Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived a number of concentration camps including Auschwitz. During this time, he paid close attention to the behaviour of both the inmates and the wardens. He recorded and analysed their behaviour in detail. In doing so he developed a simple hypothesis. While the answer to the question, “what is the meaning of life” might be simple, the way we pose the question is problematic.
“You see, it is not us who get to demand of the world, “What is the meaning of life”, Rather life is demanding that we answer the question with the actions and decisions we make. We create meaning in our choices and our beliefs”.
The fact that the meaning of life is our responsibility and that we get to decide based on our choices and beliefs might seem overwhelming, but it is also truly liberating. If it’s to be, it’s up to me – no one else. I cannot abdicate responsibility for the meaning I give to my life. When we realise this, we realise how important it is to choose the life that we will find meaningful.
When we have a clear set of beliefs it leads to the improved quality of choices. This in turn leads to decisions and actions that are driven with intent and purpose. It is said that first we make our choices and then our choices make us. In essence we give our life meaning by having a well-defined purpose – a why, a clear set of beliefs that guide our choices.
In the 1980s one of the most original thinkers in South Africa was philosopher Professor Martin Versveld. After a lifetime dedicated to studying the human condition, wrote in his book Sum. Selected Works,
“Life has no meaning; we give it meaning by how we treat other people”.
Let’s pause and reflect on this simple but powerful thought. It leads credence to Frankl’s premise that we should answer the question “what is the meaning of life” through our actions and deeds. And in this instance by how we treat others. As I mentioned I could only begin to change mothers and an entire company once I had made the choice to change myself.
Can there be any greater action we commit than out interaction with others? Love, peace, hatred, war, respect, jealousy – the whole human condition is premised on the quality of our relations with others. The quality of our life is relative to how we interact with others. John Donne knew that no man is an island, and Nelson Mandela believed that we are who we are because of other people.
Wine-lovers will know that the Hermit of Hermitage was an exception to this rule. Returning exhausted from the Crusades, Knight Henry Gaspard eschewed a life of waging war, witnessing brutality and death on an industrial scale. He headed off up the hill of Hermitage where he built a Chapel surrounded by vineyards. He avoided any form of contact with other human. Perhaps if my wines were this good I would too. It was Gaspard’s way of dealing with trauma to simply remove himself from it and who can blame him? Today it is infinitely more difficult. As an introvert who prefers to sit at home with my family and dogs to attending any number of functions, I have learned to be in crowds and not of crowds. By this I mean I have developed a set of skills that allow me to interact but enough time to recharge myself before the next event. I did this courtesy of Susan Cain’s remarkable book Quiet. But I certainly could not live in isolation. Nor I suspect could any of us.
In Auschwitz Frankl made the following insightful observation: prisoners who grew hopeless and gave up on life, those who had lost all hope for their future, were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or lack of medicine than from lack of hope. Lack of something to live for. Lack of something to look forward to. And a lack of something to love. Their lives had simply lost meaning. They were living without hope.
When we understand this, we begin to understand the importance of living with hope. Hope is the sap in the vine, the acid in the wine – hope is our elixir of life. Fortunately hope can be understood and developed, if like Frankl we believe that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as his fellow Austrian Freud believed. Nor is it a quest for power as Alfred Adler taught. Life for Frankl was a quest for meaning. The great task for man is to find his meaning in his life – his purpose. His reason for existing. And this is where the pyramid of purpose, meaning and hope intersect.
Frankl listed the following activities as sources of purpose and meaning:
Work: In particular doing something significant, something bigger than ourselves. A passion, project, hobby, interest that is an integral part of your life. Look to see where it intersects with your career and how you can incorporate them.
Love: Frankl saw this as a generous agape form of love. It may be that generous unconditional love for a spouse. Or it might be the love for all the children in an orphanage like Dr Wilbur Larch in the Cider House Rules. Can you list another person or people you care about deeply enough to make your life worth living and fighting for?
Suffering: We give suffering meaning by how we respond to it. When we recall a time we have suffered mentally, physically, spiritually, how we dealt with it and what we learned about our self and others. This form of introspection helps us to place suffering in perspective. Vipassana meditation teaches us how to avoid suffering by controlling our thoughts and responses to it. We’ll deal with some of these techniques later.
As we begin to get a clearer understanding of our WHY, so we importantly understand that hope is the source of our optimism for the future, even during times of adversity. Or as Nietzsche put it,
“He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any How”.
Find your purpose, it’s important enough to take time and agonise over it, find assistance, read, ask questions and get it down – this is the first step in planning the rest of your life. To building hope in your life and those you lead.
As a recruiter, I battled to understand how from time to time I misread an individual completely. I kept fastidious records and began looking for trends. At this time, I looked at the leadership within the organisation. Looking at where there was a steady turnover of staff, low levels of engagement, poor attendance and high levels of disciplinary and grievance issues.
There was a consistent style of leadership and leader. A colleague recommended I read Snakes in Suits. The book linked all the dots. What follows is a brief synopsis.
The authors suggest recruiters look for the following traits which suggest they may be recruiting a sociopath at best or a psychopath at worst.
Some traits include
The fact that they appear affable displaying a superficial charm.
They are insincere and rarely display any form of empathy or sympathy for others.
Their brains simply lack the circuitry to process such emotions.
This allows them to betray people, threaten people or harm people without giving it a second thought.
They pursue any action that serves their own self-interest even if it seriously harms others.
They are delusional lacking a clear understanding of the world around them and their relation to it.
They have a distorted image of their ability often claiming to have skills that they don’t, their CVs are rarely a true reflection of who they are and what they have achieved.
They wildly exaggerate things to the point of absurdity, but when they describe it to you in a storytelling format, for some reason it sounds believable at the time.
They are unreliable and totally self-absorbed, if it doesn’t suit them it doesn’t happen. They have a tendency to distort the truth to suit their own cause and make themselves look good at the expense of others.
They will spread lies and rumors about others in order to make themselves appear better and to manipulate the people they want to control.
There is a complete lack of any remorse, guilt and shame.
They are never wrong. NEVER. If they are unable to distort or obscure the facts they respond in one of two ways: blame others for their misfortune or play a victim card. The facts are never addressed.
Sociopaths are delusional and literally believe that what they say becomes truthmerely because they say it!
They possess poor judgment when assessing individuals, trusting them implicitly only to be deceived.
They have no ability to think strategically and make no long term plans. They treat their money similarly.
They fail to learn by experience, their inability to accept responsibility when something goes wrong means they never believe they have to learn from a mistake – they simply never make them – even when driving.
They are never wrong. They never feel guilt. They can never apologize. Even if shown proof that they were wrong, they will refuse to apologize and instead go on the attack.
Sociopaths never apologize, they cannot bring themselves to say the words, “I am sorry”, and don’t see the need to as they are never wrong.
Sociopaths
Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations, they have few friends as their ability to communicate and show emotions is absent. There is often a disregard for laws and social mores, anyone in authority from teachers and referees to politicians are viewed with suspicion.
They possess an equal disregard for the rights of others and will simply ignore the fact that their actions might impact negatively on someone else, even those close to them.
They hate to lose any argument or fight and will viciously defend their web of lies, even to the point of logical absurdity. They cannot distinguish between their opinion and the truth. Their opinion is the truth and they will argue as such.
Sociopaths are incapable of loveand are entirely self-serving. They may feign love or compassion calling others dear, darling and honey, complimenting them in order to get what they want, but they don’t actually FEEL love in the way that you or I do.
Sociopaths are masters are presenting themselves as heroes with high morals and philosophy, yet underneath it they are the true criminal minds in society who steal, undermine, deceive, and often incite emotional chaos among families, the workplace and even entire communities. They are masters at turning one group of people against another group while proclaiming themselves to be the one true savior. Wherever they go, they create strife, argument and hatred, yet they utterly fail to see their own role in creating it. They are delusional at so many levels that their brains defy logical reasoning.
You cannot reason with a sociopath.Attempting to do so only wastes your time and annoys the sociopath.
Tips when interviewing sociopaths:
One simple method for dispelling sociopathic delusion is to start fact checking their claims. Do any of their claims actually check out? If you start digging, you will usually find a pattern of frequent inconsistencies. Confront the suspected sociopath with an inconsistency and see what happens: Most sociopaths will become angry or aggressive when their integrity is questioned, whereas a sane person would simply be happy to help clear up any misinformation or misunderstanding.
Beware of fact-checking the sociopath by asking other people under his or her influence. A sociopath will usually have a small group of followers, even family members, who not only believe their fictional tales, but who actually internalize those fictionsto the point where they rewrite their own memories to be consistent with them. If a sociopath talks about his rugby career over and over again, some of his believers will sooner or later start to form false memories. So if you ask those people, “Did you actually ever see this person play rugby?” They will enthusiastically say, “Yes!” Because in their own minds, that illusion has become something indistinguishable from a vivid memory.
Another very valuable red flag to recognize when trying to spot a sociopath is to see how they deal with attacks on their own integrity. If a sociopath is presented with a collection of facts, documents and evidence showing that he lied or deceived, he will refuse to address the evidence and, instead, attack the messenger!
If you really try to nail a sociopath down to answering a documented allegation, they will quickly turn on you, denounce you, and declare that you too are secretly plotting against them. Anyone who does not fall for the brainwashing of the sociopath is sooner or later kicked out of the circle and then wildly disparaged by the remaining members of his/her group.
Once you are able to detect these traits in an individual, you are better able to avoid the trap of recruiting them. Even better to avoid them at all costs. If you are to work with them on some project you are at least armed to protect yourself.
Have a look at any number of state or corporate failures in recent years and see if you can determine some of the traits displayed by those implicated.
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