The search for meaning
 

I have been rereading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived three years in the Nazi death camps. He lost his entire family,including his beloved wife, in the camps. Frankl had one sister who survived. That's it.

In the book, Frankl talks of making two decisions early on in his imprisonment. The first was that he would survive and the second was that he would retain his humanity.

Frankl emerged from the experience with a philosophy of what he calls "tragic optimism" and a desire to be "worthy of his suffering."

That last one has always rocked me back on my heels. How does one become "worthy" of such tremendous suffering as that endured by the prisoners at Auschwitz?

Frankl writes that a person can survive almost anything as long as they have a REASON to do so. He gives examples of a man who struggled on for the sake of his child, safe in a far away country. Another man who fought to survive was a scientist who felt no one could finish the research he'd started except himself. These two men, along with Frankl, had a REASON to will themselves to live despite their terrible suffering and despair.

What would be your REASON to survive if everything you had was taken away? Today I helped a disabled woman get down to to a local food bank to get some groceries. Last night she had dined on a slice of mouldy ham. Tonight she will have tuna and mac and cheese and hamburger patties and canned chili and ravioli. Her smile as we unpacked these items in her kitchen made not only my day worth while, but my entire week. Someone other than me had benefited from my existance.

I'm curious as to what other folks feel gives their lives ultimate meaning?

Sadly, I am a wickedly selfish, mean-spirited individual who rather takes delight in seeing people suffer. It's a problem, to be sure, but I'm never short for entertainment! Why, just the other day an old blind woman was attempting to cross a very busy street; I could have helped her, but instead I just said, "fuck it" and went about my way, squashing as many ants as I could. Down the road a beautiful Canadian goose got smashed by a car going about 60mph. I laughed all the way home!

Bri - i am disturbed at your introduction of humor into such a serious topic. the fact of the matter is that the search for meaning is something that everyone is engaged in - whether they admit it or not.

i freely admit that it took me some time, effort, reflection, and much soul searching to find the answer. now that i know the truth i have made it a kind of mission that i should introduce others to the the truth that is so obvious that we tend to overlook it.

the real reason we are here - the conclusion of my search, has led me to believe, is


oh wait, i have an appointment here, i'll try to get back to this later.

LOL, Brianna! You didn't stop to pluck the feathers? :lol:

I actually just found that book in a pile of unwanted literature here on the FOB. I am going to read it eventually. But he is correct. That is why I find it fascinating that so many healthcare professionals and fitness gurus shovel their findings down our throat "you won't live unless you take this," "You are going to die of cancer unless you read this book and," it goes on and on. I often used the prison camp arguement with people.
Look what they went through, without vitamins, without food and water, without the secret potion made from Shark fins, etc. They had one thing: the will to survive, and that was enough. Your brain is God, like Mr. Leary once said. Find your passion and your meaning and you will live a long and fruitful life, unless you are hit by a car or eaten alive by tiger sharks, of course. You get the idea.
Lookout123, take it easy. I'm sure the Jews even had laughter in their prison camps. It's what keeps us human. Dont' be so quick to take offense. We have to unlearn this state of constant offense that the Clinton adminstration instilled upon us. Let's start here.

Life's a pile of shit, then you die.
Don't bother trying to cheer us up.

We tend to be a nation of hypochondriacs with a 1,000 snake oil salesmen with just the thing for our every possible woe, but I don't think Aushwitz is the argument to use to prove these characters wrong. The ovens aside, the death rate at the Nazi camps was beyond our human comprehension. People died for lack of food, lack of medicine, no modern sanitation, no proper clothing, exposure to outbreaks of cholera and typhus, on and on. Frankl managed to survive through an extreme act of will and extreme luck. He was a young man when imprisoned and he was a physician. As a doctor, he was able to obtain some extra rations and slightly better treatment which greatly helped his ability to survive.

I think Lookout just wasn't up for such a serious discussion. He'd have to tell us, though. You are correct, Frankl does write of moments of humor which the prisoners used to make their lives at least a little more endurable when they possibly could. Lookout and I are sparring partners from way back, and Clinton doesn't really enter into it unless Lookout knows something that I don't. What did Clinton ever do to you, anyhow? Political correctness was around long before old Bill ever showed up on the scene, and Clinton was anything BUT politically correct if you ask me.

Life has its moments, but they are over quickly enough. This thought has always given me great solace.

uh, yeah. guess i forgot my smiley when i was giving bri some crap and pretending i had some answers.

Clinton responsible for PC-ness? i don't even like slick willy and i know that is bullshit.


we are still newbies. UT and TW - they are sparring partners from WAY back.

Okay, just started it and I can't put it down. I love this book. Pick it up, People. I'm only on page 52 but I read that in one shot while trying to get sleepy but soon realized I wasn't going to sleep. It will get you thinking about your own life and how much you actually have. Great post, Chicko.

Somehow I managed to make it through gradual school without having to read this. That ultimately dark detour into "Feminist Social Psychology*" I was bait-and-switched with probably had something to do with that.

I'll have to pick it up.


__________
* As you might expect I would have been more happy to have all my fingernails ripped out with pliers than take such a class. Social Psychology was required to completed the master's program. It should have been one of those boring classes with a 25 pound hardback textbook that would have examined things like Frankl's work along with Milgram's 9th Level experiments, Zimbardo's Prison thing, and well, all that cool stuff. Instead I paid $600 to listen to other women bitch about men and how unfair they are, while I was the only one defending things like all-male military schools And the Augusta National Golf Club Membership policies. Despite this, I still got an A.

Yeah, when I was in grad school, we were forced to read Watson's and Cricks' Molecular Biology of the Gene. NOT a page turner, I'm warning you right now! I mean, if you're into amino acids, it had its moments, but the peptide sequencing and the double helix thing really WERE just a bit over done. The plot sucked, too. I got a "B" in the class because I refused to read the final third of the book. Never did find how it all turned out.

I first read Frankl on one of my "snow days" in Durango at Fort Lewis College. I was in a bad mood that day, wondering why God had cursed me to be the only member of the library faculty with a pair of Swiss mountaineering ski's - originals used by the Swiss army to patrol mountain passes in WWII. The library director would always call me at 6:00am the morning after we'd had a 3 foot snowfall the night before, and say, "Come on Marichiko, you're the only one who can make it up to the top of the mesa." The fact that this also meant that no one but me would make it up to the library that day and there was no point in having it open seemed to elude him.

Anyhow, I was grouchly prowling around the empty stacks and feeling VERY ill used since everyone else had gotten the day off when the title of the book caught my eye. I pulled it off the shelf and went up to the third floor to the Southwest studies collection which had lots of cozy Navajo rugs on the wall and a great view of the La Plata Mountains and sat down to read. I didn't look up again until around 4:00 in the afternoon. It is a very powerful book, and Frankl's story is an incredible monument to the human spirit. I have re-read the book several times now, and each time, I find the words even more compelling than the last.

if you can find a distinction between where molecules end and life begins, you should be able to understand it.
a cell can be seen as just molecules working together and interacting. but the molecules have to obey the laws of physics and chemistry. we are made up of cells. we are a cell of cells. we are multicellular organisms.
the earth can be seen as a living thing (not in the gay hippie way). but we (animals) are like the living cells of it. roads are the veins we built, communication networks are the nervous system etc (terrorists are cancer ;), we cant cure it because they are bad cells that dont get identified by the earth as foreign. and you cant kill them without killing good cells in the process)

IF a life force can be traced back to atoms. then whats to say a star isnt a living thing? it has complex chemical reactions keeping it "alive" and eventually dies. just imagine what one of those things could tell you about the universe.

all this makes so much sense in my own head but i have trouble explaining it sometimes. i think i might have to write a thesis on it

I totally do not agree with the thought that "roads are the veins we built, communication networks are the nervous system". And for what I think, it seems humanity in general has been the cancer to the earth; not just "terrorists". Terrorists (in my view) are humans desperate for change but are trying to achieve it in the wrong ways. We colonized mother earth, depleted loads of her natural resources, destroyed parts of her with our selfish "wargames", etc... We have been a pain in the earth's butt for centuries and you claim us to be her white blood cells (biologically speaking)? No offense, but I don't agree... But then again, this is my opinion. :headshake

I'm not saying we humans shouldn't have been here in the first place but I do tell you that i'm not quite proud about being a human. I do try to live my life true to my ideals as much as possible. :biggrin:

i didnt say we were the "white blood cells" i said all "animals" were cells. humans are part of the entire earth ecosystem whether you think were bad or not. it would be stupid of us not to use the intelligence we've evolved into to better ourselves.
think about it...the only reason some of us are concerned about keeping earth "healthy" is because if its screwed up...we'll die.
nearly all animals fight and are territorial, some animals evolve to have bigger weapons (antlers for example), we develop bigger weapons.

nothing is wrong with this world. its running exactly how it should be logically. and humans are as natural as cows or ants.
im damn proud to be a human.

Well, we have traipsed rather far a field here thanks to my mention of The Molecular Biology of the Gene. Kagen, I appreciate your attempt to romanticize biochemistry, but I very much doubt if my old molecular genetics prof would have given you a passing grade. The Gaia hypothesis is a most interesting one, and you might want to read Teilhard de Chardin (another author I read on a snow day – that was a bad winter) if you haven’t already done so.

Yes, the human species is a biological, naturally evolved species. Does this mean that all is right with the universe and things are exactly as they are “supposed” to be?

I suggest you add the works of imminent ecologists such as Macarthur and Huffaker to your snow day reading list before you attempt to defend such a hypothesis. Pay special attention to their experiments and theories on carrying capacity, ecosystem diversity, and gap dynamics and throw in some reading on population genetics just for the hell of it.

What you will discover is that any species which outstrips the resources of its ecosystem is doomed to have a rather significant population crash, and may even face extinction, depending upon any number of factors. We need not go ask the stars for answers, the answer can be found right here in that trilobite fossil you just over turned on your afternoon walk through the new suburb they’re constructing right outside of town.

We can view the earth as rejecting or accepting us, but biology remains indifferent to our romantic notions of it. I imagine that we can continue to artificially extend the earth’s carrying capacity of our species for a while, but, frankly, I’m glad I won’t be around for the end-game which is inevitable and will NOT be pretty. Read Jared Diamond if you want a sneak preview.

I am neither proud nor ashamed to be an individual member of the species Homo sapiens. I am pragmatic, nothing more. Species come and species go. I wouldn’t attach much significance to that fact.

i wish I knew what was worth it. It's all so confusing.

Maybe we should all simply follow our own hearts. People are people no matter where you go. Right? I only hope they are as good as I think they are.

I think they are.

People suck. Trust in yourself and your loved ones.

It would be so cool if someone cared. Like having your childhood over. (assuming it was a good childhood)--I wish I were care-free. Skipping. Going home for lunch. What is hard? Mean spirits. Snide comments. Comparisons. I wish we were all free.
I feel very sad. Lots of bad stuff going on. Wish for release. Wish for health.

The problem with people is that they won't stay in the nice compartments we long to slide them into. Good people do awful things. Frankl describes a dreaded Nazi Concentration Camp official who was captured by the Russians and ending up giving great solace and comfort to his fellow prisoners in Lubyanka.

Life has the meaning we ourselves give it - if we want it to HAVE meaning.

Yeah, I think most people ultimately share my same human response, but some people will fool you.

In the end, we all meet the same fate as that trilobite. What matters is how we LIVE, right this second. And THAT is up to as individuals.

well marichiko for starters it doesnt snow here :). i dont really need to read books to see the logic involved when it comes to what humans are doing to the world and themselves. but i'm just an optimistic pessimist. i know bad things are going to happen but i think it all has a purpose and will be good in the end. i like to see meaning and purpose in things. i dont believe in god but i believe in existence as a whole.
humans are still at the "beginning" of their evolution so we wont know for a while how far our path can take us.

I reached the conclusion long ago that life is essentially meaningless in and of itself and now accept that premise as fact. What separates me from the pessimist is, I've also decided that it doesn't matter that life has no meaning and have consequently stopped trying to find meaning in it or to ascribe meaning to it. So what keeps me going then? I suppose it's excessive curiosity more than anything else. I want to see whether the sum of all of my actions and their consequences, the long causal chain of events that is my life, will in the final analysis prove to have furthered the good or rather the evil. I do not consciously strive toward either.

On my good days I strive toward what I understand to be the Good, and on my my bad days, I struggle merely to survive and wonder why the hell I'm bothering. If there's some ultimate purpose or meaning to life, no one has so far informed me of it. I see us as all in the same predicament. We are here briefly and we each have our own sorrows and joys. Too often, life brings us sorrow rather than joy. If I can look around and feel that some other human being's life has been touched by the good because of my existance, that's enough for me to keep soldiering on. If I ever reach the point where I feel that my being here has become a negative and I see no way that this will change, then I'll probably throw in my towel.

there is no "right" side to be on, whether its good or evil. they are both just as necessary as each other. the main thing that is important is the balance between the two. true understanding can only be reached from seeing life from both sides.

You know, I think that's why so many people are miserable. They insist on having the good without the bad and are invariably disappointed.

I read Frankl's book as well. For me, what gives my life meaning is the chance to LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY. Nothing brings a smile to my face when I learn something new or discover something. That's my definition of living life to the fullest. So travel is very big with me :D

for me, standing up for what I believe in has meaning. I want to continually evolve, change for the better. Whether it is finally dragging my fat ass to the gym or keeping my temper doing the buddist thing when some ass hat pisses me off. That is what I want to do. I love my friends and want to be with them in spirit and in thought. If someone calls at 3am I will unhappily drag myself from slumber and be glad for it when I finally hang up the phone. I love the enlightenment and connection that happens when I reach out to other people..like you guys.

I have lived my entire life surrounded by jerks and fools.

I am determined to outlive the bastards!

i plan to win the lottery and walk through the forests from town to town and eat breakfast at a small resturant then walk around the town meet new people, maybe go to the bar and buy drinks get a hotel room have a huge party where no one remembers anything and then walk to the next town with my credit card over some hills and through some valleys maybe go on a couple adventures who knows

Oh, to be that young and naive, again!

Well, maybe not. :rolleyes:

There is only one true meaning in every life that exists, and that meaning is 'moksha'. A puzzle whose key is to become the puzzle itself.

hey, first post, don't eat me. to return to the first question, what gives other people's lives meaning? or something to that tune.

personally, and this may sound a bit corny, but i was at a wedding not too long ago, and i got bored one of these nights and went out on the beach. the sky was perfectly clear, very little light pollution. in fact, it's the clearest sky that i've ever seen. i saw a shooting star every 15 minutes on average (or per 3 songs on my mp3 player). and looking up at the stars, i was just thinking about how mind boggling the size of the universe is. and so i started thinking about conscienceness as perhaps an extension of things (you could think of the blanket in I (heart) Huckabees). And I thought, well, even if my conscienceness may be a biological adaptation or just an indenture of some sort in reality, then it really doesn't matter because it's still what i have.

so I guess what gives my life some meaning, or reason not to just up and kill myself, is that i have (as we all do) this gift of conscienceness. And even though there may be suffering at times, i still have the ability to recognize it, and that alone opens a lot of options for me for any given situation. and even if one dies and conscienceness follows, then it still isn't a big deal because i'm aware of what's happening and i have what a tree doesn't. if that makes any sense at all.

oh, and also someone said -
there is no "right" side to be on, whether its good or evil. they are both just as necessary as each other. the main thing that is important is the balance between the two. true understanding can only be reached from seeing life from both sides.

i don't think good and evil are necessary at all. i think that good and evil are really just concepts imposed upon reality by people. i know i'm not alone there. i think a lot of people try to argue that there are universal goods and evils. for example, killing another human is evil. well, i would argue that killing another human is simply unethical and pointless, therefor would naturally seem to one to be a perverse behavior. yes, it's "evil" but that's because we make it so. animals kill each other all of the time. but to them, it's good because they have to survive. it's a survival issue, killing, duh. but what is good?

A grain of dust I may be
Yet, still my eyes, the beauty see
And, so, awareness comes to me
I think I'm smarter than a tree

wow, i like that poem.

lumberpoet, huh?

Nice poem, by the way.

It may be shallow, but one thing that reminds me why I suffer the slings & arrows etc is when someone makes me laugh

I mean really being blindsided in that I-wouldn't-have-thought-of-that-if-I'd-tried-all-day laugh out loud way.
Emotions fade over time, partners cheat, the new gym body you earned yourself blurs once you go back to pizza & beer. But somewhere, on a random forum, an intelligent person exists who can surprise you into snorting tea down your nose.

And making someone else laugh of course. I went home with a glowing nimbus the other day because of a stupid (though literate) joke I played on a friend at work. She discovered it when she got home & sent me a text that made me smile at everyone on the bus.

The Wayne Dyer books are interesting if any of you want to read more about consciousness. The Power of Intention. There's a show on PBS that has been airing for quite awhile now. It's a real eye opener.