Psychology is an underlying theme in this polymath project. The Polymath Slacker is, after all, making up characters with different ideological or philosophical backgrounds in order to argue with them opinions of the best course of action for a state and all it's many governments.
This faux-schizophrenia is meant to illustrate giving equal weight to diverse perspectives. There is, though, an ideal psychological framework for the type of existential polymath who would invent a world, populate it with the extent of his distinct knowledge, or ignorance, then make it available for every person alive to see.
In the study of humanity there are very big and very basic one word questions pushing the boundary of the limits of knowledge. The Polymath Slacker pursues that of "why?"
"If hundreds of thousands of people reach out to a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails." - Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl was a German doctor sent to a concentration camp in the 1930s. His book Man's Search for Meaning is not a book about facts or events, but rather, experiences. His was an attempt to reflect on how the life of a prisoner in a concentration camp played out. How some lived. How some died. How some survived.
"The best of us did not survive...."
Frankl begins his study with the recognition that humans often lose all scruples in their efforts to advance each day's desperate struggle to stay alive. Number 119104, Frankl was put to work digging tracks for railroad lines early in his term in the camps. He describes the various states of mind he experienced (shock, longing, disgust, "mortification of normal reactions") resulting in the eventual conditions of apathy and delusions of reprieve.
In one early scene in the book Frankl describes preventing himself from waking a fellow prisoner from a nightmare because no dream could be as bad as the horror of reality.
Frankl began to work as a doctor again in a typhoid camp, saving his own life from the grueling end that was the fate of the prisoners who dug the railroad tracks. Though not in place to improve the lives of the other prisoners, only making them capable of working (surviving), Frankl says he passed on his first opportunity to escape in order to stay with his patients.
In these circumstances, according to Frankl, men often chose their fate through apathy, frustration or fear. Still, some men choose to be well to others, which is a welcomed example of goodness in people.
"The result of the person a prisoner became was from inner choices."
Men who let themselves lose inner hold of their moral self fell victim to degenerating influences. Choice, then, could be seen as a pillar of the philosophical framework that is "logotherapy".
The book sweeps vast anecdotes describing various aspects of one of the worst human atrocities in history, carefully and tactfully choosing points and principles like that of careful choice to provide insight into the inner functions and tendencies of human beings everywhere.
Another example of this lies in the description of life in the concentration camps as "provisional existence" in which individuals cease living for the future, as they each lose their sense of "inner time." Instead, individuals who were most successful at surviving (generally), found for themselves a goal or series of goals to add a sense of service to the endless days and momentary weeks that passed.
The determination of setting goals, then, is another pillar in the structure of logotherapy.
Frankl ties these principles together intricately and elaborately in the book. These virtues can not be duplicated here, but hopefully the inset quotes yield insights to the talent with which the book covers the requisite ground.
"It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future."
Frankl describes how he remained acutely aware of his choices and trivial thoughts. The danger of the latter was such that careful attention was justified, as illustrated in the story of a particular prisoner who had a dream predicting the date his freedom would arrive. The day came and went, and the severe disappointment was the crisis that reduced and killed the man.
Rather than focusing on what they could expect from life, what began to matter most to the prisoners was what life expected from them. Frankl wrote, "We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly."
"Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to it's problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
Thus, Logotherapy can be summed up as having the self-centeredness of the neurotic be broken up rather than fostered and reinforced. Logos (Greek) - meaning the primary motivational force in life (ie Why), is more a will to meaning than a rationalization of actions.
"Logotherapy deviates from psychoanalysis insofar as it considers man a being who's main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts; or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of id, ego and superego; or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment."
To understand the anxieties of being human in a human-influenced world, replete with all it's inconsistencies and inequalities, one would do to step back from all notions of fairness and expectation, and take serious consideration in the choices of everyday activities. You see, man has no instinct or tradition capable of telling him what to do, or what he 'ought' to do in a world created by man.
This phenomenon, the meaninglessness of human activities on the face of an anthropocentric planet creates what Frankl calls an "Existential Vacuum." Depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we address the Existential Vacuum underlying them.
Logotherapy, then, prescribes 3 ways of discovering meaning: 1) Creating a work or doing a deed, 2) Experiencing something, or encountering someone, and 3) By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.
These broad, outline-prescriptions leave much to be interpreted by the individual, but they do come with a bit of advice. Man's Search for Meaning will not be summed up here any more than any other blurb or quote could do for such a book, but the advice is still useful as both an intrigue and a reaffirmation.
Frankl writes, "at any time, each of the moments of which life consists is dying, and that moment will never recur. And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives?"
I agree with the assessment, as well as the following advice. Logotherapy is undogmatic. Frankl simply suggests to each individual to 'live your life as though you are living the exact same life for the second time, and you have already acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.'
Frankl, Viktor E.: Man's Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy. With a new Foreword by Harold S. Kushner and a new Biographical Afterword by William J. Winslade. Beacon Press, Boston, 1963-2007. (A revised edition of From Death-Camp to Existentialism). ISBN 0-8070-1426-5; [paperback 2006: 0-8070-1427-3].
http://www.viktorfrankl.org/
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