Hello internet. It has again been some time. I come back to you imbued with a new sense of purpose in life. Soon I will have a new season of this podcast out, this time on moral philosophy. But first I wanted to make this special on the most important book of our time: this one right here. Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who survived the system of Nazi concentration camps spread across Europe; including within the overarching systems of infamous Auschwitz and Dachau. More than any other, this is the book we must be teaching to every single child in public education. I don’t care what Christian conservatives think; it’s not the Bible, it’s this book. My reasons as to why this book ought to be taught to every child constitute much of the remainder of this special…

…One thing I find remarkable is that, as far as I can tell, one of these realities has to be true. Either everything is light or everything is heavy, there is no in between. And it’s not necessarily the eternal return that has to make it heavy as we’ll see later in the novel, but rather there being in a cosmic sense some ultimate impact of our lives, something that survives into eternity in one form or another. Even if we are reincarnated into nine hundred trillion lives, our actions become light if we fail to come back for nine hundred trillion and one…

Siddhartha was raised as the son of a Brahman, which in the culture is a sort of religious/priestly caste. I’m not an expert on the subject, but caste systems at least are fairly standard knowledge. He was privileged, and basically spoon-fed wisdom, old teachings of the Brahmans and such, from birth.

But as he grew older, he was not satisfied with what he had. He was not convinced that the world of the gods and men written on parchment is all there is. On one reading, this part isn’t all that profound. It’s the common trope of the hero’s journey, the hero must leave home and seek out the novel and the unknown in order to improve their own lives and the lives of those they care about…