Viktor Frankl, thrown into a Nazi concentration camp, saw his reality reduced to its fullest misery. Rationally, although with an almost superhuman coldness, and although for the sake of survival, for the urgent need to preserve his mental sanity, he set out to view his misfortune through the lens of a scientist. He isolated his mind in a fictitious intellectual bubble and made physical, psychological and moral destruction the object of his investigations. It is, keeping proportions, what every serious investigator of life should do.
Tag: philosophy
The Moment When Destiny Makes Its Call
Although it is uncomfortable to assume it,—and even more so to justify it,—there seems to be, in the biography of every great man, a moment when destiny makes its call and, as usual, since we speak of great men, they fulfill their role. It is always possible to identify the emblematic circumstance whose response—the act—results in the concretization of the personality. It can also be added that such a circumstance configures the apex of a biography, the point where individuality is affirmed and distinguished and, since we speak of destiny, one’s fortune is defined. History offers us countless evidences for this unpleasant realization that seems to suggest that the greatness of its characters is limited to accepting, consciously or not, the fate that is reserved for them. Oh, note!…
The Realization of the Fragility of Life
The human brain, a machine programmed to seek and identify patterns—even where there are none—only under duress admits the conclusions that come from the realization of the fragility of life. It seems unnatural to have as determinant and presumable that which, in an instant, abruptly transforms the reality. The false slowness of time deceives it, the slow change of states seems to lead to a non-existent end—and the machine thus gives birth to erroneous judgments about existence. The unpredictable dynamics of life seem to want to force it to accept that not everything is about cause and effect; but for it, to do so is to confess its weakness and succumb to the irrational.
Metaphysical Speculations
Theosophists say, to my amusement, that man is given the freedom to choose his birthplace. My mind flies… The veracity of this curious revelation matters little: the fun is to reason about the hypothesis. I imagine myself, in front of a supreme entity, pointing out, on a map of the world, the city where I was born. Infinite options and, by simple volition, I choose a city in the interior of São Paulo—a city of which I have not a single and solitary memory. I want to believe that the entity has presented me with other places, exposed me from its geographical to its cultural aspects and that, even so, I chose to be born where I was born. The next question is: why? One single justification seems reasonable to me: my pride—and correct me the theosophists if manifestations of pride are possible in these spheres of existence—must have thought something like: “I will prove that I am capable of developing in an environment hostile to my nature.” Very well! Then have I and my analytical mind, after long and careful meditation, judged this one to be the most interesting of all the possibilities? Or maybe, if it is true what the theosophists say about us being born and reborn numerous times, I got sick of paradise beaches, varied architecture, high HDIs and all the rest? No, no, not “get sick”. What to conclude?