Mid-morning. The house is ready for the cleaning ladies who ought to arrive within an hour or two. You want to finish the metaphysical summaries today and move on to whatever is next for the books and for yourself, ole man. – Amorella
I don’t know why the “for yourself”. It sounds like the words are completely selfish. I am writing the books for my satisfaction, but also for a few readers. If I had no readers, that is, I would shut down the blog. I would still write. I wrote novels and partial novels for years, since 1982 and have the unpublished works to prove it. A writer writes whether or not sheorhe has readers. I feel better expressing myself. I am forever too awkward to actually talk with people other than old close friends. I run out of things to say mostly because I can’t think of anything to say that would be of interest to anyone but me and a couple of others. So, I smile and listen instead. I can’t believe I still have words in me, but at least I don’t have to listen to my own voice. Okay, point taken. You are right again, Amorella. I do write for myself; my sanity I would imagine.
You write because you think you have something to say, and just like in conversing, you show an awkwardness in communication (even within yourself). – Amorella
Crossed wiring in the brain – that’s what I have always returned to for a reason. An accidental birth and life without purpose except for what I conjure up and follow through with along the way. When one doesn’t have a purpose sheorhe keeps to the basics.
After lunch and much needed rain. While waiting for the rain to stop (before returning to the house) and as Carol fed and changed Brennan under a covered parking garage you read more about Viktor Frankl’s philosophy on ‘meaning’ in two Wikipedia articles.
One of my classmates at Westerville High suggested Frankl’s work as I had mentioned “meaning and purpose” in an email note to her after seeing her at our recent reunion. I do not have his books, particularly the one my old friend suggested as one of his best, Man’s Search for Meaning, but I will look them up in the library when we arrive home.
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Wikipedia: Logotherapy
Basic principles
The notion of Logotherapy was created with the Greek word logos ("meaning"). Frankl’s concept is based on the premise that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life. The following list of tenets represents basic principles of logotherapy:
▪ Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
▪
▪ Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
▪
▪ We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.
▪
The human spirit is referred to in several of the assumptions of logotherapy, but the use of the term spirit is not "spiritual" or "religious". In Frankl's view, the spirit is the will of the human being. The emphasis, therefore, is on the search for meaning, which is not necessarily the search for God or any other supernatural being. Frankl also noted the barriers to humanity's quest for meaning in life. He warns against "...affluence, hedonism, [and] materialism..." in the search for meaning.
Purpose in life and, meaning in life, constructs appeared in Frankl's logotherapy writings with relation to existential vacuum and will to meaning, as well as, others who have theorized about and defined positive psychological functioning. Frankl observed that when person's search for meaning is blocked, it may be psychologically damaging. Positive life purpose and meaning was associated with strong religious beliefs, membership in groups, dedication to a cause, life values, and clear goals. Adult development and maturity theories include the purpose in life concept. Maturity emphasizes a clear comprehension of life's purpose, directedness, and intentionality, which contributes to the feeling that life is meaningful.
According to Frankl, "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering" and that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances"
Philosophical basis of logotherapy
Frankl described the metaclinical implications of logotherapy in his book The Will of Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy. He believed that there is no psychotherapy apart from the theory of man. As an existential psychologist, he inherently disagreed with the “machine model” or “rat model”, as it undermines the human quality of humans. As a neurologist and psychiatrist, Frankl developed a unique view of determinism to coexist with the three basic pillars of logotherapy (the freedom of will). Though Frankl admitted that man can never be free from every condition, such as, biological, sociological, or psychological determinants, based on his experience in the Holocaust, he believed that man is “capable of resisting and braving even the worst conditions”. In doing such, man can detach from situations, himself, choose an attitude about himself, determine his own determinants, thus shaping his own character and becoming responsible for himself.
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Wikipedia: Viktor Frankl
Liberated after three years in concentration camps, Frankl returned to Vienna. During 1945 he wrote his world-famous book titled Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe Erlebt das Konzentrationslager (translated: "...Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp", known in English by the title Man’s Search for Meaning (1959). In this book, he described the life of an ordinary concentration camp inmate from the objective perspective of a psychiatrist.
It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps that he validated his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion served as a strong basis for his Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, which Frankl had described before WWII.
An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Nazi's concentration camps:
We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
Frankl's concentration camp experiences thus shaped both his therapeutic approach and philosophical outlook, as reflected in his seminal publications. He often said that even within the narrow boundaries of the concentration camps he found only two races of men to exist: decent and unprincipled ones. These were to be found in all classes, ethnicities, and groups.
Above Sources Edited from Wikipedia
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You wish to delete some of the above but do not. Even a voice from a secondary source can still be worth hearing. - Amorella
It is time for dinner and you have had a busy day. You were not here but the cleaning lady left a note that the house was probably struck by lightning (again) as the alarm went off and a light bulb was blown in the first floor loo. – Amorella
‘Loo’, there’s a good Brit ‘toilet’ word. The Oxford-American suggests it was from the trade name, Waterloo, for iron cisterns in the early part of the twentieth century.
You first wrote ‘bathroom’ but realized there was no ‘bath’ in the small toilet room; thus ‘loo’ was the next best thing. Post as Paul is pulling in the driveway. - Amorella
Supper at Brennan’s Colony on the corner of Lee and Silsby in Cleveland Heights. You and Carol ordered the super cheese sandwiches, plus two side orders of spinach and onion rings.
I have been going over the last lesson so far, Metaphysics Summary Lesson 8. It is eleven days long and needs divisions, as it is 8470 words in length.
Use the headliners you had each day as an outline. I will help you with this. First, however you need a simple outline up to where you are and then continue outlining the last lesson so far. – Amorella
This will be a little booklet for use as a guide to the metaphysics in the book.
All the books, boy, even the ones already published. – Amorella
How can that be? This will be a book in itself. What will I title it, “Metaphysics in the Merlyn Series”?
I can feel your spiritual excitement. “Wow! How can this be possible to write something so all-encompassing?” That was your immediate inward thought. – Amorella
Here is the Oxford-American dictionary definition:
(Which I will first edit and present for our purposes. – Amorella)
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Metaphysics - the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
Metaphysics has two main strands:
(1) that which holds that what exists lies beyond experience (as argued by Plato),
and
(2) that which holds that objects of experience constitute the only reality (as argued by Kant, the logical positivists, and Hume).
Metaphysics has also concerned itself with a discussion of
(1) whether what exists is made of one substance or many,
and
(2) whether what exists is inevitable or driven by chance.
Edited from the Oxford-American software
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You are already considering questions but let’s save those until we are completed with the concept of heartansoulanmind in the books and blog. You cannot go on in book four without a comprehensive understanding of books four, five and six and their metaphysical contextual connections with books one, two and three. Post. – Amorella
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