Some of the problems I have had with the more self-centered approach to Christianity I'd participated in during my adolescence might be resolved by emphasizing on responsibility than on salvation.
I think I've tried adopting a "nothingbutness" philosophy from 2005 onward. That's worked out terribly. It might've been a product of a hyperquantitative and largely atheistic community in grad school, or it might've been a natural outgrowth of the courses that preoccupied my mind (notably, behavioral econ), OR it might've been a period of nihilisitic selfishness that sought to avoid a true assessment and action on my readiness for my program, as well as the existential struggle that had begun senior year of college.
I don't quite understand how logotherapy is neither logical nor faith-based; given how I've been torn between these two poles my entire life, I'm filled with hope that it will provide some measure of insight, if not peace.
For the first time in a very, very long time, I'm willing to entertain the possibility that my existential crisis is actually healthy, and NOT neurotic. I have neuroses. But to extend that to a real set of choices to be made about meaning is to denigrate their importance and screw up the process almost before it starts. As one Mr. Shepherd once said during a lay sermon at St. Paul's UMC in Ithaca, "I'm not ok, and that's ok."
Simiilarly, I'm going to try to be less worried about being depressed or sad, but I'll do it using hyper-reflection. I think I came close when I once said to Roy, circa 2005: "When I read the New York Times, and consider the state of various things, I don't see how anyone could not be depressed!"
A little bit of knowledge IS a dangerous thing. Frankl gives an example of someone who had been sexually abused as a child, but whose issues were actually exacerbated by reading popular psychotherapy books, creating an anticipatory anxiety about being neurotic. This anticipation led to the very neuroses feared. This is exactly what happened regarding my father's bipolar disorder -- I made myself depressed by being worried about inheriting mental illness.
I'd have to re-read Milgram -- but at first glance it seems Frankl argues for a less comprehensive theory of human behavior. Perhaps a closer reading of Milgram will show he emphasizes cases and perhaps frequencies of types of person, rather than an overall statement that all have the potential to be barbarous or sadistic given pressures from authority. Then again, I might be overstretching both -- Frankl focuses a lot on why, while Milgram might be most interested in how.
JFK's most famous words from his Inaugural Address might have been inspired by Frankl -- they definitely echo the desire to turn ideas of what is owed to whom on its head.
It also reminded me of a line from The Picture of Dorian Gray: "The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him." Even Oscar Wilde -- or rather, of course, Oscar Wilde got that humans will confuse activity with passivity.
Initially I thought it meant I had to throw out the George Bernard Shaw (RFK) quote: "Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not." But after further consideration, we're required to do both -- see things as they really are; embrace the suffering that is inescapable, while removing the causes of avoidable suffering; yet also create and craft a meaning, sometimes out of a nearly nothing existence.
It might be irresponsible to attempt to build a Statue of Responsibility of similar scope and scale as the Statue of Liberty at this time; however, there is something appealing about the idea. The emphasis on responsibility got eroded at some point.
The trends in the poll Frankl quoted on the relative proportion of college students who want to make a lot of money vs those who said it was important to find an important meaning/purpose in life flipped sometime in the last couple decades. A role for Marx, a relatively recent and acute pathology and delusion, and its effect/response to American foreign and domestic policy swirl around, unclearly, but somehow significantly, in my head.
Maybe I'm defining "primitive" in a different way, but I'm not sure I agree with Frankl's statement that "will to money" is the most primitive form of "will to power". I suppose it makes sense if that, in its primitiveness, a person doesn't recognize the specificity of power, and will take a shortcut to the most broadly legitimate currency (literally) of power in a society.
I will never drink Schnapps again without thinking of its role in the concentration camp economy.
I'd like to read more about Frankl on politics. It seemed that, compared to religion, it was a somewhat less reliable source of meaning in the concentration camps. If I'm interpreting what little I've read of logotherapy correctly, he'd probably laugh at our two-party circus, but respect that many of us do find meaning in this way.
I think he deliberately chooses to identify hope, faith, and love as three things that cannot be ordered. Maybe if I re-read 1 Cor 13, I'll find it less prescription and more description.
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