I see things as they are, without the distorting lens of those rose-tinted glasses that others seem to wear. When challenged on my pessimism, I usually respond by saying that I am ‘realistic’ as opposed to pessimistic. This is particularly true in personal relationships where constantly assuming the worst can be pretty frustrating for your partners and friends. If you are always expecting the worst you can be pleasantly surprised when reality fails to meet your expectations. When things are going badly, I assume that I am still some distance from rock bottom. When things are going well, I assume that they are about to get worse. I rarely see a silver lining without a cloud. ![]() Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.Īnd since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.I am a pretty pessimistic person.* At least that’s what I am told. So, let us be alert-alert in a twofold sense: ![]() For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt” (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples that are the exceptions to the rule. ![]() If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, “mercy” killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. More specifically, this usefulness is usually defined in terms of functioning for the benefit of society. ![]() Just as life remains potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable, so too does the value of each and every person stay with him or her, and it does so because it is based on the values that he or she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the usefulness that he or she may or may not retain in the present. It is that which warrants the indelible quality of the dignity of man. That unconditional meaning, however, is paralleled by the unconditional value of each and every person. In view of the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, life’s meaning is an unconditional one, at least potentially. And now, Viktor Frankl’s postscript to his masterpiece, Man’s Search for Meaning.
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