The Modern Day Search for Meaning
INTRODUCTION
I recently found my way to the writings of Viktor Frankl, the incredible neurologist and psychiatrist who founded logotherapy (meaning-therapy), oh and who also survived 3 years in four concentration camps including Auschwitz, during World War 2. If there was ever a set of circumstances to generate a mind for understanding meaning and the mind under suffering, Viktor Frankl is most likely up there. Tragic and horrific is inadequate to describe what he went through and saw, but finding meaning in the suffering he describes is invaluable.
But please don’t take my word for it, if you haven’t already, read Man’s Search for Meaning. And if you have already read it, I hope the discussion below will be of interest, to help grow your own mental models of the work and your own search for meaning.
THE MODERN DAY HUMAN CONDITION
As a human species in modern times, we lack the instinctive drives and traditions which we once had — finding food, finding shelter, building relationships in tribes for safety, spiritual stories and fictional concepts to bond over, the need to procreate for the growth of the species, and so on. If you are lucky to live in a developed country, we pretty much have everything we need with relative ease, here in lies the ironic issue.
With all this additional free time, the existential vacuum grows, boredom now trumps distress in the reason for neurotic conditions such as depression. The gap between finding meaning and our being is a giant chasm, which we fill with meaningless endeavours like fancy things, drugs and other short term pleasures. We long for meaning, either consciously or unconsciously, but Frankl teaches that longing is healthy.
Noogenic Neurosis caused by this longing is not a typical psychological neurosis caused by conflict between reality and the inner world of the mind, but instead can be overcome by finding the why in life. In fact, Frankl labels this tension caused by the inner search for meaning beautifully, as an “indispensable prerequisite of mental health”
FINDING MEANING
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
An important pre-requisite to finding meaning in life is responsibleness. Thus, the present is already the past, which can now be changed for the better. Also, life is finite and the choices we make have finality so must be honoured with the importance they deserve.
Logotherapy looks to broaden the visual field so we can find our own meaning. It does not pass judgement of what should be done, but allows space to find our own meaning, through being responsible to society or one’s own conscience. In doing so we must forget one’s self and serve someone or something else in order to accomplish “self-transcendence”. I.e. only in the focus outward in the world will we find true meaning.
Frankl also introduces the concept of super-meaning, and the fact that we cannot grasp logically the meaning of life, as logos is deeper than words. Hence trying to apportion some logic to your meaning is not compatible with the concept, we must live that and be that meaning, not try to make logic of it.
We can find this meaning either by:
- Creating a work or doing a deed
Is quite self-explanatory but involves the commitment of one’s self to some work that brings meaning in the context of the beholder.
2. Experiencing or encountering someone or something
Essential to meaning is love, love towards nature, collective beings or someone. Love too, is the only way to truly see someone for their innermost core personality and essential traits. Further, love both highlights and allows the actualisation of the yet to be realised true potential in one’s being.
3. The attitude taken towards unavoidable suffering
It is important to first highlight “unavoidable”, that is suffering that is out of our control or has already passed. Creating unneeded suffering is machoistic, not commendable. Considering suffering is often self inflicted in modern times, this needs further thought…
HAPPINESS & SUFFERING
Happiness in the modern world seems to have become a burden, something we must achieve. On the flip side, unhappiness is seen a bad condition, a failure, something we should be ashamed of. This in itself leads to the wonderfully tragic concept cited by Frankl, from Edith Weisskopf-Joelson — “the unhappiness about being unhappy”. This is exactly the type of suffering that can be avoided, through the right mindset and applying meaning to life.
A beautiful example of this from the book is given for a man who was suffering from the loss of his wife. Upon Frankl’s question for how his wife would have felt had she been the first to pass, the man realises the pain she would have endured. Hence meaning is assigned to his suffering, so that his wife did not have to.
Question & exercise: What is the deep meaning of your own suffering?
LIFE’S TRANSITORINESS
Logotherapy teaches that having been is equally or more meaningful than the potential being of the future. The opportunities captured, the love loved and the suffering endured we should be proud of.
When you take time and the finiteness of existence out of consideration, there really is a more optimistic way to phrase past and future in terms of meaning and value. This has synonyms with acceptance of ageing, of the concept of death, of finiteness. Time is a human concept, I think Logotherapy transcends this limitation.
WE HAVE A CHOICE
Psychotherapy often teaches that symptoms are a result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, only exasperating the nihilistic thinking of meaninglessness. Logotherapy instead draws on Frankl’s extensive first hand experience from 4 concentration camps, that meaning can be found despite of the worst conditions conceivable.
Frankl teaches that we have control of our destiny, and we have the freedom to change in any moment. That freedom however, must be carefully balanced by responsibleness, for freedom by itself is a slippery slope towards meaninglessness, boredom and suffering. Hence only by taking responsibility for our own psyche in any situation and environment we face, can we truly assign meaning to our being.
In closing, logotherapy and the work and experiences of Viktor Frankl show faith in the human psyche no matter the circumstance. It understands that the human is ultimately self-determining, with the potential to make one’s own sense and meaning from any situation. And this is coming from someone who survived Auschwitz…
