July 27, 2013

Victor Frankl's "In Search of Meaning"


Few books have meant so much to me as Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
Of course, I have quoted and thought about Viktor Frankl and his life many times.  His life in concentration camps, his reflections on what that had meant to him.  His so well-expressed belief that it is not one’s circumstances but one’s reaction to them which matters most.  His book, which has gone through countless printings, and sold over 123 million copies, is one that I had never read before.  It is short and utterly profound.  It is founded on the belief that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or a quest for power, but it is a quest for meaning. And Frankl finds that quest for meaning deriving from three sources:  an activity or act to which one commits himself; an experience, particularly an experience of love, but also the experiencing of nature; and the meaning that flows from the dignity with which one approaches suffering.
Frankl’s most enduring insight is that forces beyond our control can take away everything we possess except one thing, our freedom to choose how we will respond to a situation.  We cannot control what happens to us in life, but we can always control what we feel and do about it.  We are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.  There are so many galvanizing perspectives here:
The advice that one should not aim for success, but rather realize that success like happiness must ensue and always does ensue as the unintended side effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the bi-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
I was captured by Frankl’s revealing of a thought which transfixed him in the concentration camp – that for the first time in his life he saw the truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.  Surely “the salvation of man is through love and in love.”  At these moments he thought of his wife.  He didn’t even know if she was still alive, but he knew that “love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.  It finds its deepest meanings in a spiritual being, his inner self.”  He said there was no need for him to know (if she was alive).  “Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved.  Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying.”  Isn’t this how we can recall and do recall those whom we have loved who have passed away in death?
Frankl reflects on the choice that the concentration inmates faced.  And he does not suggest that many, let alone all, faced it successfully.  The choice revolved around whether the individual would struggle against the situation to save his self-respect, being an individual with a mind with inner freedom and personal value.  He had the choice of thinking of himself as only part of an enormous mass of people, his existence descended to the level of animal life.  He did not fault those who succumbed to this.  But he celebrated those who maintained their individual dignity, who recognized that finding meaning at that moment involved determining what they could do to make the most of every moment, to capture the view of a living tree or a sunrise, to do something for a fellow inmate.
Others, “instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of inner strength, preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past.  Life for such people became meaningless … it is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future and this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”
Frankl returns to the thought expressed above many times.  He turns to another thought later in the book which I think has equal merit and, in fact, seems to co-exist with his admonishment of looking to the future.  Here he points out that “instead of possibilities in the future, we can view realities of the past – the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized – and nothing, nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.”  He says eloquently that “people tend to see only the stubble in fields of transitory-ness, but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives; the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”
This is a wonderful thought which I and all of us should take heart from.  We must remember our victories, our blessings, and draw strength from them even as we at the same time identify our purpose and the meaning of our lives as we go forward. 
There’s another aspect of this book which bears deep thought.  And that is the emphasis Frankl brings to the value of not only being what would be described as “useful,” but being valuable in the “sense of dignity” that one displays in living one’s life.  This certainly applies to how one handles setbacks and suffering.  It is important to note that Frankl insists that he’s talking about bearing with suffering which cannot be avoided.  If suffering can be avoided, the first command is to avoid it, but there is other suffering, such as an incurable illness, which cannot be avoided, and it is the dignity and courage with which one handles this, the amount that one still takes from every day, that not only represents living life as well as one can, but represents a model for others to emulate.
Frankl has perspective on “freedom” with which I agree entirely.  He regards freedom as only part of the story.  Freedom is a negative aspect of the whole phenomena within which responsible-ness is the positive aspect.  “In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrary-ness unless it is lived in terms of responsible-ness.”
Frankl ended his book by noting that rather than talk about “saints,” why not just talk about “decent people.”  “It is true that they form a minority.  More than that, they will always remain a minority.”  Our challenge is to join the minority.  “For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”  Words to sign on to.
[Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life.  He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written.  One student surprised Frankl by saying “the meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”    “That was it, exactly,” Frankl said.  “Those are the very words I had written.”]
Again, this is a book of less than 170 pages.  It contains enormous wisdom.  I hope that I can internalize the best of it and live it.

Sobering Realities Showcasing The Complexity and Imperfection of Man, While Calling On Us to Live Our Better Natures

April 9, 2013


Subject:  Sobering Articles Revealing the Frailty of Man, the Challenge of Making Decisions
                                    To do What’s Right, and the Case for Humility
 
Seldom, in a single day, have I read so many articles that show the perplexity and perversity of life: 
 
·         From the New York Times Page One:  “The Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood..the CIA air war in Pakistan began with quid pro quo killing of rebel Nek Muhammad.”
·         From the New York Times Page One:  “Tax Lobby Builds Ties to Chairman of Finance Panel..former aides are hired..pushing interests of business’s changes to the Code.”
·         From the New York Times:  Page One:  “Grave robbers and more steal serious history from Syria.”
·         From the Boston Globe:  Some believe, “It may be in the interest of the United States to see the savage civil war in Syria continue.”
·         From the New York Times Book Review:  “Fear Itself:  The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time.”  The book makes the case, among others, that in order to pass its programs, the New Dealers “sell their souls to the segregated South.”
·         From the New York Times Book Review:  “FDR and the Jews,” it posits that “to fight World War II, Roosevelt needed support from legislators who wanted to keep out Europe’s Jews” from immigrating to the United States.
 
I read all these articles in juxtaposition with the glorious day and evening I spent at Yale, celebrating the tenure of Rick Levin as President of Yale and the values which he and Yale espouse in the pursuit of truth, human rights, etc.  And yet, as these articles (and life in general) showcase, that pursuit is not an easy one to chart, and it is not always or perhaps even usually pure.  But yet, this sobering reality cannot stop us from pursuing what is right and just and fair as best we can see the light to do that as well as we possibly can.
 
These articles are a call for us to do what we can in our own limited time and in our own limited space, in the name of integrity and doing what we can to make the world around us a better place, starting with those closest to us.
 
 
 
                                                                   

Maintaining the Anchor of Your Own Conscience


Following the Voice of Your Conscience and The Importance of Courage
(This was a personal reflection which I wrote in 1994 in preparing a talk for my P&G associates)

There will be several turning points in all our lives – and in fact we may have to reach this most important turning point many times.  It is the point at which we make the decision:  “I will live by my conscience from this time forward to the best of my ability.  I will not allow any voice, social mirror, scripting, even my own rationalizing to speak more clearly to me than the voice of conscience and, whatever the consequence, I will follow it.”
As Emerson said:  “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
Of all the principles that guide us, the two most essential to peace of mind are contribution – making a valuable difference – and conscience – being trustworthy – to oneself and to others.
We know that our Company will only be as strong as the intelligence, judgment and character of our employees.
Our people … our values … our principles … they are the one competitive advantage that cannot be duplicated.  Technology can be copied, capital can be bought, and strategies can be gleaned from what we do and from what others write.  But values … principles … these cannot be copied and picked up.  They flow from the heritage and character of the people who have been with and are with the Company today … the way we work together and the expectations we have of one another.
It is most difficult and often most important for you to hold your ground when you are most alone.  Only conviction, strength of character and courage will let you do this.  But there will be times in your life when it will be all important.  Times when we must hold to our own convictions, not being swayed by others, even those of great repute.
It is useful to remind ourselves how often people of high reputation can get things wrong.  Opinions about Stalin written in the years 1929-34, when he was in the process of liquidating ten million Russians as part of the collectivization of agriculture and farms, bear out the point.  H.G. Wells said he had “never met a man more candid, fair and honest…no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him.”  Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, described him as leading “his people down new and unfamiliar avenues of democracy.”
The American Ambassador, Josephine Davies, reported him as having “insisted on the liberalization of the constitution.  His brown eyes, exceedingly wise and gentle; a child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.”  Emile Ludwig, the famous popular biographer, found him to be a man “to whose care I would readily confide the education of my children.”
No matter who says what, no matter how small the group that supports your point of view, never fail to follow the voice of your conscience.
JEP Journal – 1994 – Principles of Life_022012

America's Growing Inequality Crisis

March 23, 2013

I recently read a sobering and mid-opening book, "The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It", by Timothy Noah

I will begin by citing some key facts--and then the author's and my own conclusions.


1.     On primary and secondary education.  To note that as late as the 1930s, America was virtually alone in providing universally free and accessible secondary schools (page 88).  By the end of the century, Europe had caught up with or exceeded average educational attainment in the United States.

2.     In 1970 the high school graduation rate stopped climbing for the first time since 1890.  Since 1980 it has leveled off at about 75%.

3.     While the college attendance rate in the United States has continued to rise, the college completion rate has slowed sufficiently to put our 25-34-year-olds behind many other countries including Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, Belgium and Ireland.  We are now in the middle of the pack.
  •  Among other things, this highlights the need for us to be bringing children into technical colleges for specific degrees matched with developing job markets.


5.     The book tells a crystal-clear picture of how we have constantly resisted immigration.

For example, the immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans, who accounted for more than 75% of the 8 million European immigrants who entered the United States during the first decade in the 20th century, drew this diatribe from President-to-be Woodrow Wilson in his “History of the American People” in 1902, the year he became President at Princeton University:

“Throughout the (19th) century men of the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe had made up the main strain of foreign blood.  But now there came multitudes of men of the lowest classes from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy or any initiative of quick intelligence; they came in numbers which increased from year to year, as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population.”

This vicious cultural stereotyping bore the imprimatur of the academic elite.  To try to prevent immigrants from voting, literacy tests were put in place in 1917 and then quota laws in 1921 and 1924.

*****
The book develops in a compelling way the fact that the “richest of the rich” have moved back to a position they had in the late 1920s, with about 24% of all income going to the top 1% of the population.  It had drifted down to be as low as about 13% during World War II.

The author reviews many contributors to this inequality.  They include the demise of labor unions, a greater premium being afforded to higher education, the growth of single parent homes (40% of homes where children are growing up with a single parent are in poverty), the outsourcing of jobs in a re-configured global economy, particularly in Asia, tax policy (not really a big factor as he reviews it; interestingly, no matter what the nominal rates have been on higher income, the net effective rates have varied fairly little) and at the upper end, just a dramatic growth in those wages.  For example, the average CEO in 1973 was earning about 27 times more than the average worker.  That has now increased 10-fold to about 270 times.  I witnessed it first-hand.

As to how to tackle the issue of income inequality, which I agree is something to be pursued, the key instruments, it seems to me, are providing the education and skills that young people need to participate in the best jobs in the emerging economy, eliminating the most egregious laws and policies that afford more money than is truly earned by top wage earners (e.g., carried interest, obvious tax loopholes), ideally (though not likely practical) imposing a minimum effective tax rate on high income earners (the idea that Warren Buffett pays only 17% is, in his own view, absurd). 

The even bigger issue for me is to ensure the possibility of upward mobility, i.e., every child and young man and woman has the opportunity to fully use his/her abilities.  The key here within our control is education.  It starts at the very earliest age (pre-natal/pre-school).  I won’t spell out again here suggestions that I have made in other blogs on this space. 

CAPITALISTS FOR PRESCHOOL

March 3, 2013


OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

Capitalists for Preschool

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IN his State of the Union addressPresident Obama called for making preschool available to every 4-year-old in America, opening a welcome discussion on whether and how to make the investments needed to realize this vision.

Related in Opinion

ROOM FOR DEBATE

Is Public Preschool a Smart Investment?

Would quality child care that included a preschool curriculum be a better national goal?
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As two longtime corporate executives who have been engaged in education for decades, we have no doubt about the answer to this question. Children who attend high-quality preschool do much better when they arrive in kindergarten, and this makes an enormous difference for their later success. The data on preschool is overwhelmingly positive. Although some studies suggest that the positive impact decreases over time, this is mainly attributable to differences in the quality of preschool and of the schooling that follows — not a deficiency in preschool itself.
The effectiveness of quality early childhood education has been affirmed by many business-related groups, includingReadyNation, a coalition of business leaders, organized in 2006.
The Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the United States Chamber of Commerce, found in a 2010 report that “for every dollar invested today, savings range from $2.50 to as much as $17 in the years ahead.” Research by the University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate, points to a 7- to 10-percent annual return on investment in high-quality preschool.
Local examples of the impact of early childhood education abound. In greater Cincinnati, a program called Success by 6 has raised the proportion of children testing as “ready to read” upon entering kindergarten to 57 percent, from 44 percent in the 2006-7 academic year. Of those children, 85 percent still read at (or above) age level at the end of third grade — compared with only 43 percent of the children who do not test as “ready to read” when they start kindergarten.
In short, early educational interventions really matter, and have long-term consequences. Children who are not proficient in reading by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school than children who read at or above grade level — and 13 times more likely, if they live in poverty. A child’s brain grows to roughly 85 percent of its full capacity in the first five years of life. These are also the years when a child’s sense of what is possible is being formed.
The connections from preschool to reading proficiency to high school completion — a bare-minimum requirement in today’s economy — could not be clearer.
And it shouldn’t take scientific research to reach this conclusion. Families who can afford quality preschool don’t generally consider long-term cost-effectiveness when they enroll their children. Indeed, among affluent families in which both parents have full-time careers, there is strong demand for quality learning environments as early as age 2.
To be sure, the debate over preschool is also partly a debate over inequality. Our nation is becoming divided: an America of well-off, well-educated families, who can afford pre-K education, and struggling families who are living in poverty or close to it (often, even while holding down full-time jobs), have modest educations, living in challenged circumstances, and can’t.
Do we really think it is fair to predetermine children’s chances for success in life based on what ZIP code they live in? Doesn’t every child deserve as close to the same chance to develop her or his abilities as any other child?
Universally available prekindergarten is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Raising lifetime wages (and thereby tax revenues) and reducing the likelihood that children will drop out of school, get involved in crime, and become a burden on the justice system more than make up for the costs of early childhood education.
Other countries have realized this. China reportedly has set a goal of giving 70 percent of all children three years of prekindergarten education — far ahead of the modest one year proposed by President Obama — by the year 2020. Our greatest deficit in this country — the one that most threatens our future as a nation — is our education deficit, not our fiscal one.
Some will ask where the money will come from, at a time when states and localities are even more strapped than the federal government. While there are a variety of financing proposals, we do not believe higher taxes will be necessary in every jurisdiction.
Rather, we believe the right approach will be to rebalance and optimize the money we are spending now. The amount of money being spent on early childhood education is so small currently that we are confident it is possible to achieve the efficiencies needed to shift money from other areas of investment.
Last year, only 2 percent of Ohio’s general-fund budget went to early childhood education. We believe that, with proper planning, that amount could be doubled without compromising other financing streams.
We have spent most of our careers in business and have come to support quality prekindergarten for all children, especially those whose families cannot afford it, because we know these programs work. The only question is how to bring them to a huge scale. Our nation’s future demands it. If there ever was a nonpartisan issue, this is it.
John E. Pepper Jr. is a former chairman and chief executive of Procter & Gamble and a former chairman of the Walt Disney Company. James M. Zimmerman is a former chairman and chief executive of Macy’s.

A MADE FOR ADULT PLAN: A WISH STILL UNFULFILLED

February 23, 2013

As we approach the sequester, I re-visit a thought piece I wrote almost six months ago expressing the hope that following the election our two parties and the Administration would come together to hammer out and agree on a sustaining plan to address the nation's challenges and opportunities. 

Sadly, it is not happening. This nation deserves and needs better. It appears that we need more pain before we take the medicine we know we need. 

I believe our leaders, starting at the top, need to sequester themselves, non-stop, to hammer out a plan and make it happen. "Easy to say, hard to do".  "We have already tried".  We will hear all of this. And more. Still, that is what has to happen. 

LEARNING FROM HISTORY-FACING REALITY

February 16, 2013

I RECENTLY FINISHED READING A SAD AND SOBERING BOOK: "THE INSURGENTS: DAVID PETRAEUS AND THE PLOT TO CHANGE THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR" by FRED KAPLAN

 It is brilliantly researched and written and is searing in its assessment of the human and systemic frailties surrounding the prosecution of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is also so striking and sadly meaningful- and it is why I have committed my learnings to this blog is how these "frailties" characterize and explain the biggest failures of effort in every walk of life: business, non-profit, personal.