victor frankl Archives - Revolutionary Misfit

How often have you heard this expression…

“I’m not pessimistic…I’m just realistic”…?

I came across this old and grainy video in a Brain Pickings post of Victor Frankl. He appears to be giving a lecture to college students .

What he says in it is quite illuminating to me.

He says, basically, that idealism is realism.

That when we expect more from people, what we get is a more proper expression of who they really are. Tweet it Out!

Conversely, when we’re pessimistic, and expect the negative in the name of being “realistic”, we get a lower version of the true capability of human expression.

Therefore, according to Dr. Frankl, one is being realistic, by being idealistic.

I’d never heard such a thing before, but it makes sense.

And he should know, having survived a Nazi concentration camp in which he made the observation that the ones who had the best chance of survival were, indeed, the optimistic and idealistic ones.

He went on to write a rather famous book about entitled, Man’s Search for Meaning.

The problem is that we don’t edify one another in this idealistic manner, generally. We don’t support one another’s dreams. We don’t give credence to one’s search for meaning.

We instead tend to poopoo on such pursuits as a waste of time in this dog eat dog world.

Why do we do that?

One of my earliest childhood memories is hearing my father screaming at my mother telling her how much of a piece of crap I was. I’d done something bad…not so terribly bad. I’d accidentally knocked out a tooth of a girl during a round of put put. And for that, I’ve carried a memory my entire life of being, well, worthless.

Now, I’m not going to blame that event for all the woes of my life. But it does sort of support the idea Frankl espouses.

That is, if we express a negative view of others with our words and actions, more than likely we’ll get an even more negative outcome.

Whereas, if we expect more than we perhaps believe they can possibly ever really deliver, i.e., an “idealistic” view, then, chances are, we’re going to be quite pleasantly surprised.

This idea could be brought to bear in many areas of society…from parenting to prisons.

I recently spent 3 weeks in LA County Jail. I can tell you there ain’t a whole lot of edification going on inside that place. Inmates are made to feel like pieces of human refuse. In fact, the guards seem to take sadistic pleasure in doing that.

And when they’re finally released, they often find themselves making a rapid return to that same treatment.

Makes no sense, until you consider carefully Frankl’s idea that we get less than we expect from humans.

What if instead, we expected more from inmates? What if we supported their finding some meaning in their lives? What if we helped them do that?

What if we did that in our public schools?

What if the most important subject in school was finding meaning in life?

We don’t do that because we take the pessimistic view that life really doesn’t have any inherent meaning. It’s just life. It’s just survival.

So we try to equip students with survival skills, but no real meaning finding skills.

And we often get far less than they’re truly capable of.

That’s not real.

What’s realistic (and idealistic at the same time) is for humankind to reach it’s REAL potential.

And we have a better chance of realizing that with more idealistic expectations.

So, the next time you hear some bloke expressing pessimistic sentiments in the name of realism…

Tell that person to shut up and get ideal!

If we project idealistic expectations of what people are capable of, we might get more realistic views of who they truly are.

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Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

Victor Frankl

Just re-read Victor Frankl’s amazing book, Man’s Search for Meaning.

Frankl’s revolutionary premise, which inspired a new branch of psychotherapy, which he called logotherapy, was in suggesting that one’s meaning is not found in the asking, but in the answering.

That is, we are not to ask, “oh life, what meaning might thou findeth in thee?”…

But, rather, life asks us…

and we alone have the responsibility to answer with our own unique purpose.

In that sense, one’s meaning is unconditional…that is, it doesn’t depend on any circumstance…it transcends circumstances…

as Frankl’s own dramatic Nazi concentration camp examples demonstrate.

I find myself asking, again, rather than taking the responsibility that Frankl suggests is key.

So, I started rummaging around for past examples of correct thinking on this matter…to help re-convince myself and mend the error of my latest wrong-headed relapse…

This one on the elusivity of happiness stood out…

Where is happiness located?

Our Declaration of Independence speaks of the “pursuit” of happiness, an expression that lends credence to its elusiveness.

Happiness must be pursued because it is indeed an elusive and often ephemeral thing.

A deeply religious person will tell you that happiness is found in God, in your faith and in conforming all your actions to be consistent with what you believe from a religious standpoint. That we stumble onto happiness on the road of religious obedience.

Our secular and highly commercialized society conveys the idea that happiness is found in things, that it resides “out there” in the world and it is your responsibility to go out and grab as much of it as you can.

Much of the literature that we read, great novels and poems that move us emotionally, express that happiness is found in romance. That romantic love is the location where happiness resides.

But I can tell you from my own experience that true and lasting happiness is not located in any of these places, as I have visited each and experienced just as much misery there as anywhere else.

Happiness is an emotion and in that sense it occupies the small amount of space located between the ears.

But if happiness is found in such an obvious and easily accessible location, why does it remain so elusive?

Moreover, why are we told in our founding document that it is a thing to be “pursued” when all along we have the capacity to “conjure it up” with our own focused thought?

We often talk about happiness being fleeting…that just as soon as we have it, it tends to dissipate, dissolve or just disappear.

Why is that?

I submit to you it is because our general ideas about happiness are all wrong.

Happiness is a mysterious quality that tends to become more of a consistent experience in life when it is promoted than when it is pursued.

If you think about it, the happiest among us are those who tend to be more concerned about the happiness of others than of their own, wouldn’t you agree?

Happiness spreaders tend to be happier than happiness pursuers.

The reason is because the quality, or state, of happiness has a lot to do with our feelings about ourselves. If a person is focused solely on himself or herself, it is very easy to become discouraged and disillusioned.

That’s because the more laser-like we direct our focus on ourselves, i.e., the more self-interested we are, the more apparent our imperfections, or those related to our circumstances, become.

We begin to realize that we are not the perfect specimens of humanity that we may have deluded ourselves into believing.

We, or things, are really screwed up.

But as soon as we direct that focus to helping others find happiness, all those imperfections disappear, or at least cease to matter all that much.

Instead we discover that despite them we do have the capacity to make a difference…

to have a positive impact and influence on others.

We have the ability to spread happiness and in so doing, a magical thing happens…

we discover true and lasting happiness ourselves.

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Idealism is Realism

The Elusivity of Happiness

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