Meaning – Parts Per Billion

Alienation and Creativity

Creation for capitalism, consumerism and pleasure maligns its true purpose which actually is to create joy and a sense of belonging, comfort and safety. Alienation is the end effect of such capitalist processes where people have isolated their humans side for the rat races and FOMOs. Pure creativity, empathy, connect with nature and self can help use to preserve that human core and come out of the alienation.

How true forms of creativity can help us to reconnect with our human core

“On The Train Ride Home” by The Paper Kites

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I found –
Maya Angelou

Humans – the creative animals

I think creativity is the most important quality granted to human beings. Nature in itself is the ultimate and the best creation which at the same time is also the creator of many things. Animals, non-human beings too have the gift of creativity to certain extent but human beings have outperformed in using this gift of creativity. We are always creating something, we have tools, we have automated processes to create anything we can understand. This creation of things has led us to becoming the most developed species on the planet. Creation can be in any sense – creation of music/ art/ cultures, families/ society, factories/ industries/ conglomerates, institutions/ organizations, cities/ metropolitan, governments, policies, supply chain, and what not! All these creations are intertwined to prove how advanced the human species is. You must also remember that once a process of creations starts generating fruitful outcomes it gets automated to optimize, to improve the efficiency. Most of the times we forget that some creative processes are not meant to be optimized because value of their outcomes is not materialistic. The concept of efficiency and/or optimization is purely materialistic concept. But as we are progressing ahead as the species, most of our creation processes are getting robotized, where materialistic outcomes are more important than the process of creation itself.

Young generation has crucial role in deciding the future course of our species, especially when we have this great tool of creation – our creativity itself. People of my generation (millennials and Gen-Z to some extent) are the key creators of this time who will decide where our future will lead us. This generation is completely busy in various ventures of creation to justify their own life. But, as I have mentioned before, our creation processes have become so mechanistic, so robotic to gain more, extract more materialistic outcomes that this young generation is getting more and more detached from the real purpose of creation in its true spirit. The consumerism and (crony) capitalism has thrown today’s youth into a forced state of alienation in spite of being living in crowd, densely populated resourceful, glamorous cities. We are lonely in spite of being surrounded by the crowd.

This loss of attachment from the spirit of creation has led to the alienation of the today’s young generation – who many times go through the feelings of isolation, meaninglessness, directionless, confusion – it’s not just a normal existential crisis through which every young generation of their times goes through rather it’s the blurring of the true spirit of living in today’s young generation. Please keep in mind that it is not mistake of this same young generation. The system, society, institutions have evolved in such way that the creative processes are getting designed more for materialistic optimization instead of getting created for the real upliftment of the human civilization. Feels like we are losing touch of the real purpose of our being.

An Australian indie rock band called The Paper Kites released a song called “On the Train Ride Home” which in my opinion tries to touch those feeling of “alienation” which our today’s young generation is going through. Deep down we all know what we really want, we know what our core is but the systems in which we are living today have made our lives more and more mechanical, even though we are in the process of creation that creation no more belongs to us, that detachment, that alienation, that freedom from the vicious capitalistic cycle is what we are yearning for in the end. This is what this song for me is.

The Paper Kites
L–R: David Powys, Sam Bentley, Sam Rasmussen, Christina Lacy, Josh Bentley

I will dissect this song from the point of alienation; for me that is what it is all about.

The lyrics of the song is credited to Samuel Bentley, On the Train Ride Home lyrics copyright: Wonderlick Pty Limited

(It’s a song which needs to be treasured, hidden from others so that no one spoils it and I know I am committing a personal crime by exposing it. But such creations need more exposure and deserve proper appreciation too.)

Waiting down at the station
I don't remember, think it was late then
Standing, always so quiet
We're like elevators filled up with strangers
No sound, no hallelujah's
Still I was praying on the train ride home

The starting of the lyrics creates an imagery of the person waiting for a train home. The complete separation from the surrounding has made this person to forget vivid details, it shows the mundane-ness, the separation from surrounding to just reach a safe, calming place which is home. The feeling of loneliness in spite of being in the crowd shows how there is no emotional connect between people. Elevator filled with strangers shows that people are closer and more connected, more accessible but they are not closer emotionally. This is exactly today’s situation, social networking and internet brought us so close that we can ‘poke’ our friend living in another hemisphere within few seconds and still we will see people craving for true connections more than ever. No hallelujah’s shows the loss of spirit, loss of soul in people who are part of this – physically close but emotionally isolated crowd.

If I can't get the things I want
If I can't get the things I want
Just give me what I need

Here, the person is aware of the difference between wants and needs which shows that his/ her separation from home to go to the crowded place to create a better resourceful life was not the ultimate goal. This is the only way through which this person can live a life. The system based on the cycles of consumption has narrowed down the meaning of living a life to mere survival. One can get as many things by obeying this cycle of consumption but it will not satisfy the hunger – the emotional hunger, that intimate craving of humanity. The distinction and use of wants and needs is a very smart way to show how the person is trapped in the system to survive but deep down they know what actually makes a fulfilled life. That is why person asks for basic fulfilment if not all what they desired.

Our words fill up the pages
Fill up the days with psalms for the ages 
Still those vows that we all speak
We break them like concrete
And just make our words cheap

This part of song shows how words have lost their worth. Words in the sense the sense of commitment, sense of loyalty to keep the promises. The piousness of the daily prayers, the vows are less cared for. This expression shows how insensitive we have become to just gain the materialistic means, to survive.

This is exactly where it struck me that this song is not just about average existential angst every young generation goes through; this song is more about the alienation of a person where system does not value real creativity – which gives our lives meaning. The system now has been maligned with the materialistic efficiency. Consumption has become more important than the end effect it creates. Mention of “wants” and “needs” thus highlight the culture of consumption here.

I want someone to grow with
Songs I can sing to, and I family to cling to

The song tries to conclude with the ultimate pursuit for living a better life. Why are we all doing the things which we do? Why do we go on job? Why do we work all week, live paycheck to paycheck without any greater purpose – in spite of knowing that we hate this work at its core? Why knowingly, intentionally are we craving for more and more materialistic pleasures?

I think it is because of the recent vile cycle of consumption. I have a reason to justify this. Somewhere we know that the process of creation in which we are involved is not doing justice with our pure humanistic core.

As a human being all we crave for is the mutual growth, sense of fulfillment, love and intimacy for each other in this limited time on the earth. We know that ultimate goal of creation should be this humanistic goal, but the moment the creation loses this human touch we suffer from alienation, a sense of directionless, sense of being confused, a sense of trapped inside an infinite maze. This is the exact moment when the person craves for home, family and intimacy.

The train ride home is that craving for being the real human being who values emotions, commitment, love and happiness of the loved ones.

But If I can't get the things I want
If I can't get the things I want
Just give me what I need

The person understands that in this seemingly flashy, attractive, glamorous but mechanistic, mundane, lonely and unemotional life there is some hope that they at least will be able to preserve their human core. The request for the “need” over “wants” is the cry for that preservation of the human core.

Alienation

What urged me to completely (and maybe blindly) associate the lyrics of this song to alienation is how Socialism defines the concept of alienation. Karl Marx identified how a process of creation thereby value creation could isolate its creator from its creation. This isolation of creation and creator once intensified removes all the human, emotional attributes from the process of creation and here the brutal capitalism starts. The creation is now mere a mechanical, boring routine of materialistic revenue creation where humanity has no value.

Karl Marx on alienation

Karl Marx presented very beautifully the purpose of creation in human life. It is what separates human beings from other animals, non-humans. We are always involved in creative process which have a personal purpose, a meaning. That is why our creations and it’s end results are so intense and are way different than how other non-human creative processes. The moment such processes start demonstrating the separation of creator, the process of creation and the end-product of creation, capitalism/ consumerism start peeking their head out thereby slowly eliminating what made such things processes humanistic. This exactly is alienation, there is no sense of home, comfort or belonging.

Marx defined four types of alienation in his discussions:

Alienation of an object –

A factory labor stitching the designer clothing does not bear the capacity to own it and enjoy it. Even though the labor holds the skill and knowledge to create that fancy clothing the system is rigged in such way that the emotional connect between creator and creation is lost forever.

Alienation of process –

The process of creation has become so mechanical, so repetitive to improve the efficiency and to increase the output that humans involved in them have also became mechanical, unemotional. Today’s young generation working in mundane jobs, the jobs they hate only for the paycheck and the job without any personal purpose is the example of that alienation. The separation of creator from objects makes the object accessible to anyone but this accessibility is not equally distributed because the input to output ratio is highly skewed. The value that is created in the creation of the object does not reward the creator in any good way thus creator – the labor remains poor. This also make the creator to lose the faith in the process thereby leading to the alienation of the process.

Alienation of species-being –

The moment this mundane, highly optimized process does not bear any real humanistic purpose, the creator no longer follows the process to reach a better position in life spiritually, intellectually through the process of creation. It’s like the human creator has become a machine giving throughput. A sense of being a better species is lost forever – this is another form of alienation.

Alienation between humans –

Once the creator no longer has a direct connect to its creation, has no faith in the process for better pivot of meaning, has no sense of humanity, the value for another human life is lost. It is not because the creator or this person demeans or belittles others, it is because the creator himself/ herself does not consider their efforts their value of better worth, hence same treatment is given to people in their surroundings.

There is one famous snippet of a speech from Gabor Maté, a Canadian-Hungarian physician who has done work in ADHD, trauma, childhood development.

Gabor talks about broader scope of alienation which somewhat is based on the Marx’s idea of alienation.

Alienated from nature –

We as the human species no longer have that connect with nature which has resulted in its deterioration. You might have seen that there are still some tribes living in the remotest, inaccessible areas round the globe which are completely in tune with the nature and have preserved it. Today’s consumerism has detached our objects of consumption from their consequences on nature thereby destroying it.

We have to somehow re-establish that connect with nature otherwise nature has its way of adjusting things (we are seeing its effects all around the globe). And remember that this re-connection is also linked to we being the human beings. I mean, who doesn’t like lush greenery, pristine rivers and remarkable biodiversity!

One of the first condition of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.
Leo Tolstoy

Alienated from work –

The works we are engaged in are rarely driven by a meaning or a higher purpose. Even if it has some meaning it is immediately inked to some materialistic thing, there is nothing wrong in it as far as survival is concerned but at least this awareness should push us to work for the things with higher humanistic, spiritual purpose, that is our real core as the creative beings. The alienation from work has led to depression, anxiety, emotionless feeling, numbness among every one of us. We are replacing this meaninglessness by other material means which involve how we look, what we possess. Such means of damage control are creating more damage to who we are and what we work for which defines us. You will see, the economy we live in highly focuses on associating meaningful experiences to materialistic products.

Alienated from other people –

The moment we lose the hope and connection between our surrounding we are losing some human part in ourselves which dims down our perception of humanity for others. We trust very few people or almost no one, the relationships rarely have that depth, that intimacy. Social structures based on the depth of relationship are dwindling. The mental illnesses are emerging due to the lack of social emotional support system, growing intolerance, apathy on global level are also effects of that.

The start of the song where it mentions people filled in the elevator, disinterested and having been lost their spirit is the same alienation.

We have to start forgiving people again, create safer environments where we can express ourselves without any prejudice. It is scientifically backed that putting trust in people and treating them with high worth makes them trustworthy and high performer (see Pygmalion effect) In the end, everyone of is craving for someone to rely on and also someone who will make our sacrifices worth of the hardships. Associating positivity of self-worth to being appreciated and being respected for who we are is hardwired in our human circuitry. Our existence gets redefined to higher standards the moment other people (even single person) recognize it. (History has examples where people did impossible for far lesser people who believed in them without expecting anything in return)

The urge to cling to a family, sing a song to someone, grow with someone mentioned in the song is asking to escape from such form of alienation.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night
Margaret Mead

Alienated from ourselves-

We have lost the connect our inner self, our curiosities, our inner child in the pursuit of the consumerist ends. The disconnect with the surrounding and numbness to the processes in which we are involved is furthermore deteriorating our inner human core. We rarely listen to our gut feelings, instincts because presence of lots of data, information around us creates a false sense of understanding of the things around us. This is alienation from ourselves, we don’t even trust ourselves – a simple advertisement or targeted influence is enough to make us buy that next thing that we don’t even want.

The part in the song where it talks about making our words cheap is the alienation from self. There is no concept of morality and inner compass in such alienation.

We know deep down what exactly is happening with us and around us but the system rarely creates conditions to come out of that.

How to de-alienate?

The desire to know your soul will end all other desires
Rumi

The core reasons of alienation lie in the loss of empathy, loss of higher meaning/ purpose and loss of responsibility/ commitment (committing to something to change the course of life requires higher sense of responsibility). We are empaths by default as a human being, so it is imperative to preserve this attribute even if the surroundings force the opposite. I know this is difficult when we are responsible for multiple things and people, but you are also responsible for yourselves. It is worthless if you win, achieve something great while losing yourself in the end.

The creative processes whose outcomes are not attached to any material means are thus the purest paths to avoid such alienation in the times of high consumerism and negative effects of capitalism. High consumption is an addictive form of alienation which can be nullified by pure creation. Consumption will give pleasure but creation will give joy.

The prayer to ride home in the song is the hope that we will again meet ourselves in spite of such extreme disconnect. Pure creativity is the answer to such prayers as far as the process elimination of alienation from our life goes.

What separates human beings from rest of the animals is their creative ventures otherwise we are exactly like all other living things. We are the beings who engage in multiple activities of creation which are driven by conscious intent, a reason. This ability to create something has led us to become the technically advanced species on the planet. If we establish the connect with our inner core through meaningful creation, the victory over all forms of alienation is possible.

True creation is all about connecting to every possibility there is.

Such deep concept of alienation expressed in a wholesome and soulful song by The Paper Kites truly deserves more and more appreciation and recognition. Words failed me to express how it made me feel (that is exactly why I didn’t control my words count, where few verses of this song did the same job. No wonder poetry is highly potent than prose!)

The song-

Deconstruction – reading between the lines

Logic always talks about ones and zeros. But when logical, philosophical arguments end up in a paradox we discover a totally new understanding about reality which is neither one nor zero but a spectrum. Jacques Derrida’s basic urge through deconstruction is the rejection of the duality or presumption, and seeing beyond what is shown using the limitations of language. Deconstruction helps to come out of the duality of any argument by putting relative meaning at the center instead of loyalty towards the signs used to show the meaning.

Jacques Derrida’s philosophy for the better understanding of the reality

Language and its purpose

Questioning is at the core of philosophy. Philosophy’s main pursuit is always to create an understanding about the subject of interest. It provides a way to create a basic and concrete understanding of the subject. It is a way to understand the creation and things that are beyond creation. Philosophy is the process of formalizing any concrete understanding so that a new evolved, more absolute understanding could be built upon that foundation.

The means to create such understandings are languages; it could be any language, of symbols, pictures, sounds, geometries, etc. Language serves as the most important tool to formalize any thought, idea, proof, postulate. So, every component of the language has to mean something to create a bigger meaning; like in speech, every word means something. When I say ‘child’ you will see a human young-ling, when I say ‘apple’ you see a red fruit of that particular shape, and when I am saying apple, you are sure that I am not talking about ‘oranges’, because orange is associated with something different looking ‘fruit’ (some would even think of an iphone when I say apple!). This shows that just like how atoms create molecules thereby the object, in similar sense, words of basic meaning create an expression and thereby some context which shows what we mean when we are saying them together to convey a bigger meaning.

Just like atoms of different elements from the periodic table come together in different permutations and combinations to create variety of compounds and infinite objects rather the whole universe, in the same sense every component of given language carries a value – a meaning which builds a narrative, an expression to create a context, a logical statement; a set of such logical statements together can point to some truth, some fact. If used in smart ways, it can help us to discover the hidden sides of our understanding. That is roughly how science and mathematics work.

But you know what? When we are investigating the boundaries of our understanding, we see that they all end in paradoxes, some self-referential paradoxes. Take for example, Epimenides paradox (the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos) as follows:

Epimenides, a Cretan says, “All Cretans are liars”.

Now what does this convey? Prima facie it feels like all Cretan people are liars, but then you see that person who is saying this is also a Cretan that makes him a liar, so he too is a liar. But if Epimenides himself is liar then what he said is also a lie, meaning that Cretans are not liars rather they are veracious. If Cretan’s are veracious then what Epimenides says is truth meaning that all Cretan’s are liars and this means Epimenides is also a liar. We end up in a loop, a self-referential paradox.

In the end, the sentence does not make sense, logic, the sentence is meaningless.

What happened here?

We used a language medium to create a meaning which helped to create newer understanding but that new understanding led us to bigger confusion, meaninglessness.

Here, I pose a very important question –

if the context of the sentence is meaningless does that mean that the words from which that sentence is made – words which have their own individual identity, their own absolute meaning a context are also absolutely meaningless?

What if we encounter same situation in the philosophical endeavors? as they are the building blocks our overall understanding of the creation and things beyond creation.

This is where the philosophy of deconstruction given by Jacques Derrida comes into light. I will try to explain deconstruction by building on some ideas. (you will see in the end that nothing “absolute” makes any sense or doesn’t even exist. That is also why deconstruction was rejected by many great philosophers but it has a valid point to prove.)

The flow of thought presented hereon is roughly like building an understanding and then challenging that idea because it does not present the best model of how our reality, our consciousness work.

Logocentrism

Western philosophy is based on the foundations of ‘the reason’. The Greek word logos (λόγος) literally means word, discourse, or reason. So, logocentrism considers language as the expression of reality and hence stands as a mediator between conscious and reality.

It is very important to understand that every type of understanding, knowledge building, sharing, communicating activity is associated with language. You need a medium to give a proper structure to what you are thinking and let others comprehend it. Logocentrism focuses on that.

As we have seen already that use of language in certain way could create meaninglessness, self-referential paradox, does that mean language is failing to create better truths? What exactly is happening? If language and logic is paradoxical then the reality which they are explaining must also be paradoxical but that is not the reality we live in (if it would be paradoxical, then reality would not exist, the paradoxical elements would annihilate each other)

This means that there is something lying beyond the territories of language which we are not able to comprehend and translate which could solve this paradox of language.

(Park this first thought in your mind for some time)

Plato’s definition of reality – Platonism and The theory of forms

Plato called out for “essence” of everything that exists. Essence represents that absolute truth which we try to define using ‘forms’, the forms are ideas which are non-physical, timeless, absolute. The forms create reality but they are beyond our grasp because of our physical limitations.

So, building on the theory of forms Platonism believes that in surety that there is something truly pure and absolute at the bottom – at the root of existence. It supports the existence of abstract objects which are believed to exist in the realm which is different from sensible external world and our internal consciousness.

So, when you try to comprehend the Platonism and logocentrism together, you will appreciate that language and the logic it conveys, the meaning, the context it conveys is the foundation of how we understand the creation, the philosophy itself and the products of philosophy.

Language creates an objective pivot to create absolute ideas whose correlation yields into higher truths. Language creates ‘meaning’, ‘context’, ‘logic’ according to the Platonism.

(Park this second thought)

Semiotics – Language as signs

If language is so important to understand the true reality, it becomes very important to create a structure, rules, grammar to use it effectively. Semiotics deals with these ideas.

A sign is an important part of any language, one can say that any language is made up of signs. Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of Semiology established the two components of sign as signified and signifier. As these both words are self-explanatory – signified is the one which is of interest (also known as the ‘plane of content’) and signifier is how we are observing thereby expressing the object of interest (also known as the ‘plane of expression’).

So, in written language when I am saying apple, you know I am talking about the fruit called apple which looks red, tastes tart-sweet, is crispy-crunchy in texture when one takes its bite.

(This is the third thought to be parked)

Aufhebung – the sublation

In the modern western philosophy, which considered the language as the path leading to ultimate truth the idea of sublation created ‘logical’ revolution. The language as a tool to develop logic and this logic then leading to the investigation and discovery of the ultimate truth became really vital. For logic to remain ‘logical’ one needs to define the basic objective sides like right or wrong. A given idea must be right to exist in reality otherwise, it is wrong and is invalid. We build many arguments of right and wrong to lead us to the absolute understanding. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is known to develop the idea of sublation. Aufhebung literally means ‘to suspend’, ‘to abolish’.

For example, darkness is the condition when there is no light. If a place is called ‘lit’ it means that there is no darkness. So, this dualism created through sublation gave the greatest philosophical power to language and thereby logocentrism. When something is not good it is called as bad, when there are enough logical arguments like such ‘binary oppositions’, one can reach to the absolute truth as far the logocentrism goes. The process almost becomes objective, self-sufficient, and mechanical, there are no chances of human error when we are handling philosophical treatise; this is the same foundation through which judicial systems created the structure of law.

(the fourth thought to be parked)

Deconstruction

What came first – chicken or the egg? meaning or language?

Just recall the four ideas which we parked before.

Jacques Derrida is the philosopher who developed the ideas of deconstruction who solved the paradox of the logic in the logocentric philosophy.

It is important to accept that wherever a paradox arises there lies an opportunity of the creation of a new branch in our knowledge system. The deconstruction is that new branch which got created here. Derrida rejected the idea of Platonism. His work in deconstruction is highly inspired from the philosophy of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of fundamental nature of subjective consciousness and experience.

One would get confused to appreciate the matter of subjectivity in a philosophical discourse but phenomenology presents some valid points when we are questioning the reality and developing its understanding. How can subjectivity guarantee absolute truth?

Life was always there even before chicken and egg and also in both of them

Did you get my point?

The moment we separated egg from chicken and posed them as two distinct objects the famous question about their existence in timeline becomes meaningless. In the same sense, other similar questions have exactly same meaningless fate – what is life and death? what is good and bad? what is right and wrong? what is truth and lie?

Derrida pointed out that the moment we create duality in any argument we are losing some important information which could have showed us the ‘real’ reality. Maybe reality is not just two sides of the coin, maybe absoluteness itself is not ‘absolute’. In the attempt to create purely logical arguments, we lost the possibilities to see the real context behind the existence of these arguments.

Derrida strongly promoted the idea that meaning was always there, language is just a way to convey that meaning. Using language to find out new meaning does not lead to newer meaning because this ‘structured’, ‘logical’ language has already submitted itself to the already established two sides of the result – it will either be ‘right’ and if it is not right it will be ‘wrong’.

(Now bring that first parked thought of logocentrism – idea that language is the expression of the reality)

As the logocentrism goes, language is the mediator between consciousness and reality.

Now read the lines below:

This is an example taken from internet. Fact is that every average, normal person can read and understand this. Our brain is always on energy optimization mode. It never reads each and every letter to make a meaning out of the given word, it looks at the bunch of symbols to make sense out of it. This is small example to show that meaning is more important than the symbols, signs used to convey that meaning.

If we were to strictly submit to the rules of English vocabulary and grammar, this presented sentence is senseless to all of us. That is why complete loyalty to language instead of meaning is of no use as Derrida says while explaining deconstruction.

(now bring the remaining thoughts parked in your mind)

Meaning is relative

In deconstruction, Derrida talks about how we understand anything, any idea and how logocentrism, structuralism limited our understanding. The example of scrambled words helps to identify the idea of difference – Derrida called it Différence (as in French pronunciation). Whether I call it difference in english or différence in french, you understand what I am talking about because you get the context (that we are comparing something and this is the word to establish the gap between that comparison)

When I say apple how do you know what I am talking about?

You understand that I am talking about a fruit based on the context of my speech. Otherwise, there are definitely some people who would thing of an apple as an iPhone. So, when I say an apple, you think of a class of fruits, compare other fruits with ‘this’ one, this happens really fast and we are unaware of it after some time. This is true because when I am saying apple you are sure that I am not talking about oranges or any other fruits.

When I am saying dog, you know it is dog because it is different from cats, cows, horses. You are sure of the dog ‘animal’ because it is different in some sense than other animals.

Do you see what is happening here?

Our association of given word to any object whether it may be tangible or intangible is not absolute and self-reliant. It is relative. It is built based on how it differs from another objects. This is really important to understand and appreciate when one is trying to understand deconstruction.

The logocentric and linguistic tool that we are tying to use to understand the absolute truth has its limitations of preconception. The logic has already defined its two states of existence. That is why the language based on such logic will be filled with paradoxes and will never yield newer truths.

Derrida posed validity of his idea of deconstruction by showing the limitations of semiotics.

Take speech as the language of philosophy to find the absolute truth. There is a moment in Christopher Nolan’s movie inception.

We always initiate our thinking by creating certain arbitrary point as a pivot to build logic upon it. Here, the person was told to not think about elephants and in order to not think about elephants he had first defined what elephants are – where he paradoxically first thinks about elephants – to not think about them! Did you see what happened here?

Derrida says that even though the ‘sign’ which goes as the fundamental block of language as semiotics show, it is not self-reliant, self-established. For a sign to signify something specific, it has to differ from the other objects on certain attributes, the meaning of that sign will be relative.

The Swastika used by Nazi is a holy symbol in Hindu culture which signifies well-being. (you definitely are aware of its meaning in western civilizations)

Meaning of signs is always relative, contextual.

It is our complete loyalty to symbols which misleads us, where in reality the symbols are mere media to convey the meaning, context and not the other way around. Meaning created signs, language, language does not create meaning. That is exactly why complete and blind submission to language in the pursuit of truth leads to dead end.

The purpose of language/ signs in deconstruction

(recall the fourth idea of sublation, duality in logic)

Derrida attacked the semiotics by showing its limitations.

Now, we already understand what is signifier and signified. Derrida argued that if there was no difference between signifier and signified there would not be any purpose of existence of the ‘sign’.

To explain this argument in simple words, if you are not told about the varieties in the citrus fruits, you cannot tell which one is Lemon, which one is Mandarin, which one is Lime, Pomelo, Kumquat, Grapefruit, Bergamot and Citron.

If you don’t know the difference, everything would be lemon and orange

The relative difference between objects and ideas gives them their meaning. That is exactly why surrendering to strictly assigned meaning would steal the idea of its real nature. The idea would lose its other aspect due to the loss of information during formalization.

So, deconstruction shows that meaning is relative. When a sign is presented, a language is used to build an idea, it invites all its attributes and its contradictions. Again, Derrida says that blind surrender to formal attribute would never help in revealing the true nature of reality.

That is exactly why deconstruction also challenges sublation. According to deconstruction, there are never two extremes of any idea, attribute, sign. If we give into the idea of good-bad, black white, right-wrong we are losing the crucial information which lies in the spectrum that exists between these two ends. If we are able to create different levels in between these extremes of sublation we will discover new ideas.

When we talk about darkness, we know what brightness is, the relation between these two extremes helps us to understand each other. It is also true that there is some limitation in our vision which makes it impossible to perceive the constituents of the darkness, darkness is not darkness in itself, it is made up of other spectrums of light like infrared, ultraviolet. (This is just a scientific example but same can be implemented in purely philosophical treatise)

Deconstruction

So, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction challenges the logical dualism and the purity, absoluteness of language – a powerful tool and foundation of the philosophy.

Derrida attacked logocentrism by showing the flaws in the structuralism, Derrida showed that language is actually fluid while conveying the meaning instead of being completely static.

Derrida proved his point by showing our preferences for the languages. For discussion he took preference of speech over writing.

Speech involves various modulation while expression which is not possible through writing. Even though writing has certain symbols to signify those periodic gaps they cannot replace the advantages of speech.

Now, when an overly complex idea is to be presented, in order to review the train of thoughts again and again, written language is more effective than speech. Wherever you have to ‘technically’ present a thought, written communication is better, when you want to preserve an idea forever written communication is better than speech.

This is where we realize that there is nothing like the best and the worst. Each language has its own characteristics which can be only understood and appreciated once we see the difference between them. The differences between them show that there is no hierarchy among them. There value proposition is relative.

Now the moment I bring in today’s recorded audio-visual medium which is the most popular language of documentation, writing and speech will seem trivial, but they still hold their value in certain aspects.

The meaning of deconstruction as Derrida says is to break down the language to understand what is also does not mean. Our human instinct and training in language pushes us to stick to the predefined notion of the language whereas we forget that our understanding of that very notion emerged from its comparison to other parts. Derrida through deconstruction urged that while looking at something to understand seeing what lies beyond its appearance will give you the real understanding.

Why seeing beyond what is shown is important? Because the understanding with which we are trying to interpret what is shown was never absolute, it was created only because of the difference between what it is and what it is not.

This is where deconstruction starts to confuse everyone. Derrida called this puzzlement “Aporia”.

Why the idea of deconstruction felt wrong? And is it really wrong?

The tool Derrida used to explain the notion called deconstruction itself becomes the weapon to destroy that same idea.

The very first thing to understand deconstruction is to remove the presumption which logical language, logocentrism gives that these are fully defined, singular objects which are being discussed. The moment object of discussion becomes singular, we lose the possibilities to see its other attributes. To deconstruct is to remove the preconception that there is something really absolute that we are trying to discover.

It’s like searching for star emitting only infrared light by using the camera which only works in the visible spectrum of light, because you assumed that there is only visible light and where the light is not there it is only dark. You won’t even be able to appreciate that there are some stars which emit different type of light. You presumption of duality of dark and light prevented that different knowledge of your reality. Only relative understanding of the light waves can help you appreciate that there are some waves which are different from others, which are on a ‘spectrum’.

Derrida’s ideas were controversial because most of the critical ideas in philosophy, mathematics are built upon clear distinction between objects and their fixated meaning and attribution.

Even for the word deconstruction, people attributed it to rejecting what the language conveys and accepting rather its opposite.

Deconstruction is not just breaking down any idea to expose its flaws. Deconstruction rejects the complete loyalty to the focal point of discussion while inviting the references which created our so called ‘focal point’. Most of the times our trained brain seeks for exact opposite which is where deconstruction gets misinterpreted.

Conclusion

Derrida’s basic urge through deconstruction is the rejection of the duality or presumption, and seeing beyond what is shown through the language. When we are talking about something we interpret what is our ‘subject matter’ because we know the differences between other subjects and ‘this’ subject. When we appreciate such differences the meaning becomes fluid instead of static, the thinking becomes analogue instead of digital ones and zeros. Possibilities open-up instead on being ended in the paradoxes. Whatever we are thinking about and establishing as the singular truth is inherently non-singular because it always needs its other counterparts to justify its position.

Many religious wars were waged because of remaining loyal to the religious languages, script and not understanding what they actually meant, many laws were exploited because the loopholes were discovered based on understanding only what they meant. This keeps on happening.

Deconstruction becomes very important tool to critique the ideas given in any discussion where the final pursuit is meaning and not the formality.

For Derrida’s deconstruction the ‘Aporia’, the puzzlement is not a sign of weakness rather it is the sign of maturity.

Derrida’s deconstruction thus showed that only fancy formalization of philosophy will not help us to understand the reality. We have to get rid of our loyalty to the idea that there is something really singular out there which would define everything in the end. Meaning is not what the language is conveying structurally, it is also what lies beyond that which is not conveyed. The things which are not conveyed are the line of comparison to define the worth of the things being conveyed.

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”
Zhuangzi, Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters

P.S. You will appreciate the ideas of deconstruction more if you watch Denis Villeneuve’s movie Arrival (2016). The movie beautifully shows the gap between language and meaning and also how potent the ideas of deconstruction are!

Appreciation For the Flow of Life

We, the population of billions round the globe are always trying to create our own version perfect life. What is perfect is purely subjective and thereby has infinite interpretations but there is something very fundamental – common which flows through all of us. It can help us to find the real perfect life. Wim Wender’s masterpiece “Perfect Days” shows how we can appreciate the inherent imperfections that life has and how to appreciate the life and the consciousness to experience it in better ways.

Wim Wender’s Masterpiece – Perfect Days

Seeing life through the lens of practical optimism

What Is a Perfect Life?

The answer is very personal and subjective. Someone (rather most of us) wants to retire with huge corpus, someone wants true love, someone wants their dream job in that dream company, someone wants to travel the whole world, someone wants to follow their passion, someone wants to create something, someone wants the ultimate power/ strength, someone just wants happiness, someone wants knowledge of everything, someone just want their neighbor to turn down that noisy speaker, someone wants to spend time with their loved ones, someone just wants to be left alone, someone wants a fixed routine where there is predictability , someone wants surprises every day, someone just want to lay down in the bed for the whole day, someone wants to eat whatever they want (without gaining weight!), someone wants a healthy body, someone wants to remain young forever. Billions of people and their infinite definitions of perfect life!

In short, even though we have our associations of a perfect life with certain objects, things, qualities, people in life, the common thing about them is that we want them in the way we desire.

So, a perfect life for anyone is a life on their own terms, things would happen in the way they want.

Is your life perfect? I am sure that there are very few people (rather gods, saints, sages, divine people) who would agree that they have perfect life.

Wim Wender’s Perfect Days Movie

This Japanese masterpiece led by Kōji Yakusho as Hirayama-san is the perfect depiction of how we try to define our life as a perfect life in our own ways. The personalities, the characters, their choices, and the life they have is designed, intertwined in the narrative in such subtle ways that the whole movie could be discussed as a philosophy of life and the time will fall short. And even after that you would think that it is just a documentation of a normal life of a public toilet cleaner.

Even though the movie is multifaceted like life and can be discussed in greater depths, I will try to touch on the core and simple idea of the perfection in life in the forthcoming discussion.

The discussion will make more sense if you have watched the movie before, this is not a movie synopsis. Even though there will be spoilers ahead, the movie is all about how it made you feel, rather than what you knew about it. (Which is also why movies/ stories are so important, they make us feel that part in us which we never knew we had already)

The discussion will be driven by the major noticeable events in Hirayama-san’s life.

What We See From Surface? – A Life of Complete Failure

The (Mundane) Routine and the (most) Disgusting Job

Hirayama-san works as a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo. There is nothing else to describe anything exciting about this job! He travels from location to location to clean the toilets where you will see the interaction between Hirayama-san and the people around him in such ‘workplaces’ as belittling, demeaning. It’s a job that no one appreciates.

When we understand that Hirayama-san lives alone, you will find this routine more boring, mundane; being a toilet cleaner adds another weirdness to it. It’s a low paying, thankless job where you will never get recognized for the job you do.

There comes a moment when his junior, his subordinate – Takashi resigns from his job without giving any notice and Hirayama-san has to cover all his locations that day. It’s a disgusting low paying job with possible non-rewarding overwork.

Low on Money

Money-wise Hirayama-san looks like a person with below average necessities and below average job to fulfill them. Even though he is not poor, he is not hopelessly broke; it is just a very basic life lived on basic income. But you will see that his life is just on the edge of poverty the day when he pays his junior – Takashi to go on a date with his love interest – Aya-chan. As Hirayama-san pays Takashi all the amount he has and when his car stops in the middle of the road due to low gas, he has to sell his cassette to get some money to reach home. On the same evening he eats the cup noodles as he has no money. He stays in the low lying, cheap house, the only coffee he drinks is the regular vending machine coffee.

Failed Relationships

Hirayama-san is a loner. There is nothing exciting about his life from the relationships point of view. No wife, no children, no one to take care of him if something goes wrong. There is a moment when we realize that his father suffering from dementia is in nursing home and he never pays him a visit. Hirayama-san also doesn’t go well with his sister – Kieko. There is certain disagreement (probably the toilet cleaning job) between him and his sister which is why his niece – Niko is prohibited to meet him.

There comes a moment when Hirayama-san sees his (supposedly) love interest – the owner of the restaurant – Mama hugging some man affectionately. Hirayama-san is not shown openly in love with Mama but the interactions between them show that they have some deep connection, deep affection for each other. Hirayama-san’s heart gets broken when he sees that there is already a man in her life. Heartbroken Hirayama-san buys beer and cigarettes that day to numb that pain.

If you go by the standard definition of a perfect life – Hirayama-san’s life is not perfect. It is not even a good life per say.

What is the Reality? – A Life filled with Richness in Every Experience

The Discipline and The Dedication

You will notice that Hirayama-san is a very diligent and disciplined person who cleans the public toilets in Tokyo. Even though he is a toilet cleaner he has a discipline and routine like an army general. Whatever may happen he always sticks to his routine, even on holidays. His van is equipped with every possible cleaning equipment to make sure that he does his job with perfection. There is same level of dedication for every cleaning job he does. He is never ashamed of the job he is doing.

You will appreciate this more when Takashi asks him that even if the toilet is getting cleaned now it will eventually get dirty. You must note that this is the same discipline why Takashi respects Hirayama-san and considers him dependable (although Takashi himself is reluctant to remain in that job)

But, imagine if no one cleans the toilet regularly, how dirty will it get. Same is about life. Pardon my analogy of toilet with life but even though seemingly full of randomness our life needs a routine diligence, a routine discipline to take care of our overall health – mental, physical and/or materialistic. These seemingly small, insignificant routines decide our habits and these habits eventually decide who we are – especially when the times are difficult. Our responses to random, unplanned, unfavorable events in life are completely dependent on the how we react to routines. Our habits are the baselines to decide the reaction to unfavorable events.

You must appreciate that even when there are many sad moments in Hirayama-san’s life he always sticks to his routine. This ‘boring’ routine ensures the mental peace that even though many things in life are going wrong there are certain things which have gone perfectly in the given day.

You know what they say, “If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.”

That is why routine is very important psychologically, it is like a subconscious support system to tell our brain that at least some things are going well.

The Hobbies

Even when Hirayama-san is continuously busy in his toilet cleaning job, he is always in sync with his surroundings. He has that eye of a professional photographer where he is always trying to capture a perfect moment of light and shadows and reflections around him. His job is not preventing him from pursuing his passion.

What this shows is that one must have access to certain intangible experiences which are present all around us to have a healthy living.

So, an ideal hobby is the activity which is accessible to us in any form to elevate our perspective about the world we live in. If listening to music is your hobby, even when you lose your music player, or you have to lose your cassettes (like when Hirayama-sells his cassette for gas) the music in you cannot be sold, you can still reminisce that tune and hum to it.

Even when you have the cheap, outdated camera you can still appreciate the picturesque beauty of nature and the interplay of things in it with your eyes and creativity.

Hirayama-san’s cassette collection is not an outdated relic, rather it is shown as a valuable classic item. It is wonderful because our hobbies provide this unfair advantage through their intangible nature to outweigh the tangible, materialistic possession. (it’s like as seemingly nonsensical painting made from paints and canvas worth some hundred bucks becomes invaluable because how it touches that intangible aspect of your life.)

Hobbies thus are a powerful tool to bring real wealth in life – this wealth can also create materialistic advantages if used in proper ways. (Some people turn their passions into a career)

Please note that hobbies are not always meant to bring in some materialistic benefit. In Hirayama-san’s case collecting saplings, watering plants is just for his mental satisfaction, it also shows his caring – nurturing side. Some hobbies, most hobbies are meant to carve out your best version. This best version can take care of everything materialistic and non-materialistic.

Hobbies also help you to create a deep meaningful relationship with the people from different walks of life. You will see young Aya-chan’s appreciation for Hirayama-san on his taste in music. His niece truly values her uncle for making her aware about photography, reading and music, the restaurant owner Mama appreciates his intelligence for his reading habit.

Hobbies provide an access to the pleasures – priceless pleasures which are difficult to trade with anything that is materialistic in nature. Habits make you passionate about something, anything. We are human beings because we are passionate.

Routines bring in that predictability, certainty and thereby comfort in difficult times whereas hobbies ensure that we are always open to appreciate the beauty in novelty, randomness when our routines become mundane.

Meaningful Connections – Loneliness vs Solitude

A relationship can be predetermined or could be in our hand. And both are equally important in life.

Even though Hirayama-san does not go well with his sister he knows that their worlds are totally different. It does not become a reason to envy his sister. (His sister is shown having a car with Chauffeur) He also teaches his niece about the closeness of relationships despite having differences very well.

Hirayama-san is depicted as lonely person but there are many relationships which are an integral part of his life. The restaurant owner – Mama who is always appreciating him for his intellectual ways despite knowing that he is a toilet cleaner, his deep connection with his niece who hasn’t met him for many years (he almost finds it difficult to recognize her when they first meet)

You must appreciate that despite being a complete introvert, a lonesome person – Hirayama is very effective in establishing immediate and intimate connections with unknown people. Being an introvert does not mean that the person is shy, it just means that they are highly selective and they mean it when they do or say it. (hence, this is one of the most consistent depiction of introverts in movies.)

You will see Hirayama-san immediately comforting the lost boy in garden (even though the boy’s mom treats him badly indirectly), playing tic-tac-toe with some unknown person, recognizing the homeless person whenever he appears, having good relations with the caretaker of the garden where his has his routine work time lunch, the bookshop lady appreciating him for his taste while selecting the books, he is also able to bring calmness to the cancer diagnosed Tomoyama – the ex-husband of Mama – the restaurant lady.

This shows that you can remain as a single existent person and still you won’t miss life. You will not miss life because you are at peace with who you are and what you want to do with your life, otherwise this same single existent person is engulfed into loneliness.

Hints of Stoicism

There are many instances in the character of Hirayama-san where you will find the principles of stoicism. Stoicism appreciates the order of nature and not resisting that order. One must be flexible to appreciate the ebb and the flow of the life which is the core of stoicism. If it is in the nature of the given thing, it will eventually happen, how you respond to such things is the only thing in your control.

Conclusion

As the life is multifaceted so is the interpretation of the movie perfect days, but I will try to highlight certain important takeaways.

A River will eventually end into the vast sea, but that doesn’t stop it from flowing

When Hirayama-san is talking to Niko about the difference in his and his sister’s world, he gives Niko a life lesson. This simple message has become the popular highlight of the movies all over.

Next time is next time. Now is now.

But this statement comes from the following discussion where Niko is trying to find her place in the world of her uncle and her mother.

The world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected some are not.

And the analogy of river and the sea/ocean is used to justify this scene.

So, even though our lives, our worlds are sometimes connected and sometimes not they are eventually meant to end into the vastness of the overall one existence thereby losing their own identity. But that should also not bring in the fear for the end of our distinct existence. Because even when the destiny of the river is to meet the ocean in the end that does not stop it from flowing.

That is exactly why Hirayama-san tells Niko that you will eventually find the world where you belong and maybe you will have you own isolated world but that should not remain your concern, your concern should be – “are you living in the current moment?” that is where you belong.

If you keep on justifying your life based on how and where it started from and how and where it will end you will miss many precious things, unnoticed and underrated things, moments, people in current reality which would have made your life actually beautiful.

Instead of fearing for the end in the future, let us first appreciate the current moment.

One Suffering is equal to many sufferings and many sufferings combined is one suffering

The discussions that happened between the ex-husband of Mama called Tomoyama and Hirayama-san is the most unnoticed message of the movie I would say. Actually, the movie is filled with so many messages that this is normal.

Tomoyama tells Hirayama that he regrets that the terminal cancer he has will prohibit him to live the life to the fullest. There were so many things Tomoyama wanted to know but won’t be able to know only because of this cancer. He also feels sorry that he left Mama and come to realize her worth only when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s like only when the life is getting snatched away from us is then we start appreciating life of others especially the people we loved.

The doubt Tomoyama presents to Hirayama hence is very symbolic here.

Tomoyama - Shadows...
           Do they get darker when they overlap?

I think the gist of whole narrative of the movie lies in this moment, where they both find out that even when the shadows overlap the darkness remains the same!

Do you see what is happening here? It is like ‘even the darkest clouds have silver lining’ – type message that is portrayed here.

The shadows represent the suffering in our life.

You will feel sad when you have a problem in your life, you will be sad on the same level when you are having multiple sufferings/ problems. I have a proof for this.

You cry on one problem as the biggest problem of your life and then you see another person having practically bigger problem than yours which pushes you to think that yours was nothing given to the suffering that person has right now. It is all about how we define abundance, how we define satisfaction where the life itself is infinitely abundant like the light. Any single shadow of suffering or many shadows of suffering will create same darkness when they overlap but the light of life is far brighter than that.

And where there is light of life there will be shadows of suffering.

So, this works both ways,

When you have one suffering it will affect only this current moment. If you remain in this moment, you can certainly work over it.

And when there are many sufferings combined together, they too can affect only this current moment. If you act on the current moment then only can you pass to the next one. It’s one moment at a time. That’s how you live. There will always be many problems, shadows while we live but to live is the highest privilege, the light of our existence.

This is why the movie ends with the term:

KOMOREBI – the shimmering of light and shadows that is created by the leaves swaying in the wind. It only exists once, at that moment.

Whatever big problem/suffering, whatever big victory/ happiness/ fulfillment/ satisfaction there is, they both exist only in that moment. You just have to pass through them all the time and appreciate the life granted to you.

This too shall pass.

Nobody can steal from you how you experience life

When we say that many sufferings and one suffering actually impact our lives similarly, we are allowing infinite possibilities, infinite perspectives to take action which are far more positive than these tiny, petty problems.

The problems seem big than the infinite possibilities because we try to limit our lives to remain in our defined ways, our own set standards which we create by comparing ours with the lives of others.

We try to fit the aspects of life on some measuring scales defined by this materialistic society where many beautiful dimensions of life are lost forever.

That is why you must try to create the places, moments, people, habits of your own choices which are not soiled, stained by the comparisons with other lives. Try to connect you moments with something intangible using your hobbies, routines, relationships. You will lose things associated with them but you will never lose how they made you feel. You can share that, amplify that with others but nobody can steal it from you, because you were the originator of that experience.

Any type of Life and the consciousness of it being granted to us is a privilege

We are always trying to justify our pain as the bigger pain than others and glorify our own best experiences over the experiences of the others but we keep on forgetting that it is the same life flowing through all of us.

A perfect life is a life of appreciation for the privilege of getting a passage through life and its awareness instead of valuing the materialistic privileges like money, fame, career, relationships, lifestyles, possessions.

The life is a spectrum not a side.

We will always have many reasons to cry about our lives over other people’s seemingly better lives but believe me only one reason is enough to justify the grandeur of the life that is granted to you and through you. The so-called imperfections assigned by us to our own life look really petty in front of the infinite possibilities that the same life has to offer.

That is exactly why, appreciation of what good life has offered and the courage to deal with what bad there is in the life is important. Appreciating the imperfections of life is the perfect life. You live it through moments one by one thereby creating your perfect days.

Cover image from Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

Motivation and Fulfillment – Sailing Through The OCEAN of Life for Self-Actualization

Abraham Maslow’s ideas of the hierarchy of needs lost its essence due to oversimplification into the famous pyramid of needs. Those who lacked happiness in their lives will prefer to be happy by trading all valuable objects they have, whereas those who never possessed basic things for survival will endure endless pain to get them. This creates a paradox of life. What was lost through Maslow’s pyramid came back into limelight due to modern theories in psychology like the Cybernetic Big Five Theory and Sail-Boat Model. They highlight a very important fact that stability and plasticity both are necessary for a person to become whole – a complete human being.

Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ for The Modern World

Psychology ~ Study of mental!?!

A big part of psychology is always associated with the mental disorders – a negative aspect of human psyche. It is a common (mis)conception that students of psychology largely associate themselves with the studies and treatments of such mental people. Maybe it is our human tendency (a defensive tendency) to get immediately attracted to negative aspects immediately which creates such conception about psychology. This is not limited to only psychology; it is applicable to everything we have initial opinions about. But this is not true, we are seeing only a half part of the psychology. The other half and the positive part – is more helpful to live a better life.

Talking about good and bad part of human psyche – where would you put a selfish person? For the sake of classification, a selfish person is the one who prioritizes himself/herself first when it comes to anything. He/ she would think of themselves first, for their own benefit first to make the best out of the circumstances. Isn’t that bad?

How could it be bad if survival is the only option in front of such people? Then the roles reverse immediately. When it comes down to survival of a person every virtue falls down. If a person did something for their own betterment and jeopardized others in the process, will they be called selfish? Now the answer to this question becomes subjective and quite tricky. Were the others evil? If yes, then being selfish for self-benefit by belittling the evil others makes you a hero. If the others were good then being selfish makes you the evil one. So, is selfishness subjective?

We will find the answers to this question soon in upcoming parts.

Have you ever felt that feeling of void after achieving something great you’ve been striving for? Have you felt that emotion of not being repaid for the many good you did for others? Have you felt jealous for that simpleton who while being less competent than you got more recognition? Have you felt bad for people who devoted all their life for the betterment of society got disrespected by the society? Do you think that the modern definition of love is closer to formal transaction of things, physical acts and emotions?

Do our answers to all the questions above in a “Yes” mean that we are bad humans?

This is exactly the part where the positive aspect of psychology plays a crucial role.

Humanistic Psychology – What Makes Someone “A Whole Human”?

The humanistic psychology popularized by the ideas of an American Psychologist Abraham Maslow is also coined as the third force in psychology. (After Freud’s Psychoanalysis and Skinner’s Behaviorism)

“It is as if Sigmund Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and now, we must fill is out with healthy half.”
-Abraham Maslow

So, simply put, Maslow asked opposite question about human psyche. What if things go right? What happens when a human mind is completely healthy? What changes can be seen in a healthy human psyche? What are the characteristics of “a whole human”?

The ideas of humanistic psychology hence bring one spiritual aspect in the understanding of the human psyche. Maslow’s ideas from the Theory of Motivation show us that psychology is also about what good is in humans and how everyone can achieve it.

Self-Actualization – The Classical View on Being the Best Version of You

In 1938 Abraham Maslow spent six weeks with Siksika Blackfoot, the first nation (Indigenous people) in Alberta, Canada. Maslow was trying to understand the social hierarchy and dominance within these people and surprisingly he found something totally different. Siksika people ever fought for dominance or power, the definition of wealth for Siksika was sharing – the more you share the wealthier you are, children were treated same as the adults were – they had chance to put their own opinion in front of others, Siksika people were highly cooperative. Instead of a single dominant person forcing others for power, the Siksika Blackfoot society left no one behind. Even the people who committed wrong work had option to lose that attitude and join back. It was like the Siksika were highly aware of how one should behave for the betterment of everyone without compromising the personal well-being. Maslow realized that this is the highest form of being a human being.

Maslow understood that if certain basic criterion, basic needs are fulfilled for every human being, then they can immediately strive for self-betterment and also for the betterment of society. They will not exploit society for their personal betterment. Such person would be a person who has achieved self-realization where he/ she knows what is good for him/ her and how they can benefit others in the process.

So, Maslow’s Theory of Motivation talks about achieving human potential to it’s fullest. How we can bring about the best of ourselves which will satisfy us and will also benefit others around us thereby uplifting the whole society. This theory of motivation struck hard against the individualistic ideas which were strong in capitalist America.

The (Controversial) Pyramid

We all would have seen the famous pyramid of needs in certain forms somewhere. This pyramid is known to represent Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Although the concept of hierarchy of needs is originated from Abraham Maslow, the pyramid was never drawn by him. A consulting psychologist Charles McDermid came up with this pyramid to oversimplify Maslow’s ideas and this is where the core of Theory of Motivation was lost.

Oversimplification of Maslow’s theory caused the loss of its very fundamental ideas

Theory of Motivation and Self-Actualization

According to this theory, humans need an integrated hierarchy where basic survival needs must be satisfied to realize their full potential – to become a self-actualized being.

Theory of motivation deals with what motivates people to achieve certain goal or expected outcome. The most primary theory here is Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow attributed 5 hierarchies for the any person to achieve their full potential:

Physiological needs – Things required for survival like air, water, food, clothing, and shelter
Safety needs – personal protection from surrounding hostile conditions, a safe society, secure job/ income, health
Belonging needs – people who appreciate your presence in their lives, love, friendship, companionship, sense of connection/ belonging
Esteem needs – respect, loyalty, status, recognition
Self-actualization – the ability to reach the highest potential

Before moving on with the discussion with these hierarchy it is very important that Maslow never intended these to be linear. The mistranslation of the concept of hierarchy into pyramid lost the whole basics of Maslow’s theory of motivation. Maslow always clarified that these are not sequential.

Maslow’s classified the first four needs namely physiological, safety, belonging, and esteem as the existential motivators. These are the necessities for a person to exist in this world and are completely dependent upon external factors.

The last need for self-actualization is completely intrinsic motivator. Unless and until you feel that drive to understand the purpose of you your being, you won’t reach the stage of self-realization. The person who has satisfied all first four but not the self-actualization will feel directionless even after achieving what he/ she desired. That is exactly why doing things to prove your worth to the world mostly ends in existential confusion, such people question the void which is created after achieving everything they wanted.

That is why inner motivation is important for bringing out the best of you. So, the last need namely Self-actualization is attributed as the intrinsic motivator. This intrinsic urge will drive the person to make the sense of his/ her conditions improve further.

In this further improvement the person achieves self-transcendence. This is the purest form of the happiness. Spirituality calls it the enlightenment.

The Characteristics of Self-Actualizers

It is very important to reiterate that Maslow never intended the hierarchy of needs to be linear and always clarified that you can work of these needs simultaneously. It is not like leveling up in a game one by one. The more you satisfy lower needs, the more you are concerned with the higher needs.

Maslow’s studied such people who have achieved self-realization and found some special common traits. Some of them are listed below:

They have high level humor – Low level humor is when you belittle others to create laughter. The self-actualizers will make fun of themselves to create this laughter.
Self-realizers have high sense of reality – Self realizers exhibit a healthy self-esteem. A person with toxic self-esteem will feel jealous for other people’s success. They feel entitled as they were the worthier than others. But the self-actualizers appreciate other people’s success and befriend them to learn the ways to succeed.
Continuous appreciation – Self-realizers are able to find joy in even the routine tasks, mundane activities. Even though they are excited for something new and challenging they equally value the mundane-ness of the events in life. It is because they carry highest sense of gratitude for everything.
Problem centered – Self-actualizers understand that whatever mission they have whatever purpose they have to fulfill must always lie beyond themselves and consider the big picture and long-term vision. They are aware that once the goal is achieved, they will get exposed to that existential confusion, once you have higher and wider sense of goal it is very rare that you will end up in existential angst. These types of people are not building an empire to become billionaire, they are on a mission to contribute to the world. Most importantly this urge to contribute to the society is not to make themselves feel worthy, it is because they understand that it is what the world desperately needs. Thus, self-actualizers select their goals in such ways so that they strengthen the personal skills and contribute to the betterment of the society simultaneously.
Self-realizers enjoy privacy – Solitude resonates more with such people than loneliness.
Self-realizers demonstrate these values: Wholeness, perfection, completion, justice, effortlessness, aliveness, richness, simplicity, beauty, self-sufficiency, goodness, uniqueness, order, playfulness, truth
Self-realizers are accepting towards oneself and others – they know that a perfect human is not the one without flaws. They understand that imperfections, sadness, grief, jealousy are also important aspect of being a human and thus try to uplift others going through same conditions instead of belittling them.
Self-actualizers are more spontaneous and strive to become more natural
Self-actualizers intensely look out for autonomy. It’s like micromanaging will kill their motivation to do the task.
Self-actualizers have more profound relationships. The relationships are not transactional.
Self-actualizers have high sense of Gemeinschaftsgefühl – meaning heightened sense of being connected to humanity.
Self-actualizers always strive to create win-win situations. That is exactly what helps them to find the goals which will benefit them personally and also the society on grand scale.
Self-actualizers have peak experiences. Self-actualizers are not always happy (otherwise one would surely attribute such people mental!) Instead of remaining happy with everything irrespective of is valence – intensity, self-actualizers have these small moments which make them appreciate their purpose on even higher level. They are not always drenched in the rains of happiness instead a small shower of joy elevates their sense of purposeful existence.

After going through such detailed characteristics explained by Maslow, it is tempting to ask one question. Do Self-actualizers settle for what they are given?

Self-actualization is a journey

What majorly got lost in translation due to the creation of this controversial pyramid of hierarchy of needs was Maslow’s attribution to continuous improvement in Self-actualizers.

“It is not a state of being but a process, It’s a direction, not destination. This process won’t always bring the feelings of happiness, contentment, and bliss, and it may even sometimes cause pain and heartache. It’s not for the “faint-hearted”. It requires continually stretching outside your comfort zone. It takes a lot of courage to be the best version of yourself.”

This is the part where the theory of motivation truly becomes humanistic. That is exactly what I love about self-actualization. It is not creating a paradise free from suffering, rather it accepts the presence of negative ideas of humanity at the same level as positive ideas. That is what makes us a complete human. It is sad that in general understanding we miss this part of the theory of motivation.

Maslow’s theory of motivation for the modern world

Scott Barry Kaufman – an American psychologist conducted an experiment to fit Maslow’s theory of motivation which is more relevant in this modern world and also doesn’t mistranslate the original theory during oversimplification. I would say it is not oversimplification of the theory of motivation rather it augments the same theory to remain more relevant in modern times.

Scott Kaufman in his famous paper discusses that the as Abraham Maslow’s ideas go, the lack of satisfaction motivates people to fill that existential i.e., external, and emotional i.e., intrinsic deficiency. This deficiency is primarily about physical existence and then about mental/ emotional existence. It can also be deficient in both aspects (external and internal simultaneously). The people who lack motivation are also very defensive when they feel danger to their basic needs – survival needs.

Scott explains that motivated people are driven more by exploration, creativity and love not for themselves but also for the humankind.

The Cybernetic Big Five Theory

Scott Kaufman bridged the concepts of cybernetic big five theory with the characteristics of self-actualized human beings as explained by Abraham Maslow through an experiment consisting of a psychrometric test. (A psychrometric test is a questionnaire to assess intelligence, abilities, potential and personality.)

The big five theory of cybernetics identifies five factors which helps to define the person’s overall personality. Cybernetics here indicates the study of systems which work with a feedback loop. After all motivation is a type of feedback loop. Any mechanism which changes its response based on the outcome can be studied under cybernetics. So, the cybernetic system we are interested here are human beings. There are five factors which indicate the major habits – traits of the person. The varying contribution from each attribute can help us to understand what motivates, influences the given person and how his/ her life can be improved.

Following are the big five:

Openness to experiences – as the words themselves explains – it’s the way – the trait in which one accepts or molds/ changes to the new experiences. The more open one is to experiences the less they are susceptible to mental disorder
Conscientiousness – it is the ability to care, to take things/ consequences seriously, being diligent. More conscientious a person is more he/ she is reliable; extremes would be attribute to workaholics, perfectionists.
Extraversion/ Extroversion – is related to how a person draws energy to exist. Introverts feel energetic in solitude whereas extroverts seek company to feel energetic. This is inspired from Carl Jung’s ideas.
Agreeableness – it measures how considerate you are. People with low agreeableness are selfish, people with high agreeableness are kinder, sympathetic.
Neuroticism – is related to how one handles negative emotions and stress. More neurotic a person more negatively they behave.

This theory is also commonly known as the OCEAN theory. But, why did we try to understand the cybernetic big five theory? What motivates people is immediately related to how people behave and what are their “traits”; So, understanding the OCEAN aspects of the personality creates a model where you can understand what motivates them.

The Metatraits – Bridging the Classical and Modern Theory of Motivation

Scott Kaufman linked the big five facets of human personality to Maslow’s theory of motivation through the bridge of Metatraits.

The five facets of human psyche – the five traits namely Openness to experiences, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism can be grouped into two major categories. One is Stability and the another is Plasticity.

Stability is defined through the contributions from traits of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.

Plasticity is defined through the contributions from the traits of Openness to experiences and Extraversion.

The personality trait hierarchy
(Source: Cybernetic Big Five Theory, Colin G. DeYoung, 2014, Journal of Research in Personality)

Now, the magic starts happening.

It’s Not A Pyramid, Rather It’s A Sail Boat

Remember that the theory of motivation had two aspects. One is the security, safety and the another one is sense of existence, meaning.

Scott Kaufman through his experiment clarified almost all aspects of Maslow’s theory of motivation. Unlike the popular mistranslated pyramidal structure of hierarchy of needs, Scott smartly utilized the fundamental idea of simultaneity of all needs into his new model. According to Scott Kaufmanns model the hierarchy of need is best represented by the Sail Boat.

Scott Barry Kaufman’s Sail Boat Model of Self Actualization

It is very wonderful to appreciate what this Sail Boat model communicates. Its beauty is that is brings the lost ideas from the classical theory of motivation into limelight and at the same time it removes that false linearity from the hierarchy. The word ‘hierarchy’ reflects that interdependence and complementary nature of the needs. The more you satisfy the lower needs, the more you will try to fulfill the higher need.

Scott presents that we are never leveling up from one need to higher one, rather we are trying to fulfill every type of need to certain extent simultaneously. Once we fill like certain need is fulfilled to a safer extent, we can fulfill other multiple need simultaneously.

We are continuously changing our needs based on the experiences we have while fulfilling other needs. Once you achieve certain goal in your life you may feel the need to upgrade you living standards, social status. If you get one life changing spiritual experience you may feel to downgrade your living standards because you feel that this is materialistic obsession.

Scotts Sail Boat model thus can be represented as follows:

The Boat is the security aspect necessary for the survival of a person. It is both physiological and psychological. Safety, Connection and Self-esteem create the boat; once you fulfill these aspects your life will be secured, your physical existence is guaranteed but this will not fill the spiritual existential void, the urge for purpose and meaning in you. You will have to attach a sail of being open to uncertainty, daring to love, daring to find the purpose which will drive that boat into the “OCEAN” of the life. (Look what I did their, actually this is how Scott explains it, you get it!)

Having a boat with holes – the lack of safety, connections, and self esteem will surely jeopardize your materialistic existence. After that having only a boat – fulfillment of safety, connections and self-esteem will give you proper survival. But only survival will instantly demotivate you to even live. Its like a boat which has taken halt, has no purpose and may collapse when a big wave collapses. Basic fulfillment of survival need does not guaranty long term sustenance, any big challenge in life, any negative event will tear down this boat of existence into pieces. You must appreciate that the boat here indicates the metatrait of stability which is supposed to the rigid trait of the personality, rigid int terms of the fundamental support to the whole being.

In order to handle the challenges, the big collapsing waves one need to explore the OCEAN, the challenges for that the motivation will be drawn from the openness to new experiences, learnability, curiosity. This learnability, urge for growth is attributed to the sails of the boat. The sails will ensure that you will move faster when you sense collapsing waves, sails will ensure that your boat will reach the destinations you want, sails will ensure that you have the goal, the purpose, the meaning to your existence. Thus, the sails represent the metatrait of Plasticity.

You must understand that Stability metatrait is how you fulfill your deficiencies in the fundamental needs for existence whereas Plasticity metatrait is about how you make sense of what existence you have established.

How strongly you will live is defined by stability, it is about how you protect your goals, its is about how you handle your impulses, how you strategize and understand the events to remain stable.

How purposeful, focused you will remain will be defined by plasticity. What new goals you create, how you learn new things to achieve these goals, hoe you strategize you r actions to demonstrate understanding, create meaning is what plasticity is.

Conclusion

Life, our existence is always proven to be filled with paradoxes and contradictions. You will see a smiling beggar lying on the roadside – begging for the food of one time and you will also see a billionaire crying in his Lamborghini because he/she lost their loved ones. Different people will weigh out these events based on what type of life they were exposed to. Those who lacked happiness in their lives will prefer to be happy by trading all valuable objects they have, whereas those who never possessed basic things for survival will endure endless pain to get them. These types of paradoxical lives are the origins to a completely different world view and most importantly what motivates human beings.

What was lost through Maslow’s pyramid of hierarchy of needs came back into limelight due to modern theories in psychology like the Cybernetic Big Five Theory and Sail-Boat Model. They highlight a very important fact that stability and plasticity both are necessary for a person to become whole – a complete human being. Scott Barry Kaufmann also found out in his study that self-actualization was more strongly related to plasticity than the mere absence of stability. It shows how intrinsic motivation weighs heavier than the materialistic stability. It is a big concept to grasp but all of us are always passing through this experience but seldom are aware of that. You will realize that this is the theory which could also join the western and eastern concepts of enlightenment and self-transcendence.

P.S. – Iron Man’s character from MCU in every sense is the best pop-cultural representation of both the classical and modern ideas of the theory of motivation.

The most selfish character in a story got motivated to sacrifice himself for the greater good

References and for further reading:

A Theory of Human Motivation, A. H. Maslow (1943), Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396
Kaufman, Scott Barry. “Self-Actualizing People in the 21st Century: Integration With Contemporary Theory and Research on Personality and Well-Being.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 63 (2018): 51 – 83.
https://scottbarrykau f man.com/
DeYoung, Colin G. “Cybernetic big five theory.” Journal of research in personality 56 (2015): 33-58.
What Does It Mean to Be Self-Actualized in the 21st Century? – Beautiful Minds – by Scott Barry Kaufman in Scientific American
The Untold Science of Self-Actualization by Marco Sander
Featured image – A man looks at the painting Not to be Reproduced by René Magritte by Daniel Reinhardt

A Bet Called Life

Anton Chekhov through his short story called ‘the Bet’ establishes important gifts life grants us. The real freedom is to neither let go of life with an escapism/nihilism nor degrade it through materialistic exploitation. The real freedom is the harmony between time, resources, practical curiosity and most importantly people around us. Life has possibilities to offer, it is up to us to live our lives on the spectrum rather than polarizing them to an ideology.

Anton Chekhov’s famous short story called “the Bet”

The good life is a direction, not a destination
Bruce Lee

Quick question! Would you trade 10 years of life for 10 million? There are two important parts of this question before looking for the right answer and only a fool would think that there truly is one good answer to this question.

The first part of this question is – what is the value of time we live through our lifetime? Say, a millionaire who is bedridden in his last moments of life is still unsatisfied with the plans he had for his life. Would he trade his money with extra time?

The second part is – if we live a life with no resources – money to meet the ends then what good is to live such life?

Now if we look out for subjective answers, the diversity in answers would surprise us (and that part is not surprising, because everyone has their own definition of a good life and a bad life based on the experiences they had)

Anton Chekhov – one of the most important short story writers wrote one interesting story called “The Bet” which makes the readers question the real intent of having a life and living through it till death. What kind of life is a good life – a short but resourceful life or a long but painful life?

Synopsis

The Bet is a story of two people – A Banker and a lawyer who in their young age fix a bet to decide who among them is right. The argument of the bet is based on the morality of a death penalty. Banker thinks that instead of making the convicted suffer for a long time through lifetime imprisonment, he should be sentenced to instant- immediate death. Life – long but with suffering is inhumane punishment. Whereas the lawyer thinks that taking life in any way is inhumane as humans do not have any power to restore the life back. Taking life slowly or instantly – both are inhumane but if these two are the only options, then the best punishment is to let the convict live; even though it will be painful but he still lives.

In order to prove validity of their arguments they decide a bet where the banker agrees to pay the lawyer 2 million if the lawyer undergoes solitary confinement for five years. In the excitement of the argument the lawyer agrees to 15 years of solitary confinement for 2 million. If by any means the lawyer escapes this confinement or tries to connect with any human being, he will lose the bet and banker won’t have to pay anything to him. The lawyer would get wine, smoke, books and a musical instrument but no human contact or newspaper or a letter from someone. There was only a small window to receive anything from outer world.

As the confinement proceeds the bankers becomes more and more nervous. He anticipated that the lawyer won’t even last for 2-3 years but the bet truly goes till its completion and in the meantime the baker loses most of his money where the 2 million he pledged is the only amount he has. He now knows that the lawyer – seemingly successful to survive through the bet will now have 2 million while living out of the confinement and the banker himself would be poor. He tries to kill the lawyer on the last day of his confinement where he discovers that the lawyer has actually renounced what he was about to win from the bet, he even distastes the life itself and seeks the ultimate salvation, freedom from life. The lawyer understands that even after reading these many books, these many stories, learning many languages the death in an instant can wipe out everything that can be created.

Next day, the baker finds out that the lawyer escaped the confinement as he had planned in his letter to purposefully lose the bet. The banker is relieved knowing that he still has hold over the 2 million which was his last capital for survival. To not let discussions catch fire he locks the letter of renouncement of the prize from lawyer in a safe.

Life – granted to everyone has majorly two aspects which are continuously deciding the course everyone’s life. One is time and another is resources.

Anton Chekhov can be called as the king of short stories where his philosophy of writing was focused on to present only what is necessary to convey the intent to drive the story further, nothing seems extra in his stories which make them highly effective short stories. All of Chekhov’s stories are based on common scenarios happening with common people, there is always some realism and non-fictional touch to his stories. And hence they always deliver a profound idea about what a life really is, what it means to be a human. You will rarely find a direct message in his stories, the natural reactions of his characters will show you the mirror. Anton Chekhov truly mastered the skill of mirroring the life through is short but highly effective stories. The Bet is one such masterpiece. Let us dive deeper into this story.

The Abundance

The Bet is a story of how one values their own life and other people’s lives. Chekhov smartly shows how abundance dulls, narrows and blinds the vision and opinions one has. The banker and the lawyer in their young age while arguing over the justification to punish someone by death of life-long imprisonment are indicated to be full of adrenaline and excitement. Even though they have not gone through such experiences they have firm opinions on such experiences. The lawyer and banker both have many years of life still left to spare which leads to such an absurd bet. The banker thinks that he has enough wealth just to spare for such a silly bet. Almost all the times, we are ready to stake things we have in abundance for a silly thing which would prove our beliefs to be either right or wrong. Abundance reduces the perception of value for things, time and even life. Lawyer and banker both were young when the bet was established. Great thing about Chekhov to appreciate is how he points out the behaviour and opinions of youth on almost anything. The youth seem to have strong opinions on everything even when they haven’t gone through those experiences or lived with the people closer to such experiences. The so called “hormones” make the youth think themselves as invincible – there is nothing wrong with that as it is what makes young people turn impossible things into possible but being in a simulation where there is no relevance to the reality makes the youth delusional where they take negative and life-altering decisions carelessly. Consider if this bet was set up between two beggars or two old men, its an impossibility. In both cases they are lacking time and resources/ money.

So, the starting set up for bet shows how in early young years abundance can blindfold the person from reality.

Banker wanted the punishment to be instant as it involves no suffering also shows how greatly he values pleasures and happiness in life. A painful life is equivalent to death for him. At the same time for the lawyer morality is more important, that is why he prefers gift of life in any form rather than the instant death.

“To live anyhow is better than not at all”
The Bet

And funnily or ironically, in the end after 15 years you will see the lawyer longing for the true salvation, you will see this in his letter when the bet is about to end where he establishes that whatever knowledge, experiences, money, resources one could have in their lives – the death will render all of those useless – a more nihilistic opinion.

“You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe”
The Bet

The Solitude – Curse or Boon?

It is really interesting how Chekhov describes the lawyer’s voluntary solitary confinement. It’s like mirroring of how we as human beings go on the quest of understanding the surroundings, the nature and the society around us when we are left alone.

As the lawyer was alone and confined to himself only, in early years of imprisonment the lawyer felt lonely and depressed. This shows how we are mostly created by our surroundings. Most of the time we are what our surroundings are. We only start understanding ourselves when we try to define our existence from inside and not outside. This becomes accelerated and intense when one accepts the solitude in the place of loneliness. The journey to solitude for lawyer started with music and romantic, thriller fiction.

It is impressive of Chekhov’s writing to highlight how our mind tries to fill in the gaps when we are alone. When people are on their own with no outward person to person interaction or person to object interaction, they try to fill that gap of loneliness with entertainment, music, poetry, literature, addiction and what not. People who are unable to fill this gap are the truest lonely people, they always will long for company of other people to fill the void.

In second year, the lawyer became more silent and started writing for long hours instead of reading anything. He is angry with what he accepted just to prove his point but is helpless to change the course of the things. This is the stage where Chekhov sneakily establishes that even though entertainment may fill the void of solitude to some extend for a person, it will not stand the test of the time. The solitude makes the person to have thoughts inside them engulf themselves. Writing is one way to blurt out all that is going inside the mind of the person thereby consoling them that whatever was inside them is now physically outside, on paper. One peculiar observation about writers inserted by Chekhov here! When your thoughts try to eat you, devour you from inside, it is good to channel them outside through your creations, that is what is the basic characteristic of the greatest artists the world has ever seen.

Chekhov then describes the sixth year of the lawyer in confinement as the seeker of the knowledge. Again, the credit goes to the genius of Chekhov where he shows that when a person rises above his own materialistic existence, he seeks the understanding of the nature that he emerged from. When the person accepts his solitude then only his search for real truth begins. It’s like this solitude removed all the noise from his existence. The lawyer in solitude studying philosophy, languages and history shows the curiosity to know oneself better. Study of languages show the curiosity to understand and comprehend that which others had already said but your inability to hear restricted you to access that knowledge. Studying philosophy shows the urge to clear the clutter of thoughts going in the head, philosophy to some extent is the re-organization of what we think, how we think and how we decide our actions accordingly. Studying history indicates the ways to understand the reasons behind the present order of things, everything that exists in present has traceability to history which justifies the way things – traditions are perceived, handled in present.

From sixth to tenth year the lawyer studied the languages and mastered them like a commoner. It is very interesting choice from Chekhov to make his character study languages after studying some heavy fields like philosophy, history. It could have been science and technology but no, all the lawyer was interested in were the languages. Please understand that this is one of the most important creative choices made by Anton Chekhov.

When a person finds the truest, purest reservoir of knowledge, his search for anything greater than that ends there (obviously), the next stage for such enlightened person is to understand and find different interpretations of this pure knowledge.

“The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all”
The Bet

After completing ten years, the lawyer surprisingly moved to theology and gospels – the study of religion. It is surprising for a scholar who mastered six languages and deeply understood philosophy, history of humanity. Chekhov wants to highlight one important aspect of humans and their obsession with certain goals – destinations in life. When the destination people considered the most important thing of their life are reached, at that exact moment they become meaningless. The human mind becomes clueless after this event, whatever efforts they took to reach their feel worthless as if nothing in life was worth that or was worth that value. That is the moment when the person tries to detach themselves from all these theories, logics and philosophies. This is the moment when a person realises that there is totally different order and the entity which has designed this current order in which he exists. This is the person resorting to spirituality. When a person feels hopeless during continuous sufferings, purposeless even after achieving that important goal he desired for his whole life, spirituality becomes the last stop.

“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism: but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Sir Francis Bacon

In the last two years Chekhov portrays the lawyer in solitary confinement as a the one who is drifting in the ocean of existence, he is on the verge of breakdown, he is sinking thus wherever he will find support he will cling to it. It is some sort of neurosis, especially the neurosis of the genius mind.

It is the true genius of Anton Chekhov where he shows his readers the journey to find the meaning of our existence, solitude intensifies the speed of this journey. And in the end, if one forces himself to understand the meaning of life in an absolute way, then he will definitely end up being the fool – the smartest and greatest fool the world has ever seen! Too much analysis, too much knowledge and too much logic can drain humanity from the person in a very tragic way. Even nihilism will look petty in front of such condition.

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
Rabindranath Tagore

The Time Vs The Resources

Please understand that major events in the Bet are flashbacks of the banker. And Chekhov has written these flashbacks as if the banker is regretting his decision of setting this bet. The banker knows that he has already lost the bet. He lost all his wealth during this time of 15 year and in addition to that peace of his mind just to prove some foolish point to some group of people.

You must appreciate how Chekhov manipulates the effect of time and resources in the bet. Through this manipulation, he shows significance of both time and resource/ money in human life and also the interplay between them. You will see that the lawyer had 15 years to build his upcoming life after successfully completing the bet. He was the victorious who would have had wisdom and wealth – he would have become practically invincible. But too much knowledge and time spent with books made him think about the worthlessness of life, as his mind was always fed with the simulations, experiences from the books he never got the hold of real-life experiences. This created a detachment from reality in his life experiences. Thus, it is not surprising that he considers the gift of life (which he was ready to live anyhow in the early time of the bet) as a worthless one as death can wipe it out in no time.

For banker it is totally different story. He was the one who was so sure about the future abundance of the wealth he would have had that the pledged money was nothing for him in the early years. The lack of knowledge and the abundance created illusion for him. When the bet was about to end, he was consumed by the idea of loss of his dearly 2 million. The banker even makes an attempt to kill the lawyer in secret to win the bet. The character of banker seems shallow right from the beginning of the story but we must not forget that he too is a human being. Before the setup of bet, the banker was of the opinion that a good life must be painless life otherwise the life should not be lived. But as the bet proceeds you will find the banker in the continuous pain and fear for the loss of his money. Even with this pain he prefers living though it. He chooses painful life now.

Let us understand one scenario, what if the banker went on to become wealthier and wealthier as the bet went on to completion. He would not have felt a single regret to let the lawyer win the bet. Rather the character of the banker would have definitely honored the lawyer for his willpower and genius that he had become during his solitary confinement. The “supposedly” wealthy banker would have humbly sponsored the lawyer for the rest of his life. But Chekhov did not let that happen with the banker’s character. This shows how we human beings set our ideals, our philosophy of life, our way of making decisions, our way of thinking and our motivations based on how we feel about ourselves. Our ideals or philosophy of life never take a moral guidance system – it rather follows the pathways of how we experience life around us and how we feel about it. A cold-blooded criminal will never feel regret for killing another human being and at the same time a sage will punish himself for losing his temper on a child who broke his meditation practice. Your calls for right or wrong are heavily influenced by how you feel about yourself, others come later.

So, it is really important to understand how we decide right or wrong. Most of the time these decisions are influenced by how we were feeling in that decision making moment.

No wonder Chekhov shows mirror to his readers through his short yet highly effective writing.

The Conclusion

So, we will again come back to the question we asked at the start of this discussion. Can 10 years be traded for the 10 million? If these 10 years were full of pain and suffering, one would surely trade them for the money. If these 10 years were filled with happiness, joy and fulfillment then 10 million would look worthless in front of them. This shows how foolishly we are trying to justify our lives by attaching it to a single defined destination. We are always forgetting the multitudes of spectrum our lives have. We always try to justify our life with a single event – good or bad and forget that this too shall pass. The profoundness of life allows us to define the life in every possible way, that is actually a curse and a boon. That is exactly why living life with the decisions we take is the biggest bet a person can play. Anton Chekhov shows this side of life through a simple bet between a lawyer and a banker.

Life will never be a single conclusion, it will always remain multifaceted, full of possibilities. That is why whatever call we take for the life to become something ahead is going to be new trick every time. When we discuss the quality and quantity of life, we are again ignoring the spectrum of endless possibilities life has.

Salvation either through the pursuit of knowledge or through the pursuit of resources – both are foolish moves to live a fulfilled life. Life will never associate itself to single adjective, single attribute, single absolute ideology, philosophy – otherwise it will become monotonous- mechanical – lifeless. You will see that so called “enlightened” genius lawyer in the end literally becomes mad and despises everything that life can offer – the same lawyer who considered living life in any condition is good than death when the bet was to start.

“To be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness”
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Anton Chekhov was the master of bringing two exactly contrasting ideas through the portrayal of realistic life. That is exactly real life is – full of paradoxes. That is what makes Chekhov’s stories so special.

“What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.”
Anton Chekhov

Chekhov establishes these important aspects life granted us like the abundance of time and resources, the knowledge, the possibilities and pathways to self-discovery. The real freedom is neither to let go of life with an escapism/nihilism nor degrade it through materialistic exploitation. The real freedom is the harmony between time, resources, practical curiosity and most importantly people around us. Life has possibilities to offer, let us live our lives on the spectrum rather than polarizing them to an ideology. It is crime to let life take a side on a shore than to let it flow through the vast ocean of possibilities.

(There is a third part of this story which was not known to public for many years. In this newly revealed ending, the banker remained in guilt even when the lawyer had technically renounced the prize money by losing the bet. One day, the lawyer returned to the banker and asked for the money he won. The banker gave the lawyer the prize money in order to bring his mind at peace.)

Source for reading:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bet, and other stories

The Existence – Why? How? And What?

Logotherapy is not intended only to search for the purpose of life. It justifies and dignifies the human life for its capabilities to remain in the ebb and flow of existence which is the only real thing amongst the infinite yet unrealized possibilities in the universe.

Part 2 – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity

“Was du erlebst, kann dir kein Gott mehr rauben.”

(No god can rob you of what you experience.)
Robert Hamerling

Answers from Logotherapy

In the Part 1 of the post, we tried to touch some ideas like – “three schools of psychology”, Freudian “will to pleasure”, Adlerian “will to power”, Viktor Frankl’s “will to meaning” as in Logotherapy, “existential vacuum”, “Noö-dynamics”, “determinism according to Logotherapy”, “Freedom according to Logotherapy” and “the responsibility that comes with the freedom”

In summary, Viktor Frankl a holocaust survivor, psychiatrist by profession witnessed and experienced the extremes of the human psyche leading to the creation of the concrete foundations of Logotherapy. According to logotherapy, it is the meaning, the purpose – which makes a man to survive through any situations in life, especially the worst ones. When there were not chances to become powerful, when there were no means to gain pleasure even then people chose to go through the hardships/ sufferings – they chose life. Not only to survival but even upon the realization of death, people accepted that death in same way one would have accepted the life. They had something inside them which made sense out of the sufferings, pain, life and even death. This “sense” was the purpose they had identified for themselves to serve. This purpose, this meaning to their own life justified the sufferings they endured which created the hope for their survival and justification to the death for the people who accepted it with dignity.

Noö-genic neurosis is that existential blockage rather vacuum where a person’s mind itself is unsettled because it has no justification, no sense, no meaning behind the activities, decisions to live through the life. Upon realization of the real freedom, a person (and not the conditions, the objects around him) can determine his fate even in worst conditions; the person can still have that “optimal behavior”. This realization of freedom is possible because human psyche seeks for the sense of the things, the meaning, the purpose. This freedom also calls for the sense of responsibility because human life practically has limited span, is perishable which brings that urgency to achieve the best possible outcome, the optimal outcome out of the only life one has. Responsibility brings the best out of the freedom one has; without the sense of responsibility, freedom degenerates into arbitrariness, a diffused state where the outcomes of the event have no significant impact. In simple words, freedom with responsibility gives focused and optimal outcomes whereas freedom without responsibility (still) gives results but are diffused as there is no intent to achieve anything.

Why? Why does the life bear “a meaning”, “a purpose”?

Upon understanding what actually lies under the human psyche and the human life (i.e., the purpose, the meaning), it becomes apparent to ask the same existential question – Why does life seek for meaning only as there can be other uncountable possibilities, uncountable factors which drive the psyche, the life, the existence? Why nothing in the world – the universe but meaning only?

Viktor Frankl has excellently given the theoretical and practical proofs for the importance of meaning in a person’s life. Theoretically proof – if a person is always driven by pleasures and power then why there are examples where people chose sacrifice, where people died for their honor, where people stood fearlessly for their morals, where people rose against something really powerful, where people accepted the hardships even when there was no guarantee for them to end? These are not the exceptional cases in a human behavior. Rather when human beings are stretched to their extremes these behaviors are more common. So, unlike the pleasure and power the awareness, the urge to find the meaning is not just a secondary drive of the human life. The urge to the meaning, the purpose will always be present even in the absence of pleasure and power.

Practically Viktor Frankl presents a study to prove his point here. 89% people from a French public opinion poll and 78% of the people in an American students’ statistical survey indicated that people want “something to live for”, “finding a purpose and meaning to the life”.

I think, it is the omnipotent nature of the infinite possibilities which the real freedom grants to every person. Out of those infinite possibilities very few become realized to reality from where the freedom loses its ideal nature. Then the superposition of realized possibilities create the “real” reality which has been brought from chaos, an inconceivable, an un-understandable situation to a familiar, slightly better predictable state. This better predictable, the one “out of which some sense can be made” state is the fundamental state required for the human life to thrive upon. This urgency for predictability, for sense, for meaning, for purpose is solely because of the limited nature of the realization of life we have.

(The word predictability is not used here to imply that man wishes for everything to happen according to his wishes, rather the predictability is used in the sense for how a person will always know how he will react to the events presented to him even when they are not predictable.)

Does that mean that if a person becomes immortal, will the urge for purpose – the will to meaning ceases to exist? That is where responsibility comes into picture which Viktor Frankl has posed while defining freedom’s role in human life. Only with responsibility can the freedom be brought to the realization to possibilities out of the infinite unrealized possibilities.

In single sentence I think, a single realized possibility is more powerful than the infinite unrealized possibilities. The extraction of this power is only possible if the there is freedom with a responsibility. That is why the life exists; it exists to create the realized possibilities out of the infinite unrealized possibilities (which the universe holds or whatever ultimate there is can generate).

How? How one discovers the purpose

The profoundness of Frankl’s logotherapy is not just about the depth of the ideas and the practicality of the experimental results. He also explained how one gains this meaning, which are as follows:

Ways to discover Meaning of Life-

Creating a work or doing a deed
By experiencing something or encountering someone
By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

1. Creating a work or doing a deed

It is very similar to figuring out what you actually love doing and how you can also benefit others (obviously including you) in the process. (Some call it following your passion, answering your inner calling to create something that you and others value)

2. By experiencing something or encountering someone – Power of love

“The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something – such as goodness, truth and beauty- by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness- by loving him.”
Viktor Frankl

The meaning of Love itself became very “meaningful” to me when I understood what the logotherapy stands for. Before stumbling upon the ideas of Viktor Frankl on “the meaning”- for me love was a selfish idea to gain pleasure, to have that comfort for ourselves. Something which goes like this:

“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept – our own selves – that we love.”
Fernando Pessoa

Love is very selfish idea if we go by this statement. For me here, Pessoa meant that love emerges from inside, hence it is very “egoic” It gives us pleasure to love someone, to do everything to make them happy which ultimately will make us happy, thereby becoming selfish in the end. But then my perspectives changed. (I haven’t studied and understood the premise and the intentions behind the Pessoa’s comment on love here, which can be reserved for discussion somewhere else.)

Upon going through the ideas on Logotherapy, we become aware that there are examples where lovers (not the romantic ones only) have crossed the limits of life for other people or other things, where (again) pleasure and power were not guaranteed.

Love thus becomes a medium to realize the possibilities of the life experiences. If we are so obsessed to find the meaning of our life, then it equally becomes very meaningful to have someone who understands the same urge for meaning in you too. This love is not just a person-to-person possibility, it can also be for things and experiences.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value: rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
C S Lewis

This is the reason you will always see why almost all the events, experiences, art forms, philosophies, cultures, religions and whatnot are immediately linked to the concept of love. It’s on a whim where things not making sense are illogically explained by love, it is innate fact in everyone which logotherapy makes apparent.

3. By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

The third way one can realize the worth of life is by going through sufferings. Sufferings stretch a person to his extremes where there are clear boundaries between the existences of life and death. The urgency to make the existence of some worth becomes eminent here. The meaning discovered in such situations pushes the person to bring even the hopeless situations to his benefit by developing an attitude of optimism. The inability to change the situations makes the person change himself to bring the best out of the situation. It the way in which the person finds the meaning to his suffering.

“Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
Viktor Frankl

It is also important to understand that if suffering gives the person meaning for the life that also does not mean that everyone has to suffer to find the meaning in his own life. Viktor Frankl was very clear in these terms. Hence, he clarified the earlier two ways to find the meaning in life. The ideas communicated by Viktor Frankl are very similar to the ideas in stoicism which also discusses about focusing on things which you can control.

What? What is life according to the logotherapy?

The logotherapy explains that life is all about the tragedies, in Viktor’s words the tragic triad of three things namely pain, Guilt and Death. Why tragedies are considered to represent life is important here. It is very easy for life to exist when these three things (pain, guilt, death) are not there, but the life still remains existent rather becomes more meaningful in the presence of the same hostile aspects. Logotherapy thus discusses that even in such hostile conditions, one can find the meaning, one can have the “optimal behavior” by following ways in the words of Viktor himself as follows:

Pain – Turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment.
Guilt – Deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for better.
Death – deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

1. Pain

Logotherapy made a successful attempt to justify what is the real nature of pleasure and pain. It established a fact that life is not just a set of tragic events of sadness for someone and a series full of happiness for others. Life is about how we as a person create meaning out of our sufferings, even when they are not in control. This is the real victory over those sufferings. Logotherapy actually balanced the concepts of happiness and sadness which both are the inseparable aspects of every life. One of them is always favored (happiness) but the realization of meaning makes the least favorable yet existent (sadness) a reality. This is very effective when people are sad even in their pursuits of happiness. They expect that doing one specific thing will bring them happiness, make them feel accomplished. After doing that thing, achieving that thing they again become clueless and sad that it was not what they expected.

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. A human being is not in the pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.”
Viktor Frankl

When people get overwhelmed upon the realization that happiness is not consistent for their whole life the existential vacuum peaks in and again this meaninglessness becomes dominant. Frankl effectively established that this forced urge to become happy is one of the major reasons for the depression, aggression and addiction in the newer generations.

2. Guilt

Frankl here gives one of his professional experiences with the convicted criminals- the guilty people of the society. According to his ideas from personal experiences which are really powerful- every crime cannot be traced back to single point event, single person, single cause, single behavior. If it is impossible to pinpoint and press conviction on such singular aspects, then how can a person be considered completely guilty for the crime. For such human beings rather every person feeling guilty about something life is about rising above it. Even though Viktor’s examples are based on criminal and convicted human beings, it will be an understatement that they are not applicable to everyone of us. Every one of us considers themselves guilty for at least one thing, one mistake in their life. Finding the purpose, the meaning can help us to rise above this guilt with the feeling of responsibility. What a powerful thought!

Humanness in everyone is one important aspect of logotherapy. Rising above guilt through realization of meaning reflects that. It made the psychology more humanitarian rather that a mechanistic interaction between humans and their drives.

3. Death

We have already discussed that the perishable nature of life creates the urgency to meaning. The sense of death brings in the responsibility to optimally live the only life one has is an important aspect of every human life rather every life.

“The opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives.”
Viktor Frankl

This is where I think we can understand what actually lies under the existence of life. Our existence as a conscious life is destined to create the realities from the infinite possibilities that universe has. We are the means to bring the intangible possibilities into the reality through our lives which makes every life meaningful. Every life is meaningful and hence deserves dignity. It is dignified because by its mere existence it has successfully created the realities out of the unrealized and intangible possibilities. Our existence itself makes us dignified of the life we have even if it may not be useful for others.

“An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being.”
Viktor Frankl

This is also the moment where Viktor has highlighted on creating real possibilities in present rather than dwindling on to past and future. Past is more important because it is where the reality existed, it is where the meaning of actions from the present are justified.

The Super-meaning – why does the meaning exist?

“What is demanded of man in not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.”
Viktor Frankl

It is also very important to understand that Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy is not just about finding the sense to the life, the meaning the purpose of the life. It also makes one important argument about the limitations of human understandings. When we will go on asking “why?” to the answers of every “why?”, we will end up into some abstract idea of meaning which won’t even make sense to our existence. (And again, the same spiral of existential vacuum will start thereby rendering the question useless itself) even though there are some things which are beyond your understandings that also does not mean that your meaning should always justify unknowns, rather it is paradoxical. If the purpose of life is to create the realities from the intangible, unrealized infinite possibilities then it is very important to understand that the meaning need not to be some abstract meaning in order to justify every possibility in the universe. Logotherapy thus becomes very powerful to create a practical, real picture and purpose of human life. Logotherapy thus justifies and dignifies the human life for its capabilities to be there even in the ebb and flow of existence which is the only real thing amongst the infinite yet unrealized possibilities.

Featured Image – Jewish Museum Berlin

For more, read Part 1 of this blog post- Answering the questions on existence of “the existence” – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity – Part 1

Answering the questions on existence of “the existence”

Attempts to solve the mystery behind creation and existence is one the futile pursuits of humanity. Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy tries to establish the what, why and how of humanity’s existence.

Part 1 – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity

The existential question and unsatisfactory answers to it

Almost every one of us have stumbled upon the question about their existence in this big world full of people and things – at least once. “Why am I doing this?”, “What am I doing with my life?” – while listening to that boring lecture/ meeting. “Why does life not make any sense?”, “What should I do now that I have no options left?”, “Why should I help others, when nobody’s helping me?”, “If we are nothing but a speck of dust in this whole universe, then what is the purpose of our creation?”, “Why in first place universe was created and why we exist in this chaotic universe?”, “What is the purpose of creation?”, “Why does bad things always happen with good people only?”, “Why couldn’t I achieve something great even when I am putting more efforts than others?”

Questions like these and their many more extreme versions are one significant part of our life where we are always questioning our existence in this universe. The answers to such questions are also very poetic rather philosophical in a way. “You exist in this world to love”, “You exist in this world to suffer”, “You exist in this universe because someone (especially the God) wants you to experience the beauty of his creation!”, “You exist to establish the Truth and Justice in the society”. Some answers are really practical (but believe me more true) like “You exist because your parents had sex that night”, “You exist because who else would bring drinks from the fridge for me!”, “You exist because someone has to pay the bills”. Some are technical answers like – “You exist because of the consequences of the existence where some ape evolved in order to survive the extremities of changes in nature”, “You are just an accident in this never-ending path of an entropy increasing universe which started from nothing and will end into nothing.”

But, out of all such versions of questions and their answers we never get one satisfactory argument as to understand the real justification behind our existence. One thing is pretty sure about the answers to such existential questions that is –

“There is no absolute version-ed answer to the existential question”.

The human existence is more than just the body. The entity creating the awareness of this physical body, the entity which enables this existence through awareness – “the psyche” is one important part of our existence. Also, understanding who we are can make a successful attempt to signify our existence in the universe. That is where and why psychology provides some answers to existential questions.

What makes any human being “the human being”?

In psychology, there are two very famous schools of thought. The first one was established by Sigmund Freud who posed the important concept of “id, ego and super-ego”. In very simple words, human beings are “driven by pleasure”. As they are a part of evolution, their primitive part of the brain – “id” always seeks for something pleasurable in order to continue, remain and sustain in this evolution. The super-ego is the later cultivated part of the brain where human beings are made more cultural by the conditioning from their parents, guardians. And the ego is the current version of the mind which acts under the influences of id and super-ego.

Alfred Adler later introduced the second school of psychology where he considers man as a social being. Again, in single line what Adlerian psychology says is that, all the actions, decisions, behaviors of a human are driven by the society around him where the biggest motivation is to be strong and powerful in the hierarchy of the society. Adlerian ideas indicate that the humans are “driven by power/superiority”.

Now that we have some rough understanding of the two schools of psychology, when we ask the existential question to Freud or Adler the expected answer will be-

“We exist to experience pleasure; we exist to become superior”.

Then the next question is “So what is the difference between animals and humans?” where these two schools fail to justify their answer.

Logotherapy – the satisfactory answer

Viktor Frankl – a holocaust survivor and an Austrian psychiatrist/neurologist experienced the extreme ends of human sufferings and human behavior in Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz, where he observed and personally experienced the limitations of traditional schools of psychology. His experienced presented in his world-famous book “Man’s Search for Meaning” creates an unimaginable picture of suffering, cruelty, hope, survival which is an epitome of what it means to be a human.

Viktor, in the concentrations camps realized that some people lost that “emotional aspect” of their personality after undergoing so much cruelty and suffering – literally becoming animals; some held on to their core emotions and hoped for survival and survived successfully after all the sufferings – both mental and physical. Some people – even after becoming aware of their death, embraced it with dignity (that too under very inhumane environment).

The important thing to understand is that there was no “drive for pleasure” or “drive for superiority” which made the survivors survive through the concentration camp. (You will find moments in Frankl’s life in concentration camp where only getting a small piece of bread was a luxury. Becoming the leader – “capo” of the prisoner group was the only possible superior position in such camps, one should read the experiences of Frankl to understand what it meant to be a “Capo”. Leader – but finally a prisoner in the end.)

The gist of the whole is that there was no chance for achieving pleasure or power in any ways and still people survived through this camp; many people embraced death without any regret, fear. The main thing that made them endure all these sufferings and mental/ physical hostility was the hope. After surviving through the concentration camp Viktor Frankl made all the efforts to establish the third most important school of psychology called “Logotherapy” which is one important part of Humanitarian Psychology. “Humanitarian” in the sense that human psyche is not just a result of some actions and reactions or influences. It is an independent entity in itself rather than a mere result of interactions, influence of things. Human psyche is not a machine where pressing a key will generate some result/ reaction, it is more than just a machine.

Viktor Frankl coined the word Logotherapy from the Greek word Logos which indicates “meaning”. Logotherapy says that human beings have will for meaning. This meaning drives their course of psyche and ultimately their life.

We will try to touch the fundamental ideas explained by Viktor Frankl in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning” to understand what lies behind the existence of humanity. Interesting thing is that Logotherapy has some plausible explanations to those grand philosophical problems and even those tiny yet peculiar real-life problems.

Nihilism and Noö-dynamics

One of the biggest things that Logotherapy has achieved is to explain the nihilism. When a person doesn’t find a satisfactory answer for the existential questions (the questions in the earlier part of the discussion) he assumes the world around him as a chaotic one, meaningless one. Nihilism exactly means that life is meaningless. Viktor Frankl solved the problem of nihilism by establishing how one becomes nihilistic. It is the “existential frustration” originated from the mind of the person which sometimes is unable to grasp the big picture thereby rendering the life and the existence itself as an entity making zero sense – meaningless. This frustration later on takes the shape of an illness. Remember that no external entity has created this illness; it is the result of the inability of our own mind to solve the “meaning”, the “purpose” of its being. Frankl calls this as Noögenic illness.

Many people yet loyal to their professions, jobs still are not satisfied with what they are doing. Many people doing the bare minimum to survive their weekdays only to crash into their weekends and getting further sad that it passed in a blink of a moment (the famous “Sunday neurosis”) are the people who are frustrated with what they are doing without actually realizing its purpose. They are just passing through the things, events, interactions due to this frustration of not understanding their existence – thus becoming a nihilist. Some will argue that there are other limitations like social, financial, physical which bind the person to this existential frustration; but there are examples where people came out of some really extraordinary situations and made something great out of those limitations too. What they had was the awareness of their existence, they had found the meaning, purpose of their being, their existence.

Frankl takes support of Frederich Nietzsche’s statement here –

“He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’”
Frederich Nietzsche

One interesting and genius note Frankl made here is the nature of one’s life. An ideal life especially ideal mental health is not a state of an equilibrium rather it is state of constant tension between what one has already achieved and what one has to achieve yet. That is how we evolve and that is also what gives sense to existence as it itself is an epitome of evolution.

“If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. ”
Viktor Frankl

Significance of determinism and freedom in human life

Now take one completely opposite case of a human being where he is not limited by anything. He is free to do anything and everything – the omnipotent. Will that make him really happy? Will that solve the existential problem? The answer is obviously “No”. When presented with all the possibilities the first thing that will happen to that person is that he will get completely overwhelmed with the expanse and counts of the possibilities and will end up in doing nothing. Some will try to do everything and still will be confused for what they are actually doing with everything as the possibilities are endless. After some time, there will be two categories. The first one will be bored and overwhelmed because they are confused with what to do with everything and anything presented to them and second one will be bored and confused because they are doing everything and anything presented to them.

Thus, Viktor Frankl through his Logotherapy argued that even though freedom is important aspect of human life – it is not the complete truth. The earlier schools of psychology (Freudian and Adlerian) were based on the “mechanisms” present in our lives. When pleasure will be presented the person will react to achieve that, when strength and survival will be presented the person will kill to achieve that superiority. But that is not what always happen; history has examples where people starved themselves for something which would seem meaningless, worthless for another people. People gave their lives for someone who was not even worthy replacement for their sacrifices. The logotherapy actually highlights that humans always have the power to choose their next step, the next best step even in the worse possible case. This breaks the deterministic model of human psyche. Frankl explains that you can predict the behavior of a group as it has its limitations, but it will be always difficult to predict the behavior of single person based on any psychological analysis of theory. (It’s like quantum mechanical theory of psychology!)

Frankl further argued that even when the freedom to choose the actions is realized it eventually will lead to “existential vacuum” thereby posing freedom as rather negative part of human psyche. Freedom to do everything will eventually end in meaninglessness and existential crisis unless it is not supported by responsibility.

With great power…

To explain why it is almost impossible to predict behavior of single human being/ a single human psyche Frankl gave an example of a doctor called Dr. J who was exactly the definition of “the Satan” – “The Mass murderer of Steinhof” (the large mental hospital in Vienna). Frankl explains that when the Nazis initiated their euthanasia program, Dr. J with all power granted to him made sure that every psychotic individual goes to the gas chamber. When the war ended and when he was caught by Russians Frankl assumed that he might have escaped cunningly from Russians prison. Later on Frankl found out that Dr. J was diagnosed with cancer of urinary bladder and died in the Russian prison. In his last days people remembered him as the best comrade, the best person. The person with highest moral standards even the best friend.”

What made Dr. J to completely change his behavior his ideals?

Only upon the realization of the finiteness – the limitedness of his life, Dr. J understood what he could have actually created out of the power and authority he had. And hence Viktor Frankl highlights the importance of responsibility with freedom in human psyche. Dr. J realized the purpose of his life only when he realized the finiteness of his life that made him the real free person.

In Viktor Frankl’s own words-

“Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the east coast be supplemented by a Statue of responsibility on the West coast ”
Viktor Frankl

We already have the legacy of Stan Lee in similar words:

Logotherapy is not just an answer to the question of “why we as a human beings exist?”, “what actually drives us?”, “What is the essence of freedom in human psyche?”. Logotherapy in itself makes successful attempts to make sense of the all the chaos happening around us. The best and most important aspect of Logotherapy is that it considers human beings as a “self-driven entity” instead of the “external-driven” entity. Man is more than the things around him. Human psyche may get influenced by the “dynamics” around him but that not what completely defines what being human is. A human can always choose the best even in his worst condition.

Viktor Frankl also made successful attempts to answer the question “Why Logos – the meaning/ the purpose is needed?”, “What it means to be a human being?”, “How one can realize his own being?”.

Logotherapy itself is a vast subject of which I am not an expert, but it definitely solved some unsolved existential doubts I had. We will see how and why Logotherapy might actually lead us to more fulfilled life in the next part. We will also see how Logotherapy can provide answers to modern problems in the Part 2 of this blog post.

Reference:

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Read Part 2 of this blog post – The Existence – Why? How? And What? – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity – Part 2

Hometown by French 79 – The song of evolving patterns penetrating through chaos

Patterns and their awareness are one integral part of our daily activities and are deeply rooted in our personality too. Most of the time their influence goes unnoticed. What could be a better example than a good song to highlight the significance of patterns in our life. This is about a special song which may highlight the significance of creating new patterns in every instance of life that we live. This is about a song which embodies the patterns and evolution in them to create meaningful life out of chaos around us.

Music – magic of patterns

Some songs are such a work of art that you don’t want others to discover that treasure for the feelings it creates within you.

They say music is the last magic left in this world. It transcends the boundaries of language, religion, nationality, wealth, cultures and what not. Music, technically speaking is nothing but a harmonious, a systematic pattern of vibrations leading to the formation of difference in the density of the medium like air when sensed by our ear invokes some emotions. In this whole mechanical definition of music there is a part called “emotions” which actually becomes the bridge between the physical world (that can be sensed using our sense) and our mind (which is just there and cannot be sensed by our physical senses). Thus, it is safe to say that music lies as a bridge in a grey area between physical and non-physical (some call it spiritual) world.

The most important thing about “your” favorite music is that “hook” which recalls specific emotions in your mind. Even though the lyrics is also one important aspect of a good music that does not mean that it is everything. Every one of us can list down their favorite music which doesn’t contain any lyrics. In whole and sole, it is this hook or a specific repeating line in a song which connects you to that song and then you have this urge to explore the whole song thereby that becoming your “favorite song”.

I think our association with music has a deep-rooted link with who we are as living things (It is also present in non-living things but as there is no person alive to tell how it feels after death, we will limit our discussion to living beings only!) The only reason we can deeply associate music with living things especially with humans is due to the response generated to this stimulus. We already know that animals, plants and even insects react to music but the changes it can create through human beings are more intense and significant. (It can be loosely explained by the crowd control music in Trance Concerts, Instagram reels music trends)

Today we will discuss a song which can possibly point out what is “that” thing that we actually love about a music or any song. The music and lyrics both possibly point out to the same thing which we will discuss here.

Hometown by French 79

Hometown by French 79 – The lyrics

Every time the lights are turning blue
Then I tried to close my eyes to see my hometown
I don’t wanna change my life
Flying to the back in time
I feel like a child Wearing his golden crown
I don’t need a purified mind
“Hometown” lyrics by Simon Henner (French 79)

Looks like the songwriter- the poet from hereon has a feeling of unhappiness. Whenever he feels sad, he tries to recall the memories from his hometown. Here, hometown in broader sense are his childhood memories, the feeling of nostalgia, the feeling of familiarity. The happiness he gets from these feeling is due to a sense of familiarity.

The poet doesn’t want be become child again but he loves those memories of his childhood. That is what he expresses in the next lines. The poet here, is aware of the reality he lives in. He just wants to make sense of the chaos around him. There is no such pivot from which he can make sense of the things around him right now. That is why the feeling of sadness have kicked in due to the unfamiliar – hostile conditions. The feeling of a child with a golden crown is the feeling of a king who has control over everything. This exactly depicts how things explode in proportions when we transition from our childhood to adulthood, this explosion of everything seeming “simple” in our childhood brings in extra dimensions which are beyond comprehension. This is the reason why adulthood and every new experience thereafter feels more chaotic and unsettling. Maybe this is also the reason why our childhood memories are so precious to us. The childhood is full of innocent and simple feelings which have this sense of predictability, controllability. Important to understand here is that our poet doesn’t want that purified mind, that innocent child from his childhood. This shows his maturity towards the unsettling feelings due to chaos around him. He wants to use the pivot of familiarity of feelings from his childhood to tackle the unsettlement of his mind at this instance. He is searching for a comfort, a familiarity, a pattern in this chaos.

The future and the past are really confusing
But I keep my feet on the ground to keep trying
I don’t wanna change my life
Flying to the back in time
I feel like a child Wearing his golden crown
I don’t need a purified mind
“Hometown” lyrics by Simon Henner (French 79)

Our poet can be attributed to an adult or an old age person who is unsure about how to handle sad feelings, the unknown situations, the discomfort they bring. The past experiences are not that helpful to make sense of the new challenge he is facing. If the past would be that helpful then the situation would have been already made sense to him and could have been solved already which is not the case; hence it is already confusing to him. If it is not solved properly then the poet also has a worry for his future because of the more unpredictability, more things going out of hands. In short, he is stuck between indecision leading to not acting on things. The next most important thing the poet is thinking is attitude to keep on trying while remaining on the ground. Our poet wants to make sense out of the unsettling chaos by some practical understanding of reality. In simple words, the poet is thinking of not getting overwhelmed by the indecision – analysis paralysis and taking control on things by realistically acting on things in his life. This is his wish to evolve through this chaos while keeping the child in him alive with the wisdom of an adult. What a thought! This is his urge to evolve in the new chaos presented to him.

The music and the video

The music is the most influential part of the song “Hometown”. Blessed by the talent and legacy of French Electronic music, the song stands out for the evolving pattern – loop of synth which goes on and on throughout the song. The creator of the song is Simon Henner named here as “French 79” (Simon was born in 1979) creates an addictive hook which goes on evolving as the song progresses. The best and the smart thing about the song is that it really resonates with the idea of breaking out of the comforts of repeating patterns to make sense of the new challenges in life, to create new patterns and evolve ahead.

The video is also very interesting and quite open ended which depicts stories of people from different stages, phases in life who come out of the comforts to evolve. You will see that everyone in this story discovers a pattern in a characteristic way in their lives which inspires them to come out of their current situation, chaos and create new evolved pattern, new sense to the surrounding around them just like the lyrics and the music of the song. You will find every character transitioning from the state of rest, comfort, familiarity to the state of acting on things for actually creating something new and rediscovering themselves to a newer version of themselves.

Simply put, Hometown is the song of our evolution especially our emotional evolution

The patterns and humans

We as human beings and also animals thereby love patterns. Our favorite songs, the Instagram reels songs, the famous dialogues in the movies, the pop culture references, those callbacks in the web series, TV Series, the childhood nostalgia, our close friend circle, our family, our favorite office colleagues, our favorite memories and what not – all these things are prime examples of how much we are obsessed with the patterns in our lives. An important thing to understand about our love to these hooks, these repetitions, these patterns is the feeling of familiarity, feeling of predictability that settles our mind to an environment of known variables. It is also important to understand that a when a pattern gets continuously registered in our brain our brain automates it to save its energy. (that’s how habits are formed) The situation becomes challenging when something out of these patterns emerges; that is where we feel chaotic about our environment, we have no pivot to make sense of the things. That is our moment of evolution, that is where we would also evolve our preexisting patterns.

[Or maybe this is just a song about how the poet loved his childhood in his hometown and the memories which now console him while tackling his adulthood problems]

Image reference:

Featured image – Penrose Tiling from Wikimedia

Zima Blue and Existentialism

The whole premise of the story Zima Blue is greatly aligned with finding the purpose of life, finding the meaning of life which are greatly the interests of the Existentialism. Almost all of the great personalities in the human history are the people who did one thing in a great way as they found their purpose, their meaning of life in that one thing. The purpose they found in that thing made them to endure anything in their life and this might the way in which we can find our meaning, our purpose in this chaos.

Love, Death and Robots is undoubtedly the most valuable gems of Netflix. This is an anthology series which consists of short animated stories and is intended as “animation series for adults”. Netflix proves its purpose of existence by supporting creation of series like Love, Death and Robots because such freedom of expression has yielded some unforgettable creations in the history of storytelling. There are many great and thought-provoking ideas expressed in Love, Death and Robots which will surely tingle your mind, one of them is called as Zima Blue and my #1 favorite. I will be discussing Zima Blue in detail so spoilers ahead.

The story of Zima Blue

Zima Blue is a story of an artist on the quest of creating the ultimate masterpiece of his life. He has invited a reporter – Claire to explain what his next demonstration will be. Through the narration of reporter, we understand that Zima was an ordinary portrait artist who in the search of greater meaning moved from portrait painting to large murals. The murals were filled with some great depictions of the universe and as the murals went on developing, they gradually had a geometric center piece of blue shaded shape which went on getting bigger and bigger with each iteration and finally occupied the whole canvas of the art. This blue was later identified as Zima blue by the people. Further on, the Zima Blue crossed the bounds of canvas to cover the whole sky; after that the Zima Blue creation became so big that it cast its blue shadow on the planet. The whole “planet painted blue” became Zima’s biggest creation which influenced even the people who were not interested in the art.

In order find the real meaning of life and to create such extraordinary masterpieces Claire tells us that Zima went through extreme physical transformations as in “cybernetic transformations”. Zima modified his eyes to see in any known spectrum, he got the polymeric skin to physically experience any worst environment in the universe, now he no longer needed oxygen to breath. Now that people were eager to see Zima’s next creation, he had invited Claire as a medium to the people for explaining what Zima did and the backstory of his ultimate masterpiece.

For the final reveal, Zima Jumps into a swimming pool and gradually disintegrates every part of his body finally revealing to the audience that he was nothing but just a ceramic tile cleaning robot designed by a lady. And audience are in awe. What they were thinking as a human responsible for creation of such thought-provoking arts pieces was actually a self-aware robot evolved from a “ceramic tile-cleaning robot for a swimming pool”.

Origin of Zima as a tile cleaning robot (From Zima Blue – Love, Death and Robots/ Netflix)

Before demonstrating this ultimate masterpiece, Zima explains his life journey to Claire. Zima was actually a robot created for simple tile cleaning job in a swimming pool by a smart robot loving lady. After being unsatisfied by its performance, the lady upgraded this robot with the color vision and a brain to define the cleaning strategies for the swimming pool. After the death of lady and being handed over to different owners and thereby its up-gradation, the robot became self-aware and more human-like so that it became impossible for even him to differentiate between him as a robot or human. His evolution in his awareness finally directed him in the search of the meaning of life thereby leading to the creation of such masterpieces.

The “Zima blue” what people had famously identified as his characteristic shade was the first color the robot had sensed which was simply the name given to that shade of ceramic tile in the swimming pool by its manufacturer. When we are looking at the disintegration of Zima into its most fundamental and primitive robotic form, we hear his final words:

“I will immerse myself. And as I do, I will slowly shut down my higher brain functions… unmaking myself… leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings… to extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. My search for truth is finished at last. I am going home.”

The unfolding of Zima Blue story explained above is important as a personal experience for everyone. Somethings in Zima Blue cannot be experienced in the words. It is what makes the Zima Blue and its writer Alastair Reynolds so great.

Zima Blue points out the most important fact of any conscious being and that is- they are aware of their experiences. Even though nature has some of the physically strongest, fierce creatures already available, we humans are the most powerful beings in the world only because of our consciousness. We humans have relatively the largest footprint of our activities on the world only because we have become aware of what we do and experience and act accordingly.

But what Zima Blue story shows us is that, once the machines or any non-human entity will gain the consciousness, self-awareness, the awareness of the experiences it is having- it will eventually have the urge to search for the reason behind the actions it is doing.

Many people call it as “finding the purpose of life?” as in finding “why we are doing anything?”. We can also categorize similar questions as follows in the same group:

“Is there any greater outcome from what we are doing right now?”

“Why am I doing this?”

“Am I going to get out of this?” or “When will this end?” (Especially, when the outcomes are not in our favor)

The very nature of we as a human being is that, we are never satisfied with what we have and hence are in constant search for what will bring more pleasure into our life. This search for pleasure has no end hence we remain unsatisfied every time.

Existentialism and Absurdism

The above discussion can be perfectly fitted into the idea of Existentialism. What Zima Blue does excellently is to close the gap between humans and robots through building a bridge of consciousness of existence. Anything that is aware of what it can do, feel and experience is going to think rather question about the ultimate purpose, meaning and value of the acts it is performing.

This question to find the meaning initially generates the confusion, anxiety, restlessness leading to conclude that maybe life is meaningless- that it has no meaning also known as “the existential angst”. There is one interesting concept in existentialism called “Absurdism” highlighting that the life is meaningless and it will get the meaning by the way we define what is the meaning of our life. It’s like saying that “we will be fulfilled with our existence only when we find or define what fulfills us and act on it?” (This may sound confusing as the definition of absurdism is made of paradox itself)

Absurdism says that life is “unfair” anyways (bad things may happen with good people too, rather there is no such thing as good happening or bad happening- whatever will happen will happen) and you just have to find what unfairness you are going to handle throughout your life which can be found out by what you really want to achieve in your life. This goal of achieving something will give you the purpose to go through that unfairness in your life.

There is also one interesting concept in Existentialism called “Authenticity” and a concept called “Existence precedes essence” which somewhat go hand in hand. In existentialism, authenticity is the extent to which a person’s actions align with his ideas, values then whatever may be his surroundings – adverse or supportive. The acts performed by the man define him thereby giving him the essence (defining his nature, explaining why he is so). “How he exists gives the meaning to his existence, how he acts defines who he is” can be the loose explanation of “Existence precedes essence”.

Existence precedes essence

There is a moment in Kung Fu Panda 2 where Po is defeated by Lord Shen and is completely in confusion, fear and anxiety that it was Lord Shen who killed Po’s parents thus he is more powerful than anyone in the world. Po as a Panda cannot defeat Lord Shen as Lord Shen has wiped entire population of Pandas ruthlessly in history. He, at this moment is far away from getting the inner peace.

And in contrast it is the same moment when Po finds inner peace as he learns that it is not the labels assigned to him already that define him so that he can’t defeat Lord Shen rather it is the course of actions he is going to take ahead which will define him. The essence of his being is in the actions he is going to take ahead indicating his ways of existence. He defines himself as fulfilled when he is in the present moment.

The moment Panda finds inner peace- Kung Fu Panda 2

“Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn’t make you who you are. It is the rest of your story. Who you chose to be!”
Soothsayer to Kung Fu Panda

This moment in Kung Fu Panda really gives meaning to the statement “Existence precedes essence” which is the core of existentialism.

In the infinitely infinite expanse of the universe where there are so many things to be done one may get overwhelmed and find themselves useless hence, leading to that restlessness of not achieving something. But, once you find that one thing to live for, once you find that one thing to achieve however small, absurd, funny or useless it may seem to others- you can fulfill your purpose in the life. Probably, this thing will not be that much great for others but your actions to achieve that thing will give it greatness it deserves.

Hence, you will finally find the Zima dismantling into the only thing it was at its start- a simple blue ceramic tile cleaning robot in a swimming pool.

“I will immerse myself. And as I do, I will slowly shut down my higher brain functions… unmaking myself… leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings… to extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. My search for truth is finished at last. I am going home.”
Zima in Zima Blue from Love, Death and Robots (Netflix)

Søren Kierkegaard a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author is considered as the first existentialist philosopher, has following beautiful quote which also aligns with why Zima decides to go to its original form while entering into his ultimate moments of his life.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard

There is a good TED talk by Shaolin Kung Fu Master Shi Heng Yi, who despite of having many great academic and personal achievements chose the way of life of a Shaolin Monk. This talk mostly focuses on how to achieve the purpose of your life and highlights the uniqueness of everyone’s purpose in the expanse of universe.

“All of our lifetimes all of our lives are too unique to copy the path from someone else. To bring meaning to your life, to bring value into your life, you need to learn and master yourself and don’t let the hindrances stop you.”
Master Shi Heng Yi

Another good TED talk to explore is “How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes?” by Adam Leipzig. In short it is asking yourself these five questions:

5 Question to Ask Yourself:

Who are you?
What do you love to do?
Who do you do it for?
What do those people want or need?
How do they change as a result?

He says a good thing in his talk:

“If you make other people happy, life teaches us we will be taken care of, too.”

Adam Leipzig

The whole premise of the story Zima Blue is greatly aligned with finding the purpose of life, finding the meaning of life which are greatly the interests of the Existentialism. Existentialism also explains why many great people in the history of the humanity are not associated with greatness as an executioner of bunch of great things; Rather almost all of the great personalities in the human history are the people who did one thing in a great way as they found their purpose, their meaning of life in that one thing. The purpose they found in that thing made them to endure anything in their life and this might the way in which we can find our meaning, our purpose in this chaos.

Zima as and in his ultimate masterpiece – (From Zima Blue – Love, Death and Robots/ Netflix)

Further links and references:

Pictures of Zima Blue from Love Death + Robots episode (season 1, episode 14)
Søren Kierkegaard – Image credit –La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca
Master Shi Heng Yi – 5 hindrances to self-mastery | Shi Heng YI | TEDxVitosha
Adam Leipzig – Image credit – Julia de Boer
How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes | Adam Leipzig | TEDxMalibu
Existentialism- Wikipedia
Love Death + Robots by Netflix

How true forms of creativity can help us to reconnect with our human core

“On The Train Ride Home” by The Paper Kites

Humans – the creative animals

Alienation

Karl Marx on alienation

Alienation of an object –

Alienation of process –

Alienation of species-being –

Alienation between humans –

Alienated from nature –

Alienated from work –

Alienated from other people –

Alienated from ourselves-

How to de-alienate?

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Jacques Derrida’s philosophy for the better understanding of the reality

Language and its purpose

Logocentrism

Plato’s definition of reality – Platonism and The theory of forms

Semiotics – Language as signs

Aufhebung – the sublation

Deconstruction

What came first – chicken or the egg? meaning or language?

Meaning is relative

Deconstruction

Why the idea of deconstruction felt wrong? And is it really wrong?

Conclusion

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Wim Wender’s Masterpiece – Perfect Days

Seeing life through the lens of practical optimism

What Is a Perfect Life?

Wim Wender’s Perfect Days Movie

What We See From Surface? – A Life of Complete Failure

The (Mundane) Routine and the (most) Disgusting Job

Low on Money

Failed Relationships

What is the Reality? – A Life filled with Richness in Every Experience

The Discipline and The Dedication

The Hobbies

Meaningful Connections – Loneliness vs Solitude

Hints of Stoicism

Conclusion

A River will eventually end into the vast sea, but that doesn’t stop it from flowing

One Suffering is equal to many sufferings and many sufferings combined is one suffering

This too shall pass.

Nobody can steal from you how you experience life

Any type of Life and the consciousness of it being granted to us is a privilege

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Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ for The Modern World

Psychology ~ Study of mental!?!

Humanistic Psychology – What Makes Someone “A Whole Human”?

Self-Actualization – The Classical View on Being the Best Version of You

The (Controversial) Pyramid

Theory of Motivation and Self-Actualization

The Characteristics of Self-Actualizers

Self-actualization is a journey

Maslow’s theory of motivation for the modern world

The Cybernetic Big Five Theory

The Metatraits – Bridging the Classical and Modern Theory of Motivation

It’s Not A Pyramid, Rather It’s A Sail Boat

Conclusion

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Anton Chekhov’s famous short story called “the Bet”

Synopsis

The Abundance

The Solitude – Curse or Boon?

The Time Vs The Resources

The Conclusion

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Part 2 – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity

Answers from Logotherapy

Why? Why does the life bear “a meaning”, “a purpose”?

How? How one discovers the purpose

1. Creating a work or doing a deed

2. By experiencing something or encountering someone – Power of love

3. By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

What? What is life according to the logotherapy?

1. Pain

2. Guilt

3. Death