Book: 20200812 to 20200823, "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl

20200812 - Preface Gordon W. Allport

Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how."

20200813 - Preface to the 1992 Edition

I think, the purpose of this book is to tell us how to use rationality against destiny.

External resources like money and property are not as important as we thought. We cannot take them with us when we die. So, what is really important?

20200818 - Part 1 Experiences in a Concentration Camp

Homo Sapiens can adapt to any environment. Maybe. This reminds me of the famous ants cave: ants eat each other to avoid extinctness. But we all know that many biological species extincted.

In any cases, only the strongest individuals survive. No matter to human or animals or plants. But, the much more important thing we should do is, don't let ourselves fall into that situation. Make good plan, action quickly. To do that, we need to set up correct perception of this world.

How did Viktor Frankl survive?

1. Luck

Nothing can beat this factor.

2. Skill

He was a doctor, which is useful in concentration camp.

3. Attitude and habit

Even if physical body can maintain longer time, the mentality may crash much earlier. Viktor's endless love to his wife supported him. His honesty and other good habit (such as rationality) saved him.

<The four-hour chef> says, "Action is more important than position." True, but not always. When facing drastic life changes, position is much important than anything else. It's even much more important than LUCK!

Human is influenced by environment hugely, but even in some extreme case such as in concentration camp, some of us still can make own decisions. How to do that? One of the important factor is reading. The more we know, the more we can perceive the world, the more likely we can make correct decision.

What we see are just our illusions. The real world is not affected by our imagination or intention.

20200822 - Part 2 Logotherapy in a Nutshell

"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!"

Interesting. This is exactly what I did around 8 years ago. "When I become 70 years old, what would I tell my current self what I should do? What will I regret about?"

What's the meaning of life? How would I answer this question when I become 70 years old?

Do we envy young people for the possible wonderful lives waiting for them? If, let's say, we could go into someone's body which is 20 year younger at the cost of losing our own memory, are we going to be happier and be more satisfied? This reminds me of the book "The Power of Now". If we pay full attention to NOW, then we don't have anything to complain about, which make our life perfect, and won't envy young people. Most of the young people don't attention to NOW, so their life experience could be much worse than ours.

How to handle phobia? This reminds me of the story about river whirlpool. We need courage to face risk, and panic doesn't help.

The meaning of life is that we have the potential to become HEROES. We can control our fate. Environment and other conditions have huge impact on our fate, but in the end, it's our actions decides our fate.

One hundred years ago, the average longevity is less than forty. But now, it's almost above 80. That means, heroes even helped us to prolong our life! We can change our fate!

20200823 - Postscript 1982 The Case for a Tragic Optimism

Tragic triad: pain, guilty, death.

Mass neurotic syndrome: depression, aggression, addiction.

Meaning can be found in: achievement, experiencing something or encountering someone.

Life is like movie. There are millions of frames, which represent our "moments". But we need to put them together to see the meaning behind them.

What is the meaning? Hope is always in our hand, and we can be our own hero in spite of the environmental and internal restrictions.