Man's search for meaning.

In 1946, Viktor Frankl wrote an iconic book entitled "Man's Search for Meaning." The first part of the book recounts his imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps. The second part details the formation of a new type of psychotherapy--logotherapy--that posited, in the words of Nietzsche (whose quote is the epigraph for this book) that "he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how." IOW, the belief that much of our psychological suffering can be cured if we have purpose and usefulness in our lives.

It sprang from the unfathomable horrors he experienced as a concentration camp prisoner. How could human beings behave so barbarously for no apparent reason except for the concoction of an evil and arbitrary ideology? How could the Nazis wreak such savagery upon innocent people whose only "crime" was to be born a Jew? (Or be disabled, a homosexual, or a Roma?) He took his experience and created a way to craft meaning and purpose from incomprehensible loss and trauma. He was very successful.

I see parallels with the dilemma Viktor Frankl faced, and what we face today. How can the people most citizens put their trust in mandate such incomprehensibly cruel and destructive policies that have rendered millions homeless and without enough food to eat, denied people social interaction that has traumatized and driven many to suicide, banned medications that have been proven to be effective against a virus whose lethality has been grossly exaggerated, threatened job loss and the barring from public places of those who do not submit to an experimental gene therapy (that's still EUA only despite the announcement that a vax had been approved) that has caused thousands of deaths, and hundreds of thousands of injuries? (And they are on the possible cusp of injecting 5-12-year-olds who cannot possibly give informed consent.)

Because these authorities, too, have concocted an evil and arbitrary ideology, and like the Nazis, are blinded to all morality and ethics as they bow down to their false gods. Which is why each of us must find the why for which to live in order to bear the incomprehensible how.