Viktor E. Frankl and Normal Book Review

Due to the brevity of this review, the author will focus in on Part One and some reactions to Frankl which they find ironic. In quoting Lessing, he obviously feels that his behavior was normal. Unfortunately, it was too depressingly normal in our "civilized" world. In Orwellian fashion, the proletarians have been trained to sit there, quo up and receive whatever garbage (or gas) is dumped on our heads. He even waxes poetically on gas in which he draws "an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas . . . The "size" of the human suffering is absolutely relative (ibid, 55)." After losing his entire family in the gas chambers, this response is mind numbing. The basic human instinct for human survival is to fight hard as a group to overthrow oppression and hit back at the enemy.

To this author, "normal" behavior looks more like camp revolts such as in Sobibor or in Auschwitz.Outside of the camps, normal behavior was constituted in the Warsaw ghetto or other uprisings or in Jewish activity in partisan groups in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, Frankl's normal behavior allowed attackers with box cutter knives to take over aircraft on September 11, 2001 and crash them into buildings and the Pentagon. The "abnormal" behavior of a group of passengers on the fourth plane prevented the loss of thousands of innocent lives and is certainly a better tribute to the victims than. Certainly, we can mourn the innocent dead of all humanity. However, the real succor in all of this depressing fare is to be inspired by the brave individuals that recaptured the pack mentality to work together against a common enemy actively and not just passively. There is nothing nobler in the human experience than for them to survive with heads held freely up and into the sun.

References

Frankl, Viktor….....