One. Homework Check for Assignment 3.
Two. New Homework Assignment: First typed draft for peer edit in your teams when we meet on February 27. Your peer edit questions are on your syllabus.
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.
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 . . .
Example of a Concession Followed by a Refutation by a Frankl-Detractor
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 many weaknesses.
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.
Secondly, 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.
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.
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.
The Writer’s Rhetoric (how he presents his argument)
He begins by agreeing that Frankl is a sympathetic and intelligent figure (para. 1)
His thesis ends paragraph 1: 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 many weaknesses.
In paragraph 2, the writer shows the three main supports for his claim:
Support One: 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.
Support Two: Secondly, 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.
Support Three: 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.
The writer reinforces his final piece of evidence by elaborating on his final support that Frankl’s “either you have meaning or don’t view” is over-simplistic:
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.
Gathering Our Data to Refute Frankl’s Opponent in a Refutation Response
Frankl’s opponent who confidently asserts that Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is an overrated affair sodden with cheap 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.
Your Essays Becoming More Sophisticated, Elevated, and “Critical” When You Specifically Address Opposition
McMahon's Sample of an Intro That Frames the Debate and a Thesis Paragraph That Uses a Refutation Structure
We’ve been asked to argue if there is this thing in life called “meaning” 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 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.
What Is Meaning?
In one or two sentences, write a definition of meaning.
The Problem with Meaning Is That the Word Is "Loaded" and We Dismiss All Meaning When We See False Meaning
Examples of False Meaning
People who are delusional and commit acts of evil in the name of an ideology that gives them "meaning" like the white American settlers who wanted to be free from European tyranny but then relied on slavery to fuel their economy under the justification of white supremacy.
People who are vain posers and feel they have "meaning" when they post Facebook photos of themselves "helping the poor" for a weekend.
People who are eager to talk and write about their "meaningful" doctrines but don't live what they speak and are odious hypocrites.
People who find "meaning" supporting their family when in fact they wake up every morning and kiss the giant butt of Blind Ambition. They're superficial.
What Is Real Meaning?
Moral results
Transformative (learned helplessness and self-pity transform into courage and self-reliance, for example)
Redemptive (similar to above)
Meaning must be lived, not spoken
But do we all achieve "Power Meaning" like Frankl or relative meaning through the acquistion of the 8 Basic Human Needs?
Meaning Is a Learned Behavior and Meaning Comes from Moral Character Development
We are not born with meaning. We are born blank, a tabula rasa.
We need to learn boundaries to find meaning. A film about boundaries and the lack thereof is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder. We see in both the film and VF's book that without boundaries we become animals:
August Gloop
Veruca Salt
MF
Stallion
Either we learn and emulate the common life of hedonic pleasures, vanity, and envy, or we learn and emulate the life of moral character, which consists of the following:
1. respect
2. integrity
3. dignity
4. honesty
5. caritas, charity and compassion for others
6. sacrifice
7. fortitude
8. listening for meaning, asking what life demands of us
9. wisdom: being wise enough to see the emptiness and danger of hedonic or hedonistic quests and reject the common life of vanity, envy, and hedonism.
When we have character, our lives are more meaningful, but is "more meaningful" the same as "meaning"?
Example of a Thesis Regarding Absolute and Relative Meaning
While I love and admire VF's heroism, I reject his argument for absolute meaning 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 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 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 devote our lives to some meaningful pursuits yet still experience despair, self-doubt and the exisential 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.
Counter-Thesis That 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.
For Effective Critical Thinking, We Must Know the Main Ideas of the Text
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.
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.
The Four Realms of Meaning Mountain
At the bottom of Meaning Mountain is the bottom-dwelling realm, the land of the sloths, miscreants, narcissists, predatory hedonists, fops, dandies, pathological liars, impostors, grifters, mountebanks, snake oil salesmen, and other members of the Moral Dissolution Club. No fair-minded or decent human aspires to exist in this loathsome realm.
Traveling north up Meaning Mountain, we arrive at the middle realm, the land most people aspire to. Middle Mountain, as it's often called, hosts the world's decent people who do their work, fulfill their responsibilities, remain faithful to their partner and seek a life of security and comfort according to society's social contract.
These individuals seek the 8 Essential Needs, which we will peruse below. The people are "nice" but they tend to be invisible and rarely achieve anything "groundshaking" pertaining to the progress of the planet. For them meaning takes a back seat to comfort and security. They don't "make waves"; they simply get cozy in their cave and put their life on auto-pilot. But they fall short of Frankl because they avoid tension and conflict (105).
Between the middle and the top realm are the creative producers, those who flourish in their passion. They may not pursue Frankl's edict of self-sacrifice, but they do not settle for the mediocrity that pervades the people just below them. Often these people change society with their scientific breakthroughs and innovations. Think Apple and Steve Jobs. More generally, think about comedians, entertainers, actors, writers, musicians, artists, etc. These people cannot bear living without the torment of a struggle to better their work and art. To quit working would be, for them, a death.
Climbing past the cumulus clouds and then the misty shroud, we are now at Realm Four, the peak of Meaning Mountain. We are now in the presence of a rarefied breed of people, those disciples of Full-Potency Frankl. These are brave souls who cast away comfort and comformity to pursue Frankl's edict to take their cross and give up their life for the sake of others, to embrace suffering, theirs and the world's, and to seek what Life demands of them. For the Full-Potency Frankl acolytes, comfort and security take a back seat to meaning, sacrifice, and public service. Most people who change the world for the better come from this hard-to-reach mountain peak.
Critique Examples
D.G. Meyers, author of the above essay, writes about how he feels about his terminal cancer in the context of meaning.
Meyers makes the following assertions:
1. There is not always a "why" except on Frankl's misreading of Nietzsche.
2. The Holocaust represents a new order of reality that defies meaning and this is affirmed by other survivors who don't have a "meaning agenda."
3. Frankl does not "plumb the depths of evil" in the Holocaust because to do so would not support his thesis that meaning can be found in all circumstances.
4. Being worthy or not of one's suffering is an irrelevant point when one is being sent to the gas chamber.
5. The Holocaust is too extreme and too unusual to make Frankl's message applicable to the common reader.
Let us look at "do-gooders" to see if they have found meaning or something else.
Read "Why Do-Gooders Make the Rest of Us Uncomfortable."
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.
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