The thing about this response is that it isn’t really honest. We have had interactions in the past where I have told you that you are using the fundamentalist perspective as quasi a strawman that you proceed to burn, whereas there are a multiple of other perspectives that you ignore.
Frankl’s perspective on dealing with suffering may not be something that we can all pull off, but the discovery of methods of finding meaning is quite profound. In many cases it is like the ‘just do it’ campaign by Adidas (I believe), and many things are not effective from outside. Just like swimming can’t be learnt without getting into the water.
Work can give us a sense of purpose, especially where creativity is involved (which is seldom unfortunately), and his method of imagining he was preparing a lecture on his experiences, shows that our ability to imagine helps us access areas of life that are otherwise veiled. Even Einstein has said that imagination was his access to many of his theories.
However, if you are unwilling for whatever reasons, then it remains unaccessible. Then you are reduced to putting your pessimistic comments on books that you probably haven’t fully read, given how many you post.
You know me, Bob. It’s one thing to think or to believe or to “just know” that something is true “in your head” regarding cosmic meaning. And another thing altogether being able to demonstrate that in fact all reasonable – virtuous? – men and women will be inclined to share it with you.
From my own frame of mind “here and now”, the following…
1] my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein
3] oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die
…seem entirely reasonable to me.
On the other hand, if you or anyone else here disputes them in regard to their own life, by all means, share that with me. After all, a part of me wants to believe in something – in anything – that will allow me to scramble up out of the debilitating hole I’ve dug myself down into.
Bob:
And how on Earth would you go about demonstrating that? Other than in suggesting that if I were being truly honest, I would agree with you?
Bob:
I don’t really use or focus in on the perspective of any particular religious denomination. Instead, I challenge those who do embrace a religious perspective, to explore their convictions given the following factors:
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed…but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual’s belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
…who will assure us that, on the contrary, it is actually their own One True Path that allows mere mortals to achieve…enlightenment? And then all those religious denominations noting further that if mere mortals wish to achieve both immortality and salvation in turn, they really do only have but one option. And take a wild guess regarding which path that will be.
Just do it? Just do what? In other words, if you want to be absolutely certain that your own behaviors reflect both an objective morality here and now and immortality and salvation there and then.
Bob:
Okay, which of the One True Paths above reflects the most astute embodiment of imagination? Or might almost all of them insist that, of course, it is their own imagination that assures us “the best of all possible worlds”?
Bob:
Books? What books? Or do you mean all of the articles from Philosophy Now magazine? The ones I post at PN and at ILP? Well, I have in fact read them from start to finish.
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
In fact, for a number of hedonists among us, gorging themselves on any number of things – food, sex, dope, etc. – is all the meaning they’ll ever need. Then the sociopaths…?
There’s another rendition of this…mine. Only my focus is less on existential meaning and purpose [which is everywhere] and more on the assumption there is no essential meaning objectively applicable to everyone. Let alone immortality and salvation.
Then the part where millions are now addicted to pop culture, to mindless consumption, to the quest for their own 15 minutes of fame.
On the other hand, it’s not like the “will to power” is an entity that can actually be pinpointed in the brain.
Or in the soul?
At least not to my current knowledge. Instead, it becomes whatever you need it to become…philosophically or otherwise. And how is meaning itself really any different here? What does it mean? Well, what do you need it to mean in order to sustain your own dogmatic assessment of the human condition?
Metaphysical Skepticism
Jacob Bell argues that we can’t determine the ultimate nature of reality.
Then the part where a distinction is made between the metaphysical and the ontological. Also, the part where many objectivists among us insist there is a teleological component as well. And five will get you ten it’s their own.
Or, as Ayn Rand interpreted it…
“For Rand, metaphysics tells us that entities have definite natures, epistemology tells us how to investigate those natures, and the special sciences then do the actual investigating.” SEP
And this all revolves around her own rooted existentially in dasein assumption that to the extent mere mortals are rational, they are…metaphysically moral? Just as my own uniquely personal set of subjective assumptions has led me “here and now” to believe that moral nihilism is a reasonable frame of mind.
Call it any Ism you want…as long as you are willing to note how, given your own day to day interactions with others, you can defend it pertaining to, among other things, conflicting goods.
And if they don’t?
Cue the epistemological nihilists? Or, perhaps, the metaphysical nihilists? Click, of course.
On the other hand, how is demonstrating the validity of the above working out for you?
The term ‘meaning’ is another one of those words, moderns/postmoderns have managed to define out of existence.
Existence is full of meaning, if by meaning, we …mean, how phenomena interact, or inter-relate.
But what moderns mean, by ‘meaning’ is ‘purpose.’
Another way of saying ‘telos.’
Though existence is full of meaning, it is certainty void of a purpose, since purpose implies intent…Will.
The cosmos is not alive.
Only life can have an intent, and so only life can give itself a purpose.
This is another way of evading responsibility…which is the underlying motive of many moderns.
Responsibility is a burden they wish to unload upon another…if not god then the cosmos.
With great power comes great responsibiltiy…the price of power.
As man gains power he is burdened with greater and greater responsibilities.
He can no longer blame something or someone else, but must accept that he participates in the determination of his own fate.
The more power, the more freedom.
The more freedom, the more responsibility falls upon the one with power.
Freedom = power.
Denying free-will is an attempt to deny oneself power - to become impotent…meaning innocence.
Modern man’s greatest loss was that along with the god of Abraham he lost his scapegoat - which was what Christ and the god of Abraham was.
Who, then, will now be blamed to preserve his innocence?
His victim status.
Slaves refuse to leave the plantation when they realize the price of freedom.
The meaning of meaning is perhaps the deepest question not yet given attention by the philosophical vanguards and silly professorial aesthetes.
Freedom does indeed equal power, but the power for what? For living, for reality, for being.
Then we must begin to reconcile with deeper philosophical questions. But I’ll leave that off for now, in part to see if you have any sense of what I mean…
If you stop crying about “abraham” every single time you write something, people might take you a bit more seriously.
By that I mean both that you may become more serious, and also that others might find you less annoying/repetitive/boringly derivative.
Since I can’t recall a single meaningful, interesting and intelligent person I ever knew who gave one little fuck about “abrahamism” or any such nonsense things.
The answers to the simple questions you ask, are given in the post I made about free-will…but it was over your head.
The ‘what for…’ asking for a purpose…defines you.
Time does not help a man grow…it actually shrinks him.
Gravitas…
In your case, mental midgetry is a bad starter package.
Yes it’s possibly true. I may indeed have been wrong that you are an addition even to ilp…
but naw. Given the deplorable, wastelanded state of this boring place, even you are a nice addition! Even if all you do is repeat the same old stuff you always said for the last 10+ years.
I mean, I can’teven imagine being that consistently unproductive. Read my books or posts from 10 years ago, sure they still have value over your head but Ive already moved WAY beyond such things.
In any case, very glad to have you back
It has been, how do I say this politely, boring as fuck around here lately.
Appreciate your energy, if nothing else. Maybe I am the only one who realizes you are really seeking truths. For that, you deserve some value and attention. If not also a bit of trolling because and I mean bro. How long has it really been? and you STILL on this same stuff as before?>?
…bro. did they put you inside a time capsule or what?
Go out and live a life. Then adapt your ideas, find your errors, and reinvent your truths on a higher level.
And yeah, I know you wont do anything like that. But hey, never say you werent told.
Honestly, one could be forgiven for thinking youre an AI bot.
All you ever do is regurgitate the same exact same stuff as you always did. Odd.
I will need to rethink my ideas about being and its livingness in terms of adaptability and truth-seekingness even at the more basic and base levels. It seems like at least one being in the world, you, is incapable of growth.
Well that isn’t exactly outside the range of evolutionary expectations. It just means you are far more hypocritically NORMAL than you could ever be capable of acknowledging.
You mean like how they charged up the wazoo and made it impossible to survive? You mean like how they don’t even pay a living wage still to this day—and as soon as they increase your pay, they increase the prices? You mean like how they can’t even go live off grid in very large numbers without somebody cattle prodding them to scrape to survive like everybody else?
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
And now the 21st century’s totalitarian political movements. Although, admittedly, for many, it’s far less totalitarian and far more just plain old “show me the money”. And, for those such as myself, a cynicism that now knows no bounds.
In the interim, however, those ghastly “acts of God” continue to pummel us, making life a virtual hell on Earth for men and women around the globe. California today but natural disasters can pop up any where at anytime. Think the Yellowstone super-volcano or the next extinction event coming down out of the clouds.
Still, aside from existing theocratic states, much of the pain and suffering these days revolves around the trials and the tribulations embedded in the autocratic state capitalist policies of those like Putin and Xi and Trump.
More like authoritarian regimes. It’s not ideology or philosophy that prevails these days so much as the quest for cheap labor, natural resources and markets. This and the “strong man” mentality of those who want to turn the govenment into their very own piggy banks.
Right, right, “intrinsically meaningful values”. In the form of, say, one or another “industrial complex”? And what about the Nazis’ and the Communists’ search for meaning? They don’t count?
How about in sustaining the “will to power”? How about in “making American great again”? How about in one or another One True path?
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
Two Images of the World
There’s no simple answer to this question. For Plato and others, the universe is imbued with inherent purpose: there’s an order to things in the world and an end (telos) to human life.
Of course, for Plato and many other “serious philosophers” down through the ages, this “inherent purpose” is embedded almost entirely in a world of words. It is basically a philosophical contraption such that if you accept the definition and the meaning of the words used to convey this purpose – and meaning and morality – that’s what “makes” it true.
In other words, the answers tend to become simpler and simpler when the objectivists among us make it quite clear that they and only they have invented – discovered? – the one true purpose – and meaning and morality – said to be applicable to all that they insist are rational and virtuous human beings.
And this is established [for those of my ilk] by the fact that historically philosophers have never come close to concurring on the One True Path this purpose – and meaning and morality – actually encompasses.
And the good news is that there are lots and lots of disparate paths to choose from:
Also, once you embrace one all that is necessary to establish it as the One True Path is that you believe it is.
Or, perhaps, is that the bad news as long as particular philosophers themselves are willing to accept the “my way or the highway” objectivist mentality?
Now, in regard to that, let’s just say “the rest is history”. Frankl just happened to encounter a Purpose – and Meaning and Morality – that rationalized the extermination of an entire “ethnic group, religion, and culture.”
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
The universe that modern science describes is ostensibly at odds with Plato’s worldview. First, the Godless cosmos doesn’t have a masterplan – things just happen, sometimes bad things, without any reason at all.
On the other hand, I’m sure that Plato had his own rebuttal directed at those who might have pointed this out to him “back then”. Only the masterplan is almost entirely embedded in a set of assumptions regarding “Platonic Realism”:
“Platonic realism is the theory of reality developed by Plato, and explained in his theory of forms. Platonic realism states that the visible world of particular things is a shifting exhibition, like shadows cast on a wall by the activities of their corresponding universal Ideas or Forms. Whereas the visible world of particulars is unreal, the Forms occupy the unobservable yet true reality and are real.” wiki
Agree with this? Okay, pertaining to your own value judgments, how is it applicable to behaviors you’d choose as a prisoner in the cave as opposed to being a philosopher-king in the world outside the cave?
You choose the context.
Though there are any number natural laws that work to maximize human and animal pain and suffering.
Bullshit! Right, Mr. Objectivist?
No problem right? You already have yanked every possible ought from every possible is. Metaphysical morality, perhaps?
Over and again…a philosophical assessment deemed correct if you agree with it and incorrect if you don’t. And the point isn’t that mere mortals evolve to acquire value judgments but the fact that there are any number of objectivists out there who insist there is but one option for all those who wish to be thought of as rational men and women.
Then the extent to which “or else” is broached. And, historically, we know all the different ways that can turn out.
Meaning is another one of those words nihilists like to define in ways that nullify it.
What these freaks ‘mean’ by ‘meaning’ is purpose…they want their suffering, their pains, their fears, to have a purpsoe…
They lack purpose…objectives…and want the cosmos to give them a purpose.
They want a reason to suffer.
An explanation for why they suffer.
Like this woman…lost…lost due to her own actions and choices.
She will never accept responsibility for her state…she cries out, like a damsel in distress, for someone to come help her…
But, like the fox that cries out, to make the rabbit come to its aid…it wants to consume those who respond to her distress calls.
Wants to fracture and fragment them…make them, like herself, desperate enough to surrender to her victim collective.
So, though she claims she does not believe in free-will, she accuses, blames objectivists…because they do have a choice to become…like her.
She made the choice…they can, as well.
Then, they can deny their choice, by claimnig they had none.
Finding Meaning in Suffering
Patrick Testa on the extraordinary hope offered by Viktor Frankl.
Reclaiming Meaning
In Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl offers three ways to rediscover meaning in the personal, spiritual or ‘noetic’ dimension. First, we can participate in active creation. We can start a community project, write a book, or compose music. We can build something, not because of the end, but simply for the sake of creation.
I can only imagine Frankl in the death camps noting this to all the other prisoners. Imagining how they would all react to him there…noetically?
And, of course, the bottom line is that logotherapy as a psychological tool may or may not be helpful as a method of healing. Everything always comes down to the context and whether, existentially, we actually have an option to practice it.
For example, they’re on their way to the gas chamber. Logotherapy then? Or suppose you go searching for meaning in your life and you find it in the SS?
You tell me. For example, what this has to do with the “absurd joy par excellence” in your own life.
Same thing though. You go to the theatre to watch a play. But its plot – meaning – revolves around a moral or political philosophy that is abhorrent to you. But not to those up on the stage and to most of the audience. They’re cheering wildly.
In other words, there’s the meaning we find interacting in the either/or world and our, at times, conflicting reactions to that meaning pertaining to conflicting goods. Logotherapy…and abortion? gun control? homosexuality? animal rights?
"But the psychology establishment turned against Frankl in the early 1960s, when Rollo May questioned the therapeutic techniques suggested by Man’s Search for Meaning. In his 1961 book Existential Psychology, May related Frankl’s survival of the concentrations camps but then concluded that “logotherapy hovers close to authoritarianism,” because:
“…there seem to be clear solutions to all problems, which belies the complexity of actual life. It seems that if the patient cannot find his goal, Frankl supplies him with one. This would seem to take over the patients’ responsibility and … diminish the patient as a person.”
Or in any number of distractions available to us…respite from the horrors that “the human condition” never tires of reminding us of.
But then those particulaly fanatic – sadistic? – Nazis who found their “work” in the death camps to be, if not joyful, than certainly fulfilling. They only had to believe what they were ordered to believe by powers that be about the Jews.
Yeah, but that’s because his job involved exploring the entire universe itself. And as often as not here there are no actual moral or political or spiritual quandaries/conflicts to speak of. Instead, the more heated discussions can revolve around connecting the dots between the very, very big and the very, very small.
Then the part where “I” fits in here?
On the other hand, the part where someone is able to find work in a factory or in an office only to be ground down hour after hour and day after day doing exactly the same thing. The 'alienation of labor" let’s call it.
What would the world be…without money hung around our necks, hung around our very souls? Patrick deWitt
Communist?
“Dr. Hopkins told our class that we might never know what other people think and feel, but we used symbols that we generally agreed upon (language, mathematics, maps) for our meaning and purpose. We built rickety bridges over chasms of ignorance.” Bremer Acosta
Cue the clouds?
“I can’t not be who I am meant to be, can I?” H.C. Roberts
Clickless let’s say.
“By extricating ‘reality’ from mind, materialism has sent the significance of nature into exile. With the pathetic grin of hubris stamped on our foolish faces, we carefully unwrap the package and then proceed to throw away its contents whileb proudly storing the empty box on the altar of our ontology. What a huge stash of empty boxes have we accumulated! Idols of stupidity they are; public reminders of a state of affairs that would be hilarious if it weren’t tragic.” Bernardo Kastrup
Unless of course he’s wrong.
“In a world where self-centered souls chase fleeting desires, dare to fight for something greater—something beyond yourself. Seek a purpose that calls you to stand for what transcends your own interests, and in doing so, you’ll discover the true strength of your soul.” Blade Seventh
So, how’s that working out for you?
“Things happen, and, like millions of people before me, I look for a meaning in them, because my vanity will not allow me to admit that the whole meaning of an event lies in the event itself.” Marlen Haushofer
No, really, what does that even mean “for all practical purposes?”
because and I mean bro. How long has it really been? and you STILL on this same stuff as before?>?