"Instead of ideals and challenges, young people are being pampered" - and have to deal with the consequences. In 1979 Viktor Frankl discusses the psychological dangers of under-challenge and reductionistic indoctrination on U.S. campuses.
@@SergeyOboroc The compelling part was his description of going through the prison camp and his conclusions on the meaning of life that he developed as a result. What gives life meaning are love, work and handling life's inevitable suffering with dignity (which some adapt to their own experience as "making one's own choices.") It is one of the best things I have read.
"[Young] people today, they are not over-demanded, they are under-demanded!" Well, this was certainly true of my school days taking place at that time. In high school I got passing grades I didn't quite earn because I was articulate and could show that I'd picked up 60-70% of the required ideas through class discussion but I never did any work. While this was good for me in one sense because I had ADD and they didn't know how to deal effectively with that at the time, on the other hand, it was enervating as well. I didn't go to my high school graduation ceremony in part because I didn't feel I'd earned it. Today's kids are in the opposite predicament: they are way over-worked but the work isn't usually imbued with meaning for them. Having a demanding environment isn't enough in and of itself. UNRELATED POINT: Talk shows used to be about intelligent conversation. Even on commercial stations. I miss that.
People in the West live so free they creat hurdles and problems just to feel a feeling of victory to overcome them. These people are easily used as meat-tools for those who want Identity-Politics or other agendas, because identity is the easiest tool to talk about for uneducated people because they think it’s skin-deep and they think they speak for a lot without knowing they only speak for themselves. Overcome racism where there is no real racism (go to Africa, tribes get executed by other tribes for merely existing, they’ve been at war for hundreds of years), overcome government oppression (really in the West? Where citizens that escaped authoritarian nations run to? Oppressed, really? Go to China.)
This is it what I was thinking by own perspective, we dont have challenges in life anymore, there is no survival, because we left any harmful to justify our needs for survival, so it made up the base of modern society, ever wondered why childs always make stupid things what parents deny to them, why peoples going towards whats not right?
Our consumerist society wants us pacified, asleep, in debt, in fear, consuming, not questioning - so we are alienated from our true selves, taking the lazy route out. Medicated, depressed, dependent, addicted. And all for what? Cos we don't want stress, and to challenge ourselves, cos we fear failure. Failure, is doing nothing. Trying will always free you and teach you more. Seek out challenges and endure suffering. You will be reborn.
In my view point, I fear consciousness with all their weight, doesn’t let me think Clarify, I am always stuck in the past and the future. My shadow scares me, I can be the devil himself. Most of the time I prefer to take my fucking pill.
Like someone else already pointed out, title is misrepresenting Frankl's message here. Youngsters are not spoiled, they are deprived. Malnourishment of the soul.
@@margaretmcgarry7796 Yes it is, in the classical Frankl sense of a call to action. The title of this video is just that of an observer and spectator. On the other hand, what Frankl is alluding to, id STOP SPOILING THE CHILDREN. It's easy to frame the title in a way that takes responsibility away from those that created the conditions for the problem in the first place isn't it?
@@Kyoto99952 Right and wrong. Frankl is not blaming the children for being spoilt like the title tries to allude to, He is saying.."STOP CREATING CONDITIONS THAT SPOIL THE CHILDREN AND ACTUALLY CREATE ENVIRONMENTS OF GROWTH AND CHALLENGE"
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍-> underchallenged -> overchallenged. . . a mad bad sad society with 2 utterly extremes and almost n o t h i n g in between . . . can such a "society" survive ? What do you think my friends ?
@@seyfert8820 No easy job to do ! I think we are an utterly dualistic (insane) society without a broad range of skills. I mean, many folks only have 1 job their whole life, and more than 85 % HATE their jobs ! And with HATE in your sensitive body & mind, you absolutely CAN´T LOVE ! That´s why we are in such a mess . . . so we desperately need communities, where the folks are constantly in a VERY positive FLOW (sic!) . . . . well, now . . . . for a real broadening up, I recommend for you tor read books of -> Vic Frankl, Eric Fromm, Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi (Flow !) Maslow, Osho, Nietzsche, Jan Willem van de Wetering (ZEN !) and Robert Anton Wilson. You won´t regret that mate !
This is so good. "Man cannot stand a meaningless existence." CG Jung Of the 3 Viennese examples of Freud's Pleasure Principe, Adler's Power Principal and Victor's "Will to Meaning" principal...all are important but I think Frankl's is central. It has more in common with Jung. Jung's concept of individuation (as far as I understand it) is largely based upon seeking meaning and wholeness and the discovering the myth of one's unique life. Not to parrot another life but discover your own true self, integrating elements of your unsavory parts of your own unconscious and ,if you are a man, integrating the feminine (anima). Conversely, if you are a woman, integrating the masculine (animus). Also follows Lao Tzu's "Tao" middle way system balancing the yin and the yang navigating the middle pass between the twin peaks of danger and opportunity. Cosmic universal timeless principals that are not bound by space and time. God Bless Victor Frankl. May his soul rest in eternal peace.
I liked the intersexes integration concepts: a man without nurturing and kind traits is just a selfish animal; a woman who doesn't control herself emotionally, is just a repulsive human being.. (Is that what you meant?)
Very interesting...I find these psychiatrists in a way give a western translation to concepts that have always been known in the east (and were known to ancient Greek until Plato and Aristotle kinda distracted attention from Parmenides and Heraklitos)...basically, the principle of non-dualism (advaita vedanta) in the ancient Indian Vedas, and the Tao in China....if you listen for example to Alan Watts, I feel you find a more compelling, purely spiritual but funnily so more practical way of explaining WHY there is this "will to meaning" and this unconscious need to integrate and go beyond duality (masculine feminine, but also positive/negative, and most importantly ego vs rest of the world). If you realize that we are all God, that the soul (atma) is the same as the Universal Consciousness/God/Universe (Bhraman)...then all is crystal clear (but of course, it's not by reading or listening to this universal truth that it sinks in...it sinks in only by EXPERIENCING, by feeling it). God bless you all.
Very serious talk really. True respect for this man . He identified an existential crisis occurring especially in young people 40-50 years ago. Just imagine what might be the condition today ,it's shocking even to imagine
This man has transcended much of life’s suffering. Without meaning is a first step into confusion & even depression. Victor is a deep thinker. We’d do well to listen.
This answers everything. This answer why I feel amazing working for 10 hours straight, and in weekends my depression kicks back. Nobody has asked me or my friends to do demanding stuff, they told us the most destructive phrase we could hear “do what you want”. And know we are waisting our lives with gap years and studying things we will never use
Does this here ring a bell for you: "I wanted milk from my mother's breast and only got the bottle. I wanted loving, tender parents and was only ever given toys. I wanted to talk and was only given a book. I wanted to think for myself and was only given foreign "knowledge". I wanted genuine happiness and got crude money instead. I wanted wonderful, fulfilling love and all I got was morality. I wanted freedom and all I got was a car - as an incentive to work. I wanted deep meaning and got a career. I wanted more time and got just one more job. I wanted real friends and got social media. I wanted real communication and got a cell phone I wanted a dear girlfriend and got a calculating bitch I wanted hope and got fear. I just want to live so right!" PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE ! !
1.16 "The un-heard cry for meaning: You scarcely will find any reference to what is the most fundamental and basic concern of man: neither pleasure nor happiness, nor power or prestige, but originally and basically his wish, his desire, to find and fulfill a meaning in his life, or for that matter, in each single life situation confronting him. And if there is a meaning to fulfill, if he is aware, if he becomes cognoscente of such a meaning, then he is ready to suffer sacrifices, he is ready to undergo tensions, stress and so forth, without any harm being done to his health. But if there is no meaning available, if there is no meaning available in his visual field, then he takes his life."
"I wanted milk from my mother's breast and only got the bottle. I wanted loving, tender parents and was only ever given toys. I wanted to talk and was only given a book. I wanted to think for myself and was only given foreign "knowledge". I wanted genuine happiness and got crude money instead. I wanted wonderful, fulfilling love and all I got was morality. I wanted freedom and all I got was a car - as an incentive to work. I wanted deep meaning and got a career. I wanted more time and got just one more job. I wanted real friends and got social media. I wanted real communication and got a cell phone I wanted a dear girlfriend and got a calculating bitch I wanted hope and got fear. I just want to live so right!" PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE ! !
Man who find a light in deepest and darkest time. Listening to him help me adjust my life. Now we find ourself in disparity and mental breakdown. It's crucial for us to stay positive. So, Folks Stay strong and Stay positive.
"I was 10 years old when I was born I was 20 when I died At 30 I realized I had died When I was 40, I knew I was dead I was 50 years old when I began to hold my funeral speech At 60 I was a renowned speaker With 70 years I spoke about life With 80 I spoke of love At 90 I speak about the future With 100 years I let myself rejuvenate." Lyrics: Joe Zawinul ! Song: Success (listen here on yt !) GREAT ballad . . .
Wow! The notion of challenge and difficulty for meaning is counterintuitive but so true. This notion will change my life. I will now go through as many challenges willfully because I know that it creates happiness in the long term.
This is wild. He said life is more stressful now than it was in Auschwitz. I am sure he could never imagine it would get so bad in current modern day society
Big citys are just concentration camps in disguise, thats why they want 15 minute citys now, and end ALL physical money. sugar coated concentration camps. slavery.
@@badtuber1654 - . . . . so utterly true mate. The FIRST appearance of a city, where people "live" above and below each other (stress of severe density !!) should´ve been a CLEARLY sign od severe OVERpopulation ! Even the Hopi andes the Swiss only have 2 floors : Below are the youngsters, and above the (silent!) silver agers -> no stress at all !
@@AL_THOMAS_777 Before citys ppl all lived in the country in nature and space.. they traded that for living in a small cubicle, full of sound and factory polution near a poor paying job, to buy useless things. like TV's. To further indoctrinate them into corporate slaves.
I didn’t like that comparison with Auschwitz… would someone in Auschwitz wish that other people (like modern youngsters) experience something similar? The Auschwitz should never be repeated and this has to be the primary goal of the humanity of all the consequent times
Wow this is needed watching for young and old in our world today. I have suffered from depression throughout my life and Victor's words of wisdom to get through my life. Thank you Victor.
To find the meaning of life, an individual must have purpose. Modern Society or even the educational institutions does not cater to guiding people towards finding a purpose.
I must say, i felt deceived by the title of this video clip. Not in one message of the whole dialogue did Frankl say the younger generation is spoilled, however they feel an existencial vacuum of not being challanged enough because people are too afraid to challenge them. A more appropriate title would perhaps be the youth feel existencial vacuum or something in that context.none the less, thank you for posting this clip!
The problems of 'Helicopter parents', and single parents or both of 'em working, where children 'raise themselves', often in digital cocoons, probably don't help either. Then by the time they're old enough to find a job or have some 'goals', they have no patience with the 'Real World' to begin with. There's a good reason why there's a ton of books on 'How To Manage Millennials'.
What’s not to be happy about adulthood? Every individual from 18 till death has a social obligation at threat of a gun to hand over minimum 60% of their income through taxation inorder to fund pedo drug addicted politicians and multinational corporations who build bombs……
1:51 I agree. For Man a Meaning is most important. Hence generally most men(from civilized cultured societies) reform and become responsible mostly right after having the first child. This is also the reason men join military or navy. Where they receive martial training and are challenged and given purposes through rise in ranks, also receive free medical care if they get injured.
Of course there are places in this world where young people are challenged to the opposite extreme. Take South-Korea, where teenage and young adult suicide numbers are staggering because of the academic challenges and social pressures these teenagers are placed under.. Of course you gotta have challenges, but the challenge has to be meaningful. towards something tangible. you gotta understand what for your are being challenged. if the challenge comes with the system your born into, and exists only to uphold the system itself, then what good is it for?
Same goes for older people in retirement years. I find sitting around doing nothing, not working, and even pursuing pleasure completely meaningless and unfulfilling. And yet I seem to be in the extreme minority with that mentality.
I'm a Muslim and I liked his book his knowledge Alot of his word was written in our Quran but I didn't see nor understand until I read his book, thanks and RIP ❤️
How is that so? In the muslim holy book there is a constant appeal to believe in some outside force, this man here have gone through hell alone and no one helped him but himself and that is the core message in his great book.
You are quite right. All holy books are difficult to fathom even in our lifetime. The interpreted versions that we read can also carry the bias by the interpreter. As you have said listening to those who had actually gone thro crisis or reading them will make us understand our own holy books better.
@Abdalelah Almalki - "What the THINKER thinks, the PROVER proves. Because the human brain, like other animal brains, acts as an electro-colloidal computer, not a solid state computer, it follows the same laws as other animal brains. That is, the programs get into the brain, as electro-chemical bonds, in discrete quantum stages.'' some of these stages are: genetic imperatives, imprints, conditioning, learning.''
YES mate ! And much too often they are also VERY aggressive demanding perfectionists - and destroy the children further more . . .I´ve seen that especially in germany . . . and in switzerland it must be u t t e r l y mad: If you do not wash your car, you find a memo on the windscreen "WASH YOUR CAR" ! !
notes: - human's basic desire is his desire for meaning. - a human w meaning is basically impenetrable. they can go through any sorts of challenges and pain if they are equipped with meaning - no stress = no challenges = cowardice - young people need ideals and challenges- personal examples so that they may find meaning.
I understand what he is saying, but I don't think adults in society today need to impose their idea of challenge on young people. Life is challenging enough. Adults could guide youth through the process of awareness more. That children in Austria ask their teacher about suicide, being as their basic needs are met by a welfare state, is a sign of evolution and certainly not a negative byproduct of the welfare state. It's time that we rise on the hierarchy of needs and evolve into understanding and mastering our own minds. It is natural for adolescents to confuse their changing ego with death itself, but unlike indigenous cultures, we don't normalize or guide them through that process in modern society. A large percentage of people question the meaning of their participation in an economy and job market that suppresses their growth, diminishes and exploits them, reproduces and amplifies privilege, and is altogether disrespectful if not abusive. A lot has changed since this video was filmed - the Internet, Covid, anti-establishment politics that undermine the integrity of systems and truth itself. The quest for meaning remains, but the context values life and self actualization less. Those in power are often less evolved than those who serve them and their visions. And, in the US, the idea of welfare even existing is a big joke. Basically, our challenges are overwhelming, beyond hope of fixing. Much is crumbling, even though there is a lot of new being created. It's all disintegrated, and that's the stage we're in right now. Very stressful.
I admire a lot about Victor Frankl, but this thought about the youth has been there since Socrates. Ever consider that the older generation may be judgemental, envious, partly responsible for indulging the youth, unattuned and missing the boat in terms of helping the youth with their personal and critical development?
unfortunately everyone knows these messages and they have been circulating everywhere throughout time in books and videos. However, only tragic times forces the individual to make the necessary changes in order to survive. The point of life is to make it simpler overtime in order to for the future generation to have an easier time and not the other way around.
He completely missed the point. It is all about finding meaning. No matter how easy it is, will not change how one fells on the inside. For any the most easy task, need a reason to be completed. Even an easy life needs to find a reason to live. A man with a why can conquer any how.
Meaning helps you sleep at night. Makes you able to greet the sun. Meaningless. All human experience sum equals zero. Dao seems like grasping air but lets you resolve existencial quandaries by letting go of meaningless pursuits. I believe in the pursuit of science for understanding fundamentals. Knowing the mechanisms and the processes will leave you wanting.
Evidently, Viktor's unconscious reasoning is compelling him to misidentify the cause of his problem. Viktor isn't noticing that the holocaust was predicated on children confronted by the superstitious ideals and challenges imposed on them by the previous generation. Viktor is hiding the social conditions that caused his identity because the social conditions that caused his identity also caused the holocaust. Suffering as a way-of-being begins in infancy as the child learns from their parental figure's example to not respond to what people are dealing with and really care about. The child learns from their "socialized" parental figure's example to avoid a conscious focus of attention on what is actually happening. This pattern of behavior is a vicious circle passed on from generation to generation as a strategy to avoid the pain of rejection, and yet this pattern of behavior is the source of rejection. Victor E Frankl's work provides an example of a void of a conscious look at the process by which he developed a point of view that excludes innate human interpretations, feedback, and data; And did so in reaction to the example of his parents and community.
True but there is a need for a fair society that offers all its citizens the opportunity and support needed to feel secure enough to take the opportunity to fully contribute. My understanding is that without basic social capital (which requires everyone to pay their taxes including the wealthy) this equality of opportunity cannot arise. That is why Denmark is often seen as one of the happiest countries because where you are born does not dictate the role you will plays in society whether that be an artist or a entrepreneur or a bureaucrat, whatever gives you meaning without doing harm to another you have the opportunity whether you choose to take that opportunity should be up to you.
No easy job to do ! I think we are an utterly dualistic (insane) society without a broad range of skills. I mean, many folks only have 1 job their whole life, and more than 85 % HATE their jobs ! And with HATE in your sensitive body & mind, you absolutely CAN´T LOVE ! That´s why we are in such a mess . . . so we desperately need communities, where the folks are constantly in a VERY positive FLOW (sic!) . . . . well, now . . . . for a real broadening up, I recommend for you tor read books of -> Vic Frankl, Eric Fromm, Mihaly Cszikszentmihalyi (Flow !) Maslow, Osho, Nietzsche, Jan Willem van de Wetering (ZEN !) and Robert Anton Wilson. You won´t regret that
I was very badly abused, in marriage, I could not leave my children, and this was back then, whenthe kaos did not hekp you, and then I found -Victor -Frankl
I am unsure about this, as far as I can see stuff just happens, coincidences occur and there is no point asking for ‘Meaning’, though events may have implications which are worth thinking about.If my life has meaning I’m darned if I know what it is and I seem to get by OK
Except he writes about Ashewitz without much reference to the greater world, and deduces the meaning of life from it, Ruth Deutsch. Philosophically, it might be hard to pinpoint a greater hell. He did it well. You are right about needing a new way of thinking and being. Excellent point.
But there are no real demands left. The major wars have been won, the lands have been conquered, religion is dead, technology already surpasses our functional needs to a level of providing entertainment, specialist fields have already been mastered. Of course there is always more room for advancement but it is millimetres. Our crisis of meaning does not come from lack of challenge, it has come from over mastery of our environment and ourselves, to the sad conclusion that there are no real fulfilling challenges left
The crazy thing is that even that we know so much and it is a lot there is a lot we don't know. And even more stuff that we don't even know we don't know. The questions of life and universe are almost infinite yet somehow there is no more joy to seek them out for ourselves. We have just ended up becoming reliant on the pleasures of the modern consumerist world.
This is the title a poem by Wilfred Owen, who died in WWI at the age of 24. He was British. This poem is a must read for English poetry in most high schools and Eng. Lit 101. It’s about the senseless horrors of war. It’s a quote from Ovid, and it means : “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s nation.” Good reads.
It is unfair to judge only weak and idle people kill themselves, what about people who are struggling economically to make ends meet and work themselves to death like Japan and end up killing themselves? Don't say they don't fight for a living . Do they suffer from a lack of meaning? Or lacking ambition?