Friday, October 30, 2009

Self -Transcendence: The Will-to-Meaning

from Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, 1963

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accom­panying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neigh­bor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding hismouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slip­ping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and on­ward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasion­ally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wis­dom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may con­sist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfill­ment. …

By declaring that man is a responsible crea­ture and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true mean­ing of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. By the same token, the real aim of human existence cannot be found in what is called self-actualization. Human ex­istence is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is not a possible aim at all, for the simple reason that the more a man would strive for it, the more he would miss it. For only to the extent to which man commits himself to the fulfillment of his life's meaning, to this extent he also ac­tualizes himself. In other words, self-actualiza­tion cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-tran­scendence.

Commentary: Viktor Frankl, relative to the search for meaning, places the individual squarely in the world. He later asserts there are three ways of experiencing meaning: by doing a deed, by experiencing a value, and by suffering. Originally his narrative had the title From Death Camp to Existentialism. His ethic of the will-to-meaning is conditioned by being not separate from, but being embedded in the world. In this regard each individual has her or his unique vocation or mission to fulfill. It is in fulfillment of this unique and personal task that meaning with a measure of transcendence is realized.

Search yourself: In your experience how have you realized meaning and self- transcendence? (Remember Frankl's three ways: doing a deed, experiencing a value such as love, or by suffering.) Do you agree that self-actualization is a futile quest, whereas it is achieved through self-transcendence?

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Choice: Thou Mayest

from East of Eden, John Steinbeck, 1952

"After two years we felt that we could approach your sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis. My old gentlemen felt that these words were very important too—'Thou shalt' and 'Do thou.' And this was the gold from our mining: ''Thou, mayest.' 'Thou mayest rule over sin.'"

"Don't you see?" he cried. "The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou may-est'—that gives a choice. It might be the most impor tant word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.' Don't you see?" …

Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is impor tant. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win." …

It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentle men who were sliding gently down to death are too interested to die now?"

Adam said, "Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?"

Lee said, "These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. They know that these sixteen verses are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. They do not believe a man writes fifteen and three-quarter verses of truth and tells a lie with one verb. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars." Lee's eyes shone. "You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness." …

I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed— because 'Thou mayest.'

Commentary: In East of Eden Steinbeck dealt with the great issue of good and evil in the guise of the story of Caine and Abel. (Remember he wrote in the wake of the Holocaust and Hiroshima.) He settles on an ethic of choice, that in every situation a person has the free will to choose good or evil. This freedom to choose is a transcendent ethic, "a ladder to the stars" and the means to a god-likeness. He doesn't neglect the reality that some degrade themselves, however this is a matter of weakness, cowardice, and laziness--not essential aspects of the human condition. This is a heroic ethic, as well as an heroic appraisal of the human soul, always attacked and never destroyed. I find the ethic of choice reflective of 20th existentialism and humanism.

Search yourself: Do you feel a full measure of your existential freedom, to literally choose your destiny in every situation of your life? Can you envision yourself as an everyday hero? Do you actively resist weakness, cowardice, and laziness--all those attributes that threaten that glittering instrument, the human soul you posess?

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Land Ethic

from A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, 1948

When god-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one rope a dozen slave-girls of his house-hold, whom he suspected of misbehavior during his absence.

This hanging involved no question of propriety. The girls were property. The disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong.

Concepts of right and wrong were not lacking from Odysseus' Greece: witness the fidelity of his wife through the long years before at last his black-prowed galleys clove the wine-dark seas for home. The ethical structure of that day covered wives, but had not yet been extended to human chattels. During the three thousand years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have been extended to many fields of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages in those judged by expediency only.

The Ethical Sequence

This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process in ecological evolution. Its sequence may be described in ecological as well as in philosophic terns. An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its origin in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-operation. The ecologist calls thse symbioses. Politics and economics are advanced syrnbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms with an ethical content.

The complexity of co-operative mechanisms has increase with population density, and with the efficiency of tools. It was simpler, for example, to define the anti-social uses of sticks and stones in the days of the mastodons than of bullets and billboards in the age of motors.

The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals; the Mosaic Decalogue is an example. Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. The Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to society, democracy to integrate social organization to the individual.

There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but no obligations.

The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the evidence correctly, an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. It is the third step in a sequence. The first two have already been taken. Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present conservation movement a the embryo of such an affirmation.

An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations so new or intricate, or involving such deferred reactions, that the path of social expediency is not discernible to the average individual. Animal instincts are modes of guidance for the individual in meeting such situations. Ethics are possibly a kind of community instinct in-the-making. ...

The Community Concept

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). ...

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. ...

The 'key-log' which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Commentary: The genius of Aldo Leopold involved extending ethics from the merely human to a larger realm--the biotic realm or Nature. He argued that in the course of human civilization and understanding ethics have evolved, that ethics might also have an ecological dimension. Similar to Albert Schweitzer, Aldo Leopold arrived at a simple ethical formula: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Search yourself: How far do your relationships extend? Do your responsibilities, your sphere of cooperation, include the realm that Aldo Leopold summarized as "the Land," including all the life the land sustains. Do you see this larger community as a matter of interdependence in which you are implicated/involved?