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A transactional ethos has overtaken our land. We can see its most extreme form in Donald Trump. We also see it blatantly showcased, not only by greedy plutocrats but by the titans of high-tech, many of which now pledge allegiance to Trump.
These titans aspire not to make things better on Earth but to build massive rocketships to send colonists to impregnate new virgin planets after we have wantonly raped this one.
Trump anointed two of these titans, Musk and Ramaswamy, to be his efficiency czars, tasked with cutting two billion from our budget. They regard themselves as superior beings, dismissive of both their fellow humans and Earth itself.
We are in big trouble!
Neo-Nazis are marching in our streets to support Trump’s agenda of ‘might make right.’ Ethics will no longer matter, making the notion of right and wrong seem quaint. Nothing will have innate worth, specialness, or sacredness since everything from now on will be transactional. The only thing that matters will be whether you can be useful to the supreme ruler.
Viktor Frankl, survival of the Nazi concentration camps and author of the perennial best-seller, “Man’s Search for Meaning, “ has persuasively argued that the final end result of transactional thinking is death camps. He explained that when a society’s value system is based solely on an individual’s usefulness, then it is inconsistent “not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, “mercy” killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.1
Trump typifies this model, disparaging our soldiers who die in defense of our country as ’suckers and losers,’ and telling his nephew, Fred, that people with certain types of severe disabilities “should just die.”2
Conversely, Frankl, following in our best humanistic tradition, asserts that a person’s value is based not on crass transactions but on our innate dignity and rests on “the unconditional value of each and every person.” With Trump’s election, We must all stand up and defend our sovereign rights.
Time and time again, we hear people say: “But I had no choice.” However, based on his experience in the death camps, Frankl maintains that there is always one final freedom. We can choose our attitude towards events.
Dr Stephen Covey, who was influenced by Frankl, reiterates this truth, stating that our ability to change and how we react to what happens to us is a function of choice: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”3
As Americans, we face a choice of surrendering, which is what MAGA is counting on, or rising up to defend our dignity and welfare– along with those of our fellow citizens. We must hold on to hope that is strong and sturdy, as in the way ‘prairie mystic” Carrie Newcomer defines it: Hope is not a feeling; it is a choice.4
In the end, it is up to us.
As Frankl wrote in a postscript to “Man’s Search for Meaning” in 1984:
“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.5”
xxx
Photo Credit:
A photo I took of the sculpture by the African artist Chuke: “Statue of Limitations” (2018) Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA
Footnotes:
1 Frankl, Viktor E. “The Case for a Tragic Optimism” (postscript to Man’s Search for Meaning). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984
2 https://www.justsecurity.org/98261/disability-think-differently-trump/
3 Pattakos, Alex., and Dundon, E. (2017). Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl’s Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work, 3rd edition. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
4 https://carrienewcomer.substack.com/p/hope-ishope-is-not/comments
5 Frankl, Viktor E. “The Case for a Tragic Optimism” (postscript to Man’s Search for Meaning). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984
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