Last March, an airplane was intentionally taken to crash landing by its 27 year-old co-pilot, killing all 150 passengers. Andreas Lubitz had been diagnosed as a depressive ‘burnout’ years before the incident took place. He is said to have prepared for and even ‘rehearsed’ the event on a previous flight before enacting it successfully on the tragic day. The world was devastated by the news of so many innocent lives lost as a result of the suicidal mass murder.
Psychologists had apparently been unable to take care of the ailment after the diagnosis was made, as is but normal to expect from the deeply rooted pandemic state that mental depression has assumed in today’s society, while it is safe to assume that they didn’t suspect in the least the possibility of the mass murder as a result of Andreas’ prevailing psychological condition. The simple question that comes to mind is: How did the ‘burnout’ condition take possession of the young man so early in his life? In fact, acute depression is so wide-spread in modern society, across diverse age groups, that repeated occurrence of violence on innocent, unrelated people, often in large numbers at a time, is seen to be committed by the affected agents overpowered by their ailment.
More recently, the news of fatal shooting in a church in South Carolina by a young man on people engaged in their Bible study stunned us all. True, there is a racial overtone present here. However, racism is not expected to have expressed itself in a form it did without being triggered by a severe psychological frustration, it seems safe to imagine. This, along with so many other incidents in recent times of public violence, totally unprovoked, are normally read as isolated occurrences, apparently not linked one to the other, perpetrated occasionally by solitary social misfits who have failed to take proper care of themselves in life. We would like to explore whether there is a social reason connecting a fairly good number of these incidents, if not all.
It might be relevant in this connection to bring to mind the reported surge in episodes of bullying lately at schools in North America, incidents that have often led to deaths. This of course is on top of mindless mass fatal attacks in public places, including schools, in astoundingly quick succession of repeats of similar events, and the abundance of other forms of violence in society where family violence has its fair share, in spite of the legal deterrence in operation. The legal system on its own, as we would expect, does not ensure that people are happy, contented and at peace. It fails to prevent the irresistible inclination to indulge in violent acts, arising out of a deep-rooted discontent and unhappiness, from reaching a widespread, if not epidemic proportion in society, as many believe has happened today. The reason behind the problem lies in the propagation of greed and discontent that the modern way of living is built to generate, which the legal system tries to curb, but is not equipped to take care of at the source.
Meaning in life vis-a-vis meaning of life
Thus, value after all seems to be the issue at hand bereft of which life’s meaning is missing, yielding place to bullying, mass killings and other abhorrent forms of behaviour growing reportedly commonplace each passing day. Choosing any and every value certainly does not lead to enjoying in the meaning of life, as is quite evident. A serial thief and killer, by all means, has a value that fits into his own meaning in life, although he cannot be said to have a meaningful life in so far as his value of life lacks the possibility to provide physical or psychological sustainability, either to himself or to others, bereft as he is of the meaning of life. A celebrity musician may have a meaning in life which may be said to contribute to a meaningful life to a great extent, his own as well as others’. However, without a sustainable meaning of life, he may end his life prematurely, or continue living a fragmented life with drug addiction and other indulgences so long as he is biologically alive, as is commonplace in modern times. The unsustainable part of his character, needless to say, is likely to have an undesirable influence on the fans, especially the susceptible young minds in their formative stage. What such individuals lack is the virtue harmony within to support their proficiencies. The virtue needs to be imbibed both in the individual and the society, to an extent, for the society to continue offering the basis of the quality of life that makes meaningful living possible for individuals.
Positive Psychology and the Virtue Harmony Within
Freud does not have any room for cultivating the virtue harmony within in his philosophy. The process of sublimation does not have a positive status, in as much as he considers it an escape route for the individual in its role of a defence mechanism from the onslaught of the instinctive urge of the libido. Since sublimation, according to him, denies the individual her basic, primary and overwhelming value of life in satisfaction of the instinctive urge, he hesitates to reserve a commendable position for it.
The prominent psychotherapist who has made the area of existential meaning the focal point in his theory and practice is Viktor Frankl. He has talked of the will to meaning in human beings, which he believes makes us contented when channelled in the right way, curing us of our psychological ailments. Once the social dimension of the incidence of psychological depression in today’s life, which finds prominence in the midst of material abundance, is given adequate consideration, we can expect introduction of institutionalized measures to facilitate the road to harmony within while opening the individual to a true meaning of life. This will help check potential mass atrocities committed by people suffering from depression to a large extent, as well as help prevention of the likes of the Wall Street crisis, on the heels of the Enron debacle at the beginning of this century, which occurred in spite of the legal measures in place, and shook the financial stability of the whole world. With the desired greed-management effort accompanying the focus on the virtue harmony within, the future senators in Canada will find questionable ways many of today’s representatives happened to choose, not fitting into a life they would consider meaningful, thus setting examples for others in doing what is expected to be done. Individual therapy by itself may not be enough to prevent another Auschwitz where Frankl was detained and built his Logotherapy later on the basis of his interface with institutionalized torture at its height there. Introduction of Yoga, in its broad sense, meaning connectivity, may be a step to building the virtue harmony within that holds the clue to life’s meaning. The journey is not easy or smooth. But it has to be initiated, at the social level. If we ignore the importance of harmony within in the individual life, and the role of society in upholding it, what happens is the presence of suffering all over, as we see now.
Harmony Within Leading To Harmony Around
Here are a few words on the nature of the virtue that we have talked about so far: Inner harmony for a person means harmony achieved at the cognitive, affective and conative levels. Her cognitive world is harmoniously arranged as she keeps her mind open to new horizons. She has affective harmony within that manifests itself in the expression of dignity in relating to animate and inanimate objects, and forbids eccentricities as inner peace and joy prevail, even in the midst of challenging circumstances. The actions she performs hold together in a harmonious way, too, without being incongruous, haphazard, or the least absurd and exclusive[1], while she is involved in helping ameliorate disharmony around[2], according to capacity and inclination. There is a concurrent harmony holding here across the board combining all the three levels, so that if harmony is found missing anywhere around (cognitive level), the situation affects the person (affective level), triggering her thought process (cognitive level), which may lead to a suitable action befitting the situation (conative level).[3] Although she attempts to ensure that harmony is maintained within and without, she does not lose her cool if the actions planned fail to lead to the desired consequences; neither is she off her balance in a fit of ecstasy if they do.[4] The meaning of life based on harmony within prompts one to look for harmony all the way, and help maintain, and build it if found missing by any chance, not just because it ‘is the best policy’, but for some deeper existential reason. It is but natural that one established to an extent in inner harmony is sensitive to the harmony, or lack of it, within or around. Thus, a person imbedded in the virtue harmony within not only does not feel prone to building satisfaction upon exploitation of fellow beings, with cruelty meted out while vanity reigns supreme, as dishonesty and short-sightedness, resting on self-indulgence, find expression in arrogance; she looks forward to doing good to others, including non-humans, and taking care of the inanimate world with a feeling of affection and respect. No wonder harmony within spills over to establishing harmony outside as needed.
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[1] A person in a state of harmony is not hateful of the vicious people, or even of vice itself, in as much as she transcends the level of vice, in a harmonious way, and sees, with equanimity, its presence in society.
[2] The Gita talks about the involvement of Yoga practitioners in doing good to all.
[3] ‘And all [the] apparently disparate elements,’ as indicated before, combining the cognitive, affective and conative areas, ‘can [be seen to] form a unity in human nature; that is, they can be recognized as a way a human being, given human psychology, could be’. (Rosalind Hursthouse in ‘Environmental Virtue Ethics’, p. 160)
[4] The Gita has dealt with this state in detail.
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