frankl'squote

[Adam Blatner]

Hi Ed, of course you're right, and just this afternoon I had some new insights about how 
much people need meaning--so Frankl is right, too.
     How about this, instead of "must" maybe I would say that people do construct meaning 
systems for themselves, even if it is unconscious, or it involves participation in the 
implicit meaning systems of affiliated groups. And people will also affiliate, or generate 
interesting reasons and complexes in avoiding such connections.

       Now, you mention the capacity of psychodrama and sociodrama to
> address, if not heal, the wounds of oppression, and the sociodynamic law of the movement 
> of resource from the many to the few?     How specifically would you propose these be 
> applied or what is the remedy?

Asking how we can justify mass folly won't do it. I mean, I could answer: Individualism, 
freedom, trusting the open market, our dominion over the earth, the needs of people over 
animals, etc. The rationalizations for maintaining the status quo are elaborate. I agree 
with you and not with those who answer, but the point is that there are lots of 
justifications.

         So political, economic, and social activism often requires a mixture of wisdom 
and action that isn't easy to balance.

          What I don't get yet is an image in my mind of how sociatry, sociometry, etc. 
would actually be used to change things.

         Well, maybe I do-- did you know I recently published a paper proposing the use of 
sociodrama as a core element of the college curriculum?

           As for sociometry-- I'd certainly be open to your giving me some ideas. Warmly, 
Adam
    > Hi Adam,
>
> Thanks, as always, for the challenge you present to define, explain, refine my comments
> about Frankl and also about the relationship between Moreno's sociatry and oppression
> (beyond the most obvious relationship of the capacity of psychodrama and sociodrama to
> address, if not heal, the wounds of oppression).
>
> The issue with Frankl is that he points to an internal compass, for being human, alive 
> and
> able to intregrate horrific trauma to meaning that is life supportive.  Much of the work 
> I've read,
> particularly Judith Herman's work on trauma, addresses the need, after telling the whole 
> story,
> to find meaning.  Frankl the same, with his experiences in the Nazi Death Camps.  It is 
> the capacity
> to find positive, hopeful, meaning as we are called to respond to life itself.
>
> For me, this was the case and remains so - as I've come to terms with my own living with 
> HIV
> now for 19 almost 20 years.
>
> At the time I was first diagnosed I was offered "3-6 months to live".  And for many that 
> was the case.
> My response, after the initial shock of it all, was to find meaning for dying, or 
> possibly dying.  This is
> so often the case with cancer patients too.
>
> It is this will-to-meaning that Frankl address as an element of the human experience 
> that makes us
> human, in my opinion.
>
> I've been through this of late too - as I have been mentored and studied in the really 
> horric condition
> of the world's over consumption of the ecology of the earth.  How many of us hear about 
> this, but
> turn to the stasis of our lives, believing it's not real, that global cliamte change 
> will not impact the lives
> of all of us and the generations to follow?
>
> The horror is complex and deep.  It has everything to do with the exploitation of poor 
> people around the globe
> so we can continue to live our own lives with the goods, foods, toys, cars, computers, 
> objects that make our
> life of privledge just that.   This is one element of the nature of oppression.
>
> As to your question about how Moreno and oppression fit:   Moreno called for a 
> sociometric revolution.
> We each have to come to terms with what he meant.  For me, it means addressing the fact 
> that the sociodynamic
> effect is just that:  an operational process within civilization that in its base and 
> essence moves resources to
> the few at the expense of the many.
>
> I am not a marxist, nor a capitalist:  I am an environmental sociatrist - looking at 
> these forces Moreno described
> and looking at the from the vantage point of how at the base of it all, we are 
> destroying the biosphere, the earth,
> the ecology to pull resources from that - to us - at the expense of life itself.
>
> How can we justify 158 species per day becoming extinct, for our way of living?
> Can we?
>
> How can we justify the fact that 150 milliion (yes, that is million) children are living 
> in a state of slavery to produce
> the goods we desire?
>
> How can we justify year after year that some of us have health insurance, some do not?
>
> The movement of resource from the many to the few is the nature of oppression, 
> sociometric in nature, sociatric
> in implication.
>
> Ed
>
>
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