Nonsense. One's life meaning is traditionally simply their social role. The reason people lack meaning now is that we started determining our social roles by way of market whims, which means our roles are temporary at best and imaginary at worst. It also creates a market for braindead individualist philosophizing to explain why everyone feels so lonely and lost. Sterile precarity is the problem, not the solution.
The context in which frankl wrote this was as a concentration camp survivor, quite different than the postmodern capitalist lends you seem to be evaluating it through
Notably, man’s search for meaning was 1946 iirc and postmodernism didn’t really ascend until some time later
When reading this question I just happened to recall a Soviet writer, who was Jewish, who I think did see the concentration camps and write about them but wasn't a victim of them.
But, this person didn't write in favor of communism despite being a writer in the Soviet Union. Their books were censored.
I found his book "Everything Flows" to be extremely interesting. It is a fictional account of a Soviet gulag survivor returning to his home, and reflecting on the people he meets and his life.
I don't agree with this approach at all, but even accepting what I think are its foundations, this seems to be conflating "social role" with "employment". Unless I misunderstand.
Before employment, there was only social roles. In other words, they should absolutely be conflated. It is absurd and foolhardy to attempt separating them.
> One's life meaning is traditionally simply their social role. The reason people lack meaning now is that we started determining our social roles by way of market whims
John Stuart Mill noted that liberalism leaves the determination of social roles to individuals because the end result drives more progress than the alternatives.
> Sterile precarity is the problem, not the solution.
What to do instead? Non-sterile precarity as in feudalism?
