I hate the widespread idea that the man is just a dog. I see it all the time: whether it is the guy who thinks hunger is man’s main problem or psychology that ties to instincts and never goes beyond instincts. Well, a genius is born — and we need geniuses to tell us the obvious… — and says the following: there is in the human being a spiritual dimension that defines and transcends it. And the genius, named Viktor Frankl, had to prove in the flesh the validity of the theory itself, enduring the terrible atrocities of various Nazi concentration camps and maintaining sanity. I mean, the animal pulsates on us, but there’s something nobler. Below is an excerpt from the book:
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes — within the limits of endowment and environment — he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
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