Life is not worth living - ? Review of Frankl's book.

DanTheMan

This is a customer review from Amazon.com for the famous book Mankinds' Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. What do you think of his comments? Do you agree or disagree, and why? This review really hit me hard a few months ago when I initially came across it. I have since read Frankl's book. While I did enjoy it, I must agree with this review in that, in the final analysis, life isn't worth it and the only thing that keeps me going is that the unknown (death) is too scary. If I were to die tomorrow, what would my story be? Born to dysfunctional Catholic family, overbearing mother, distant and self-absorbed father. Increasingly paranoid and withdrawn as a teenager/young adult. Joined high-pressure cultic religion at 22. Burnt out 10 years later and left. I mean, what the hell is the point of my life?

Reviewer: A reader from New York, NY United States

What's proven here? That if you can convince youself you have something to live for: you will continue to live for it. So? If after getting hit on the head with a lead pipe 100x one is to receive ten million dollars, I suppose there are some who will endure that pain, too, in the hope they will survive. They won't.

Perhaps the real question is if there is *any* reward for enduring the brutality of life that is worth the suffering. Most, if not virtually all, love relationships are based on a thinly or not-so thinly disguised basis of psychology mercantilism, if not outright economic dealmaking. Other higher pursuits: art, philosophy, philanthropy, so-called spiritual attainment are arguably better, but, really, are little more than panaceas not much different, in their ultimate purpose, than devoting one's life to developing the perfect tennis game, for instance. They absorb one's attention and distract one's focus from the pain & dissolution to come, or even occuring, & keep one, perhaps, from ending it all at the very moment. In this manner, we all buoy each other up, but for what? The question remains unanswered. Life is a concentration camp and we are all going to the gas chamber in the end. What do we do in the meantime. Is it worth it?

Frankl, like any reasonably intelligent person, delineates the central problem well: Why live? But like every other professional philosopher or psychologist, he comes up with a reason (altho in this case the reason boils down to *find a reason*) because, well, what else is he going to do? The biological imperative compels us to go on with life at any price. The alternative: that there is no reason to do so--that is simply too terrifying to contemplate, would violate species survival, and be considered unpublishable. Just once I'd like to see a thinker have the courage to face the ultimate question and not flinch, escape to a flight of fancy, take a leap of *faith* or otherwise dissemble.

Life is not worth living. Don't blink.

wednesday

When i am depressed or in severe pain, i often think -life is not worth living. But when the chemicals in my brain work right, i am so grateful to God for every day I wake up.

I read Frankels book and indeed he indulges in fantasy to keep himself alive, I believe that as long as there is life , there is hope. There is a new start, each day.

Jehovahs' witness' nealy took my hope away, and i have fought to get it back. I think Frankel was a brilliant man to write about such a simple thing as hope and have it be one of the books most psychologist have read.

GentlyFeral

This reviewer has only proved that there is no underlying purpose to life. He hasn't proved that life is not worth living once you have it. Frankly, I don't see any point in going out of your way to deny the biological imperative. Suicide may, in extreme cases, be a practical solution, but I can't see it as a philosophical principle.

I agree that there isn't any intrinsic meaning in life -- except pleasure. And I don't mean just diddling the nerve endings, but everything that leads to any kind of happiness; this covers all the ground between hot monkey sex, communion with god, and the creation of fine art -- with plenty of room in between for kittens and rainbows and babies. Pleasure is its own justification. The Book of Mormon is right on this one point -- "Men are that they might have joy."

GentlyFeral

DanTheMan

Wednesday,

I am glad that you have found hope in your life. Even though it's been over a year since I set foot in a KH, I am still very much adjusting to post-cult life (and probably will be for many years to come - I'm a slow healer.)

GentlyFeral,

I agree that pleasure can make it worth it. For me, I can experience the most rapturous joy when I hear a song I really like.

Kenneson

I have read Frankl's book and agree that if one has a why to life he will find a how. The one's who think life is meaningless have nothing to offer me but despair. I wish them well in their absurdity. For me, life is worth living. I like myself; I love other people; I like the beauties of nature; I like my work. No feeling of ennui for me.

Huxley

I agree with Dantheman about songs bringing you joy. (Especially in difficult times!)

My current fave is an album called, "At Dawn" by the band, My Morning Jacket...

good stuff!

MegaDude

Frankl was surrounded by people dying left and right, being murdered and committing suicide, so he asked himself why he wanted to keep going despite being in the hell of a Nazi concentration camp. His outlook for survival was terrible. The conditions he endured as a starving slave working in the freezing cold were horrible.

What kept him going? He found his personal meaning even in suffering. He wanted to share the experience and his insights with the whole human race and contribute something meaningful about his insights in human nature....even under the worst conditions. That combined with hope can be a pretty awesome motivation to keep going. I think his book is one of the best things I've ever read since leaving the Watchtower. One of the things that kept him going was the love he had for his wife, that he might see her again.

Is life worth living? Only if you have a reason to live it for. What that is is purely up to each individual. I can give you a whole list of reasons but they're mine so it's subjective. I don't buy into the Watchtower's brainwashing that life outside of the organization is a hopeless and joyless existence. They lied about everything just to keep up their false rep that they are God's only leaders on earth.

Appreciation for one beautiful sunset has more spiritual power and appreciation for life to me than all the thousands of meetings I went to and endless JW literature that I read.

I think one good reason to live is to discover the "truth" of this life outside of the lie of the Watchtower. And that's just for starters.

DanTheMan

Huxley,

Welcome to the board! While I was driving to work this morning, the radio station I was listening to played a remake of the Crowded House song "Don't Dream It's Over" (popular 80's tune). I don't know who the girl was who sang it, but I was singing the song all day today, it gave me a boost.

Kenneson,

I had to look up "ennui" - that word describes how I've felt a lot of the time for the past, oh, 15 years or so!

DanTheMan

Mega,

Appreciation for one beautiful sunset has more spiritual power and appreciation for life to me than all the thousands of meetings I went to and endless JW literature that I read.

Towards the end, I got to where I couldn't read the magazines. They just became so silly and vacuous (Help for Arthritis Sufferers). And I all but blacked out during meetings, I would be driving home and I wouldn't be able to remember a single thing that was said during the "spiritual" part of the meeting.

The WT notion of what it means to be a spiritual person (hours on a time slip and unquestioning loyalty to the org) was what drove me out more than anything.

As far as Frankl goes, how somebody could experience what he did and not let it turn his heart black is hard for me to comprehend. I wonder how I would do under similar tragic circumstances (somehow I have a feeling that question will be answered in time).

wednesday

Dan,

They hurt us when they gave us hope of never dying, and being forever young, never getting sick, never growing old in the system of things. they told us God would stop all war, and peace would come to the earth. now we know, at least part of what they said can't be true. Giving up the hope of living forver, and never dying , it has been hard. I feel so cheated. I can't believe i ever bought into it. now i have to live life like everyone else does, with a possible reward after life. We have to face a possible war, and not knowing if God will intervene and stop man from destroying himself. My doc told me" it is so comforting, having all the answers" and it does feels so good, we were so smug. We just don't have all the answers now. That is why i said they had taken my hope away. But i am getting it back.

. The will to live is so strong, that is why, when someone is depressed and loses that will, they truly are ill. I've had days when i di not want to be alive. But soon something would happen and remind me why i want to live. Life is harder for some, sometimes it is i a real struggle. It has been for me. But if i have to continue seeing a therapist for the rest of my life, i will. I look for hope and somehow i find it.

may u find hope too.

weds

Life is not worth living - ? Review of Frankl's book.

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