SOMETHING MORE THAN INDIVIDUAL NEED

It may be hard to believe, there was a man who survived the death camps but lost his family to the same suffering and founded a new way of approaching existence and materialism.  As a student studying therapy faculty introduced me to a thin book The Will To Meaning. The unfamiliar author, a noted neurologist and psychiatrist and a holocaust survivor- Viktor Frankl offered a stunning notion we know as logotherapy, the foundation of my work for the next thirty years of work. I admit struggling to fit his ideas that drew attention away from the individual to the importance of ideas bigger than the individual. Why here?  It was purely happenstance, that I found a value to purer life meaning through the ethos of masonry echoed by Frankl following his discoveries during internment. Materialism means nothing. Lifes meaning is something more important that serving our own needs; something that comes into play as we try to make sense and draw meaning from our lives. I had just read a reference from her work Freemasonry & Politics in Eighteen-Century Europe, by historian Dr.Margaret Jacob.  The In 1744, the Grand Master recognized "the Order of Freemasons exisits to form men, agreeable men, good citizens, good subjects...to form in the course oftime a totally spiritual nation, where without denigrating from the various duties required by different states [or conditions], one [nevertheless] creates a new people. Given the situation in Paris at the time, I am disinclined to offer unnecessary comment.  As the humanist movement, a la Renaissance  as the history of the Greeks and Romans was rediscovered Freemasonry embraced character developed by service/charity to others.  During the Renaissance, value and agency of the individual emerged. Freemasonry took us further. Viktor Frankl captured the conviction on which the Order was formed.