Books that Have Changed my Thinking (2): Man’s Search for Meaning
Dec 1st, 2009 by Bill
Books that have changed my Thinking (2): Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
To hear the audio recording please click on this link:
Children’s Story: Nasrudin and the Poor Man with the Bag
One day Nasrudin saw a man sitting by the roadside sobbing uncontrollably.
‘Why are you crying, my friend?’ asked Nasrudin.
‘Because all I own is in this bag,’ said the man, holding up a tatty little canvas bag. ‘Just look. A few sandwiches, a spare pair of underpants, a pair of socks, an umbrella, and a bit of loose change. That’s it. I don’t own anything else, and I’m so miserable.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Nasrudin, sympathetically, and he immediately grabbed the man’s bag and set off running at top speed down the road.
‘Oh, now I have absolutely nothing!’ wailed the poor man, but he picked himself up from the ground, and began walking wearily in the direction Nasrudin had gone. ‘If I can find the thief, maybe he’ll take pity on me and give me my bag back,’ he thought to himself.
He’d walked about a mile when he saw his bag lying in the middle of the road. He ran towards it, picked it up, kissed it, and shouted out, ‘Hurray, I’ve got my bag and all my belongings back. Thank you, thank you!’
‘How strange,’ said Nasrudin, as he appeared from behind a bush. ‘How strange that the bag which a few minutes ago was making you cry is now making you ecstatically happy.’
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The first book I dealt with in this series, The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James, is quite a weighty and scholarly tome and needs to be read slowly; the twenty lectures it comprises should be taken one per day, or maybe one per week in order to get the most out of them. Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, however, although it’s been called ‘one of the ten most important books of the 20th century’, can be read at a sitting and is immediately and consistently gripping. I defy anyone of average intelligence who picks it up to abandon it half read. Its general appeal is evidenced by the fact that it has sold over two million copies since it was first published in 1946, and it is available very cheaply in numerous editions.
One of these editions is published by the Beacon Press, the Unitarian Universalist publishing company based in Boston, and this is appropriate because the author Viktor Frankl, although a Jew, had strong associations with Unitarianism. Richard Boeke, who was minister in Berkeley, California, tells me that Viktor spoke in the Berkeley Unitarian church on at least three occasions, and that Viktor’s play about Buchenwald was performed there. Frankl’s friend Joseph Fabry, who translated his work into English, was a member of the Berkeley church.
Man’s Search for Meaning is an account of Frankl’s time as a prisoner in various concentration camps during the Second World War. He was born in Vienna in 1905, and trained as a doctor and psychiatrist. In 1942 he was transported to Theresianstadt concentration camp, along with his wife and his parents. He was liberated in 1945, but his wife and parents were not so lucky. Viktor spent the rest of his life as a psychiatrist and author, dying, aged 92, in 1997. He published more than 30 books, and founded a school of psychiatry, Logotherapy, often called the Third School of Viennese Psychiatry, after those founded by Freud and Jung. Logotherapy deals specifically with finding meaning in life.
The principles of his psychological theories were honed by his concentration camp experiences, and Man’s Search for Meaning is more a reflection on these experiences than a detailed account of them.
The book is full of surprising insights. For example, he tells us that time was distorted to those living in the camps; days were interminably long, but the weeks and months flew by.
In camp, a small time unit, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly. My comrades agreed when I said that in camp a day lasted longer than week. How paradoxical was our time experience!
His experiences also taught him what most of us have long suspected: that ‘there are two races of men in the world, but only these two – the ‘race’ of decent men, and the race of indecent men. These two races are found everywhere and among all kinds of people; so, decent men could be found among the prison guards, and indecent men among the prisoners. In fact, the worst of men were those prisoners who had been promoted to ‘Capo’; but some of the German guards and officials were good men who tried their best to ease the burdens of those under their control.
Frankl was also led to the conclusion that, in Nietzsche’s words, ‘He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.’ But the ‘why’ of life need not be – and in fact, rarely is – provided by some great overarching meaning, some religious idea of purpose. ‘It is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way,’ says Frankl. ‘Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness’. In order to survive, he says, ‘We needed to stop thinking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly.’ ‘It did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.’
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument – they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child’s affections…..When the impossibility of replacing a person is realised, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears towards a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’.
We have to discover meaning for ourselves, in our individual circumstances. However, Frankl does not deny that there may be ultimate meaning. In one very moving passage, he tells how seeing a light in a distant farmhouse – a light shining in the darkness – sends his spirit soaring and from somewhere inside himself he hears a victorious ‘Yes’ in answer to his question about the existence of an ultimate purpose. Thoughts about his wife, conversations with her even though she is not present and is probably dead, taught him that love is stronger than death, that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire, and that the salvation of man is through love and in love.
I could go on picking out bits from this immensely rich little book, but I don’t want to try to cover everything superficially. Instead, I want to concentrate on just one aspect of the book’s impact on me: its clear demonstration that happiness and suffering, poverty and riches are relative. This runs completely counter to much of our political and economic thinking which assumes a direct correlation between happiness and material prosperity. Pointing out the illusory nature of this assumption has been a consistent feature of my sermons over the past decade, and I am sure I have Frankl’s book to thank for that.
He gives lots of examples. On one occasion he and his fellow camp inmates see some convicts pass their work site, and are overwhelmed by envy of the convicts! After all, they have warm beds and proper food, the opportunity to take baths; they would have toothbrushes, mattresses, and there would be regular deliveries of mail. They may be in prison, but they would be able to know what was happening to members of their family, a luxury which the concentration camp inmates had lost a long time ago.
Some years after he had been liberated from the camp, he was shown a magazine picture of some concentration camp prisoners lying crowded on their bunks ‘staring dully at a visitor’. ‘Isn’t this terrible?’ asked his friend.
Frankl tells him that this might not have been so terrible for the men in the picture as he imagined. These were probably sick, and so were excused work for the day. They could lie on their bunks, huddled together for warmth, and although they weren’t given full food rations, they didn’t have to go outside to dig trenches in the frozen earth for ten hours. ‘When I explained, my listener understood why I did not find the photograph so terrible: the people shown on it might not have been so unhappy after all.’
Frankl mentions that some of the most blissfully happy experiences of his whole life occurred when he was detailed to look after some typhus patients, and, when they were all sleeping, he could stretch himself out in front of the stove and roast a few pilfered potatoes on the fire. On another occasion he mentions how delighted he was to find a piece of string which he would be able to use to lace up his boots.
What Frankl experienced in an extreme situation, we have no doubt experienced in our own relatively comfortable lives. Last week there was a good example of it on the UTV show, I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of here! For supper one night, the celebrities were given some very dubious ‘possum’ meat, which was very tough and had an unfamiliar and quite unpleasant flavour. It was accompanied by a few vegetables and some rice. No one enjoyed it, and they all went to bed hungry. The next morning they were given a present of some unlabelled cans, one of which contained Spam! How wonderful it tasted! These rich men and women, deprived for a mere ten days of their customary luxuries, were sent into raptures about something as commonplace as luncheon meat which they would never ordinarily eat, and certainly never buy. Remember Nasrudin’s question to the man with the bag: ‘How strange that what was making you miserable an hour ago is now making you very happy!’
It’s like the old joke. A man is lecturing on the correlation between sexual activity and happiness. In order to demonstrate that the more frequently one indulges the happier one is, he asks his audience, ‘Who has sex every day?’ A handful of not terribly happy looking people put up their hands. ‘Who has sex every week?’ A few more respond. These don’t look overly happy either. ‘Once a month?’ ‘Once every six months?’ Each time a few people desultorily put up their hands, but nobody seems particularly cheerful. Finally, the man asks, ‘Who has sex once a year?’ A little old man, who is jumping about with delight, shoots up his hand. ‘Why are you so pleased with yourself?’ asks the lecturer. ‘Tonight’s the night!’ says the joyful man.
Last Monday’s Guardian contained an article by the journalist Charlie Brooker which explored the same territory, but from the other direction, from the point of view of those who have too much rather than too little. He mentions the rumours about certain pop stars like Mariah Carey making absurd demands about cars and dressing rooms; about how they like to have a certain brand of drinking water, a particular colour on the walls, champagne at the right temperature etc. The rumours are probably not true, says Charlie, but if they were he would understand why.
I’ve seen it happen in my own life, in my own little way. About ten years ago I was co-presenting a technology show on a niche digital channel with an audience of about six. This was my first time in front of the cameras. I had less screen presence than the Invisible Man and the sex appeal of a fatal head wound…. Anyway, during the first week of making the show, the runner would come over between takes to check whether I needed anything. A chair, perhaps? A glass of water? At first this was embarrassing. I didn’t want anyone making a fuss of me. But one of the primary rules of television is to keep ‘the talent’ happy, and consequently there was no let up. So you accept the proffered chair, sup the glass of water. And after several weeks of pampering, something snaps in your brain. You grow accustomed to the attention; like wireless broadband, it’s an everyday miracle you simply take for granted. Before long, the moment you get thirsty, your first thought is no longer, ‘I’ll go and pour myself a drink’, but something along the lines of, ‘Where’s that runner gone?’ ‘Why haven’t I been watered already?’ or ‘Isn’t this a disgusting breach of my human rights?’
What begins as a privilege soon becomes an expectation. Doesn’t Charlie Brooker’s experience give us just a little insight into the shocking behaviour of some Catholic prelates over the child abuse scandal? If you tell a man that he has been specially chosen to fill an important niche in God’s own organisation; and if people consistently bend the knee in his presence, kiss the ring on his finger, call him ‘My Lord’ or ‘Your Grace’, is it any wonder that he eventually comes to think that ordinary rules don’t apply to him?
These are very important insights, particularly for religious liberals like us, who generally spend our time and effort attempting to ameliorate the living conditions of those we deem unfortunate. This is a very noble pursuit, and long may we continue to do it. But religion should not concern itself solely with these political and economic issues. Since prosperity and poverty, suffering and happiness are relative, religion should teach us how to deal with our circumstances whatever they may be. It should teach us how to be constantly surprised by life, never to take things for granted. It should teach us that human desire knows no satiety; that happiness flows from an internal response to what is, not from an illusory expectation of what is to come. To live spiritually is not to force oneself to believe incredible doctrines or to participate in fancy ceremonies, but to maintain an attitude of constant vigilance.
Frankl’s book made me realise just what Jesus meant when he said, ‘the poor are always with you’; we are all poor while we continue to believe that money and possessions will make us happy. Man’s Search for Meaning helped turn my preaching from persistent lamentation at the state of the world to rigorous investigation into the state of the self. For this I can’t thank him enough.
29th November 2009
On the day this sermons was delivered, Victoria Coren, wrote in the Observer: ‘Cheryl Cole may be the most valuable woman on television. She looks wonderful. She has beauty, fame, wealth, success and expensive hair. And everyone knows she’s unhappy. Her husband cheated on her. There she sits, in the middle of the X Factor, balancing all its risky messages about what the average kid should aim for in life, with a rock-solid example of how irrelevant it all is to ultimate contentment.’