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Originally Posted by NICOTINEGUN
I actually just found that book in a pile of unwanted literature here on the FOB. I am going to read it eventually. But he is correct. That is why I find it fascinating that so many healthcare professionals and fitness gurus shovel their findings down our throat "you won't live unless you take this," "You are going to die of cancer unless you read this book and," it goes on and on. I often used the prison camp arguement with people.
Look what they went through, without vitamins, without food and water, without the secret potion made from Shark fins, etc. They had one thing: the will to survive, and that was enough. Your brain is God, like Mr. Leary once said. Find your passion and your meaning and you will live a long and fruitful life, unless you are hit by a car or eaten alive by tiger sharks, of course. You get the idea.
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We tend to be a nation of hypochondriacs with a 1,000 snake oil salesmen with just the thing for our every possible woe, but I don't think Aushwitz is the argument to use to prove these characters wrong. The ovens aside, the death rate at the Nazi camps was beyond our human comprehension. People died for lack of food, lack of medicine, no modern sanitation, no proper clothing, exposure to outbreaks of cholera and typhus, on and on. Frankl managed to survive through an extreme act of will and extreme luck. He was a young man when imprisoned and he was a physician. As a doctor, he was able to obtain some extra rations and slightly better treatment which greatly helped his ability to survive.
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Originally Posted by NICOTINEGUN
Lookout123, take it easy. I'm sure the Jews even had laughter in their prison camps. It's what keeps us human. Dont' be so quick to take offense. We have to unlearn this state of constant offense that the Clinton adminstration instilled upon us. Let's start here.
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I think Lookout just wasn't up for such a serious discussion. He'd have to tell us, though. You are correct, Frankl does write of moments of humor which the prisoners used to make their lives at least a little more endurable when they possibly could. Lookout and I are sparring partners from way back, and Clinton doesn't really enter into it unless Lookout knows something that I don't. What did Clinton ever do to you, anyhow? Political correctness was around long before old Bill ever showed up on the scene, and Clinton was anything BUT politically correct if you ask me.
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Originally Posted by Pie
Life's a pile of shit, then you die.
Don't bother trying to cheer us up.
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Life has its moments, but they are over quickly enough. This thought has always given me great solace.