Logotherapy: After Frankl

I've been working on this weird little sonnet. I can't imagine I'd ever get this to the point where I would attempt to publish it, but here it is--I'll discuss what I'm on about afterwards.

Logotherapy

We need the stars in our psychology;

given pale, inherited horizons,

kindling, enflamed by the eulogy

we seek mountains to pronounce illusion,

find books refuting eschatologies

before the crushing grief gets to the bones.

What’s gone is gone—a damned tautology

defeats us. Fucking time marches on, on

through revolutions and technologies,

boots going in and out of fashion,

young worlds cut, bleeding ideology—

and gone is gone. Fed by Auriga

we lock horns with the verdict: how far gone?

So, it's a sonnet--14 lines. Usually, the last two lines of a sonnet are comprised of a new cc rhyme, or conclude on aa. . . (if sonnet structure is alien to you, suffice it to say that I screwed around with the end rhyme, brought in Auriga, then reverted to the "on" sound, or the b rhyme again in line 14.)

It's not a successful poem by a far cry, but what I'm aiming for, in reverting to the b rhyme, is the idea that in our quest for meaning, as humans, we often fall back on the schools of thought which nourished us in the past--we cling to religion, or myth, or superstition, or even our childhood illusions.

Sometimes, this can be crippling to the imagination--we continue to rely on modes of thought that no longer serve us--but, at other times--it seems fair to suggest that these very faiths can help to pull us out of the swamp when nothing else will.

As a matter of fact, these belief systems can sometimes serve as a defense against even more harmful belief systems. Tom Robbins wrote that disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business, and I can attest that some of the more magical, intangible, and supernatural beliefs I held as a child still offer me some refuge against the harsh realities of adulthood.

For instance, I still look to the stars, and attempt to cull meaning from them, and the stories associated with them, and this perspective often allows me to overcome some of the more restrictive thinking necessitated by working in (with, for) the business community. Or at least not feel so trapped by it, enabling me to imagine, and sometimes really believe, that my life has greater purpose.

This is a very moderate example-- "logotherapy", or the school of psychiatry that examines the "will to meaning" was developed by Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and extrordinary thinker. To read more about logotherapy's assumptions, click here.

Logotherapy is concerned with "noetics."Noetic, a term derivitative of the Greek "nous", meaning, roughly, "intellect" or "consciousness. According to Wikipedia:

"The Institute of Noetic Sciences defines noetic as, roughly, 'relating to consciousness or intuition'. The mystical, cosmic and holistic connotations of the term are why the New Age movement has embraced the term noetic and used it to refer to the exploration of individual or cosmic consciousness."

These schools of thought are interesting to contrast with neuroscientific theories like Pinker's.

Is it possible to understand our own minds? Is religious faith a sort of hard wall which prevents people from questioning the nature of reality, and their own lives, any further?

I always revert back to prefering "the Great Mystery"--in this way, I suppose, my belief system mirrors Judaism's stance that human beings cannot know the will of God, while yet supposing that there is, in fact, a God.

Beyond that, however, I part ways with most religions--in fact, my supposition is more that, there is in fact "a something". Is that something spiritual? I don't know--it certainly would seem to be intelligent. And yet, I don't agree with teaching intelligent design to children when we human beings are still walking around with appendix and some children are still born with tails.

Essentially, at some point, the "spiritual" would converge with the merely human. My reasoning is as follows--if there is a higher spiritual plane capable of interacting with life on earth, this means that, by default, life on earth is connected to this higher plane--somehow they coexist. From this worldview, we are walking spirits who just happen to be caught in a dense vibration. . . It all comes back to "everything is one". . . one state of being passes into the next into the next, and these various levels are capable of informing and communicating with one another.

To what avail? We are were we are and we only know what we know--in order to find meaning, we have to consider the past, be very conscious of how we arrived at where we are, and begin to imagine what the purpose of this might be in the future.

It can become almost an adolescent's game of "if I hadn't gone to the mall that day, I never would have met Mathilda, and if not for meeting her, I'd have never applied to art school or bought a horse and if it wasn't for my horse, well, I'd never have spent that year in college. . . " ( note: the sentence "if it wasn't for my horse, I'd never have spent that year in college", is a famous Lewis Black-ism--one of those overheard snippets of conversation that it's so impossible to contextualize that you'll go mad if you try-- come to think of it, Lew's routine is actually in the noetic vein---when we are unable to make sense of our world, we begin to seriously lose it. He jokes that statements like that are where aneurysms come from--these words get inside our heads and then--pop--he may not be so far off....)

Anyhow: once we figure out how we got to where we are, we have to imagine where we might be going. . .planning the future is a big preoccupation of mine. . .finding meaning and purpose also used to be high up there, but my plans never come off quite as anticipated, so I often feel that if it isn't the gods determining my destiny, it surely is government and big business and my social status.

If Pinker and co. are right, our brains seem to be hellbent on making meaning--which many use to argue against the existence of an 'other-life' or spiritual realm beyond our ken. The argument is that since our consciousness is geared toward creating the illusion of meaning, in order to help us survive and strategize, why, then. . .surely our conceptualizations of God and the Divine are part and parcel of this great, selective delusion. . .

Ultimately it is impossible to know what lies beyond our own consciousness. . .and therein lies the conundra. We are getting closer to understanding what is "behind" it, but the beyond remains up for debate. . .and always will. . . .

and if there is beauty in that, and the possibility of peace, there is also considerable alienation and doubt . . . . . and room for many wars to be fought still. Surrendering to the mystery, to 'not knowing', seems the only chance we have for peace. . .

I'm rambling now, just wanted to point out the existence of Logotherapy, and recommend Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning", a book that, oddly, found me at a time when I really needed a jolt of meaning in my own life. . . . coincidence? I tend to doubt there's any such thing, but I do understand that the jury is out. . . .