“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Greetings!
History has a strange way of repeating itself, but we should always strive to keep moving forward, not backwards. This week we search for meaning, escape for a bowl of rice, rule for the common good, apply for victimhood status, get ready for retirement (again), and play for double or nothing. Enjoy.
NO COLLECTIVE GUILT: Marking the 50th anniversary of the Austria´s annexation by Nazi Germany, Viktor Frankl speaks passionately against the concept of "collective guilt", as he addresses the Viennese crowd in 1988. “To blame someone not personally but collectively, is something I strictly reject”, he says. It’s an incredibly compelling speech by someone who could have easily argued the exact opposite. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist and Holocaust survivor who founded the field of Logotherapy, based on the premise that the key underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning”, even in the most difficult of circumstances. His three-year experience in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp, combined with the tragic loss of his entire family during the war, affected his understanding of reality and the meaning of human life. His most popular book, Man’s Search for Meaning, chronicles his time in the camp as well as the development of Logotherapy. Without meaning, Frankl postulated, people tend to fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions.
A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE: When she escaped from North Korea, Yeonmi Park did not even know about the existence of the word ‘freedom’. While running for her life, she fled one kind of nightmare and stepped right into another. But, in her view, that was already a step in the right direction. “Starvation is worse than being raped”, she asserts. She eventually left China, crossing the Gobi desert into Mongolia, then found her way to South Korea and on to the United States. In this interview, Yeonmi provides a chilling account of her fight for survival in the hands of brutal regimes and the underworld of smugglers and human traffickers. As a young human rights activist herself, she is horrified with the manner in which several universities in America have shifted their focus from education to ‘social justice’, as some of the methods employed by the movement strongly resemble the brainwashing and repression she witnessed in her country of origin.
BEWARE OF DO-GOODERS : The Drama Triangle was first described by Stephen Karpman in the 1960s. It is a model of dysfunctional social interactions that involves three roles: Victim, Perpetrator and Rescuer, and each role represents a common and ineffective response to power dynamics. What Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot had in common was that they effectively classified the perpetrators and the victims, and portrayed themselves as the ultimate rescuers, hence justifying their actions under the banner of “the common good before the individual good”. This video invites us to examine our own contradictions before we try to fix the world around us. True freedom, it suggests, begins to emerge once we learn to reduce our fixation on external enemies and look within our own hearts with heightened awareness and humility.
ELITE VICTIMHOOD: If the Duchess of Sussex can raise her celebrity profile by telling a story of why she was victimized by Buckingham Palace, it stands to reason that a well-articulated essay of hardship and adversity can significantly increase one’s chances of getting into Harvard. There is only one problem though, as Rob Henderson points out in this piece - embroidering tales about adversity, hardship and marginalization tends to be easier for affluent candidates than for those who are in fact less fortunate. And they are also likely to be more adept at crafting anecdotes in ways that please admissions committees. “The emphasis on victimhood backfires, creating more obstacles for truly disadvantaged applicants”, he writes. Read the article HERE.
ZIS IS ZE LIFE, PART II: Cancel Angela!!!
FLICK OF THE WEEK: The clear vision and unwavering perseverance of Richard Williams (played by two-time Oscar-nominee Will Smith) is the central theme of this film, in which two girls from Compton, California rise to the global stage and become legendary figures in the sport of tennis. King Richard shines a light on the power of family, education, hard work and self-determination in helping make the impossible plan come true.