Shad's Musings

Review of Man's Search for meaning by Victor Frankl

Book Review

This is by far the best book that I have ever read in terms of how it connected with the soul.
I think I live in an interesting time where there is collective sadness and I wonder what the issue could be.
Victor Frankl divides this book into 3 sections i.e.

  1. his experience in Auschwitz
  2. Touching briefly on logotherapy as a technique
  3. A case for tragic optimism.

In the first section, he goes into his experience as a prisoner and gives us a window into the power that humans
have to change their situation if they change their attitude and create meaning for themselves.

An interesting theme throughout the book is answering the question What is the meaning of life. In his words
this is the wrong question and instead you should ask the question What meaning is life asking of me?. Basically,
you get to control what your life means. In many cases, this question can be answered by committing to an endeavor
that enables you to improve yourself and others. This include but are not limited to:

  1. Producing your own magnus opus e.g. a book, a business, a feat of strength e.t.c, and committing FULLY to the realization of this dream.
  2. Helping others to produce their magnus opus. This could take on many forms: from collaboration to loving someone fully.

On Suffering

Suffering is a like a feature of life. Suffering is a sufficient but not necessary condition for finding YOUR OWN MEANING. Why?

Sometimes when pushed to the edge, you have to come up with the fuel to keep you going. It is no coincidence that some people who survived suicide attempts are grateful for being alive. It was at the lowest lows that they realized that whatever they were going through was not that big of a deal.

However, do not suffer unecessarily, otherwise that's just sad and masochistic.

On happiness

We find ourselves in a society that criminalizes being unhappy, which in turn makes unahppy whenever we feel this way. This creates a vicious cycle, hence we see an increase in collective unahappiness.

It is okay to be unhappy, find out what made you unhappy and see how you can move on from there.

Distress and boredom

Shopenhauer said that human life is swinging from distress and boredom. We ought to strike a balance or move a bit closer to the distress side armed with a sense of meaning to make every moment worthwhile. If you find yourself in the boredom region, then know that you are in for depression-esque living. An example of the state of boredom is Sunday Neurosis. This is the feeling of emptiness you get on Sunday when the emptiness of your life fully manifests itself.

You need to be striving for a task, a SELF CHOSEN task, and it is something or someone out there in the world and it YOUR job to find it.

On Spirituatility

For some people, this might not make any sense, but it is worth considering that spirituality is sometimes what keeps people's heads above water. Another less religious perspective is self-transcedence which means that being human always points and is directed to something or someone other than oneself. The more we give ourselves to service, the more human he is and likely to actualize himself.

Selected quotes

The wish is the father of thought
The fear is the mother of the event
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
The more we narrow a target, the ore likely we are to miss it
By fixating on the past, you rob yourself of the opportunities to make something positive in the present
Man endures suffering by living looking to the future. This is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task
A man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber
Something which is in itself meaningless can not become meaningful by perpetuating it
There is a big dange in succumbing to a nihilist ideology since it pushes man to believe that they are pawns and victims of outer influences and inner circumstances
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

What this means for me