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

"Death in Tehran" from Man's Search for Meaning

A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.

What does the parable say?

Awareness of death and the challenge of death make us panic. Death is scary in its own right, but so are its implications: As Tolstoy said, "Death demands that we change our life in such a way that death cannot strip the meaning of it." That demand overwhelms many people. The limitations imposed by death also overwhelm many people.

Overwhelmed, many run from death. And it is the running from death that is, paradoxically, the running TO death.

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.

Recommended Research Links for Election:

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

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.

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.

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.”

Top Twenty Writing Errors

According to Andrea A. Lunsford in The St. Martin’s Handbook, Eight Edition, there are 20 writing errors that merit “The Top 20.”

One. Wrong word: Confusing one word for another.

Here's a list of wrong word usage.

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.

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.

Breakthrough Writer

June 23, 2016

Updated for 6-29-16, Man's Search for Meaning, Lesson 2: Danger of Frankl Lite, Overview, 8 Human Needs, Living in the Present, Mitzrayim, Top 20 Grammar Errors

Vague Pronoun Reference

Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement

Incorrect pronoun case

Comments

Categories

Pages

Recent Posts

About

May 2020

Archives

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31