Get into teams of 3 or 4 while I check your homework Number 1.
Homework for 2-20-18:
Read first 120 pages of Man's Search for Meaning; write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes how the fable cited in the book, “Death in Tehran,” explains the major idea in the book. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Frankl’s book.
Turnitin
Class ID and Key for Turnitin. 17467320 key is apex
Schedule to Essay 1 Due Date
February 15 Frankl 1-60; homework #1: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes the 3 causes some lost their will to live and “descended to animal life.” Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Frankl’s book.
February 20 Frankl 61-120; homework #2: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes how the fable cited in the book, “Death in Tehran,” explains the major idea in the book. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Frankl’s book.
February 22 Frankl 121-end; homework #3: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that explains how logotherapy is, according to Frankl, a more effective therapy than traditional types of therapy. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Frankl’s book.
February 27 Peer Edit Due; bring 4 hard copies to class.
March 1 Essay #1 Due. “Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables” 59; homework #4: write a 350-word, 3-paragraph essay that analyzes 3 possible objections to Bittman’s claim that we must tax bad food. Use at least 3 signal phrases citing Bittman’s essay.
Essay #1 Due March 1:
Viktor Frankl makes the claim that we languish in the despair of the “existential vacuum,” which can only be overcome by living a life of meaning and purpose, which requires great moral focus and sacrifice. Another camp says there is no purpose in life, that we simply make up the life we choose to live and that “meaning” is an illusion because “meaning” is simply a trick of the mind we use to motivate us. Whose side are you on? Do you agree with Frankl’s claim that we are compelled to find a life of meaning and purpose, or do you reject that claim for the philosophy that there is no real purpose in life other than to meet our basic needs?
Sources and Signal Phrases:
You only need 1 source for your Work Cited, but you need at least 5 signal phrases for your in-text citations of quotations, paraphrase, and summary.
About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Verbs in Signal Phrases
According to . . . (very common)
Ha Jin writes . . . (very common)
Panbin laments . . .
Dan rages . . .
Dan seethes . . .
Signal Phrase Templates
In the words of researchers Redelmeier and Tibshirani, “…”
As Matt Sundeen has noted, “…”
Patti Pena, mother of a child killed by a driver distracted by a cell phone, points out that “…”
“…” writes Christine Haughney, “…”
“…” claims wireless spokesperson Annette Jacobs.
Radio hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi offer a persuasive counterargument: “…”
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
Critical Thinking Introduction
You might consider 3 things when looking to be a critical thinker.
Avoid Binary Thinking
For one, you want to avoid being a binary thinker who breaks everything down into either/or.
Binary thinking makes you either for or against something in absolute terms.
You are either pro-guns or anti-guns.
You are either pro-life or anti-life.
You are either pro-immigration or anti-immigration.
You are either pro-food stamps or anti-food stamps.
You are either pro-death penalty or anti-death penalty.
You are either pro-free speech on campus or anti-free speech on campus.
Binary Thinking Isn't About Thinking. It's About Allegiance to a Tribe.
In other words, binary thinking is a form of tribalism. It fails to account for restrictions or exceptions that make one's position relative on a spectrum, not an absolute point.
Free Speech on Campus
For example, when it comes to free speech on campus, I am for it to a degree. If a group wants to spew racist epithets and engage in racist iconocraphy that mocks other students, I am opposed to this behavior because I don't see racist propaganda as speech at all. I see it as an assault on others.
I'm against assault. So when people use "free speech" as a vehicle to exercise racist assault, I am against free speech on campus. I have restrictions and exceptions.
I am not a free speech absolutist.
Death Penalty
By and large, I'm against the death penalty because there is a 5% chance that the person is innocent and a disproportion of people on death row are people of color. So the death penalty is not a color-blind form of justice.
However, there are some crimes that we know who did it beyond a shadow of a doubt, we have good reason to believe the person will kill again, even if kept in prison, and the crime is so egregious we as a society are better off executing the criminal.
Therefore, while I generally oppose the death penalty, I'm not absolute in my opposition. I see exceptions.
Exceptions are about careful, critical thinking. Absolutism is about allegiance to your tribe.
Once you start giving a granular analysis of a position and abandoning your absolute positions, the people in your tribe will expel you because you're no longer "towing the company line."
Tribalism is not about thinking. It's about emotion.
Critical thinking is about leaving the tribe in exchange for informed opinion.
What is informed opinion?
Aren't All Opinions Alike?
Some people say after reading an essay, “Well, it’s just an opinion.” But are all opinions alike?
The answer is no.
Robert Atwan in his American Now textbook writes six major types of opinions.
As you will see, some are more appropriate for the kind of critical thinking an essay deserves than others.
One. Inherited opinions:
These are opinions that are imprinted on us during our childhood. They come from “family, culture, traditions, customs, regions, social institutions, or religion.”
People’s views on religion, race, education, and humanity come from their family.
Inherited opinions come from cultural and social norms.
In some cultures, it's okay to tell others your income. It's a taboo in America.
We are averse to eating dogs in America because eating dogs is contrary to America’s cultural and social norms. However, other countries eat dogs without any stigma.
We are also averse to eating insects in America when in some countries grubs are a delicacy.
We think it's normal to slaughter trees every year as part of our celebration of Christmas.
We eat until we're so stuffed we cannot walk in America; in contrast, in Japan they follow the rule of hara hachi bu, which means they stop at 80% fullness.
Peanut butter in America represents Mom's Love; in France and Brazil, however, peanut butter is trash and an insult to place in front of someone.
In America, we put dry cereal into a bowl and then pour milk over it. That is not practiced in a lot of other countries.
In America when a woman says yes to a man's date proposal, the man, Louis C.K. tells us, will shake his fist like a tennis champion and scream, "Yeah!" We admire this behavior because we grow up seeing it.
We soak up these types of opinions through a sort of osmosis and a lot of these beliefs are unconscious.
Two. Involuntary opinions: These are the opinions that result from direct indoctrination and inculcation (learning through repetition). If we grow up in a family that teaches us that eating pork is evil, then we won’t eat at other people’s homes that serve that porcine dish.
Or we may, as a result if our religious training, abjure rated R movies.
Or we may have strong feelings, one way or another, regarding gay marriage based on the doctrines we’ve learned over time.
We may have strong feelings about immigration policy based on what we learn from our family, friends, and institutions.
We may have strong feelings about the police and the prison system based on what we learn from family, friends, and institutions.
Three. Adaptive opinions:
We adapt opinions to help us conform to groups we wish to belong to. We are often so eager to belong to this or that group that we sacrifice our critical thinking skills and engage in Groupthink to please the majority.
A student from China back in the 1940s or 1950s was raised in the country. He went to a city school and the richest boy made a sculpture of a butterfly. Everyone loved the butterfly but my student. He explained that a butterfly had 4 wings, not 2. He was sent to the "dunce corner" for the whole day.
He should have kept his mouth shut or pretended that butterflies have 2 wings. That's an example of Groupthink.
Atwan writes that “Adaptive opinions are often weakly held and readily changed . . . But over time they can become habitual and turn into convictions.”
For example, it’s easy for one to be against guns in Santa Monica. However, those views might be less “adaptive” in rural parts of Kentucky or Tennessee.
It's easy to be a vegan in Southern California, but you'll have more challenges being a vegan in certain parts of Texas, Kansas, and the Carolinas where barbecue is king.
Four. Concealed opinions:
Sometimes we have strong opinions that are contrary to the group we belong to so we keep our mouths shut to avoid persecution. You might not want to proclaim your atheism, for example, if you were attending a Christian college.
Five. Linked opinions:
Atwan writes, “Unlike adaptive opinions, which are usually stimulated by convenience and an incentive to conform, these are opinions we derived from an enthusiastic and dedicated affiliation with certain groups, institutions, or parties.”
For example, the modern “Tea Party” people or self-proclaimed Patriots embrace a series of linked opinions: Obama is not American. Obama is a socialist. Obama is helping terrorists get across the boarder. Terrorists helped elect Obama. Obama wants to strip Americans of their right to own guns so that the government and/or terrorists can move in and take Americans’ freedoms.
As you can see, all these opinions are linked to each other. Believing in one of the above opinions encourages belief in the other.
Six. Considered opinions:
Atwan writes, “These are opinions we have formed as a result of firsthand experience, reading, discussion and debate, or independent thinking and reasoning. These opinions are formed from direct knowledge and often from exposure and considering other opinions.”
Often considered opinions result in examining mythologies or fake narratives that are drilled down our throats and we deconstruct these false narratives so that we can see the truth behind them.
Considered opinions are practiced by Vulcans, according to Jason Brennan, author of Against Democracy. Sadly, Vulcans are a tiny percentage of the population.
Troll opinions based on fake news are held by Hooligans.
No opinions at all are held by the mindless shoppers, known as Hobbits.
There are many fake narratives:
Columbus “discovering” America.
The European pilgrims “sharing” with the American Indians.
White slave owners “blessing” Africans with Christianity.
The pharmaceutical industry making our health job one.
Mexican workers in America "stealing" jobs from Americans.
Poor people "choose" to be poor.
Poor people deserve to be poor because they're bad, morally flawed human beings.
Obese people got fat from being morally flawed such as being selfish and gluttonous.
Developing critical thinking skills means being able to pick apart a false narrative and examine the true narrative behind it.
Some would define literacy as developing critical thinking skills and that failure to do so is to remain a mindless consumer, an obedient child to the parental authorities of market trends and advertising.
It's your choice: You can either swallow the blue pill (blissful ignorance) or the red pill (uncomfortable, often painful truth).
One. What is the central purpose of Frankl’s book? (ix)
We must embrace Nietzsche’s adage: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”
With a life purpose, we can march ahead in spite of our suffering and insurmountable obstacles.
In contrast, without a purpose, we will slog and languish through life and suffer emptiness and depression, which we will try to feebly overcome by medicating ourselves with phony relationships, social media, addiction, consumerism, etc.
Without a purpose, we will be butterflies pinned to a wall, our legs helplessly flailing.
Without purpose, we will suffer from ennui, a state of perpetual boredom with life that leaves us sluggish, numb, and depressed.
Without purpose, we will suffer from the spiritual disease of acedia, the lethargy and fatigue that results from living in a fog of no meaning and purpose.
Frankl observed in the concentration camps two kinds of prisoners, those with a purpose and those without.
Those without a purpose were the first to give up on life. Many of us have given up on life and we don’t even know it.
We’re closed in by the despair from having given up on life. We die a slow death. We are trapped and closed in by our hopeless condition.
To give up on life is to be oppressed by our own despair. We are our own oppressor and enemy. We are the cause of our oppression and confinement. Frankl will make a reference to this condition later in the book. The Hebrew word for this imprisonment, this “tightness and being closed in,” is called mitzrayim. Finding purpose and meaning is the way out of our mitzrayim, our confinement.
The prisoners who had given up on life died more quickly. We read in the Foreword by Harold Kushner that, “They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for.”
Frankl had a purpose. He needed to survive the concentration camps, so he could teach the world the lessons he learned about the importance of finding meaning. Teaching the world the importance of meaning became his meaning.
Frankl identifies three areas where we find meaning, as we read in Kushner’s Foreword:
Work, “doing something significant”
Love, “caring for another person”
Courage in difficult times: Suffering requires courage. “Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it”: with or without courage.
The attitude we cultivate toward suffering determines what kind of person we are. Frankl writes that a person “may remain brave, dignified and unselfish, or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.”
Few people choose to be brave and dignified, but according to Frankl, the difficulty of the task that not absolve any of us the responsibility to choose a path of meaning. In other words, the road to hell is wide and the road to heaven is narrow. It’s “easy” to live a meaningless life. Most people lead meaningless lives of “quiet despair.”
But a meaningless life is in truth not “easy” because it results in a despair that eats away at us.
But what is purpose?
I know people who believe there is no purpose and they are happy. Life is about appreciating every moment and "doing your thing" or doing what "turns you on." They would argue you should be interested and engaged with life, but these things don't necessarily make purpose.
What if you spend all your time collecting butterflies or studying dolphins? Is that purpose?
What if you're a book critic and read obsessively? Do you have purpose?
Do people find purpose or find obsessions? What's the difference?
Is an engaging distraction or diversion the same as meaning?
Two. How does Frankl’s idea of meaning conflict with the world’s idea of human beings’ primary motivation? (see Arthur C. Brooks' "Love People, Not Pleasure")
Kushner writes, “Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.”
Conventional notions of success, based on the acquiring of pleasure and power, obscure the fact that life’s primary drive is to find meaning, which is the only ticket out of our personal hell of emptiness and despair.
Frankl’s book is a refutation against a world that promotes this conventional idea of “success.”
Pleasure is doomed to fail because of the hedonic treadmill: We acclimate to pleasure so that we always become numb to it.
Power is doomed to corrupt and make us evil: We will feel compelled to control and manipulate others as feeble compensation for the emptiness and despair that informs our meaningless existence.
Three. For Harold Kushner, what is the book’s most “enduring insight”?
Kushner writes: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”
Most of us define our wellbeing on our materialistic station in life: our things, our comforts, our routines, our reliance on family, and our good health.
But in the blink of an eye, anything can happen that will strip us all these things that we assumed gave us a foundation in life.
Frankl came from a loving family and suddenly the Nazis plucked him and his family members from their loving environment into the hell of the concentration camps.
The Nazis stripped Frankl of everything, but one thing Frankl would not give them was the dignity of his soul.
Some of Frankl’s fellow prisoners, after the liberation, lived like angry animals with the attitude that, “The world let this hell happen to me, so screw the world. I will go on a rampage!”
By embracing this bitter attitude, these prisoners lost their souls and became their worst enemies.
Frankl says we have the freedom to choose the attitude we will have in the face of suffering. We are accountable for having a noble and courageous attitude in the face of this suffering.
Four. What implicit moral condemnation of the American news reporters does Frankl give in his Preface?
The reporters always start interviewing Frankl by talking about how his book is this amazing best-selling success. By doing so, they miss the point: The book points to a terrible fact: “ an expression of misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.”
The reporters shouldn’t be so intoxicated by the book’s “success”; rather, they should focus on the public’s hunger for meaning, and why this hunger is such a chronic problem.
Frankl disdains society’s ambition for best-selling books and “success.” He never wanted any fame for writing his book. Originally, he was going to write it anonymously but decided for credibility’s sake to put his name on it.
He is against success. He writes, “Again and again I . . . admonish my students both in Europe and in America: ‘Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.’ For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause great than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”
The irony is that people who seek happiness the most are the least happy and that people who seek not happiness but meaning are the most fulfilled (true definition of happiness).
Seeking happiness for its own sake is an infantile, childish impulse; therefore, it is doomed to fail from the start.
Five. What “three phases of the inmate’s mental reactions to camp life become apparent”?
Phase 1: Shock
The first phase is shock, which can be a sort of disbelief we feel as we’re still processing the information.
Sometimes this state of shock and denial was accompanied by a “delusion of reprieve,” the belief that none of this was happening and that everything would be okay.
Such a delusion was perhaps necessary in a hell where 90 percent of the prisoners were selected for immediate death in the “bath” house.
In this hell, fellow prisoners pointed to the smoke and said, “That’s where your friend is, floating up to Heaven.”
The new prisoners were in too much shock to believe in this: Either you would die, or have everything, including your wedding ring, taken away. Even all their head and body hair would be shaved off and the hair would be used for industrial use.
Frankl is deluded into thinking he will be able to hold on to his manuscript, his “life’s work.”
The shock is slowly accompanied by a dark sense of humor and a “cold curiosity” for the horrors of this remarkable hell on earth. “How bad can things get? Is there a bottom on human depravity and evil or is there no bottom at all?”
During this first phase, everyone is tempted to commit suicide, to run into the wire, for a brief time.
To keep the will to live during this suicidal phase, a prisoner explains that one must keep shaved and “stand and walk smartly.” Letting oneself go is the first step in giving up on life.
We read, as Frankl quotes Doris Lessing, that an “abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
Phase 2: Apathy
The second phase of this “abnormal reaction” was apathy, in which the prisoner “achieved a kind of emotional death.”
He needed to deaden the tortures of being separated by his loved ones.
Being surrounded by filth and excrement added to his disgust, which translated into apathy.
He becomes hardened by the suffering he sees around him. This is an adaptation, a “necessary protective shell.”
The only time Frankl felt any emotion during the apathy stage was when the guards insulted his humanity with their blows and humiliations. Indignation was the result of an insult, and it would not be accepted under any conditions (25).
As the apathy continues, some prisoners will experience the “intensification of their inner life.” As an example, Frankl has a transcendent experience in which he feels his wife’s loving presence, which becomes a source of strength to him (37-38).
Humor was also learned to keep the prisoners from going completely crazy in their hell (44).
Phase 3: Depersonalization
Being reduced to an animal fighting tooth and claw for survival could strip a man of his dignity and his soul.
We read that, “If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this [attack on his fundamental humanity] in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life” (50).
Six. How does Death in Tehran explain the manner in which we are too often our worst enemy?
A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.
Often our fear accelerates us to the very fate we wish to escape from. For example, time and time again Frankl refused to take the easy way out when offered “easier” camps and these “easier” camps raged with famine and even cannibalism (56).
Staying loyal to his commitment to his patients in the camp gave Frankl an “inward peace” he would not have experienced had he acted in self-interest.
Frankl’s book makes us ask what really is self-interest in the context of self-interested altruism, knowing the benefits we gain from helping others (59).
Seven. What radical claim about free will does Frankl make in the context of the depersonalization that occurred at the concentration camps?
On page 65, we read
In attempting this psychological presentation and a psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors — be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners' reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him — mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Eight. What makes choosing the good life of sacrifice and meaning so difficult?
We read that even though we are motivated and think about living a good life, we quickly forget our resolutions. As we read:
Those of us who saw the film called Resurrection — taken from a book by Tolstoy — years ago, may have had similar thoughts. Here were great destinies and great men. For us, at that time, there was no great fate; there was no chance to achieve such greatness. After the picture we went to the nearest cafe, and over a cup of coffee and a sandwich we forgot the strange metaphysical thoughts which for one moment had crossed our minds. But when we ourselves were confronted with a great destiny and faced with the decision of meeting it with equal spiritual greatness, by then we had forgotten our youthful resolutions of long ago, and we failed.
Perhaps there came a day for some of us when we saw the same film again, or a similar one. But by then other pictures may have simultaneously unrolled before one's inner eye; pictures of people who attained much more in their lives than a sentimental film could show. Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.'" ...
that while the surroundings are overwhelming, there still exists “human liberty” and “spiritual freedom.” Frankl writes, “The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”
Nine. How did the “intensification” of Frankl’s inner life help him transcend his suffering?
We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner's existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.
"Stop!" We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.
"Can't you hurry up, you pigs?" Soon we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb.
My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing — which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
Ten. Frankl’s central thesis is also at the heart of one of mankind’s greatest controversies. Explain (Review of Question #7).
... In attempting this psychological presentation and a psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty? Is there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors — be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners' reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him — mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is sufficient proof that man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
Take the fate of the sick — especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now — he wrote — fate was offering him a similar chance.
Eleven. What is the link between suffering and meaning?
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is sufficient proof that man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
Short Story Resource
Here's a short story that you can use as a resource. It's about a student who challenges Viktor Frankl and his professor:
Part One. Essay 1: Man’s Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Argumentation, Refutation
The Trap of Frankl Lite: Confusing Your Desires for Meaning
There's the trap of believing you don't need "meaning" so much as you need the basic human needs:
One. We need to believe in something larger than ourselves so we don't become crushed by the weight of our inclination for self-centeredness and narcisissism.
We can't believe in just anything. There's a huge caveat or condition: This "thing" we believe in should be good, conducive to our maturity and dignity and the dignity and respect of others.We can't, for example, believe in killing others to achieve some political goal motivated by a lust for power. Then we are monsters like Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler.
If this thing is good, it doesn't necessarily create meaning. For example, if we develop an interest in martial arts, math, chess, bicycling, swimming, etc., all these things are good and help us get the focus of our self, but they aren't the Holy Grail of Meaning.
Two. We need self-awareness, AKA the Third Eye or metacognition so that we can make more intelligent and moral choices rather than being dragged down by the reptilian, primitive, irrational part of our brain. But this too falls short of meaning.
Three. We need humility to learn from our mistakes so we can become stronger and wiser. Again, humility is great, but not the same as meaning.
Four. We need a good job that uses our skills and makes us feel needed and pays us so we can buy stuff we want and feel secure and comfortable. This is good, too, but it isn't meaning.
Five. We need reproductive success. This means finding a mate whom we find desirable and attractive and a complement to our existence. This is great, but it isn't meaning.
Six. We need a sense of belonging and meaningful friendships. This too is great, but it is not meaning.
Seven. We need free time to play and enjoy recreation as a counterbalance to our hard work. Again, this is a need, but it isn't meaning.
Eight. We need moral character, the kind that compels us to have respect for others and ourselves and to have a reverence for life. In fact, we don't find meaning outside of ourselves. Meaning is born from our moral character.
We can have all these 8 things and achieve a certain satisfaction in our growth, maturity, and success and still not have meaning or at least not the heroic kind evidenced by Viktor Frankl in his book.
As a result, we can have the 8 Essential Things and go through life happy enough without having meaning. Our life is full enough based on our moral growth, our work, our love life, our friendships, and our human connections that we don't seek any meaning beyond this.
However, some of us can attain the 8 Essential Things and still suffer, to some degree or other, the existential vacuum, the sense of emptiness and restlessness that "life is good but there must be something More."There is a sense of the Beyond, of Mystery, and Enchantment.
Some people seek this More in religion.
Others seek this More in creativity, such as writing or the arts.
Others seek this More with drugs, LSD, mushrooms, marijuana, etc.
Others say there is no More, that we are biological creatures who can be reduced to sexual and survival instincts.
Viktor Frankl says there is meaning in terms of our moral position, which is that we must fight to help others at the expense of our own safety and convenience. This is a morality rooted at the heart of his religion.
His religion states that we must fight to help others at the expense of our safety and convenience; otherwise, we will become self-preservational animals, losing our souls to our most primitive urges. The consequence of not following the moral dictate described by Frankl in his book is that we will suffer moral dissolution and the existential vacuum.
The challenge is that throughout human history something like less than 1 percent of the human race have chosen to live as heroically as Viktor Frankl.
Most of us pacify ourselves sufficiently with the 8 Essential Things but fall short of Meaning as described by Viktor Frankl. For Frankl, meaning is an absolute. For most people meaning is relative to the 8 Essential Things.
Full Potency Frankl goes further:
It's about sacrificing personal comforts and material success to serve others with a joyful attitude. Some would argue you can't serve two masters. You can't serve material success on one hand and meaning, as defined by Frankl, on the other. But that is a debatable claim, one worth addressing in your essay.
To sum up, Frankl Lite refers to a life of comfort by achieving the basic needs; Full Potency Frankl refers to a life of sacrifice to help others with no regard for creature comforts.
Do I Believe in Full Potency Frankl or Frankl Lite? What is McMahon's position?
I've struggled with this book over the years, sometimes being a believer, a nonbeliever, and an agnostic.
As I write this, I'm part believer (I'll show you how I don't believe later), but I need to qualify my position.
I think the book should have a different title: Man's Search for Character.
Why? Because we can't find meaning, as Frankl himself argues. Meaning finds us. But meaning only finds us if we have character unless we experience a miracle.
Apparently, meaning doesn't find everyone. I don't know why some people find meaning and others do not.
Of course, if given the choice, in the face of adversity I'd rather choose heroism than cowardice.
If heroism is meaning, so be it, I agree with Frankl's thesis.
What is character? We see that that Dexter Green and Nikolai are both spiritually diseased and they become more and more disconnected from life, people, and meaning.
Courage and heroism (Malachi Andrews)
Integrity (refund on eBay)
Discipline (doing what you have to do even when you don't feel like it), honesty, compassion (serve the underdog or "serving the least among us" because it's easy to be a sycophant and serve high and popular people), empathy, listening, passion, and last but not least, we need the Third Eye, the ability to stand back and analyze our actions with unflinching honesty and even analyze the way we analyze our actions (metacognition).
Why do I emphasize character over meaning? Because the latter suggests Something Out There that comes to us on a silver platter.
Example of a Man with Meaning from his compassion (serving the least of us)
I know a man who is a world champion savate fighter (French boxing) and he could live in luxury and isolation but he spends all his time at his underprivileged youth facility on the border of Compton and Long Beach. He gives young people discipline, passion, and structure for no profit except what he receives in his heart: meaning. He sometimes gives demonstrations in the boxing room right next to my office. He's my hero.
Without these qualities that make up character, we can have no purpose or meaning.
The matter of meaning is further complicated by the old riddle of what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Or what comes first, meaning or character?
Meaning feeds character and character feeds meaning so the answer is both.
But the point is, as I reread Frankl's book over and over, meaning and character are the same thing or they are inextricably linked.
The more I read Frankl's book, the more I realize the book is not about finding meaning Somewhere Out There but about building character so that meaning can find us.
When we lose character, we lose meaning. When we cheat, violate our values, we kill the part of ourselves we value and we fall down a rabbit hole.
Think of the cop who steals drug money and the stealing gets easier and easier as he loses his soul.
Or think of Deb, Dexter's sister from the Showtime program Dexter. After she commits a murder to cover up for her brother, she goes into a depression, drinking alcohol and we realize she's lost herself and her reason for living. She wants to die.
She lives in what Frankl calls the "existential vacuum."
Frankl says we need meaning; otherwise, we will languish in the "existential vacuum."
What is the "existential vacuum"?
It's a wasted life and the sick feeling of emptiness that comes from knowing deep down you're living a wasted life. If you're spending more than 5 minutes a day on Facebook playing stupid games like Bubble Shooter, Trollface Launch, or Whack Your Boss, you're most definitely wasting your life and therefore languishing inside the existential vacuum.
It's the anxiety you suffer when in the back of your mind you know you're wasting your life and that life is passing you by.
A wasted life is mindless reptition of the same mistakes over and over again. And this is the definition of insanity.
Some couples break up and re-unite for ten years until they finally get married to get a divorce.
Americans typically go on 10 diets in a lifetime and get fatter every time but this failure doesn't stop them from going on a new diet.
A wasted life is dedicated to materialism, a form of egotism.
A wasted life is dedicated to superficial distractions.
Maybe I shouldn't teach this book. Not all the time, but sometimes I enjoy the existential vacuum.
Louis C.K. says he has chosen the existential vacuum over meaning:
"I drive an expensive car. I could sell it, by a cheap car, and use the leftover money to feed the poor, but I don't."
Some would argue only people whose lives are rich in meaning and who totally believe in Frankl's book are qualified to teach it.
But I disagree. Sometimes a cynical, highly-flawed person makes a better teacher than the upright true believe because the cynic makes you see both sides of meaning, the cynic's disbelief and the acolyte's belief. An acolyte is a follower of a doctrine.
Full Potency Frankl Means We Overcome Fear
Examing the Role of Fear as an Obstacle to Meaning
"Death in Tehran" from Man's Search for Meaning
A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.
What does the parable say?
Awareness of death and the challenge of death make us panic. Death is scary in its own right, but so are its implications: As Tolstoy said, "Death demands that we change our life in such a way that death cannot strip the meaning of it." That demand overwhelms many people. The limitations imposed by death also overwhelm many people.
Overwhelmed, many run from death. And it is the running from death that is, paradoxically, the running TO death.
Developing a Thesis About Meaning Requires Specificity
Develop a thesis that shows how Frankl addresses the role of fear as an impediment to meaning in at least 4 ways.
Example:
When we are slaves to fear, as illustrated in the fable "Death in Tehran," our meaning is eviscerated in four major ways, including ______________, _____________, ______________, and _______________.
Develop a thesis about how Frankl's book makes us struggle with the idea of absolute and relative meaning.
Example:
While it is dangerous and erroneous to discuss "meaning" as an abstraction and an absolute, we can argue that our lives become more meaningful, relatively speaking, when we exercise the priniciples of logotherapy. I will provide four different principles of logotherapy and show the four ways they have helped me change my life to make it more meaningful.
Develop a thesis about the dangers of absolute meaning.
Example:
When we strive for absolute meaning, paradoxically, we actually find less meaning in our lives because absolute meaning kills real meaning in four major ways, including _______________, _______________, ____________, and _______________.
A cynical, deterministic attitude toward meaning.
Example:
Of course, Viktor Frankl's life exudes meaning. He is a hero, a saint, a wonder to all of us. His life makes us weep with glory. However, his thesis that anyone can choose a life of meaning is in error, namely the false assumption that we have free will. I will show that free will, especially as it pertains to choosing a life of meaning, is a fallacy by demonstrating ___________, _____________, _______________, and ______________.
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