Читать книгу The Cosmic Ocean - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 7

The military taught me a secret about the human condition that many people do not know. By learning this secret as a West Point cadet and active duty soldier, I clearly saw how Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other great peacemakers became so influential as leaders and visionaries. They also knew this secret.

Psychologist Erich Fromm described this secret when he wrote about how Sigmund Freud had been incorrect; Freud mistakenly believed that biological urges such as our desire for food and sex cause most human problems. Even today, I hear some people claim that most conflicts, wars, and injustices around the world are caused by human cravings for food and sex. According to them, if everyone had easy access to food, sex, and other physical comforts, humanity would live in peace.

But Erich Fromm had a more realistic understanding than Freud of our human problems, because he knew what the military, Gandhi, and King also knew. Fromm realized that when we have easy access to food and sex, our problems as human beings do not end. Instead, when these biological urges are easy to feed, our human problems truly begin.

For example, conquerors such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon had easy access to food and sex. Their motivations ran deeper than this, however, because although they had access to more food and sex than one person could possibly consume in a twenty-four-hour day, this could not stop them from conquering. In Europe and other parts of the world, many kings and even queens also became obsessed with conquering, despite having easy access to food, sex, and other physical comforts.

The U.S. military, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Erich Fromm all taught me a secret about the human condition. The secret is that our greatest human problems do not result from biological cravings for food and sex, but our search for purpose and meaning. The craving for purpose and meaning, more than any physical craving, drives people to conquer, to become fanatics, to produce great art, to feel alienated and alone, to suffer from addiction, to descend into madness, and to commit suicide. Erich Fromm explained:

Even if man’s hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied “he” is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power, or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life. Indeed, “man does not live by bread alone.”9

The saying “man does not live by bread alone” is from the Bible, found in the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus says, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”10 Although this saying has been interpreted in different ways, its core message expresses a basic truth about the human condition that religious people and atheists can both agree upon. This truth is that food alone is not enough to satisfy a human being, because we have other needs. Some people call these religious needs. Others call these spiritual needs. And some call these psychological needs. But whatever we call them, these needs include humanity’s craving for purpose and meaning.

The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs says “man does not live by bread alone” is a proverb that means that “in order to survive, people need more than physical things like food and shelter; people need mental or spiritual things like satisfaction and love.”11 The McGraw-Hill dictionary also illustrates the meaning of this proverb through a dialogue between two people:

Alan: I’m so miserable.

Jill: How can you be miserable? You’ve got a good place to live, plenty to eat, nice clothes …

Alan: But man does not live by bread alone.12

At West Point I learned that effective leaders provide people with purpose and meaning, because the human condition causes us to crave purpose and meaning like plants crave sunlight and water. If people are given a deep sense of purpose and meaning, they will work hard and even willingly die for a cause. Throughout history countless people have died for causes that give them purpose and meaning, such as their freedom, family, country, religion, and ideals such as democracy. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. died for peace and justice, while many soldiers and activists died struggling for the rights and freedom of others.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this secret was common sense. Human beings, no matter what racial or religious background they come from, want a reason to get out of bed in the morning. They want their work to be rewarding. They want life experiences that give them emotional fulfillment. They want to feel that their existence matters. And they want to feel connected to something larger than themselves, whether it is their friends, family, country, planet, God, a mission, or an ideal. They want something worth living for, and even something worth dying for.

We can better understand humanity’s craving for purpose and meaning by exploring the story of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Sisyphus had been condemned to hell, which was called Tartarus in Greek mythology. The book Mythology, edited by C. Scott Littleton, describes Tartarus, where people who committed evil and many of the Titans who rebelled against Zeus were tortured for eternity:

The real terror that assailed the dying was the thought of being condemned to take the road to Tartarus, increasingly thought of as the destination of sinners. Tartarus was a pit so deep that it was said that an anvil dropped from Earth would take nine or ten days to reach the bottom. Much of it was in total darkness. Within its bounds, wrong-doers faced eternity under the worst torments. One was Ixion, who had killed his future father-in-law, then tried to carry off Zeus’s own wife; his fate was to be stretched forever on a wheel of fire … Sisyphus, who had seized his brother’s throne and betrayed Zeus’s secrets, had to keep pushing a huge boulder up a steep hill, only to see it roll down each time he neared the top …

Tartarus’s horrors endured in a long lineage of colorful accounts. They were described by the Roman poet Virgil in the first century BC. Thirteen hundred years later, Virgil’s poetic vision was in Dante’s mind when he wrote his Inferno, although by then Tartarus had been subsumed into Christian notions of hell.13

In the Odyssey, written by the Greek poet Homer nearly three thousand years ago, the warrior Odysseus sees Sisyphus in Tartarus. Homer’s description of Sisyphus gives us important insights into the human condition:

And I saw Sisyphus too, bound to his own torture, grappling his monstrous boulder with both arms working, heaving, hands struggling, legs driving, he kept on thrusting the rock uphill toward the brink, but just as it teetered, set to topple over—time and again the immense weight of the thing would wheel it back and the ruthless boulder would bound and tumble down to the plain again—so once again he would heave, would struggle to thrust it up, sweat drenching his body, dust swirling above his head.14

Greek mythology is filled with brilliant metaphors, and the punishments in Tartarus reveal that the Greeks knew some important truths about psychology and the human condition. They knew that torture could consist not only of extreme pain inflicted on the body, but also the loss of all purpose and meaning. Sisyphus experiences hell not because of the strain he feels from pushing the heavy boulder uphill, but the sense of futility he feels when the boulder refuses to go over the top of the hill, rolling back downhill despite his best efforts. His repetitive actions serve no purpose. They have no meaning, and all of his work seems in vain. Imagine struggling with every ounce of your strength to push a boulder uphill, only to see it roll back downhill, and repeating this meaningless cycle for eternity. You would go insane.

Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, realized that finding purpose and meaning is important not only for our sanity, but also our survival. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner described Frankl’s contribution to our understanding of the human condition:

Frankl approvingly quotes the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” He describes poignantly those prisoners [in Auschwitz] who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future and were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for. By contrast, Frankl kept himself alive and kept hope alive by summoning up thoughts of his wife and the prospect of seeing her again, and by dreaming at one point of lecturing after the war about the psychological lessons to be learned from the Auschwitz experience. Clearly, many prisoners who desperately wanted to live did die, some from disease, some in the crematoria. But Frankl’s concern is less with the question of why most died than it is with the question of why anyone at all survived.

Terrible as it was, his experience in Auschwitz reinforced what was already one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it …

My own congregational experience has shown me the truth of Frankl’s insights. I have known successful businessmen who, upon retirement, lost all zest for life. Their work had given their lives meaning. Often it was the only thing that had given their lives meaning and, without it, they spent day after day sitting at home, depressed, “with nothing to do.” I have known people who rose to the challenge of enduring the most terrible afflictions and situations as long as they believed there was a point to their suffering … Having a Why to live for enabled them to bear the How.15

Discussing his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz, Frankl explained how prisoners who found purpose and meaning in the midst of suffering were better able to endure the tremendous hardship of the concentration camp:

Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” could be the guiding motto … regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.16

When suffering has no purpose and meaning (which is symbolized by the psychological torture of Sisyphus in Tartarus), it feels like a senseless hell. But when we find meaning in our suffering, we can “bear the cross” with courage and dignity. Christian philosophy teaches that suffering becomes redemptive when it serves a high moral purpose. This is symbolized by Jesus, whom many Christians believe was able to carry the cross despite its heavy weight, because he knew his suffering was for the benefit of humanity.

Gandhi applied this to leadership by giving people a purpose for their suffering. In The Art of Waging Peace, I explain how Gandhi was more strategically brilliant and innovative than any general I have ever studied. In his struggle against colonialism, he used nonviolent tactics such as protests, boycotts, and “going to prison for a just cause” to undermine the authority of the British Empire—the most powerful empire in the world.

Throughout human history, people have dreaded going to prison. Because Gandhi had an ingenious understanding of the human condition, however, he realized people will voluntarily suffer if they know it serves an important purpose. How incredible was Gandhi’s leadership ability? He was the first leader in history who motivated tens of thousands of people to want to go to prison. Gandhi did not even pay these people. Unlike presidents and generals, Gandhi had no official authority, instead having to rely on his moral authority.

Gandhi motivated people to voluntarily suffer for a cause by first leading by example (he spent many years in prison himself), and by giving them a noble purpose they felt strongly about. Gandhi scholar Michael Nojeim describes how Gandhi’s understanding of the human condition allowed him to transform prison from something people dreaded into something they desired:

Ordinarily, going to jail was supposed to be a shameful, peril-riddled experience that no self-respecting Hindu, and surely not one from Gandhi’s social status, could ever imagine or countenance. But Gandhi changed all that because he was able to convince other Indians that going to jail while fighting for a just cause could be a point of honor and even prestige. He made going to jail “the hallmark of integrity and national commitment rather than an experience of degradation and public shame” (Brown, 1989, 117). Moreover, Indians having served time in jail for taking principled, nonviolent stances often increased their political stock among their nationalist brethren, which added to their qualifications to become high-ranking members of the Indian Congress Party …

Gandhi’s repeated incarcerations in South Africa (in 1908, 1909, and 1913) for conducting civil disobedience campaigns provided an excellent training ground for other reasons. He learned to court and face prison sentences with pride and resilience and for the sake of conscience.17

Describing how Gandhi’s leadership transformed perceptions in Indian society, Narayan Desai discusses how he reacted when his father—who served as Gandhi’s secretary—was arrested by the police:

A batch of policemen came to arrest my father, and some of us young children were following the police van and instead of saying “Bye bye papa” or something like that, I was telling him, “Papa, this time no less than two years,” which means I want you to be in prison for no less than two years. You see, it was a [source of] pride to have your father sentenced for two years and not for three months or so. So Gandhi’s idea is what had touched even the children in that atmosphere.18

Applying Gandhi’s tactics and understanding of the human condition to the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. gave many people a high sense of purpose and meaning that motivated them to confront physical danger, go to prison, and even die for their cause. Civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis, who was beaten and imprisoned as a young activist during the civil rights movement, said, “Growing up in the rural South, it was not the thing to do … to go to jail. It was bringing shame and disgrace on the family. But for me, I tell you, it was like being involved in a holy crusade. It became a badge of honor.”19

Civil rights leaders knew that when people have a high sense of purpose and meaning, they become stronger when facing a variety of dangerous situations, such as being kidnapped. Civil rights leader Bernard Lafayette said the movement taught people that “in order to remain strong during a kidnap situation, you must maintain a clear sense of purpose in life, and have a motto that states what your life means or some particular value that you have chosen.”20

The U.S. military teaches the same thing. Soldiers are required to learn the Code of Conduct, which states: “I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense … If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners … I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free.”21

Of course, being kidnapped or becoming a prisoner of war are terrible situations that can break even the strongest minds after a prolonged period of time, but the more purpose and meaning people have, the longer it can take for them to be broken. As Victor Frankl said in the earlier quote, “Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.”22

Just as food and water can nourish and strengthen our body, purpose and meaning can nourish and strengthen our mind. Victor Frankl referred to our craving for purpose and meaning as the “will to meaning.” He realized people of all races and religions experience this kind of hunger, because it is part of our shared humanity. In a world where so many are starving for purpose and meaning, how can we best feed ourselves? According to Frankl, people often feed their craving for purpose and meaning with activities that are empty and unsatisfying, just as eating dirt does not satisfy our stomachs and drinking salt water does not satisfy our thirst.

Frankl realized that when we base our purpose and meaning entirely on greed, for example, it does not satisfy us as much as the psychological nutrition found in a life devoted to deep empathy and service to others. Frankl said, “Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure.”23

In this book I show how empathy is a powerful source of psychological nutrition, capable of satisfying our craving for purpose and meaning in ways few other things can. I also discuss what happens when the will to meaning collides with the storm of childhood trauma, like a ship caught in a ferocious hurricane. Furthermore, this book questions much of what we have been told about happiness. What if happiness is not the absence of struggle—as I have often heard—but finding purpose and meaning in our struggle? What if a struggle that gives us a deep sense of purpose and meaning is more fulfilling and rewarding than a life that lacks meaningful struggle?

Bernard Lafayette said, “Martin Luther King Jr. believed voluntary suffering builds character.”24 The U.S. military and many of the world’s greatest religious and philosophical traditions teach the same thing. Realizing that struggle can strengthen the human mind, Nietzsche said a person can cultivate an attitude toward life where “that which does not kill him makes him stronger.”25

This book will address many of the questions people have about happiness, while debunking common misconceptions. For example, people often associate smiling with happiness. Although people certainly smile when interacting with those they care about, people usually do not smile when engaged in an activity they love. How often do you see professional athletes smile when they are deep in concentration and completely focused? None of the great violinists perform while grinning ear to ear. If they smile at all while performing it is rare. This is because when human beings are deep in concentration, when they are “in the zone,” they almost never smile.

During a 60 Minutes interview, the father of world chess champion Magnus Carlsen told journalist Bob Simon how much his son enjoys chess. Since Carlsen almost never smiles while playing chess, Simon reacted with surprise and said, “When I look at him, enjoyment is not the word that comes to mind.” Carlsen’s father responded, “It should. Maybe you have to compare it to a writer or a painter. Probably if you see them at work, they are not smiling or having an easy time. They are exploiting their mind to the utmost, and the same with the chess players.”26

In addition to gaining a deeper understanding of joy and suffering, perhaps the most important tool I have gained from exploring the human condition is the ability to increase my empathy for all human beings. In order to build our empathy for humanity, the first step is recognizing what we have in common with all people, regardless of their racial or religious background.

For all people, working for something feels fulfilling when it gives us purpose and meaning. And all people can feel hurt and even betrayed when what they worked for loses its purpose and meaning. When Al Qaida captured the Iraqi city Fallujah in 2014 after the withdrawal of American forces, a U.S. Marine staff sergeant, whose comrades died so that American forces could gain control of Fallujah in 2004, explained his reaction: “It brings back a lot of anger … I feel like it’s been a big waste of time. It’s kind of like, why the hell did my buddies die there for? There’s no purpose to it [emphasis added].”27

When I learned that we all crave purpose and meaning, it became easier for me to find common ground with people, whether they call themselves liberals or conservatives, whether they are fellow American citizens or fellow citizens of the world. We are all vulnerable to the problem of finding purpose in our lives. We are all searching for meaning, and many of us remain psychologically and spiritually starved. The following chapters will offer more insights into the human condition, revealing other aspects of our shared humanity that can further expand our empathy.

Cynicism can interfere with empathy. Today it has become trendy to trash-talk humanity. It has become fashionable to say in a cynical tone, “Humanity sucks. We are like a cancer upon the earth. We are a stupid, inherently violent, and bad species.” But the following chapters will explain why I respect and love humanity, despite the traumatic upbringing that has given me reasons to hate the entire human race. When we derive purpose and meaning from nutritious sources such as empathy, we can all find reasons to respect and love humanity.

But what happens when we are unable to find purpose and meaning in our lives? What happens when we feel like Sisyphus day after day, and this emptiness lasts year after year? When this happens we will either “lead lives of quiet desperation”28 as philosopher Henry David Thoreau said, or self-destruct and likely hurt others in the process.

The road to peace leads away from desperation and destruction. As we journey together on the road to peace in the following chapters, we will explore the deepest mysteries of the human condition and the universe we inhabit, searching for answers, finding light in storms and darkness.