I recently read, in one sitting, Man’s Search for Meaning by the psychiatrist Victor Frankl.

The book, if you haven’t read it — and if you haven’t, you should — is split into two parts: the first, a chronicle of Frankl’s experiences in a succession of Nazi concentration camps; the second, a concise exploration of his psychotherapeutic theory, logotherapy.

Frankl’s strategy is to surrender himself entirely to fate

If this all sounds a bit heavy, a bit depressing, worry not: it isn’t. In fact, it’s one of the most uplifting books I’ve read for years.

The first half is a stark reminder that no matter how shit you think your life is, there are many millions in recent history who had it a lot, lot shitter. The suffering Frankl endures is almost unbelievable — and all related in beautifully cut, sharp, clinical prose that pulls you through the mists of time and emotion right into the moment.

Frankl’s strategy for survival is to surrender himself entirely to fate. On several occasions, this approach — to uncompromisingly accept his circumstances — directly saves his life. 

What sustains him is not the starvation diet, the daily bowl of thin soup and tiny piece of bread he just about manages to subsist on, but the love of his wife and the love of his work: work he plans to resume when the war is over, and prepares for by making tiny notes for his next book on a scrap of paper.

He is kept alive by meaning — meaning as opposed to hope or superstition, both of which Frankl observes are prone to collapse, leading inevitably, in the context of a concentration camp, to the individual giving up and dying. This forms the basis of logotherapy, which posits that finding meaning is an individual’s primary motivator. It is meaning that allows us to endure. Indeed, in normal life, it is our ticket to what we might call happiness.

It is no surprise that this existential insight has been repackaged by figures such as Jordan Peterson — and others, often conservative in nature — who have made an industry out of providing succour to the mounting pile of neurotic young people.

Yet Man’s Search for Meaning is a rather less pretentious book than many recent offerings. It is a better text than Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life, for instance. By eschewing pseudo-intellectualism, it gets straight to the heart of the problem — a problem as relevant now as when the book was first published, in 1946.

We live now in a world that is awash with material goods. Despite our current challenges — the pandemic, war in Ukraine — we are, for the most part, warmer and better fed than we’ve ever been. Physical labour is something many of us can avoid entirely. Those that do manual work, such as plumbers or builders, are in many cases well rewarded for it. There is opportunity; there are routes to success and ladders out of poverty. Better lives are available. Yet, people — younger people in particular — are increasingly unhappy.

You can see it in their fixed smiles and desperate eyes

Part of it perhaps is rootlessness. Everybody around my age wants to own a home, yet few feel they will ever be able to. The difficult truth, for younger people in London at least, is they probably could buy an apartment, but it would mean relocating. If they wish to preserve their urban lifestyle, one could relocate to one of our other major cities, where prices are more manageable — I did this, and chose Manchester, but there are plenty of other options. (I understand why this course of action is unattractive. Such a decision can only be made after a cold-headed, and therefore painful, analysis of your personal prospects — “is my trajectory such that I really need to be in London?” — and nobody as they hover about thirty wants to engage in the reality of that.)

Not only are young people often rootless physically, but emotionally, too. Take the rise in hook-up and dating apps. In both cases, the real reason people are on there is more likely loneliness than horniness: a longing for human connection. Then check out what they say about themselves, if they say anything at all. “Atheist”. “Liberal”. Sometimes, “love holidays”. Or, worse, “love the gym”.

And that’s it. That’s how everyone presents. We have a youth, in precarious accommodation, living half-digitally, denuded of any real culture or depth, bobbing in a sea of anxiety. No wonder they are drugged up, bogged down and miserable. You can see it in their fixed smiles and desperate eyes.

No wonder, also, that they are increasingly attracted to the easy answers of the extreme left and extreme right. But political activism is flimsy and febrile. A socialist revolution, or a right-wing strongman, will not solve any of their problems.

Victor Frankl had his God, but his seminal work isn’t an argument for theism. He also had the love of his wife — which seemed, for him, to transcend her murder — and his work. 

He had meaning. Waving a flag — be it a union flag, or a rainbow flag, or a hammer and sickle — does not give a person meaning. Nor does casual sex. But, Frankl teaches us, find what is meaningful to you, and you can endure anything.