I gre:w up in a small town where children could play freely without any fear or doubt about their future as they might have envisioned after watching Saturday morning TV.
But, there were a group of kids from the Arawak Indian community of various colours and shades. They got to play as well but as soon as they got to child bearing age and sufficient maturity at age 24, certain behaviours were expected of them. Men had to have large biceps to be accepted by females in that community because ancestrally many of these individuals had descended from a non-free people who were subjected to horrible brutality and slavery. Ultimately, the men had to at least appear robust enough to pull a horse drawn cart and strong enough to fend off any man who may wish to just abusively throw the woman in his cabin or horse drawn wagon. Also, the community ran on a notion of respect which meant you had to have at least six children during your life time and maybe as many partners if you were a man. If you wanted only one woman, you might be called ill.
What was most disheartening is that if you did not come from a Saturday school that taught you these lessons so that you understood by 24, the women may try and ensure you would understand because that is just the way it is. It was cultural. But, because of the long journey of history that confounds every child's ancestry, how do you know your ancestor does not include the man who climbed Mount Sinai to get you the ten commandments? The point is that celebrating the recent break in your ancestors' journey by perpetuating it and its unfortunate meaning for their experience and your child's present or future is counter-productive and its cultural you say. Pass the chitlins. Yes; chicken feet are served at dim sum so why not some pig gut or goat belly or trotters? Well, I just want sliced turkey breast and I have never watched the movie "Beloved" and I choose not to know because it felt painful when I heard about it and I would rather watch Barry Manilow sing Copa Cobana and I also love watching Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole videos as they score hat tricks and Penelope Cruz speaking slowly in some well-conceived movie about common sense or even Thandi Newton in something interesting or edifying or Kenya Moore in an episode of ER as a good nurse; Yah!
Now, Bruce Lee was strong like Jackie Chan but they do not have such an overtly large bicep. That does not fit the expectation of the Arawak Indian woman usually and still though they are men. They want or have children. That is all you need. Steroid induced biceps are not necessarily "will-power" biceps that can actually pull the cart if not so overtly big and help you uh get some consistency in the corn bread. This does not mean he is "too sof" What is that as a matter of discussion? He is consistent with his uh corn bread. Ok? Just ask his last wife since there is uh an implicit covenant in what you do. She said "..You don't get me." What does that mean after 10 minutes minimum of conversation and lots of coffee?
The bitterness of a culture arising around prolonged difficulties can become self-perpetuating. It is only a culture of poverty that is anxious about his neighbour's child and their discipline to run every night and to read their high school or college notes over every night from Monday to Thursday or at lunch if there is homework; a culture of poverty to be anxious about how many sons someone could have or the hew, pitch or contrast of your neighbour's skin tone. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and so are you in relation to Him no matter how fast you nuclearwave your food in 1 minute or have an instant shower. Use a washcloth because your armpits will never change or the sweat from playing tennis or base jumping. God is not changing and neither is His expectations of us whether you have Shakespeare or Dickens in paperback or e-reader. What did you learn when you read Dickens or the bible or Torah? This is why Jesus passed his Exam as seen in Matthew 4 and the devil did not but they both had access to most of the same information. Jesus submitted. Abraham did pretty good on his exam as well. Read Matthew 4. Your ancestors may find ways to ensure that they pass the bitterness on to a 157th generation if they can because they could have just decided to cut it off with some painful forgiveness but its hard to see how the way in which you are shouting at your grand children, calling them a bad child is just a manifestation of your own rejection and all they did is forget to say good morning fast enough or put the crumbs in the sink to mix it with the water to celebrate the communion(but you are a very good church lady in our memories and made or make good peanut butter and jam sandwiches with the ends cut off how you liked it and you were proud to see them dance to Diana Ross and the Hustle and they saw you smile at that and you asked them to dance some more!) and they were just five years old and still learning to tie their shoes. But you do know someone can call time on this and you can pause to see yourself and say maybe my ancestors before this horrible 400 year break were doing something else like writing books calmly and quietly in some other culture not based on pain, bitterness and rejection and family hurt. Maybe they were painters or hunters or dead sea scroll scholars before this fear of a dirty-blond Jesus and anything that mentioned His name in a book happened. Just remember that the bible was in Africa for hundreds of years before it was in Europe and well preserved in the Ethiopian Coptic Church (Acts 8)Ok? This is before Paul got to Rome where he paid the ultimate price for the grace depicted in Peter's dream drafted in Acts 10; also used as a depiction of democracy in many scholarly visions.
Frankl identifies three psychological reactions experienced by all inmates to one degree or another: (1) shock during the initial admission phase to the camp, (2) apathy after becoming accustomed to camp existence, in which the inmate values only that which helps himself and his friends survive, and (3) reactions of depersonalization, moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment if he survives and is liberated.
Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. In a group therapy session during a mass fast inflicted on the camp's inmates trying to protect an anonymous fellow inmate from fatal retribution by authorities, Frankl offered the thought that for everyone in a dire condition there is someone looking down, a friend, family member, or even God, who would expect not to be disappointed. Frankl concludes from his experience that a prisoner's psychological reactions are not solely the result of the conditions of his life, but also from the freedom of choice he always has even in severe suffering. The inner hold a prisoner has on his spiritual self relies on having a hope in the future, and that once a prisoner loses that hope, he is doomed.
An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:
Frankl also concludes that there are only two races of men, decent men and indecent. No society is free of either of them, and thus there were "decent" Nazi guards and "indecent" prisoners, most notably the kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain.... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us." That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."[6]
His concluding passage in Part One describes the psychological reaction of the inmates to their liberation, which he separates into three stages. The first is depersonalization—a period of readjustment, in which a prisoner gradually returns to the world. Initially, the liberated prisoners are so numb that they are unable to understand what freedom means, or to emotionally respond to it. Part of them believes that it is an illusion or a dream that will be taken away from them. In their first foray outside their former prison, the prisoners realized that they could not comprehend pleasure. Flowers and the reality of the freedom they had dreamed about for years were all surreal, unable to be grasped in their depersonalization.
The body is the first element to break out of this stage, responding by big appetites of eating and wanting more sleeping. Only after the partial replenishing of the body is the mind finally able to respond, as “feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it” (111).
This begins the second stage, in which there is a danger of deformation. As the intense pressure on the mind is released, mental health can be endangered. Frankl uses the analogy of a diver suddenly released from his pressure chamber. He recounts the story of a decent friend who became immediately obsessed with dispensing the same violence in judgement of his abusers that they had inflicted on him.
Upon returning home, the prisoners had to struggle with two fundamental experiences which could also damage their mental health: bitterness and disillusionment. The last stage is bitterness at the lack of responsiveness of the world outside—a "superficiality and lack of feeling...so disgusting that one finally felt like creeping into a hole and neither hearing nor seeing human beings any more" (113). Worse was disillusionment, which was the discovery that suffering does not end, that the longed-for happiness will not come. This was the experience of those who – like Frankl – returned home to discover that no one awaited them. The hope that had sustained them throughout their time in the concentration camp was now gone. Frankl cites this experience as the most difficult to overcome.
As time passed, however, the prisoner's experience in a concentration camp finally became nothing but a remembered nightmare. What is more, he knows that he has nothing left to fear any more, "except his God" (115).
Frankl's meaning in life is to help others find theirs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning
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