahon's Doubts about Meaning:
We Can Have Life's 8 Human Needs Without Having Absolute Meaning and Therefore Argue for Frankl Lite:
When I ask myself if there is meaning, I begin with fundamental human needs. They aren't meaning as described by Frankl, but most of us can be happy with them. They include the following:
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.
What's the biggest weakness of Frankl Lite?
None of the basic needs, except moral character, are reliable. Frankl, who underwent the torture and humiliation of a concentration camp, has a message: Everything can be taken from you.
However, the kind of meaning Frankl develops in himself, the very kind of meaning he defines in his book, cannot be taken away.
One. Why does Frankl urge us to live in the present?
Without a future goal, we are doomed to become “retrospective,” wallowing in our past (71). Embracing our present crises, Frankl observes, “gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.”
To live in the past, to wallow in nostalgia, is dangerous. Such indulgence evidences a meaningless life (72).
Fearful of a sterile, barren present, we attempt to medicate ourselves on an imaginary idealized past, nostalgia, and romanticism.
Frankl observes that only “a few people were capable of reaching great spiritual eights. But a few were given the chance to attain human greatness even through their apparent worldly failure and death, an accomplishment which in ordinary circumstances they would never have achieved. To the others of us, the mediocre and the half-hearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: ‘Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.’”
One of the most radical statements in Frankl’s book is that the concentration camp provided an unusual opportunity for spiritual greatness. One could turn life “into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of prisoners.”
The overwhelming majority of us won’t suffer imprisonment in a concentration camp. We will face more ordinary challenges:
Financial
Education
Parenting
Employment
Family
Health
Whatever our challenge is, we can either embrace it with a courageous attitude and find meaning or we vegetate, become zombies, and constantly text, tweet, and check our social media status.
Two. How did a future goal propel Frankl forward with his life and help him rise above his agony?
We read on page 73:
I became disgusted with the state of affairs which compelled me, daily and hourly, to think of only such trivial things. I forced my thoughts to turn to another subject. Suddenly I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In front of me sat an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats. I was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp! All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertaken by myself.
Three. Throughout the book, is Frankl telling us to turn away from the source of our suffering or to confront it? Explain.
Over and over again, Frankl explains that we are prisoners of our suffering. Suffering is our oppressor, it is our prison, it is our inevitable condition. Suffering makes us feel closed in, trapped, and claustrophobic.
In the Hebrew religious tradition, there is this idea of mitzrayim. Either through external oppressors or the internal demons and moral failings that make us our own worst enemy, we find ourselves in a hellish place of tightness, confinement, and imprisonment. We often become so inured to our condition of imprisonment, our mitzrayim, that we’re not even aware that we are in our condition of “narrow straights” or of being closed in. We’ve acclimated to our claustrophobia. I’m reminded of a famous quote by the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard: “Despair is not knowing it.”
For Frankl, finding a higher purpose and the energized attitude that accompanies such a purpose is the antidote or cure for mitzrayim. Our human struggle is to identify our mitzrayim and find a purpose that liberates from our personal prison.
If we don’t overcome our mitzrayim and the hopeless and helplessness that accompanies it, we will fall prey to our own broken hearts, our bodies, minds, and souls will break down, and we will begin a decline that leads to death.
Ironically, though, suffering in our mitzrayim is also the source of our spiritual greatness, but we must first experience our suffering in all its totality first:
We read on page 74:
What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? –“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
He develops this idea of confronting our suffering in the Logotherapy section of the book where he writes we should use humor to exaggerate our suffering in a technique he calls paradoxical intention.
Comedians use paradoxical intention all the time.
A lonely woman leaves empty beer cans around her house and keeps her TV on ESPN 24 hours a day with messy dishes in the sink and unpaid bills on the kitchen counter so she’ll feel she has a man around the house.
Four. Much of Frankl’s book addresses the need for us to radically change our expectations. Explain.
One of the most difficult things to change is our attitude, which becomes hardened and calcified over time.
Frankl writes:
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing me, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in the talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
In other words, coming up with some generic or universal definition of meaning is useless. Meaning depends on individual circumstances and identifying our highest responsibilities based on those circumstances.
We change to adapt to our circumstances. For example, studies show a lot of men who suffered drug addiction quit their drug habit, not through rehab or therapy, but because they got old, got tired, had families, and their responsibilities demanded a change in their behavior.
A second point from above is that we cannot meditate or think too much about what meaning may or not be; rather, we have to act in the circumstances we find ourselves in.
A third point is that if our attitude bleeds of self-pity and entitlement, we will sit around and wait for life to happen to us.
People who wait for the world to stop for them and to give them things and to love them will find that nothing happens to them. They simply die alone in their delusional attitude.
Much of Frankl’s book is about waking up to identify that we may be the creators of our own prison. Our creation is our delusional attitude.
The biggest challenge we face is changing our attitude. This type of change sometimes happens in the blink of an eye, spurred on by some epiphany or other, but usually our attitudes change gradually as we fight tooth and claw to cling to our old attitude.
Much of our inadequate attitude is rooted in the childish delusion that there should be no suffering in life. To the contrary, Frankl wants us to know that suffering is the central feature of human existence, and that the sooner we embrace this fact the better we will be:
When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.
Frankl’s book differs from other self-help books in that he doesn’t rely on cheap feel-good aphorisms to “help” us; rather, Frankl tells us the brutal truth: Suffering is something that is avoided in modern consumer society but in reality our meaning is rooted in how we embrace our suffering. Frankl writes:
Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us, we refused to minimize or alleviate the camp’s tortures by ignoring them or harboring false illusions and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, ‘Wie vie list aufzuleiden!’ (‘How much suffering there is to get through!’). Rilke spoke of ‘getting through suffering’ as others would talk of ‘getting through work.’ There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only very few realized that. Shamefacedly some confessed occasionally that they had wept, like the comrade who answered my question of how he had gotten over his edema, by confessing, ‘I have wept it out of my system.”
Five. Does Frankl prescribe a one-size-fits-all meaning for all of us? Explain.
Frankl does not prescribe one type of meaning that should fit us all. While he wants us to all embrace an attitude of courage, sacrifice, and service, he says meaning varies from person to person:
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.
If you’re a parent, your priorities are clear and obvious. If you’re not a parent, you have more free time and more “open space” to decide where you find your meaning.
Parents are wrong-headed to think they’re superior to adults who don’t have children. No one can make claim to having found “ultimate meaning.”
Meaning differs based on our individual situation. As Frankl writes in the second half of his book:
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
An Aside or Digression
I wish Viktor Frankl were alive because I have some questions for him about Finding meaning.
Question for Frankl: What happens when one person’s “meaning” conflicts with anothers?
For example, Dan Barker is a former Christian preacher, now atheist, who travels the world proclaiming the gospel of atheism. He sees the bible as an evil force with evil teachings and he wants to show that people who don’t believe in a god live normal, moral, meaningful lives. Preaching atheism gives Barker meaning.
Often Dan Barker has debates with Christian theologians whose meaning is to spread the Christian gospel.
My question for Frankl: How do we reconcile these two contradictory “meanings”? Does it even matter? Why? Why not?
Six. Over and over Frankl says we are accountable to others—our family, our friends, even our god. How does this accountability and responsibility free us?
In a state of fatigue and hunger, Frankl gives a speech to his fellow prisoners in which he explains that having no accountability is equal to having nothing to live for:
So I began by mentioning the most trivial of comforts first. I said that even in this Europe in the sixth winter of the Second World War, our situation was not the most terrible we could think of. I said that each of us had to ask himself what irreplaceable losses he had suffered up to then. I speculated that for most of them these losses had really been few. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope. Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune, position in society — all these were things that could be achieved again or restored. After all, we still had all our bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future…
Then I spoke about the future. I said that to the impartial the future must seem hopeless. I agreed that each of us could guess for himself how small were his chances of survival. I told them that although there was still no typhus epidemic in the camp, I estimated my own chances at about one in twenty. But I also told them that, in spite of this, I had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no man knew what the future would bring, much less the next hour. Even if we could not expect any sensational military events in the next few days, who knew better than we, with our experience of camps, how great chances sometimes opened up, quite suddenly, at least for the individual. For instance, one might be attached unexpectedly to a special group with exceptionally good working conditions—for this was the kind of thing which constituted the ‘luck’ of the prisoner.
But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which was drawn over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys, and how its light shone even in the present darkness. Again I quoted a poet — to avoid sounding like a preacher myself — who had written, ‘Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben.’ (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.
Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a meaning. I told my comrades (who lay motionless, although occasionally a sigh could be heard) that human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours — a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or God — and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly — not miserably — knowing how to die.
And finally I spoke of our sacrifice, which had meaning in every case. It was in the nature of this sacrifice that it should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the world of material success. But in reality our sacrifice did have a meaning. Those of us who had any religious faith, I said frankly, could understand without difficulty. I told them of a comrade who on his arrival in camp had tried to make a pact with Heaven that his suffering and death should save the human being he loved from a painful end. For this man, suffering and death were meaningful; his was a sacrifice of the deepest significance. He did not want to die for nothing. None of us wanted that.
The purpose of my words was to find a full meaning in our life, then and there, in that hut and in that practically hopeless situation. I saw that my efforts had been successful. When the electric bulb flared up again, I saw the miserable figures of my friends limping toward me to thank me with tears in their eyes. But I have to confess here that only too rarely had I the inner strength to make contact with my companions in suffering and that I must have missed many opportunities for doing so.
Seven. What are the “two races of men” Frankl discovers in this world?
Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils.
[…]
From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two — the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of “pure race” — and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.
Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp.
Eight. When the prisoners are liberated, they come to a fork in the road, so to speak, in which they can turn their life around for the better or sink into an abyss of bitterness and nihilism. Explain.
Viktor Frankl had a deep spiritual connection to his God. After being liberated from the concentration camps, he describes in his book how he walked alone through the country and contemplating the nature surrounding him, he fell to his knees and repeated a passage from the Psalms: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” Rather than be a bitter nihilist in the aftermath of his imprisonment, Frankl used his newfound freedom as an opportunity to start a new life. After falling to his knees and quoting the Psalm, he writes, “How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.”
But not all traumatized prisoners react like Frankl. We read the following:
During this psychological phase one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences.
This was often revealed in apparently insignificant events. A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it, but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, ‘You don’t say! And hasn’t enough been taken from us? ‘My wife and child have been gassed – not to mention everything else – and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!’
Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.
We had to strive to lead them back to this truth, or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a few thousand stalks of oats.”
A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro.
Compliment is a to say something nice about someone. "You look nice in that pumpkin polo shirt. Very nice pumpkin accents."
Complement is to complete or match well with something. "This full-bodied red wine complements the spaghetti."
The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan.
The word should be accepted.
Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers.
Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following:
Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers.
Confusing their and there
There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays.
We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their.
Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause
Terrified of slimy foods, Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster.
In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters, I attended the carnival with my family.
Three. Incomplete documentation
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness.”
It should read:
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness” (277).
Four. Vague Pronoun Reference
Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises.
Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend.
Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings)
No one came forward to bare witness to the crime.
No one came forward to bear witness to the crime.
Every where we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Everywhere we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Six. Mechanical error with a quotation
In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”.
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.”
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Seven. Unnecessary comma
I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations.
You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses:
I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels.
I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine.
You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because:
Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday.
Peaches, that are green, taste hideous.
The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas.
However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas:
Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit.
Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedraremain legal.
We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships.
Nine. Missing word
The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience.
The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience.
Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help.
Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help.
Ten. Faulty sentence structure
The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply.
A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures.
The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy.
I prefer yoga at home to the gym because of privacy.
11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak.
The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak.
A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp.
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient.
Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister.
A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)
Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being.
The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat.
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.
15. Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
16. Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
18. Poorly Integrated Quotation
A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Corrected
In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.
Corrected
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.
Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
This paper looks at fictional and real life examples.
A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen.
The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it.
A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements.
20. Sentence Fragment
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Essay Options for Final Paper on Man's Search for Meaning:
Option One
In a 1,400-word essay, defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Option Two:
In a 1,400-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction. Recommended Research Link for Alternative Option: http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/chance-and-choice-biology-and-theology-in-alexander-paynes-election/
Option Three
In a 1,400-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Option Four
In a 1,400-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Option Five:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Option Six:
Develop a thesis that shows how Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning explains the major thematic points in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You need 5 sources for your final paper.
Option Seven:
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the Coen brothers' A Serious Man complements the themes in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should 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.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Blue Book Exam for Wednesday, July 6
Analyze the manner in which the fable Death in Tehran explains the entire book Man's Search for Meaning. Your thesis should have 4 mapping components, and your essay must have 4 supporting body paragraphs.
First Option
Defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Some Things to Consider for Your Essay
Comparing Man's Search for Meaning and "Gooseberries," consider the following:
One. Nikolai has no ideal other than being a false god. His own self was his "ideal," which is no ideal at all.
Two. He has no higher purpose other than to find comfort and hedonism (pleasure seeking).
Three. He avoids conflict and stress, the very thing Frankl says fulfills us when they result from a life of meaning.
Four. By hiding from life, Nikolai is like the servant in the story Death in Tehran.
Sample Thesis for Option One
Nikolai's foolish life is like a cautionary tale that embodies all the things Viktor Frankl warns us about in mankind's false meaning quests. These foolish pursuits include _____________, ______________, _____________, and _________________.
Sample Thesis That Shows How Election is a Refutation of Man's Search for Meaning
The characters in Alexander Payne's masterpiece Election (1999) refute Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in compelling ways. For one, the characters lack the self-awareness to make the kind of choices or show the type of "freedom" that Frankl says we must utilize to find meaning. For two, the characters' earnest attempts to find meaning and structure in their lives prove to backfire and send them down a rabbit hole of moral dissolution and self-destruction suggesting that our most zealous efforts for meaning are contaminated by the unsavory impulses of the unconscious. For three, Tracy Flick's "meaning" and structure proves to be no meaning at all but rather unbridled ambition. Fourth, the movie's symbolism argues for a world governed by determinism through the environment and hard-wiring rather than a world populated by people who can make legitimate choices. Fifth, the movie's very title Election shows the ambiguity of choice: We "elect" to do things while at the same time life elects to place people in their place in the world's soulless machine.
For paragraph 1, summarize Frankl's book.
For paragraph2, summarize the movie Election.
For paragraph 3, write a thesis that presents your argument about meaning as you pit the book against the movie.
Paragraphs 4-10 should support your thesis.
Paragraph 11 will be your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
Resource:
You may use the short story, "Critical Thinking," I wrote about the conversation I had with a student on this subject.
Third Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Sample Thesis of Student Who Opposes Frankl on Grounds That Frankl Is Religious
Frankl believes in God (he is a theist), and the philosophy that informs his book Man's Search for Meaning is based on Frankl's theism. Take away religious faith and all the precepts of Frankl's book come crashing down like a deck of cards. A close look at the book from an atheist's point of view reveals that the book is full of faith-based aphorisms and homilies that cannot be believed unless one is religious. The notion of meaning is false since no one can prove there is any meaning at all. We have adapted to cooperate with one another and have evolved morality, but these developments do not point to any meaning or any God. Frankl's heroism is not the result of his choice to have the right attitude toward his suffering but rather the result of his hard-wiring and environment. Lots of decent people would not have performed so heroically in Frankl's circumstances, and they should not be ashamed if they are more selfish when faced with such excruciating circumstances. My third point is that if everyone were like Viktor Frankl, a goody two shoes, the world would be a boring place. Many of our most famous comedians who preach cynicism, hopelessness, misanthropy, and life's essential meaninglessness, provide us with therapeutic laughter precisely because they have never found "meaning" or the pious attitude toward life that Frankl would impose on the rest of us. Finally, since the "meaning" of one person with one religious faith collides with the "meaning" of a person who practices a different religious faith, we can conclude that "meaning" is an illusion based on a person's delusion belief in God. Looking at the evidence, we are forced to conclude that Man's Search for Meaning is simply a mouthpiece for religious dogma and does nothing to convince me or anyone that "meaning" exists.
Fourth Option
Defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Thesis Sample:
Through the lens of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Groundhog Day's universal themes of damnation and salvation become crystal clear. We see that Phil Connors is without meaning a damned man doomed to live in an eternal loop of nothingness and despair. We see that without hope for a meaningful existence, Connors surrenders to his beastly impulses of cynicism and petulant childishness, resulting in his disconnection from himself and the human race. We see that Connors must be redeemed by love, one of the three ways humans find meaning, according to Frankl. Finally, we see that it is only the primary drive for meaning that, like the logotherapy used by Viktor Frankl, can provide the therapy and healing Connors' shrunken soul needs.
For paragraph 1, summarize Frankl's book.
For paragraph2, summarize the movie Groundhog Day.
For paragraph 3, write a thesis that presents your argument about meaning as you pit the book against the movie.
Paragraphs 4-10 should support your thesis.
Paragraph 11 will be your conclusion, a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
Fifth Option:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should 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.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
One. What is the central purpose of Frankl’s book? (ix)
We must embrace Nietzsche’s adage: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”
With a life purpose, we can march ahead in spite of our suffering and insurmountable obstacles.
In contrast, without a purpose, we will slog and languish through life and suffer emptiness and depression, which we will try to feebly overcome by medicating ourselves with phony relationships, social media, addiction, consumerism, etc.
Without a purpose, we will be butterflies pinned to a wall, our legs helplessly flailing.
Without purpose, we will suffer from ennui, a state of perpetual boredom with life that leaves us sluggish, numb, and depressed.
Without purpose, we will suffer from the spiritual disease of acedia, the lethargy and fatigue that results from living in a fog of no meaning and purpose.
Frankl observed in the concentration camps two kinds of prisoners, those with a purpose and those without.
Those without a purpose were the first to give up on life. Many of us have given up on life and we don’t even know it.
We’re closed in by the despair from having given up on life. We die a slow death. We are trapped and closed in by our hopeless condition.
To give up on life is to be oppressed by our own despair. We are our own oppressor and enemy. We are the cause of our oppression and confinement. Frankl will make a reference to this condition later in the book. The Hebrew word for this imprisonment, this “tightness and being closed in,” is called mitzrayim. Finding purpose and meaning is the way out of our mitzrayim, our confinement.
The prisoners who had given up on life died more quickly. We read in the Foreword by Harold Kushner that, “They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for.”
Frankl had a purpose. He needed to survive the concentration camps, so he could teach the world the lessons he learned about the importance of finding meaning. Teaching the world the importance of meaning became his meaning.
Frankl identifies three areas where we find meaning, as we read in Kushner’s Foreword:
Work, “doing something significant”
Love, “caring for another person”
Courage in difficult times: Suffering requires courage. “Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it”: with or without courage.
The attitude we cultivate toward suffering determines what kind of person we are. Frankl writes that a person “may remain brave, dignified and unselfish, or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.”
Few people choose to be brave and dignified, but according to Frankl, the difficulty of the task that not absolve any of us the responsibility to choose a path of meaning. In other words, the road to hell is wide and the road to heaven is narrow. It’s “easy” to live a meaningless life. Most people lead meaningless lives of “quiet despair.”
But a meaningless life is in truth not “easy” because it results in a despair that eats away at us.
Two. How does Frankl’s idea of meaning conflict with the world’s idea of human beings’ primary motivation?
Kushner writes, “Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.”
Conventional notions of success, based on the acquiring of pleasure and power, obscure the fact that life’s primary drive is to find meaning, which is the only ticket out of our personal hell of emptiness and despair.
Frankl’s book is a refutation against a world that promotes this conventional idea of “success.”
Pleasure is doomed to fail because of the hedonic treadmill: We acclimate to pleasure so that we always become numb to it.
Power is doomed to corrupt and make us evil: We will feel compelled to control and manipulate others as feeble compensation for the emptiness and despair that informs our meaningless existence.
Three. For Harold Kushner, what is the book’s most “enduring insight”?
Kushner writes: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”
Most of us define our wellbeing on our materialistic station in life: our things, our comforts, our routines, our reliance on family, and our good health.
But in the blink of an eye, anything can happen that will strip us all these things that we assumed gave us a foundation in life.
Frankl came from a loving family and suddenly the Nazis plucked him and his family members from their loving environment into the hell of the concentration camps.
The Nazis stripped Frankl of everything, but one thing Frankl would not give them was the dignity of his soul.
Some of Frankl’s fellow prisoners, after the liberation, lived like angry animals with the attitude that, “The world let this hell happen to me, so screw the world. I will go on a rampage!”
By embracing this bitter attitude, these prisoners lost their souls and became their worst enemies.
Frankl says we have the freedom to choose the attitude we will have in the face of suffering. We are accountable for having a noble and courageous attitude in the face of this suffering.
Four. What implicit moral condemnation of the American news reporters does Frankl give in his Preface?
The reporters always start interviewing Frankl by talking about how his book is this amazing best-selling success. By doing so, they miss the point: The book points to a terrible fact: “ an expression of misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.”
The reporters shouldn’t be so intoxicated by the book’s “success”; rather, they should focus on the public’s hunger for meaning, and why this hunger is such a chronic problem.
Frankl disdains society’s ambition for best-selling books and “success.” He never wanted any fame for writing his book. Originally, he was going to write it anonymously but decided for credibility’s sake to put his name on it.
He is against success. He writes, “Again and again I . . . admonish my students both in Europe and in America: ‘Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.’ For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause great than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”
The irony is that people who seek happiness the most are the least happy and that people who seek not happiness but meaning are the most fulfilled (true definition of happiness).
Seeking happiness for its own sake is an infantile, childish impulse; therefore, it is doomed to fail from the start.
Five. What “three phases of the inmate’s mental reactions to camp life become apparent”?
Phase 1: Shock
The first phase is shock, which can be a sort of disbelief we feel as we’re still processing the information.
Sometimes this state of shock and denial was accompanied by a “delusion of reprieve,” the belief that none of this was happening and that everything would be okay.
Such a delusion was perhaps necessary in a hell where 90 percent of the prisoners were selected for immediate death in the “bath” house.
In this hell, fellow prisoners pointed to the smoke and said, “That’s where your friend is, floating up to Heaven.”
The new prisoners were in too much shock to believe in this: Either you would die, or have everything, including your wedding ring, taken away. Even all their head and body hair would be shaved off and the hair would be used for industrial use.
Frankl is deluded into thinking he will be able to hold on to his manuscript, his “life’s work.”
The shock is slowly accompanied by a dark sense of humor and a “cold curiosity” for the horrors of this remarkable hell on earth. “How bad can things get? Is there a bottom on human depravity and evil or is there no bottom at all?”
During this first phase, everyone is tempted to commit suicide, to run into the wire, for a brief time.
To keep the will to live during this suicidal phase, a prisoner explains that one must keep shaved and “stand and walk smartly.” Letting oneself go is the first step in giving up on life.
We read, as Frankl quotes Doris Lessing, that an “abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
Phase 2: Apathy
The second phase of this “abnormal reaction” was apathy, in which the prisoner “achieved a kind of emotional death.”
He needed to deaden the tortures of being separated by his loved ones.
Being surrounded by filth and excrement added to his disgust, which translated into apathy.
He becomes hardened by the suffering he sees around him. This is an adaptation, a “necessary protective shell.”
The only time Frankl felt any emotion during the apathy stage was when the guards insulted his humanity with their blows and humiliations. Indignation was the result of an insult, and it would not be accepted under any conditions (25).
As the apathy continues, some prisoners will experience the “intensification of their inner life.” As an example, Frankl has a transcendent experience in which he feels his wife’s loving presence, which becomes a source of strength to him (37-38).
Humor was also learned to keep the prisoners from going completely crazy in their hell (44).
Phase 3: Depersonalization
Being reduced to an animal fighting tooth and claw for survival could strip a man of his dignity and his soul.
We read that, “If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this [attack on his fundamental humanity] in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life” (50).
Six. How does Death in Tehran explain the manner in which we are too often our worst enemy?
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.
Often our fear accelerates us to the very fate we wish to escape from. For example, time and time again Frankl refused to take the easy way out when offered “easier” camps and these “easier” camps raged with famine and even cannibalism (56).
Staying loyal to his commitment to his patients in the camp gave Frankl an “inward peace” he would not have experienced had he acted in self-interest.
Frankl’s book makes us ask what really is self-interest in the context of self-interested altruism, knowing the benefits we gain from helping others (59).
Seven. What radical claim about free will does Frankl make in the context of the depersonalization that occurred at the concentration camps?
On page 65, we read
In attempting this psychological presentation and a psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors — be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners' reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him — mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Eight. What makes choosing the good life of sacrifice and meaning so difficult?
We read that even though we are motivated and think about living a good life, we quickly forget our resolutions. As we read:
Those of us who saw the film called Resurrection — taken from a book by Tolstoy — years ago, may have had similar thoughts. Here were great destinies and great men. For us, at that time, there was no great fate; there was no chance to achieve such greatness. After the picture we went to the nearest cafe, and over a cup of coffee and a sandwich we forgot the strange metaphysical thoughts which for one moment had crossed our minds. But when we ourselves were confronted with a great destiny and faced with the decision of meeting it with equal spiritual greatness, by then we had forgotten our youthful resolutions of long ago, and we failed.
Perhaps there came a day for some of us when we saw the same film again, or a similar one. But by then other pictures may have simultaneously unrolled before one's inner eye; pictures of people who attained much more in their lives than a sentimental film could show. Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.'" ...
that while the surroundings are overwhelming, there still exists “human liberty” and “spiritual freedom.” Frankl writes, “The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”
Nine. How did the “intensification” of Frankl’s inner life help him transcend his suffering?
We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner's existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.
"Stop!" We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
"Can't you hurry up, you pigs?" Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing — which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
Ten. Frankl’s central thesis is also at the heart of one of mankind’s greatest controversies. Explain (Review of Question #7).
... In attempting this psychological presentation and a psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors — be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners' reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him — mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is sufficient proof that man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
Take the fate of the sick — especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now — he wrote — fate was offering him a similar chance.
Eleven. What is the link between suffering and meaning?
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is sufficient proof that man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
The other night I consumed a tub of Greek yogurt with peanut butter and honey so I'd have enough energy to watch a documentary about world hunger.
I wasn't really hungry, I was anxious. Whenever I get anxious; which is all the time, I eat like a demon.
Anxiety propels me to stuff my face even when I’m not hungry. The mechanical act of eating. Using my greedy hands to lift food to my mouth and then hearing my mandibles and molars crunch the food matter into mush, has a soothing effect on my anxieties—like giving a teething biscuit to a baby.
Anxiety compels me to engage in the practice of “preemptive eating.” The idea that I even though I’m not hungry in this moment, I might be “on the road” inside my car far away from nutritional resources so I had better fill up while I can. In truth, I’m not “on the road” that often evidenced by the fact that my nine-year-old car has only 33 thousand miles on the odometer. Clearly, then, my impulse for preemptive eating is indefensible.
But you see, my anxieties exaggerate the circumstances, so that I have ample food reserves in my car—cases of high-protein chocolate peanut butter bars and a case of bottled water. All that unnecessary weight in the trunk compromises my gas mileage, but my anxieties are a cruel tyrant.
Anxiety is the reason that, in spite of my hardcore kettlebell workouts, I am a good twenty pounds overweight. Being twenty pounds overweight makes me anxious, and these anxieties in turn make me want to eat more.
Contemplating this vicious cycle is making me extremely anxious.
Good food makes me anxious.
Just thinking about good food can make me so anxious I’ll obsess over it in bed, so I’ll toss and turn all night. Like a heroin addict.
When I was in my early twenties, I ate donuts that were so good I wanted to drop out of college, give up on relationships, and hole myself up in my mother’s basement. Where I’d spend the rest of my life eating donuts.
I suffer from food insomnia. Meaning that fixating at night on a certain delicious meal I once had can prevent me from falling asleep.
There’s one food in particular that keeps me up at night—chocolate brownies.
Chocolate brownies are the best delivery system for sending an explosion of chocolate into the brain’s pleasure centers. Chocolate brownies saturate my brain with so much dopamine that after eating a brownie platter it’s not safe for me to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment. When I was a kid, I took cough medicine laced with codeine, and there was a warning label on the back: “Not safe to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment.” Chocolate brownie mix should have the same warning on the back of the box.
The best brownies mix I’ve ever had are Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies from Costco. I’ve purchased the same brand from other stores, but the Costco version is the best. Costco apparently uses its special powers to have Ghirardelli make an exclusive proprietary formula that is far superior to other versions, this fact has been corroborated by conversations I’ve had with Orange County housewives.
I don’t live in Orange County, and I don’t normally have conversations with housewives. That I talked with them about the superior quality of the exclusive Costco version of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies mix attests to the severity of my unhealthy dependence on food.
Costco does a good job of making you think about food. Before you even walk inside Costco, you smell the freshly baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and cream Danish. The smell makes you run inside the store.
Chronologically speaking, I am supposed to be an adult, but like a kid I’m running toward the Costco entrance while pushing an empty shopping cart. I must be a scary sight. This 240-pound middle-aged bald guy aggressively pushing his battering ram into a giant food larder. Where he will pillage the spoils. I’m like an Old Testament warlord about to ransack a defeated city.
Essay 3 Due June 27: Choose one of the following:
First Option
Support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.
Sample Thesis for Kohn
While Kohn may have good intentions in his desire to abolish grading, his mission is misguided when we consider ________________, _________________, _________________, and __________________.
Second Option
Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.
Sample Thesis
Bell Hooks convincingly shows in her personal narrative that climbing the education ladder entails a sort of betrayal of one's working class roots evidenced by _________________, _________________, ______________, and __________________.
Third Option
In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”
Sample Singer Thesis
Peter Singer's argument that "mercy killings" can be the most humanitarian option available is extremely dangerous and indefensible when we examine ________________, ______________, _______________, and ____________________.
Fourth Option
In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Sample Thesis
A close examination of the surrogate motherhood industry reveals it to be a moral abomination evidenced by _______________, ________________, _______________, and ___________________.
One. What did Hook’s mother teacher about desire in the mother’s attempt to quell the appetite for unaffordable things?
Hooks felt belittled and learned to distrust her desires and bury them. The implicit message is that since she is of the lower classes she has to know her place and have no sense of entitlement. She must remain modest. She must be happy in life with life's bare minimum. She must be apologetic about her existence.
To have desires for anything above one's station in life is considered impolite.
We can only imagine what this would do to her psyche.
That would drive me crazy to want something and to develop this reflex to immediately say I don’t actually want it.
Hooks’ save-money mentality followed her into college where money had to be first considered above all else.
During Hooks’ first year in college, she realizes a lot of her mother’s fears are rooted in class shame, the disgrace of not measuring up in the presence of “real classy people.” Sadly, we live in a society where the lower classes suffer an inferiority complex because they don't "measure up" to the higher classes.
Two. What happens to Bell Hooks in college?
She is isolated by the white girls who look at her in horror and disdain for being black and for being not rich. “Not only are you black; you’re not rich. Stay away from us, you pariah.” She becomes La Otra.
Like her childhood, Hooks was learning to be apologetic about her existence. "Sorry I don't fit in, rich girls. I'll try to stay out of the way."
Her existence becomes one of self-abnegation or self-erasure: “If I want things and if I feel overcome by loneliness, then too bad. I have to suffer. My existence is not worth these considerations. My needs mean nothing compared to these rich white girls.”
Bell Hooks sees the world as binary: The haves and the have-nots. Those who live in glorious gardens with grass and trees and those who live in the scorched weeds.
Bell Hooks connects with one white girl who like Hooks is financially challenged. She is a Czechoslovakian immigrant with modest means. The two of them together become Las Otras.
In 1978 when I was training at the gym, a 300-pound power lifter scrutinized me with piercing eyes and told me "there are only two kinds of people in the world, homeowners and renters." And then he spit behind his back before bench pressing 500 pounds like it was a feather.
Unlike Hooks, though, the Czech girl has contempt and envy for the rich white girls. She desires their riches and resents them for having what she lacks.
In contrast, Hooks’ religious upbringing taught her to be leery of excess, of pride, of loving riches for their own sake.
Three. What finally sets off Hooks’ rage toward the rich white girls?
When they perform their ritual of trashing someone’s room and it ends up being Hooks’ room, Hooks is enraged that these rich narcissists cannot consider that someone with modest finances cannot easily replace all the items that were ruined during the trashing.
The rich girls’ lack of empathy and their failure of imagination stirs Hooks’ deep loathing for them.
Adding to her contempt is Hooks’ refusal to want to be white like them and to aspire to behave like a vain privileged white girl.
Her contempt for these immature white girls compels Hooks to go to a real college, Stanford, which will test her parents’ class anxieties. Her parents will hide behind religion and say that Stanford, which is in California, is sinful.
Four. What does the essay teach us about education?
To succeed in education, we have to break the bonds with our class identity and this can be excruciating if our class identity is tied up with our parental identity.
Time and time again, we read of college students who don’t succeed until they break from their parents’ and communities’ class influences and this break is often seen as a betrayal and it results in guilt. But it is necessary.
Five. What cynical worldview does Hooks observe at Stanford?
Her white roommate, a poor girl from Orange County, believes in the religion of privilege: “Cheating was worth it. She believed the world the privileged had created was all unfair—all one big cheat; to get ahead, one had to play the game. To her, I was truly an innocent, a lamb being led to the slaughter.”
Hooks isn't prepared to play the game because playing the game means selling one's soul to the devil.
For Hooks' roommate however the only devil to worry about is being poor.
Six. What does Hooks conclude about the manner in which students must adapt to college?
Hooks writes: "Slowly, I began to understand fully that there was no place in academe for folks from working-class backgrounds who did not wish to leave the past behind. That was the price of the ticket. Poor students would be welcome at the best institutions of higher learning only if they were willing to surrender memory, to forget the past and claim the assimilated present as the only worthwhile and meaningful reality."
In other words to assimilate into the privileged, educated class, we have to embrace their language, attitude, demeanor, characteristics, body language; in other words, we have to die to our former self, disavow our past, and become a new person born in a world of privilege.
This new privilege becomes evident in the way we speak, write, and affect our body language. We develop a certain superciliousness and hauteur (uppity, proud, self-regarding expression that says, "I'm all that").
Hooks is tormented by the above fact not only because it's true, with all of its questionable moral implications, but because Hooks went through the process herself even as she questioned it. She became an "upper class intellectual."
At best when we transform from working class to privileged educated class, she writes, someone like her will suffer contradictions, having a remnant of her past identity and a new identity based on privilege.
Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.
Sample Thesis
Bell Hooks convincingly shows in her personal narrative that climbing the education ladder entails a sort of betrayal of one's working class roots evidenced by _________________, _________________, ______________, and __________________.
Sample Essay Response That Agrees with Bell Hooks
College should be a place that champions the humanitarian spirit, embracing the struggle of those who suffer under the weight of the elites, the privileged class. However, as Bell Hooks convincingly argues, college perpetuates class and sometimes racial elitism, tacitly scorning the working-class while adulating the privileged elites evidenced by the professor’s indoctrination of the students to act and be privileged, the pressures to disown one’s working-class family and community, and the rich students’ contempt for the poorer students.
Sample Essay Response That Disagrees with Bell Hooks
While I sympathize with Bell Hooks and would defend her against anyone, teacher, student, or otherwise, who would discriminate against her on the basis of her race or economic class, I find that her condemnation of the elitism she identifies at college to be misguided. The role of the college should be to teach students to lift themselves up from their lower class and into a more privileged class. That’s the point of going to college, to go from a lower station to a higher station in life. Secondly, having these ambitions doesn’t make us anti-humanitarian or contemptuous of the lower classes. We simply want to work toward a place of more privilege. That’s normal human nature that addresses the Darwinian, often brutal realities we face in this world. Bell Hooks has the luxury as someone who makes hundreds of thousand of dollars a year to decry the privileged class, but she needs to face the fact that she belongs to that privileged class and she worked hard to get there. Finally, Bell Hooks does a disservice if she doesn’t tell students from the working class the hard truth about succeeding at college, which is that to be successful we must disavow ourselves of our tribalistic past, even if it means separating ourselves from our working-class parents and community, even if our abandoning that family and community, as Bell Hooks herself did, gives us shame and guilt, because that separation is essential for becoming reborn as an empowered member of the privileged class who is now in a position to help our family in ways we never were before.
Response That Refutes the Above
The refutation of Bell Hooks under the claim that we must sell our souls to the devil in order to be successful is a grotesque absurdity misinformed by the blind ambition of class privilege, a convenient worship of Darwinian self-centeredness, and a failure to acknowledge that we can enjoy the joining the privileged ranks without disavowing our past identity, family, and community.
Response to the Above Refutation
I never claimed we should sell our soul to the devil and engage in Darwinian self-centeredness. My argument, contrary to the one misconstrued above, is that to embrace the new life of college, its ideas, its knowledge, its new identity, and yes the privileges that come with higher learning, we must go through the excruciating process of dying to our old self, the very self that was raised in our working-class homes and communities and that this process of dying and being reborn again is the very process that Bell Hooks admits to going through in order to become the success she is today.
"Our Baby, Her Womb" by Arlie Russell Hoschild
One. What is a typical surrogate mom situation?
A woman hits about 40 because she's worked during that time, she has a lot of financial resources, and she realizes she's too old to bear a child, so she seeks a younger, less financially endowed woman.
The dynamic of power is someone with money buying someone's body and that body belongs to a someone of modest financial means.
An aside: Just like the documentary we saw on temporary work, whenever we're short on financial resources we find ourselves vulnerable to sacrificing our bodies to survive.
I'd rather be a surrogate mother than work in a chicken farm.
The total cost is $80,000, and this includes psychological evaluations. However, in India, the total cost is $10,000.
Two. What are the typical steps at attempting pregnancy?
First, the husband and wife have a doctor implant their embryo in a surrogate's womb.
If step one doesn't work, step two is combining the husband's sperm with a surrogate's egg (a donor egg) and implanting into another surrogate's womb.
In the case of Dr. Patel, she increases the chances of success by implanting "about five embryos at at time, aborting fetuses if they numbered more than two."
Fourth Option
In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Sample Thesis
A close examination of the surrogate motherhood industry reveals it to be a moral abomination evidenced by _______________, ________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Thesis That Defends Surrogacy
With the right regulations, surrogate motherhood can be a viable alternative for couples who depend on this method as way of becoming parents. We're not going to stop the business, so we should regulate it. We shouldn't deprive couples of free choice. In the free market, the transaction can be mutually beneficial.
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
Essay Prompt:
In a 4-page typed, double-spaced essay with 3 sources in your MLA Works Cited page, develop a thesis that explains how "Market Triumphalism," discussed in Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals," helps explain the moral bankruptcy in Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb."
Sample Thesis:
Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" explains the moral bankruptcy in Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb" evidenced by _________________, __________________, ___________________, and ___________________.
Some Points to Consider:
Market Triumphilism makes consumerism the apotheosis (highest point) of human existence resulting in the loss of moral concerns.
Market Triumphalism creates markets that cater to consumers who want to make exchanges that are disconnected from moral concerns.
Market Triumphalism confuses the sacred with the profane.
Market Triumphalism changes us from a market economy to a market society. We become saturated with consumerism resulting in blindness to moral concerns.
Your thesis is the one sentence in your essay that announces your argument to your reader.
Your thesis is your essay's central argument that can demonstrated with evidence and logic.
Your thesis is often debatable and allows you to address opposing views.
Your thesis is more than a general statement about your main idea. It needs to establish a clear position you will support with balanced proofs (logos, pathos, ethos). Use the checklist below to help you create a thesis.
Thesis Examples
Thesis That Supports Accepting Syrian Refugees
Americans should accept Syrian refugees because the intangible benefits outweigh the tangible risks.
The tangible risks are a lack of assimilation and financial burden on American tax payer and that some are ISIS recruits. However, to turn our backs on a humanitarian crisis makes us morally ugly and moral ugliness is not a legacy we want to pass down to our children. Moral ugliness is a disease that spreads evil. For two examples, America stood by during the Armenian genocide and stood by when European Jews were sent back to Europe as their ships waited for entry on America's coastline. Refugees from Honduras and El Salvador are being sent back to gang-ruled societies where children are forced to be foot soldiers for gang leaders.
Morally ugly societies rank low on the Happiness Index.
Another thesis example:
Even though we give lip service to having moral integrity, we find that none of us truly has moral integrity because our self-interest always compromises it evidenced by every day circumstances (cheating on a college test if you knew you could get away with it; finding millions of dollars of stolen money if you knew you would never get caught; finding a wallet, etc.)
The following section is adapted from Writing with a Thesis: A Rhetoric Reader by David Skwire and Sarah Skwire:
Make sure you avoid the following when creating your thesis:
A thesis is not a title: Homes and schools (title) vs. Parents ought to participate more in the education of their children (good thesis).
A thesis is not an announcement of the subject: My subject is the incompetence of the Supreme Court vs. The Supreme Court made a mistake when it ruled in favor of George W. Bush in the 2000 election.
A thesis is not a statement of absolute fact: Jane Austen is the author of Pride and Prejudice.
A thesis is not the whole essay: A thesis is your main idea/claim/refutation/problem-solution expressed in a single sentence or a combination of sentences.
Please note that according to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition, "A thesis statement is a single sentence that formulates both your topic and your point of view" (Gibaldi 42). However, if your paper is more complex and requires a thesis statement, your thesis may require a combination of sentences.
Quick Checklist for Your Thesis Statement:
_____ The thesis/claim follows the guidelines outlined above
_____ The thesis/claim matches the requirements and goals of the assignment
_____ The thesis/claim is clear and easily recognizable
_____ The thesis/claim seems supportable by good reasoning/data, emotional appeal
Successful Thesis Template Examples
McMahon's argument that we should embrace Syrian refugees is flawed evidenced by ____________, ______________, ______________, and ___________________.
McMahon's contention that as a general principle we do not have moral integrity is form of cheap cynicism that collapses under the weight of various fallacies, which include ______________, _____________, ____________, and __________________.
The New Jim Crow is a failed/successful analogy to the original Jim Crow because __________________, ________________, _____________________, and __________________.
While Alexander makes a compelling critique of the mass incarceration system, her analogy between Jim Crow and incarceration as "The New Jim Crow" collapses when we consider ______________, ______________, ___________, and ______________.
While through Alexander's own admission the analogy between Jim Crow and mass incarceration as "The New Jim Crow" is not a perfect one, we can make the case that those who would dismiss her analogy entirely are in grave error when we consider these major flaws in their thinking, which include ___________, ___________, _____________, and _______________.
Michelle Alexander has written a brilliant critique of mass incarceration in which she points out its moral bankruptcy in ways that are beyond dispute. However, her book is a failure because she squandered the opportunity to point out the real causes of this moral bankruptcy, which include __________, ___________, __________, and ____________.
The assertion that Alexander's book falls short because it fails to address the deeper problems caused by free market capitalism collapses when we consider ___________, __________, ___________, and ________________.
While Alexander's book is hardly perfect and contains some serious flaws, her overall argument is compelling when we consider ____________, ____________, __________, and _______________.
Avoid an Either/Or Thesis
Going to college is in your best interests because ___________, _____________, ______________, and ________________.
Use stipulation (show conditions or requirements) and nuance (showing subtle distinctions) to inform your thesis and give it appropriate sophistication for a complicated topic:
If you keep your costs down and major in something that utilizes your passions and has strong market value, getting a college degree, while not guaranteeing financial success, is your best play for entering the job market.
Use concession clause
While majors in the humanities would probably not be in your best financial interests, marketable majors such as finance, accounting, computer science, and engineering should give you upward economic mobility if you can keep your costs down.
While the job market is declining and while college costs continue to skyrocket, going to college is still your best play for upward economic mobility unless you are a tech or sales whiz.
Use refutation thesis
The argument of going to college or not is a false argument since there is overwhelming evidence that compels us to conclude that going to college is our best financial play. The real argument is WHAT kind of major do we pursue and at WHAT cost? In other words, the argument should focus on the ratio of financial potential to college costs.
The question isn't going to college or not; the real question is do I major in a "safe bet" and approach my career like a soulless mercenary or do I choose my major based on my passions and say the hell with making money?
We should not either major in a "safe bet" or a passion-based guarantee of lifelong poverty; rather, we should seek a balance.
Study the Templates of Argumentation
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors' supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
Sample Thesis:
The payment of women to borrow their bodies during a pregnancy is morally bankrupt when we consider ______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________.
Sample Refutation of the Above Thesis
While in an ideal world I would be opposed to the surrogate womb business, in the real world surrogate motherhood is the lesser of two evils for poor women because ____________, ___________, ______________, and _______________.
Possible Supports for the Above
Paternalistic do-gooders shouldn't be able to tell the poor what they can and can not do with their bodies.
Payment for a womb rental may help a woman feed her starving family.
Payment for a womb rental may help a woman get an education and break free from her cycle of poverty.
Signal Phrases with present tense verb
Using Signal Phrases for putting citations in your essay.
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Sentence Fragment Exercises
After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence.
One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her.
Two. In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.
Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market.
Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.
Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.
Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming.
Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar.
Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety.
Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV.
Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel.
Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills.
Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend.
Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me.
Essay Prompt:
In a 4-page typed, double-spaced essay with 3 sources in your MLA Works Cited page, develop a thesis that explains how "Market Triumphalism," discussed in Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals," helps explain the moral bankruptcy in Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb."
Sample Thesis:
Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals" explains the moral bankruptcy in Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb" evidenced by _________________, __________________, ___________________, and ___________________.
In a 500-word essay, support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.
On June 21 of your syllabus, I should have put the essay "Unspeakable Conversations" on page 96, NOT "Everything You've Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong."
Sorry for the mistake.
Essay 3 Due June 27: Choose one of the following:
First Option
Support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.
Sample Thesis for Kohn
While Kohn may have good intentions in his desire to abolish grading, his mission is misguided when we consider ________________, _________________, _________________, and __________________.
Second Option
Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.
Sample Thesis
Bell Hooks convincingly shows in her personal narrative that climbing the education ladder entails a sort of betrayal of one's working class roots evidenced by _________________, _________________, ______________, and __________________.
Third Option
In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”
Sample Singer Thesis
Peter Singer's argument that "mercy killings" can be the most humanitarian option available is extremely dangerous and indefensible when we examine ________________, ______________, _______________, and ____________________.
Fourth Option
In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Sample Thesis
A close examination of the surrogate motherhood industry reveals it to be a moral abomination evidenced by _______________, ________________, _______________, and ___________________.
“Unspeakable Conversations” by Harriet McBryde Johnson
One. How does Johnson effectively get our attention in her essay’s introduction?
“He insists he doesn’t want to kill me.”
Two. What kind of hubris (excessive pride) and arrogance inform Singer’s philosophy to kill deformed babies?
He seems to know that the “suffering” disabled babies go through, and the parents’ suffering, justifies killing them.
Is there a definitive suffering scale, and even if there were, would such a scale justify the killing of certain kinds of babies?
Additionally, Singer argues that “individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn’t consider them persons” should not live.
Again, how do we definitively measure such perceived impairments, and even if such a measurement were available, could we justify this practice of killing people?
Again, his insanely mathematical formula used to justify infanticide is an oversimplification. As HMJ writes, “the presence or absence of a disability doesn’t predict quality of life.” Her brother Mac who is not disabled has flaws and gifts “that cannot be measured on the same scale.”
For Singer, a disabled baby is “worse off” than a healthy baby so the disabled baby should be killed. But what does it mean to say someone is “worse off”? What about a healthy baby who as a toddler proves that he is a sociopath who tortures cats and dogs? He gets to live?
At another point of debate, Singer says healthy children can have fun at the beach but disabled children cannot and therefore they should be put to death. Does this make sense? “You, child, are unable to have fun. Now die.”
I’m less shocked by the stupidity and evil of the argument (because there will always be madmen spewing made theories) than by the fact that Singer is a venerated philosopher who is a hired professor at Princeton.
Three. How does HBJ's appearance present challenges, some of which are for her insufferable?
People assume she needs pity.
They assume her life is horrible.
They assume she is in immense pain.
They assume she needs to be treated like a child or patronized like a slow person.
They don’t see her. They see stereotypes based on her appearance.
Lexicon of Terms Pertinent to Peter Singer’s Moral Philosophy.
One. Utilitarianism, the philosophy that we should sacrifice the individual for the greater good of the collective whole.
From Economy: Definition: Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy, generally operating on the principle that the utility (happiness or satisfaction) of different people can not only be measured but also meaningfully summed over people and that utility comparisons between people are meaningful. That makes it possible to achieve a well-defined societal optimum in allocations, production, and other decisions, and achieve the goal utilitarian British philosopher Jeremy Bentham described as "the greatest good for the greatest number."
This form of utilitarianism is thought of as extreme, now, partly because it is widely believed that there exists no generally acceptable way of summing utilities across people and comparing between them.
Two. “quality of life” argument: human life is only valuable if a certain “quality” can be achieved; otherwise life is better off destroyed.
Three. “normal children”: They can achieve a “quality of life” and should take priority over “abnormal children” who should be euthanized.
Four. “infants are replaceable”: we should replace abnormal infants with normal ones for the “greater good.” The moral imperative is that we are reducing suffering and adding more productive citizens to society as opposed to citizens who put a burden on society.
Five. Eugenicist, one who defends the idea that we should select what humans are desirable based on genetics and which ones should be replaced, that is euthanized, for the betterment of society. The eugenicist also develops the criteria for making these choices.
Six. Nebulous definition of “personhood.” The ability to imagine the future. What does that mean?
Seven. Intrinsic value of human life, called the sanctity of life vs. conditional value of human life based on “quality of life.”
Eight. Apologist for eugenics. An apologist takes controversial or unpopular ideas and makes them appealing by defending their validity and showing why those views are correct.
Nine. Peter Singer is an advocate for genetic re-engineering.
Ten. Market-driven and peer-pressure-driven forces for genetic re-engineering. The result will be a loss of diversity. Most women will like Salma Hayek and Beyonce while most men will look like Will Smith and Brad Pitt. See the New Eugenics.
Part Two. Peter Singer’s Major Arguments
One. Peter Singer’s quality of life argument for infanticide:
His stated reason, rather, is that such children have diminished prospects of eventually enjoying an adequate "quality of life", in his words, and to allow them to live would take away resources from what Singer calls "normal" children. He therefore advocates killing "disabled" infants, if the parents so choose, and replacing them with "normal" ones. The terminology of "replacement" is Singer's own; his philosophy "treats infants as replaceable", in his words (Practical Ethics p. 186).
Why, then, does Singer argue that infants born with this condition can justly be killed? Because they are "abnormal" and do not have "good prospects" (Rethinking p. 214).
This notion of "prospects" runs like a mantra through Singer's discussion of Down syndrome children: "the future prospects of life may be so bleak" (211), "the prospects are clouded" (213), and so forth. But what sort of prospects does he have in mind? On p. 213 of Rethinking he lists several activities which a person with Down syndrome will supposedly never be capable of: "to play the guitar, to develop an appreciation of science fiction, to learn a foreign language, to chat with us about the latest Woody Allen movie, or to be a respectable athlete, basketball player or tennis player."
This list reads like a parody of bourgeois myths of achievement, success, and respectability. To Singer, however, these are legitimate reasons for killing a newborn. After all, if you can't do your own financial planning, why should you be allowed to live?
Two. Peter Singer’s utilitarian argument for infanticide:
What counts as a "severe disability" for Singer? He intentionally leaves the term vague to allow for a broad range of parental discretion, but he has discussed a number of specific examples, both hypothetical as well as actual cases.
The conditions he has explicitly named as sufficient justification for active infanticide include Down syndrome, spina bifida, and hemophilia. Here is Singer's reasoning on the latter condition, taken from his popular textbook Practical Ethics (P. 186): "Suppose a woman planning to have two children has one normal child, then gives birth to a haemophiliac child. The burden of caring for that child may make it impossible for her to cope with a third child; but if the disabled child were to die, she would have another. . . . When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him."
Three. Peter Singer’s definition of a “person” or someone who is worthy of the label “personhood”:
a conscious being, a creature who has the capacity to imagine the future. This definition can apply to humans, animals, and creatures. A “person” should not be killed, but a human baby suffering severe retardation or some other handicap is not a “person.”
Four. Utilitarian Slippery Slope:
If we agree that we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people and that handicapped people burden the “greatest good,” at what point do we stop at defining who constitutes a “burden”? Smokers, the obese, criminals, the handicapped, the autistic? Where do we stop?
Five. Peter Singer’s “Worse Off” Argument:
Disability makes a person worse off and therefore that person should be killed. And Peter Singer is comfortable judging who’s “worse off” and who’s not, a very subjective condition. See page 97 and page 106 top.
Six. Peter Singer’s Eugenicist Position:
The eugenicist position endorses selection according to desirable and undesirable genetic traits, and favors the elimination of the latter. Singer's argument sorts people into two categories, "normal" and "abnormal", and declares the ostensibly abnormal ones fair game at birth. He doesn't even bother to try to provide "objective" grounds on which to classify some human physical or mental conditions as "defective" (a term he used in earlier editions of Practical Ethics) and contrast them with "healthy" ones. Instead he simply welcomes whatever arbitrary social norms happen to prevail, thus turning his argument into a vehicle for prejudice. But of course there is no perfect, flawless version of the human form against which putatively "inferior" specimens could be measured.
Seven. Harriet McBryde Johnson’s quality of life argument:
Studies show that the public underestimates the quality of life for most handicapped people based on stereotypes.
Essay Option:
Defend or refute Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.” Here is how the assignment looks for a 4-page essay:
Write a 4-page critique of Peter Singer’s philosophy as rendered in “Unspeakable Conversation” (92). In your first page, explain Peter Singer’s philosophy and the methods he uses to defend it. Then in your next page, begin a thesis paragraph that defends or refutes Singer. You must use a Works Cited page that has no fewer than 3 sources.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis One:
While Singer’s argument for infanticide is consistent with his utilitarian worldview, his position collapses under the close eye of scrutiny in which we detect huge holes or flaws in his reasoning. These flaws include __________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________.
Refutation of Peter Singer: Thesis Two:
If we accept Peter Singer's utilitarian argument as a just rationale for infanticide, then we are paving the way for genetic re-engineering as a tool to create a Super Baby that all parents will be forced to breed. This forced breeding of the Super Baby will result from ______________________, __________________________, ______________________, and ____________________________________.
Defense of Peter Singer: Thesis Three:
McMahon has treated Peter Singer’s infanticide argument with gross unfairness. While McMahon is correct that Singer needs to tidy up some of his vague definitions, Singer’s general argument can be ethically defended as actually helping the human race when we consider _________________________, _______________________, ___________________________, and _______________________________.
Some Salient Titles
Must I Conform to Peter Singer's Definition of Happiness So I Can Live?
Be Happy Singer's Way . . . Or Die
Let Go of the Stale Past and Become New and Improved, Peter Singer Style
We Limit Ourselves By Dismissing Peter Singer So Quickly
McMahon Commentary on “Unspeakable Conversations”
Peter Singer’s theories of “selective infanticide” insulate him from the reality of flesh and blood:
His theories are abstractions and as he percolates his ideas behind the university walls, he loses touch with reality. Specifically, Singer does not see the human face of “disability” and this human face is Harriet McBryde Johnson. According to Singer’s theory of eugenics, HBJ’s parents had the right to kill her since someone with her disabilities could not lead a “quality of life” and as such she doesn’t deserve the title of “person.” Nor does she possess, to use Singer’s term, “personhood.”
To the contrary, HMJ has a lot of richness in her life that defies the stereotypes too many people have about people with disabilities. Part of HMJ’s gifted life is her intellect, which allows her to see the “bone-chilling” theories of Peter Singer for what they are: monstrous. For example, Singer believes in “selective infanticide” under the guise of “preference utilitarianism” (96), which states that disabled babies are disposable and that is preferable to replace them with healthy babies who have a better change for a flourishing existence.
One of the horrifying qualities of Peter Singer is that during his debate with HMJ he remains affable, lucid, and logical. We can infer that Singer has succumbed to his abstractions so fully that he has lost his humanity and his sanity. He is clearly an congenial monster, polite on the outside, roiling with his murder doctrine on the inside.
One of the striking inadequacies of Singer’s theory, we read on page 97, is his belief that someone like HMJ is “worse off” (106) as he projects condescending pity for the disabled based on his ignorance and stereotypical beliefs (104).
Dark chocolate is my second favorite dessert; my first favorite is Costco-purchased Ghirardelli Triple-Chocolate Brownies.
When I was five years old, my parents moved us into the Royal Lanai Apartments of San Jose, California; by the time I was seven we had advanced to a large house in the nearby suburbs.
I used the Jack Crazy Man Ripped Abs Training Program for six months; it proved worthless: I'm as fat as ever.
Use semicolon for two related sentences separated by a conjunctive adverb:
I didn't get the pesto pizza; instead, I chose the zesty feta cheese with Greek olives.
I won't loan you a thousand dollars; however, I'll pay you $50 to wash my car.
Torrance is a good place to live a sedate, stagnant existence as you grow old in your elastic waistband Dockers; in contrast, Santa Monica is more snappy and urbane for aspiring hipsters.
I won't break up with you for cheating on me; nevertheless, you must now live with the guilt of knowing that I will forever feel like a rusty claw just ripped into my chest and tore out my heart.
Use semicolon to clarify a list:
Planet Earth was saved by Superman, the Man of Steel; Aquaman, the Creature of the Deep; Batman, the Caped Crusader; Captain America, Fighter for Justice; Wonder Woman, the Goddess of Crime Stoppers, and Thor, the Hero of Fury.
Without the semicolons, you would think the world was saved by 12 heroes when in fact it was saved by only 6.
Colon Rules
Use a colon to introduce a list:
My favorite desserts are the following: triple-chocolate brownies, cherry pie ladled with Italian vanilla gelato, fresh apple jelly donuts doused with powdered sugar, German chocolate cake, and cinnamon butter pecan coffee cake.
I decided to hire you for several reasons: One, you are reliable. Two, you pay attention to details. Three, you appear to be someone of conscience. Four, you appear to have a hard work ethic. And five, I'm hoping you can set me up with your sister. And perhaps throw in a few good words for me.
Use a colon to emphasize further explanation:
I feel like an old, beat-up dollar bill: Just as an old dollar bill is never accepted in the Coke machine, I'm never accepted by mainstream society.
I remember the first thought I had when my first girlfriend told me she loved me: Oh my God, I need to find a way to get out of this.
Use a colon to precede a quotation, a summary, or a paraphrase:
Paul Fussell explains that X People supremely discard middle-class values and mores: For X People, Fussell explains, the good life is experiencing the Now in all its richness, not groveling for some pathetic social status.
In the masterpiece memoir Muscle, author Samuel Wilson Fussell contemplates his growing paranoia and pent-up emotions: "The threat wasn't just from without; it also came from within. The fright I'd felt on the streets of New York I also felt deep within myself. Who was this man who cried not just at graduations and weddings but during beer and credit-card commercials? Who was this man terrified of his own rage, his own anger, his own greed, his own bitterness? Who was this man who never head a compliment without hearing a subtextual insult, who never said 'I love you' without resenting the other fact: 'I need you.' I couldn't deny it was me, or could I?"
Examples of Student Fragments
People are never happy with what they have. Always trying to be something they're not.
Star Trek predicted what the future would be like. A world where an abundant supply of technology helps the human race.
Since being drawn to social media, we're together now more than ever. Not communicating with conversation but only connecting.
Writing Prompt from Page 270
According to Rizga, the primary factor responsible for designating a school as "failing" is our current reliance upon standardized tests. Write an essay in which you evaluate the validity or usefulness of using standardized tests to rank the performance of schools. Do such tests offer a fair, accurate, or helpful measure of a school's performance or not? How? If you were charged with revamping the system for evaluating school performance, what kind of standardized test (if any) would you utilize? Why?
Classmates call her derogatory names and stigmatize her because of her lack of English skills.
I have a Turkish friend who complained that Americans thought he was stupid because of his accent, as if an accent, or not, is a sign of intelligence.
The real issue isn't intelligence. An accent presses the buttons of the close-minded tribalist who's afraid of Los Otros.
Therefore, a lack of English speaking and writing makes student in the essay an outsider, La Otra. She's not a member of the tribe. The tribalists (people who only accept their "own kind") won't accept her because her lack of English skills suggest she's not a member of the privileged club.
Her math teacher addresses Maria and the other students as dummies.
Nothing like having a teacher who has contempt for her students. This creates a stigma or a permanent dark cloud over the person.
We could argue it is criminal for a math teacher to stigmatize Maria and others because lowered expectations have harmful (deleterious) effects on students.
Patronization
In the administrative office a middle-aged woman who thinks she’s being sympathetic tells Maria that she shouldn’t worry about struggling in high school since “Latinas usually don’t finish high school. . . . They go to work or raise kids.”
Nothing like having a counselor or an administrative official rely on stereotypes for an "analysis" of the student.
We have lowered expectations and racism ushering a girl into the lower economic and social classes, and this degradation is reinforced by standardized tests that cater to the upper classes.
Two. What is the source of Maria’s academic frustration?
She begins to do well in high school; however, her state exams for going to college are too low. These are standardized tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.
NCLB was based on good intentions: to raise expectations for all students, especially disadvantaged ones, but it actually punishes them.
Each state spends over a billion dollars on standardized testing, which comes to about $65 a student. This is a huge money grab for companies who want to be part of the test.
NCLB was supposed to be the savior, offering concrete metrics to measure student performance in the face of wishy-washy bureaucrats, and it was championed in a movie Waiting for Superman. Many have dismissed this film as propaganda for charter schools as we read in The Washington Post.
Three. What is Rizga’s thesis?
Rizga’s thesis or purpose is to criticize NCLB by showing the many ways it has changed instruction for the worse.
Students might know bullet points for NCLB but be ignorant of everything else; in other words, NCLB is too narrow in its instruction objectives.
The overemphasis on test performance has resulted in cheating.
There is class bias in the standardized tests so that the tests are more understood by middle and upper classes than lower classes.
There is a tendency to make the standardized test the be all and end all of education. We’ve turned it into a panacea or a cure-all when in fact its godfather Robert Glaser warns that it’s incomplete and imperfect (260).
In a school where English is the second language, NCLB scores will be lower and this will give an inaccurate metric of the school’s quality.
According to Rizga, the primary factor responsible for designating a school as "failing" is our current reliance upon standardized tests. Write an essay in which you evaluate the validity or usefulness of using standardized tests to rank the performance of schools. Do such tests offer a fair, accurate, or helpful measure of a school's performance or not? How? If you were charged with revamping the system for evaluating school performance, what kind of standardized test (if any) would you utilize? Why?
Sample Thesis:
We need to get rid of standardized tests and replace them with a variety of assignments that measure Student Learning Outcomes because ______________, ___________, _____________, and ____________________.
While I concede that standardized testing has made some educational improvements in terms of bridging the gap between performing and non-performing schools, the current practice of standardized testing must be eliminated because _____________, _____________, ______________, and __________________.
Although standardized tests are imperfect and still need fine-tuning, they are a necessary tool for improving public school education evidenced by _____________, _____________, ____________, and _______________.
One. In the essay’s opening, we see that boredom is synonym for all sorts of horrible things. Give a list of things boredom stands for.
Learned helplessness
Resentment or mutual loathing (everyone blames everyone else for the problems at school)
Recurring cycles of futility, which brings up Einstein’s definition of insanity
Monotony
Lethargy, the fatigue and enervation from being mired in a problem with no apparent solution for so long
Lowered expectations
Dysfunction, settling into the idea that “this is how it is” and “nothing can be done,” so I’ll just “ride this out.”
Two. Who does Gatto blame?
All of us. We are all responsible, according to Gatto’s grandfather, to entertain and amuse ourselves.
We have all been responsible for the apathy and tolerance to brain-dead mediocrity.
Three. For Gatto, what is the difference between education and forced schooling?
He argues that “mass compulsory schooling” is not associated with success if we look at history.
The goals of “mass compulsory schooling” were defined, we read during 1905 and 1915 and they focused on the following:
One. To make good people.
Two. To make good citizens.
Three. To make each person his or her personal best.
For Gatto and H.L. Mencken who Gatto quotes, education is a form of indoctrination in which we brainwash students to fit with the system, be mediocre, and conform into the same type of safe person. This conformity is to the model of the mindless consumer who is obedient to marketing and advertising in order to insure a robust economy.
We further read that schools base their operations on indoctrination, not critical thinking.
Obedience to authority, conformity to norms, learning the “correct” social role, labeling the students according to perceived rank (tag the “unfit”; promote the desirables), pass on elite power to younger generation of the elite and to hell with the rest of them (276).
In contrast, a teacher serves his students well if he gives them critical thinking skills:
Learn how to think for yourself by establishing informed or considered opinions, not habitual or peer-driven ones.
Learn how to read critically.
Learn the difference between causation and correlation.
Identify logical fallacies.
Grow and flourish as you become an adult and independent thinker.
Writing Prompt from Page 279
At the heart of the problems around contemporary schooling, argues Gatto, is its compulsory nature. Think back on your experiences in school. How much of what typically defined your role was compulsory? What are some of the scripts (for how to act, talk, even think) that were required? Write an essay that argues in favor of or against the validity of implementing these particular requirements. What educational goals did they seem designed to accomplish, and were they worth it?
Your Essay Must Have a Thesis Statement That Is the Engine of Your Essay's Body Paragraphs
A thesis statement is an assertion that can be demonstrated with logic, reasoning, and examples.
We read in US & World News Report that, "Among millennials ages 25 to 32, earnings for college-degree holders are $17,500 greater than for those with high school diplomas only, a new study finds."
The above is not a thesis; it is a fact. We could use such a fact or study to support a thesis.
A thesis from the above would look like this:
While college costs are punitive and oppressive, especially to those with modest financial means, going to college for most people is worth its steep investment when we consider gains in lifetime income, networking with diverse populations, developing literacy, and creating a legacy of higher income for future generations.
Thesis statements or claims go under four different categories:
One. Claims about solutions or policies: The claim argues for a certain solution or policy change:
America's War on Drugs should be abolished and replaced with drug rehab.
Two. Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that a person, thing, policy or event caused another event or thing to occur.
Social media has turned our generation into a bunch of narcissistic solipsists with limited attention spans, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a shrinking degree of empathy.
Three. Claims of value: These claims argue how important something is on the Importance Scale and determine its proportion to other things.
Global warming poses a far greater threat to our safety than does terrorism.
Four. Claims of definition. These claims argue that we must re-define a common and inaccurate assumption.
In America the notion of "self-esteem," so commonly taught in schools, is in reality a cult of narcissism. While real self-esteem teaches self-confidence, discipline, and accountability, the fake American brand of self-esteem is about celebrating the low expectations of mediocrity, and this results in narcissism, vanity, and sloth.
Sample Thesis
John Taylor Gatto accurately diagnoses the corruption of school by pointing out that it is not designed to educate us to be our better selves; rather, public education is about indoctrinating us to be malleable slaves to mediocrity and conformity evidenced by _____________, _____________, _____________, and ______________.
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
Dark chocolate is my second favorite dessert; my first favorite is Costco-purchased Ghirardelli Triple-Chocolate Brownies.
When I was five years old, my parents moved us into the Royal Lanai Apartments of San Jose, California; by the time I was seven we had advanced to a large house in the nearby suburbs.
I used the Jack Crazy Man Ripped Abs Training Program for six months; it proved worthless: I'm as fat as ever.
Use semicolon for two related sentences separated by a conjunctive adverb:
I didn't get the pesto pizza; instead, I chose the zesty feta cheese with Greek olives.
I won't loan you a thousand dollars; however, I'll pay you $50 to wash my car.
Torrance is a good place to live a sedate, stagnant existence as you grow old in your elastic waistband Dockers; in contrast, Santa Monica is more snappy and urbane for aspiring hipsters.
I won't break up with you for cheating on me; nevertheless, you must now live with the guilt of knowing that I will forever feel like a rusty claw just ripped into my chest and tore out my heart.
Use semicolon to clarify a list:
Planet Earth was saved by Superman, the Man of Steel; Aquaman, the Creature of the Deep; Batman, the Caped Crusader; Captain America, Fighter for Justice; Wonder Woman, the Goddess of Crime Stoppers, and Thor, the Hero of Fury.
Without the semicolons, you would think the world was saved by 12 heroes when in fact it was saved by only 6.
Colon Rules
Use a colon to introduce a list:
My favorite desserts are the following: triple-chocolate brownies, cherry pie ladled with Italian vanilla gelato, fresh apple jelly donuts doused with powdered sugar, German chocolate cake, and cinnamon butter pecan coffee cake.
I decided to hire you for several reasons: One, you are reliable. Two, you pay attention to details. Three, you appear to be someone of conscience. Four, you appear to have a hard work ethic. And five, I'm hoping you can set me up with your sister. And perhaps throw in a few good words for me.
Use a colon to emphasize further explanation:
I feel like an old, beat-up dollar bill: Just as an old dollar bill is never accepted in the Coke machine, I'm never accepted by mainstream society.
I remember the first thought I had when my first girlfriend told me she loved me: Oh my God, I need to find a way to get out of this.
Use a colon to precede a quotation, a summary, or a paraphrase:
Paul Fussell explains that X People supremely discard middle-class values and mores: For X People, Fussell explains, the good life is experiencing the Now in all its richness, not groveling for some pathetic social status.
In the masterpiece memoir Muscle, author Samuel Wilson Fussell contemplates his growing paranoia and pent-up emotions: "The threat wasn't just from without; it also came from within. The fright I'd felt on the streets of New York I also felt deep within myself. Who was this man who cried not just at graduations and weddings but during beer and credit-card commercials? Who was this man terrified of his own rage, his own anger, his own greed, his own bitterness? Who was this man who never head a compliment without hearing a subtextual insult, who never said 'I love you' without resenting the other fact: 'I need you.' I couldn't deny it was me, or could I?"
In a 500-word essay, support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.
Essay 3 Due June 27: Choose one of the following:
First Option
Support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.
Sample Thesis for Kohn
While Kohn may have good intentions in his desire to abolish grading, his mission is misguided when we consider ________________, _________________, _________________, and __________________.
Second Option
Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.
Sample Thesis
Bell Hooks convincingly shows in her personal narrative that climbing the education ladder entails a sort of betrayal of one's working class roots evidenced by _________________, _________________, ______________, and __________________.
Third Option
In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”
Sample Singer Thesis
Peter Singer's argument that "mercy killings" can be the most humanitarian option available is extremely dangerous and indefensible when we examine ________________, ______________, _______________, and ____________________.
Fourth Option
In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Sample Thesis
A close examination of the surrogate motherhood industry reveals it to be a moral abomination evidenced by _______________, ________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Your Final Essay Due July 11. I'm recording grades till 9 AM on the morning of July 12. At that time, GRADES ARE CLOSED. Papers submitted after 10PM on July 11 to 9AM July 12 will be LATE and lose an entire grade. Papers submitted after 9AM on July 12, will not be accepted.
Option One
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Second Alternative Option:
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction. Recommended Research Link for Alternative Option: http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/chance-and-choice-biology-and-theology-in-alexander-paynes-election/
Third Alternative Option
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Fourth Alternative Option
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Fifth Option:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should 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.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
One. Kohn asserts that good teachers de-emphasize grades and that bad teachers, who even lack a conscience, emphasize grades. How compelling is his argument?
Some would accuse him of an over simplification and an either/or fallacy. “Either you drink my Kool-Aid and stop using grades, or you are proving to be a horrible, immoral teacher."
This extreme position, many would say, is an oversimplification and a form of bullying, evidence of a false prophet.
Furthermore, the “three effects of grading” that Kohn refers to could be disputed.
For example, we read, “Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.” What’s the baseline of interest that Kohn assumes will deteriorate if we push grades on students? Is there a baseline? If there is, he doesn't define it in any way.
He also claims that students will shy away from challenging tasks and suffer the reduction of “quality” thinking.
Again, Kohn is throwing an either/or fallacy in our face: Either hold students accountable with grades and suck the creativity out of their learning or cut out grades altogether and inject creativity into their learning. Why can’t there be a balance of both?
Two. What Are Some Possible Refutations of Kohn? (A Defense of Grading)
1. Competition from grading prepares students for real world.
2. Not all students try and perform equally. Those who are superior, as a result of their hard work, should enjoy seeing their hard work rewarded with higher grades.
3. It’s human nature to be motivated by the carrot and the stick. Kohn is living in a candy-coated dream world that ignores the realities of human nature.
4. Grades are not perfect, but they are an important motivational tool.
5. Grades are not perfect, but they do help show the “cream rising to the top,” an important process in any meritocracy. A meritocracy is a society that rewards the people based on merits.
6. It turns out that Kohn also is against homework. Thus, it appears he subscribes to the Cult of Academic Relaxation, a form of “creative laxity,” which I oppose.
7. Kohn's argument contradicts empirical evidence: In my 30 years of teaching, A students tend to be responsible; C and D students tend to be less responsible.
Three. What does Kohn mean when he says grades "spoil relationships with students"?
He uses an anecdote of a teacher whose instruction has been reduced to fanatical grading and that is served as evidence that grading is this monster that takes over teaching. In other words, he uses an extreme example to argue against grading. That's a logical fallacy.
Then there's the argument that a teacher should be less of a grader and more of a friend. Is this a good idea?
What if the student doesn't want to comply with his "friend's" educational goals?
The student might say to the teacher, "Sorry, friend, I don't feel like writing my Works Cited page."
Four. What is the Maternal Fallacy and how does this fallacy apply to Kohn?
The Maternal Fallacy is the emphasis on nurture and protection at the exclusion of discipline and control, qualities associated with the Patriarch or father figure. "Education should be a place of nurture and unconditional acceptance," says this line of thinking. "We don't want to traumatize the students by judging them harshly and hurting their self-esteem."
But in fact coddling students like this makes them weak and helpless in the real world. Creating dysfunctional citizens with no skills for the real world is hardly serving them.
In an affluent society in which the young generation have a foundation of basics in math and writing, some of Kohn's maternal outlets for creative freedom are valid. However, in the absence of these basic skills, grading and basics in education are sometimes necessary.
Five. Would you be more motivated if you did not receive grades? Explain.
Answers may vary.
For me personally, if I had an interest in the class, I might not need to be motivated so much by grades as much as I would be seeking approval from the instructor. But if the class were a requirement outside my sphere of interest, I might not do anything.
Six. Is it fair to compare grading to a polluted city or is this rhetorical demagoguery? Explain.
"Wearing diamonds is equal to killing slave children in Africa," it could be argued, has more of a basis in reality than Kohn's statement above.
More Criticism Against Kohn
We read the following by Daniel Willingham whose link is provided below:
In his book, Punished by Rewards, Kohn claims “Praise, at least as commonly practiced, is a way of using and perpetuating children’s dependence on us. It gets them to conform to our wishes irrespective of what those wishes are.” (p. 104.) Kohn also argues that praise and rewards for good behavior are destructive to motivation. The truth is actually somewhat more complicated. Rewards can reduce motivation, but only when motivation was somewhat high to start with. If the student is unmotivated to perform some task, rewarding him will not hurt his motivation. Praise can be controlling and exact a psychological cost, but its effect on the recipient depends on how it’s construed: does the child think you are offering sincere appreciation for a job well done, or sending the message that future behavior had better be in line with expectations? There is important psychological work showing that the role of praise and reward is complex. Carol Dweck is a leader in this field and her book, Mindset, provides a good overview.
Regarding self-control, Willingham writes:
In a recent piece in the Phi Delta Kappan, Kohn argues that self-discipline has been over-sold, and indeed, that it has a dark side—too much self-control may be associated with anxiety, compulsiveness, and dampened emotional responses. He notes that some researchers put few or no qualifications on their enthusiasm for self-control, essentially arguing that more is always better. But Kohn proceeds from a definition of “self-control” that differs from that used by these researchers (Roy Baumeister,Angela Duckworth, Walter Mischel, and Marty Seligman), and indeed, by virtually all of the important researchers in the field. They define self-control as the ability to marshal your cognitive and emotional resources to help you attain goals that you consider important. Kohn defines self-control as using willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable. Thus by Kohn’s definition, a child shows self-discipline when she determinedly (and miserably) slogs towards a goal that she does not value, but that her parents (or others) deem important. Researchers use the former definition when they claim that they find no disadvantages to self-control, and that they observe positive associations with achievement, social adjustment, mental health. Kohn’s point—that authoritarian control leads to negative outcomes—is not very startling and is shared more or less universally by researchers.
Pointing out Kohn's logical fallacies, Willingham point out:
Kohn falls prey to logical fallacies on occasion. In the same Kappan piece on self-discipline, Kohn writes “Learning, after all, depends not on what students do so much as on how they regard and construe what they do. To assume otherwise is to revert to a crude behaviorism long since repudiated by serious scholars.” (p. 170). This is a false dilemma. Kohn offers me the choice of agreeing with his version of a constructivist learning theory or agreeing with a behaviorist theory. Actually, those are not my only choices of learning theories. (I have yet to find a Kohn piece in which behaviorism—a theory whose heyday was fifty years ago, and is now ignored by most learning theorists—did not take a beating.)
Kohn’s work often makes use of misleading vividness, or perhaps better, a variant of that fallacy. His articles are characterized by a long, vehement attack on the target and a brief, subdued qualification of the attack. The pale qualification, though important to an accurate characterization of the literature, is likely forgotten by the reader. For example, the Kappan piece is an attack on three fronts (psychological, philosophical, and political) on the usefulness of self-discipline. Kohn also notes “While I readily admit that persevering at worthwhile tasks is good—and that some students seem to lack this capacity—. . . .” This qualification indicates that an important topic ought to be “when is self-control useful, and when is it destructive?” But the message of the article is unqualified: self-discipline is bad.
“Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself” (238).
“Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenge tasks” (239).
“Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking” (239).
“Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective” (240).
“Grades encourage cheating” (241).
“Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with students” (241).
Sample Responses
Student Who Disagrees with Kohn
My experience as a student contradicts everything Kohn tries to say. I’ve walked into classes with absolutely no interest in the subject, but because I had a gun to my head, that is the pressure of grades pointing at my temple, I forced myself to get acquainted with the material. Contrary to Kohn, my being forced to know the material made me respect and like the subject matter far more than a situation in which I knew I would not be graded. Without the pressure of grades, I would remain ignorant of the subject, and that ignorance would perpetuate my lack of interest in the material.
Kohn’s second assertion is that grading will discourage me from embracing challenging tasks. He’s assuming that without grades, I’d be more inclined to take intellectual and creative risks. He is wrong. When I was a college student, I was lazy and was not predisposed to taking on any kind of challenge. The path of least resistance was my work ethic. Grades or not, I was an incurably lazy human being. If anything, I needed grades to prompt me off my butt and to do some actual homework.
Kohn’s third assertion is that grading will compromise my critical thinking skills. Again, I don’t think Kohn knows what he’s talking about. When I was in college, I had no critical thinking skills to lose. Grades were hardly the reason I was so ignorant. My youthful naiveté, my laziness, and my being sheltered in the suburbs had far more to do with my lack of critical thinking skills than any teacher’s grading system.
Kohn’s fourth argument is that grading is not a reliable system because the teachers can be biased, unfair, and use unreliable grading measures. I’ll admit these are possible scenarios, but in my years at high school and college, it seems that over 95% of the time, students did indeed get the grades they deserved. If there is a five percent error, that is hardly sufficient reason for dumping grades.
Kohn goes on to say that grades encourage cheating and spoil students’ relationship with teachers. Of course, a grading system is going compel students to cheat. They want to be up to par with the A students whose A performance has earned them top honors. Any system with a top and a bottom is going to have cheaters. To deny that reality is to try to create a world that does not exist. And that world is the one provided by Alfie Kohn.
Regarding the final point about our relationship with teachers, Kohn is assuming there is this great relationship that is forged without grades and that grades spoils the deal. Again, he is in error. We are not friends with the teachers. They are hired to do what they do because of their presumed expertise and authority in the subject. They are our guides and mentors, and their grading system is their way of showing us how well we are at reaching the benchmarks that are part of each class. Kohn’s assertion that these benchmarks measured by a grading system is a degradation of the student-teacher relationship has no bearing in reality and again shows that he is trying to impose an artificial world on the real one. For all these reasons, I have dismissed Kohn convincingly. Can we move on to a new topic, please? (avoid hubris in the conclusion)
Student Defense of Alfie Kohn
Alfie Kohn is trying to save education from being a terrible place of fear, elitism, and students being helpless pawns before their maniacal teachers who use grades to bully, control, and traumatize their students.
First off, everyone knows that grades are unfair. Teachers don’t really care how well you write. All they care about is that you agree with them, so you spend your time kissing up to them, trying to make your essays reflect what your instructors say in the class.
Secondly, Kohn is right that grades reduce interest. How can you focus on the subject with any interest when you’re always worried about achieving a 4.0 so that you can get into a good university? Interest is irrelevant. It’s all about the grades. And seeing some students get As while others get Cs is traumatizing for the lower students who feel stigmatized and shamed, often wearing these negative emotions for the rest of their lives. How dare we let teachers have so much power over our self-esteem. We should cut their grading power out from under them just as Alfie Kohn says we should.
Third, Kohn is so correct to point out that grading makes us students avoid challenging approaches to the subject matter. We always seek the easiest path to The Land of A. Why take risks by doing something more challenging than we have to?
Finally, what kind of relationship can I have with my teachers when I fear their power over me? Their grade determines my place in the world. One wrong move and my life as a successful banker could be diminished to a milk truck driver. It’s impossible to develop strong relationships with figures that wield so much power. Therefore, I commend Alfie Kohn for telling us to stop the insanity, cut out grades, and bring real education back to the classrooms.
Refutation of the Above Response
While I concede that there are too many teachers who want their students to regurgitate their ideas rather than think critically for themselves, the rest of the student’s defense of Alfie Kohn is a mishmash of egregious fallacies, clichés, and sloppy thinking, all of which serves to highlight Kohn’s dangerous arguments for ending grading systems as we know them.
Perhaps the biggest danger is this idea that we are hurting students’ self-esteem and subjecting them to lifelong traumas by judging them with clear benchmarks to see if they are fulfilling course requirements. The sentiment of preserving self-esteem has everything to do with the fantasy of staying home in the safety of Mother’s House and nothing to do with the reality of competing in the real world. The fantasy of preserving the Big Baby for eternity is typically an upper class one. Narcissistic, well-to-do parents who can’t accept the foibles of their “perfect” Junior want teachers who can only mutter obsequious flattery, and if their grading system in any way is less than flattering, then clearly grading, as Kohn argues, is the enemy of all: self-esteem, creativity, student interest, the buddy-buddy relationship with student and teacher.
Of course, this fantasy bears no resemblance to the real world. Imagine a jiu-jitsu instructor who elevates his students’ self-esteem by giving everyone a black belt. The tournament comes along and that instructor’s students have to spar with real black belts. I think we all know what the outcome will be.
Kohn is the instructor who’d love to give everyone a black belt, which of course is a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that.
Break Down the Assignment into Your Own Words
We're asked in the prompt to explain, perhaps in one sentence, what Kohn means when he says we must move from a grade to a learning orientation. Clearly, a grading orientation for Kohn excludes learning. We have to explain why Kohn believes this and then explain whether or not we agree with him.
Student Refutation of Kohn
Kohn has created a false opposition, between grading and learning, to propel is phony argument that grades are a plague ruining schools and minds. What Kohn and his ilk are afraid of is this big scary thing called judgment. Grades are a form of judgment, and judgments for Kohn are a very scary thing because they take a child’s fragile self-esteem, Kohn’s view, and dismantle it.
I’ve got some scary news for Kohn. Judgment is here to stay. Judgment is everywhere. Judgment is how we survive. Judgment is how we flourish. And judgment is how we measure our educational success. When we choose toothpaste or a cold cereal or a web browser, or a laptop, or a smartphone, or a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, we exercise judgment. When a university picks students from a pool of community college students, the university exercises judgment.
Kohn’s argument is so removed from reality that it seems he must live inside a bubble in which he talks only to himself or his Kool-Aid drinking believers. Grades aren’t going anywhere. Grades are a normal part of the judgment process. And Kohn’s fantasy of taking judgment out of the education process is so lunatic that he is nothing more than a provocateur and a demagogue whose flea-sized arguments will be crushed in the elephantine marketplace of real ideas.
Types of Arguments
(I've adapted these ideas from Chapter 3 of How to Write Anything by John J. Ruszkiewicz.)
Know what kind of argument you are writing:
Argument to advance a thesis:
You argue for a thesis as you champion an idea or a cause.
For example, you might argue for eating steamed vegetables three times a day and provide the many benefits of employing such a practice.
Another example would be a writer who argues that the Paleo diet is the most effective way to maintain lean muscle mass.
Another example would be for a writer to argue for water rationing and triple water bills for homeowners who go over their water threshold.
Refutation argument:
You refute an already existing argument or practice, showing point by point why the argument is weak, precarious, or even fallacious (fallacy-laden).
For example, you might refute Civil War reenactments on the grounds that they are white male fantasies based on the infantile hunger for nostalgia, the toxic Kool-Aid of White Supremacy, and the denial of moral accountability for the evils of slavery.
In your refutation, you paint Civil War reenactments as a grotesque pageantry akin to a racist Disneyworld where are all the actors are white and black history has been erased because "it would be too disturbing" to the bogus, idealized world inhabited by the emotionally-arrested aspirants of "the good old Confederate days" and their other shameless displays of morally-bankrupt tomfoolery.
Once you decide on your argument or claim, you must consider finding compelling reasons to support your claim.
Support Your Claim
Without support consisting of data, statistics, reasoning, logic, and refutations to counterarguments, your opinion exists in an abyss or a vacuum. You must develop a considered or educated opinion, which is the result of fearlessly studying the pros and cons of your subject in which you try to minimize your prejudices, biases, and other emotional baggage that might blind you from the truth.
Understand Opposing Claims and Points of View
You don't have an educated or considered opinion until you have been tested by your opponents' strongest arguments. If you can refute those arguments, then you can continue with your claim.
You will also gain credibility with your readers for showing your understanding of your opponents' views.
You will gain even more credibility when you can refute your opponents with assured insouciance rather than infantile hostility. Also choose polite insouciance over hostility as the former is a sign of intellectual superiority; the latter is a sign of juvenile fear and inexperience.
Give Appropriate Sartorial (Clothing Style) Splendor (Writing Style) to Your Arguments
Your argument is the "body" of the essay. Your writing style is the fashion or sartorial choice you make in order to "dress up" your argument and give it power, moxie, and elan (passion).
Here is the same claim dressed up differently in the following two thesis statements:
Plain
Civil War reenactments are racist gibberish that need to go once and for all.
More Dressed Up
Our moral offense to civil war reenactments rests on our understanding that the participants are engaging in nostalgia for the days when the toxic religion of white supremacy ruled the day, that the participants gleefully and childishly erase black history to the detriment of truth, and that on a larger scale, they engage in the mythical revisionism of the Confederacy narratives, hiding its barbaric practices by esteeming racist thugs as if they were innocent and venerable Disney heroes. Their sham is so morally egregious and spiritually bankrupt that to examine its folly in all its shameless variations compels us to abolish the sordid practice without equivocation.
Plain
We need to stop blaming the poor for their poverty.
More Dressed Up
The idea that the rich are wealthy because of their superior moral character and that the poor live in poverty because of their inferior moral character is a glaring absurdity rooted in willful ignorance, the blind worship of money, and an irrational fear of poverty as if it were some kind of contagious disease.
Qualify Your Thesis to Make It More Persuasive and Reasonable
Qualifiers such as the following will make your thesis more bullet-proof from your opponents:
some
most
a few
often
under certain conditions
when necessary
occasionally
Example:
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Examine Your Core Assumptions
Assumptions are the principles and values upon which we base our beliefs and actions.
Claim
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Assumption
Treating drug use as a medical problem that requires rehabilitation is morally superior to relying on incarceration. Some may disagree with this assumption, so the writer will have to defend her assumption at some point in her essay.
Notice the link, which is from a community college, is riddled with grammar errors. We all make mistakes from time to time, especially on the Internet, but a pattern of errors is disturbing indeed.
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
Dark chocolate is my second favorite dessert; my first favorite is Costco-purchased Ghirardelli Triple-Chocolate Brownies.
When I was five years old, my parents moved us into the Royal Lanai Apartments of San Jose, California; by the time I was seven we had advanced to a large house in the nearby suburbs.
I used the Jack Crazy Man Ripped Abs Training Program for six months; it proved worthless: I'm as fat as ever.
Use semicolon for two related sentences separated by a conjunctive adverb:
I didn't get the pesto pizza; instead, I chose the zesty feta cheese with Greek olives.
I won't loan you a thousand dollars; however, I'll pay you $50 to wash my car.
Torrance is a good place to live a sedate, stagnant existence as you grow old in your elastic waistband Dockers; in contrast, Santa Monica is more snappy and urbane for aspiring hipsters.
I won't break up with you for cheating on me; nevertheless, you must now live with the guilt of knowing that I will forever feel like a rusty claw just ripped into my chest and tore out my heart.
Use semicolon to clarify a list:
Planet Earth was saved by Superman, the Man of Steel; Aquaman, the Creature of the Deep; Batman, the Caped Crusader; Captain America, Fighter for Justice; Wonder Woman, the Goddess of Crime Stoppers, and Thor, the Hero of Fury.
Without the semicolons, you would think the world was saved by 12 heroes when in fact it was saved by only 6.
Colon Rules
Use a colon to introduce a list:
My favorite desserts are the following: triple-chocolate brownies, cherry pie ladled with Italian vanilla gelato, fresh apple jelly donuts doused with powdered sugar, German chocolate cake, and cinnamon butter pecan coffee cake.
I decided to hire you for several reasons: One, you are reliable. Two, you pay attention to details. Three, you appear to be someone of conscience. Four, you appear to have a hard work ethic. And five, I'm hoping you can set me up with your sister. And perhaps throw in a few good words for me.
Use a colon to emphasize further explanation:
I feel like an old, beat-up dollar bill: Just as an old dollar bill is never accepted in the Coke machine, I'm never accepted by mainstream society.
I remember the first thought I had when my first girlfriend told me she loved me: Oh my God, I need to find a way to get out of this.
Use a colon to precede a quotation, a summary, or a paraphrase:
Paul Fussell explains that X People supremely discard middle-class values and mores: For X People, Fussell explains, the good life is experiencing the Now in all its richness, not groveling for some pathetic social status.
In the masterpiece memoir Muscle, author Samuel Wilson Fussell contemplates his growing paranoia and pent-up emotions: "The threat wasn't just from without; it also came from within. The fright I'd felt on the streets of New York I also felt deep within myself. Who was this man who cried not just at graduations and weddings but during beer and credit-card commercials? Who was this man terrified of his own rage, his own anger, his own greed, his own bitterness? Who was this man who never head a compliment without hearing a subtextual insult, who never said 'I love you' without resenting the other fact: 'I need you.' I couldn't deny it was me, or could I?"
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development. In a 1,500-word argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion from Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” (online essay) that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development.
Sturgeon's law states that over 90% of everything is crap. By that logic, over 90% of people using social media are using it in a way that's not in their best interests. But do we throw away social media? Here's another example: According to Sturgeon's Law, over 90% of teachers are woefully bad, but does that mean we abolish teaching?
Life is about accepting the good with the bad, and Sturgeon's Law tells us that most things are bad--very, very bad.
Sample Thesis in Support of Turkle
We ignore Turkle's warning about the way technology is degrading our humanity at our own peril. The evidence supports Turkle's contention that technology, especially social media, is bringing us down "dark places we don't want to go," evidenced by our inability to be alone, our addiction to false connection, and our acclimation to anti-social behavior.
Sample Thesis That Refutes Turkle
While Turkle makes some cogent points about the dangers of social media, her technology diatribe collapses under the weight of evidence that shows other forces, not social media, are dehumanizing us and making us lonely. These forces include Sturgeon's Law, economic collapse, and suburban sprawl.
Sample Thesis That Defends Turkle
While I concede that Sturgeon's Law, economic collapse, and suburban sprawl contribute to the loneliness and social pathology evident in our digital age, these factors do not diminish in any way Turkle's examination of the manner in which technology and social media interact to degrade our humanity in many ways including _____________, ______________, __________________, and _____________________.
Thesis That Defends Turkle
While there are many forces that are resulting in loneliness, Turkle has her finger on the pulse of one of the most virulent causes of self-imposed isolation: social media, which attacks our humanity by making us prefer control over intimacy, making us fear being alone, and making us lose our empathy, and making us atrophy our conversation skills.
Essay 3 Due June 27: Choose one of the following:
First Option
Support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion from “Degrading to De-grading” that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon.
Sample Thesis for Kohn
While Kohn may have good intentions in his desire to abolish grading, his mission is misguided when we consider ________________, _________________, _________________, and __________________.
Second Option
Support, refute, or complicate the inferred lesson from bell hooks’ essay, “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” that upward mobility requires a betrayal of one’s economic class and even family.
Sample Thesis
Bell Hooks convincingly shows in her personal narrative that climbing the education ladder entails a sort of betrayal of one's working class roots evidenced by _________________, _________________, ______________, and __________________.
Third Option
In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”
Sample Singer Thesis
Peter Singer's argument that "mercy killings" can be the most humanitarian option available is extremely dangerous and indefensible when we examine ________________, ______________, _______________, and ____________________.
Fourth Option
In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Sample Thesis
A close examination of the surrogate motherhood industry reveals it to be a moral abomination evidenced by _______________, ________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Your Final Essay Due July 11. I'm recording grades till 9 AM on the morning of July 12. At that time, GRADES ARE CLOSED. Papers submitted after 10PM on July 11 to 9AM July 12 will be LATE and lose an entire grade. Papers submitted after 9AM on July 12, will not be accepted.
Option One
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or refute the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning gives us a cogent, appropriate and insightful analysis for evaluating Nikolai’s moral dissolution in the Chekhov short story “Gooseberries.”
Second Alternative Option:
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that the determinism evident in the 1999 Alexander Payne film Election is a compelling refutation of Frankl's notion that we are free to find meaning as a cure for our despair and self-destruction. Recommended Research Link for Alternative Option: http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/feature-articles/chance-and-choice-biology-and-theology-in-alexander-paynes-election/
Third Alternative Option
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that even though Frankl’s philosophy is informed by his religious faith, one need not be religious to embrace Frankl’s precepts and principles. You can concede that Frankl’s book is “religious” but not in the narrow sense of the word. Rather, it is universally religious. On the other hand, some will argue that the theistic religion that informs Frankl’s philosophy is too narrow to accommodate secular and atheist thinkers. Take a position and explain. You may want to consult Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Fourth Alternative Option
In a 1,500-word essay, defend, support, or complicate the argument that Groundhog Day character Phil Connors’ spiritual malaise and eventual spiritual transformation can be analyzed through the lens of the principles in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Fifth Option:
Defend, refute, or complicate the argument that Man’s Search for Meaning is the greatest anti-self-help self-help book ever written.
Consider these distinguishing qualities of traditional self-help books:
They deny suffering as the central feature of human existence
They play into reader’s narcissistic fantasy of being special and at the center of the universe.
They promise easy solutions based on gimmicks intended to look like “insights.”
They promise easy solutions using common sense dressed up in jargon and pretentious language.
They tend to condescend to the reader, treating him like a child. There is an infantile, dumbed-down quality to them.
They make false promises about happiness and self-fulfillment.
They make being a selfish self-centered lout acceptable and “noble.”
They place selfish self-interest and self-indulgence over responsibility to oneself and others.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should 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.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
after although as because before even if even though if in order that
once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless
until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
We read that Generation Wi-Fi, or specifically college students, today "are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years."
This lack of empathy results in the following:
A cold heart
No sympathy or compassion for those who suffer
No concern for others' misfortunes
Two. Why should we be concerned about the empathy deficit?
Cultures who score low on empathy, such as Moldova, score low on the Happiness Index. In Moldova, a common saying, we read in Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, is "not my problem." No one wants to live there.
There is no agreement or definitive definition. We know it’s about reading other people’s emotion and feeling their emotion and this shared feeling gives us connection with others. This connection in turn results in greater compassion.
We also read that when we have empathy we can read other people’s distress signals and we feel compelled to react compassionately toward those signals.
Four. What is the relationship between narcissism and empathy?
As narcissism increases (through privilege, entitlement, false self-esteem, wealth, or other causes), empathy decreases.
Narcissism is defined as “increased self-absorption” in the essay.
Someone once defined narcissism this way: On one hand the narcissist has this unlimited craving for the adulation of others; on the other hand, this same narcissist has utter contempt for others. The contradiction of the narcissist speaks to his insanity.
Five. According to college surveys, what is the state of empathy?
Analyzing 72 surveys, researchers found that empathy was flat from 1979-2000. Then around 2000, “there’s this sudden, sharp drop.”
A specific type of empathy, called empathic concern (how much one cares about others), dropped 48 percent between 1979 and 2009.
Six. What cultural changes have accompanied this dramatic drop in empathy?
The rise of video games, 24-hour cable television, widespread divorce, laptops and cellphones have created an insular world where people withdraw more and more into themselves and what David Brooks calls “The Big Me.”
With news overload coming at us on social media, cellphones, and 24-hour cable TV, we read that we suffer a sort of tragic news overload in which one world catastrophe bleeds into the next until we become numb and our empathy traits die off in a sort of gangrene or frostbite.
Types of Arguments
(I've adapted these ideas from Chapter 3 of How to Write Anything by John J. Ruszkiewicz.)
Know what kind of argument you are writing:
Argument to advance a thesis:
You argue for a thesis as you champion an idea or a cause.
For example, you might argue for eating steamed vegetables three times a day and provide the many benefits of employing such a practice.
Another example would be a writer who argues that the Paleo diet is the most effective way to maintain lean muscle mass.
Another example would be for a writer to argue for water rationing and triple water bills for homeowners who go over their water threshold.
Refutation argument:
You refute an already existing argument or practice, showing point by point why the argument is weak, precarious, or even fallacious (fallacy-laden).
For example, you might refute Civil War reenactments on the grounds that they are white male fantasies based on the infantile hunger for nostalgia, the toxic Kool-Aid of White Supremacy, and the denial of moral accountability for the evils of slavery.
In your refutation, you paint Civil War reenactments as a grotesque pageantry akin to a racist Disneyworld where are all the actors are white and black history has been erased because "it would be too disturbing" to the bogus, idealized world inhabited by the emotionally-arrested aspirants of "the good old Confederate days" and their other shameless displays of morally-bankrupt tomfoolery.
Once you decide on your argument or claim, you must consider finding compelling reasons to support your claim.
Support Your Claim
Without support consisting of data, statistics, reasoning, logic, and refutations to counterarguments, your opinion exists in an abyss or a vacuum. You must develop a considered or educated opinion, which is the result of fearlessly studying the pros and cons of your subject in which you try to minimize your prejudices, biases, and other emotional baggage that might blind you from the truth.
Understand Opposing Claims and Points of View
You don't have an educated or considered opinion until you have been tested by your opponents' strongest arguments. If you can refute those arguments, then you can continue with your claim.
You will also gain credibility with your readers for showing your understanding of your opponents' views.
You will gain even more credibility when you can refute your opponents with assured insouciance rather than infantile hostility. Also choose polite insouciance over hostility as the former is a sign of intellectual superiority; the latter is a sign of juvenile fear and inexperience.
Give Appropriate Sartorial (Clothing Style) Splendor (Writing Style) to Your Arguments
Your argument is the "body" of the essay. Your writing style is the fashion or sartorial choice you make in order to "dress up" your argument and give it power, moxie, and elan (passion).
Here is the same claim dressed up differently in the following two thesis statements:
Plain
Civil War reenactments are racist gibberish that need to go once and for all.
More Dressed Up
Our moral offense to civil war reenactments rests on our understanding that the participants are engaging in nostalgia for the days when the toxic religion of white supremacy ruled the day, that the participants gleefully and childishly erase black history to the detriment of truth, and that on a larger scale, they engage in the mythical revisionism of the Confederacy narratives, hiding its barbaric practices by esteeming racist thugs as if they were innocent and venerable Disney heroes. Their sham is so morally egregious and spiritually bankrupt that to examine its folly in all its shameless variations compels us to abolish the sordid practice without equivocation.
Plain
We need to stop blaming the poor for their poverty.
More Dressed Up
The idea that the rich are wealthy because of their superior moral character and that the poor live in poverty because of their inferior moral character is a glaring absurdity rooted in willful ignorance, the blind worship of money, and an irrational fear of poverty as if it were some kind of contagious disease.
Qualify Your Thesis to Make It More Persuasive and Reasonable
Qualifiers such as the following will make your thesis more bullet-proof from your opponents:
some
most
a few
often
under certain conditions
when necessary
occasionally
Example:
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Examine Your Core Assumptions
Assumptions are the principles and values upon which we base our beliefs and actions.
Claim
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Assumption
Treating drug use as a medical problem that requires rehabilitation is morally superior to relying on incarceration. Some may disagree with this assumption, so the writer will have to defend her assumption at some point in her essay.
Notice the link, which is from a community college, is riddled with grammar errors. We all make mistakes from time to time, especially on the Internet, but a pattern of errors is disturbing indeed.
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction