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18 Jan 2023 - How can we find meaning in these difficult times? Viktor E Frankl Tonight Liz reflects on a recent read - "Man's Search for Meaning" a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome.
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18 Jan 2023 - How can we find meaning in these difficult times? Viktor E Frankl Tonight Liz reflects on a recent read - "Man's Search for Meaning" a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome.
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The speaker discusses the topic of individual rights and the importance of protecting them against the influence of collective guilt and groupthink. They reference a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, a survivor of concentration camps, and his perspective on finding meaning in suffering. They emphasize the value of each individual and the need to differentiate between usefulness and dignity. The speaker also touches on the topic of euthanasia and criticizes nihilism in psychotherapy. They urge therapists to maintain loyalty to the principles of logotherapy and promote independent thinking. And I'll just go and do the live on Facebook as well. There we go. There we go. Awesome. Yep. Make sure I don't leave the meeting like I did the last time. Yeah, it's a bit of an unstable connection. I can see that, but that's okay. What we're going to talk about tonight and what you're going to hear tonight, people, is something that will probably shock you to the core, make our troubles seem light, but I believe what lies in our future unless we take hold of the situation and use the law. And we've certainly got all of the law on our side. What I'm going to play for you is parts of a book called Man's Search for Meaning. It's by an author called Viktor Frankl, and he was a survivor. He died in 95, I think. He was a survivor of four concentration camps. Auschwitz was the largest one. He was also in Dachau. Towards the end, I think Dachau was the last camp he was in, but he was in another two small camps as well. And he's a psychologist or psychotherapist. He has a method. Quite a lot of the book is to do with the difference between his method and Freud's method, which is very interesting because Freud, to a certain extent, has this attitude that the problem is ourselves, and it's kind of a bit the fetus because you just sort of have to keep on having therapy your whole life. And I mean, of course, that's worth a lot of money, and we know that psychiatrists these days are a big, big part of Big Pharma, and that is where I believe they are trying to go with us in terms of all, especially you guys will just have had the slightest taste of it in what's called employee assistance programs. I think they called that. One of you will be able to enlighten me on that. But basically, and I've talked about it before, that they talk about conspiracy theories, but EAP, employee assistance programs, is it? Yeah, programs. What they are is the thin edge of the wedge. They talk about us as conspiracy theorists. They say we're crazy. We're et cetera, et cetera. So what do you do with crazy people? You send them off for therapy, don't you? Yep. Well, I mean, they already think that the human being is a very inferior. Inferior creature. This is the whole basis of euthanasia. Right? God didn't get it right, actually. Man can improve on it. Right? Man can improve on it. So if there's one thing that you think about tonight is don't ever think that what you've suffered was anything to do with your attitude to what happened to you. For example, and this psychotherapist, Mr. Frankel, Dr. Frankel, he's got a great spiritual attitude. Because he looks at suffering as a way to gain a spiritual overview and use it as a defense of yourself. Right? So we're going to talk a little bit about what it means. And then in the end, I want to talk about, and I'm going to play bits of the book to you. What I want to talk about in the end is how do our individual human rights come into this story? His ultimate lesson, takeaway lesson, is that it's always the individual who resists. And there's always a very small number of us. But in the end, and you can do other things with this realization of your individual, if you like, your individual against the group mentality. That you can do it. If you use it in action. Because the other thing he talks about in the book is there's quite a few ways of actually getting in touch with the spiritual side. One, what he's talked about mainly in this book is his realization of the spiritual aspect of suffering in the camps. However, he says it doesn't have to be that. It can be an action. It can be taking action. Or it can be appreciating beauty, the beauty of nature. Those are the three things he talks about. But anyway, I'll stop now and I'll just play a little bit. This is part three. Let's see. Oh, I hope it's going to do it. Because I don't want to talk about the book all night. Come on, open up. Here we go. Now, I'm going to play it from about three minutes. Oh, that's just the right song. was again present. The murderous capo entered the room by chance, and he was asked to recite one of his poems, which had become famous, or infamous, in camp. He did not need to be asked twice, and quickly produced a kind of diary from which he began to read samples of his art. I bit my lips till they hurt in order to keep from laughing at one of his love poems. And very likely, that saved my life. Since I was also generous with my applause, my life might have been saved even had I been detailed to his working party, to which I had previously been assigned for one day, a day that was quite enough for me. It was useful, anyway, to be known to the murderous capo from a favorable angle. So I applauded as hard as I could. Generally speaking, of course, any pursuit of art in camp was somewhat grotesque. But I would say that the real impression made by anything connected with art arose only from the ghost-like contrast between the performance and the background of desperate camp life. I shall never forget how I awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion on my second night in Auschwitz, roused by music. The senior warden of the hut had some kind of celebration in his room, which was near the entrance of the hut. Tipsy voices bawled some hackneyed tunes. Suddenly there was a silence, and into the night a violin sang a desperately sad tango, an unusual tune not spoiled by frequent playing. The violin wept, and a part of me wept with it, for on that same day someone had a twenty-fourth birthday. That someone lay in another part of the Auschwitz camp, possibly only a few hundred or a thousand yards away, and yet completely out of reach. That someone was my wife. To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider. But he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well. Of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation. He was a surgeon, and had been an assistant on the staff of a large hospital. So I once tried to get him to smile by describing to him how he would be unable to lose the habits of camp life when he returned to his former work. On the building site, especially when the supervisor made his tour of inspection, the foreman encouraged us to work faster by shouting, Action! Action! I told my friend, One day you will be back in the operating room performing a big abdominal operation. Suddenly an orderly will rush in announcing the arrival of the senior surgeon by shouting, Action! Action! Sometimes the other men invented amusing dreams about the future, such as forecasting that during a future dinner engagement they might forget themselves when the soup was served and beg the hostess that they lit from the bottom. Yeah, okay guys, that was the wrong part, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, so I wanted to actually play you the whole of the fourth part because it's basically talking about the group, the individual against the group. Now, of course, I've been talking about the value of the human rights legislation and personal grievances. They are all individual actions against the group or the corporate, the company. So I believe, actually, that the Bill of Rights Act, the modern covenants of civil and political rights, they must have arisen directly out of what happened in the concentration camps. Because it's the only way that you can make sure that you're not painted by group things, is an individual action. And you never know. And, of course, the Bill of Rights Act, New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, it is our protection against the arms of the state and other people, other groups who are exercising that. And I think it's because the realisation, you know, they did plenty of studies about how people got through, why people didn't just give up and die in those camps. And I believe that what's called jurisprudence or people who actually think about making new law or think about law that can be used to push back on this sort of thing, they probably thought, right, the only thing to do is to protect the individual against the group, because that is what, you know, that is what is the problem. The group, the collectives, you know, people like to think of, oh, the collectives, that means left-wing stuff, that's socialism, that's et cetera, et cetera. But at its heart, fascism is a form of socialism. The Nazis' full name is the National Socialist Workers' Party. That's the translation of the Nazis. So I'll just see if I can get another, I don't know why it didn't come up with the right part of the search for meaning. Let's see if we can get it away again. I think some of you actually have read the book. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on it. Let's see if we've got the right one now. Rewards were given in camp not only for entertainment but also for applause. I, for example, could have found protection, but luckily I was never in need of it, from the camp's most dreaded kapo. For more than one good reason we're known as the murderous kapo. I seem to be stuck on that one. Ah, gee, that's a shame. I was just looking to see if, because I had it on, you've got it on Audible, Liz, or something else. What, you mean what, oh, you've got another recording? No, it's because I've had it on Audible and I don't have an account going at the moment. The concept of collective guilt. I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons. Since the end of World War II, I have not become weary of publicly arguing against the collective guilt concept. Footnote, see also Victor E. Frankel, Psychotherapy and Existentialism, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1967. Now this thing, this is it, so I'll just pause it. This thing about collective guilt, right? I think that we can take this to heart in New Zealand at the moment, too, with what's going on with the co-governance bullshit. Or the, you know, the racism rubbish, or the, what is it supposed to be, that we're oppressors, because the new form, the oppressor and the oppressed have become the new classes, if you like. So it's always, you know, you get put into, if you've got some sort of view that doesn't gel with the group. Now, for example, the government is pushing that, you know, people who don't get back are putting the oppressed into danger. You know, and those oppressed have got, you know, their, somebody's, you know, they're a certain colour, for example. The, what do you call, that Matatini group, what are they called? The pink-haired lady in that lot. Their advice to the government was that Māori and Pacific Island people had much more chance of being, getting the vaccine, sorry, getting the disease. And so, you know, anybody who said no, no, no, then morally was put down as some sort of white supremacist or something. Or, I mean, you even had the group of 12, was it the group of 12 or the group of 10, and all of the ridiculous, crazy stuff that was going on about, there were certain groups of people where we got labelled as domestic terrorists, you know, because we were supposed to be putting down all of these oppressed people. So this is what happens with the group, so don't be worried about the fact that the small numbers of us, there will always be small numbers, but we've got a great, we've got a great weapon on our side with the law, and groups can't use it. Groups can't use it. So we're very fortunate in that. So I'll play some more of this one. Sometimes, however, it takes a lot of didactic tricks to detach people from their superstitions. An American woman once confronted me with a reproach, how can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler's language? Now, does that sound familiar? How can you write some of your books in German, Hitler's language? So English is the new language of the coloniser, right? So this is where superstition and groupthink take you, you know? In response, I asked her if she had knives in her kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, how can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims? Now here we've got another clue about why our Bill of Rights Act is so important. We need to be able to talk about these things without being censored. Now, in terms of that, what about the knives being used to kill and stab people? What about guns, right? This is the same sort of crazy argument about guns. Because knives can kill and stab people too, that's true. But when they're sitting in the cupboard or the drawer in the kitchens of sane people, they're absolutely no danger at all, same with guns. So I'm just not talking about the mandates or anything tonight. I'm talking about this whole idea that the rights that are contained, the individual rights that are contained in our Bill of Rights and other legislation like this, are extremely, extremely valuable to us. And they will be when the war with us in the end. She stopped objecting to my writing books in German. The third aspect of the tragic triad concerns death. But it concerns life as well, for at any time, each of the moments of which life consists is dying, and that moment will never recur. And yet is not this transitoriness a reminder that challenges us to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives? It certainly is, and hence my imperative, live as if you were living for the second time, and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfil a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualised a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past, wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. Now this is an interesting thought, isn't it? He wrote this, and I think this one was written in 1947, because it's another book that's a preview of, but, you know, it just sounds like everything that's on the net now is in the past, but it's irrevocably stored. So we have the evidence, always we have the evidence, and that's why they're trying to censor us on the net, but they haven't actually understood to a certain extent that we've got everything, we've got all of the evidence. Sure. People tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness, but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives, the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future, but they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past, the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized. And nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. In view of the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, life's meaning is an unconditional one at least potentially. That unconditional meaning, however, is paralleled by the unconditional value of each and every person. It is that which warrants the indelible quality of the dignity of man. Just as life remains potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable, so too does the value of each and every person stay with him or her. And it does so because it is based on the values that he or she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the usefulness that he or she may or may not retain in the present. More specifically, this usefulness is usually defined in terms of functioning for the benefit of society. But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy, and in particular it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference, and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, mercy-killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch. Even in the setting of training analyses, such an indoctrination may take place. Nihilism does not contend that there is nothing, but it states that everything is meaningless, and George A. Sargent was right when he promulgated the concept of learned meaninglessness. He himself remembered a therapist who said, George, you must realize that the world is a joke. There is no justice. Everything is random. Only when you realize this will you understand how silly it is to take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in the universe. It just is. There is no particular meaning in what decision you make today about how to act. Footnote. Transference and countertransference in logotherapy. The International Forum for Logotherapy, Volume 5, Number 2, Fall-Winter 1982, pages 115-118. One must not generalize such a criticism. In principle, training is indispensable. But if so, therapists should see their task in immunizing the trainee against nihilism, rather than inoculating him with a cynicism that is a defense mechanism against their own nihilism. Logotherapists may even conform to some of the training and licensing requirements stipulated by the other schools of psychotherapy. In other words, one may howl with the wolves, if need be, but when doing so, one should be, I would urge, a sheep in wolf's clothing. There is no need to become untrue to the basic concept of man and the principles of the philosophy of life inherent in logotherapy. Such a loyalty is not hard to maintain in view of the fact that, as Elizabeth S. Lucas once pointed out, throughout the history of psychotherapy, there has never been a school as undogmatic as logotherapy. Footnote. Logotherapy is not imposed on those who are interested in psychotherapy. It is not comparable to an oriental bazaar, but rather to a supermarket. In the former, the customer is talked into buying something. In the latter, he is shown and offered various things, from which he may pick what he deems usable and valuable. And at the First World Congress of Logotherapy, San Diego, California, November 6 to 8, 1980, I argued not only for the rehumanization of psychotherapy, but also for what I called the de-gurification of logotherapy. My interest does not lie in raising parrots that just rehash their master's voice, but rather in passing the torch to independent and inventive, innovative and creative spirits. Sigmund Freud once asserted, Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger, all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge. Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the individual differences did not blur, but on the contrary, people became more different. People unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. And today you need no longer hesitate to use the word saints. Think of Father Maximilian Kolbe, who was starved and finally murdered by an injection of carbonic acid at Auschwitz, and who in 1983 was canonized. You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples that are the exceptions to the rule. Said, Omnia praeplara tam difficilia quam rara sunt. But everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find. Reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to saints. Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority, for the world is in a bad state. Everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. So let us be alert, alert in a twofold sense. Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake. This concludes the reading of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Okay, right. We're back to discussion time. So anybody read the book? I did put out a little bit. I tried to put it out there a few days ago. But I just discovered this book at the weekend. And I just think that all of the things that we've been talking about on a personal level these last two years, it's pretty much we can understand a lot more about what has gone on with reference to that first attempt. There's probably been more attempts in the past. But, you know, that 1933 to 1939, and then the camps themselves, that was an attempt, you know, and coming from the same sorts of ideas that are current now. And what he was saying in that very last part about nihilism being taught in universities, that everything is meaningless. There is no justice. It's just random. That is why I believe that we've got so many functionally idiotic academics and so-called professionals, that it's the result of that. And so it's been a very planned program that's gone on. But, yeah, the law itself, I believe, we have had this put in preparation for us to use now, to escape and ultimately to overcome them. I'm going to try and put my video back on and see if anyone wants to have a chat about, you know, what you've heard or if you've... Oh, no, it's not going to work. I'm going to take the video off. Otherwise it looks like a naughty dog. Lynette said she had to reinstall Zoom, yeah, which is... Oh, right, yeah. Mine said just before I started out that it was updating Zoom. But I might have to reinstall it. But anyway. Yeah. Voices tonight. I just popped on to Kindle and bought the book. And there was a passage that I came across quite easily. It was actually like page 181, but for some reason it's popped up, talking about what... Let's first ask ourselves what should be understood by tragic optimism. And in brief, it means that one is and remains optimistic in spite of the tragic triad. It's also called in logotherapy a triad which consists of those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by pain, guilt and death. This chapter, in fact, raises the question, how is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all of that? How to pose the question differently, can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, saying yes to life in spite of everything, to use the phrase in which the title of a German book of mine is couched, presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this, in turn, presupposes that the human capacity to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. The best, however, is that in which Latin is called optimum, hence the reason I speak of tragic optimism, that is an optimism in face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for turning suffering into human achievement and accomplishment, number two, deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better, and number three, deriving from life's transitoryness an incentive to take responsibility, to take responsible action. It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately against all odds, against all hope. Yeah, that's what I really liked about that book, was those kinds of... Yeah, those kinds of... Yeah, remaining optimistic no matter what. Yeah. And, of course, we've got to remember that the court hearings, the justice that was meted out at both Nuremberg and in Tokyo, because Tokyo had its trials, was English common law, right? So, and there had to be new law, there had to be new jurisprudence actually brought up for that because whereas there had been war crimes committed before, these were a lot of war crimes committed by non-combatants, right? So war crimes... And they're not military, is that what non-combatants... Yeah, non-combatants. So, you know, I mean, you have... If you've got uniforms on and you're fighting each other, each man is fighting to save his life against his enemy. So, but it's the crimes where the soldier is committing crimes against the civilian and the civilians in the service of the state are committing crimes against other civilians, right? So that takes into the camps and the doctors, et cetera, et cetera. So that wasn't... Before Nuremberg and Tokyo, that wasn't actually... That part of law hadn't been developed. So, yeah, but there is always... So to me, there is a lot of optimism that can be developed by taking action. So there's... And I think that even if you haven't got a PG going, there are so many other aspects to this fascism or corporatism is sometimes the word that's used for it too. Because, of course, the corporates were hand-in-hand with Hitler. And one of the biggest corporates that was hand-in-hand with Hitler was... What was the name of that big pharma company? Well, it was a big chemical company. Not Bayer. Bayer was one of the ones that came out of them. Crump? Crump? Crump? No, they were the steel. Anyway, they were also the producers of Xylon B. Now, Xylon B, you may know or not know that that was the gas that was put into the showers, so-called showers, that were in the concentration camps, the extermination camps. And, of course, these poor people, they had... Some of the descriptions, get the book and read it. It's really worthwhile. They accused them of being pigs and swine and vermin and dirties. And yet they could not get washed, they could not get food. It was pretty horrific. And so they were given a piece of soap. This is the horrible thing. They were given a piece of soap and said, go to the showers. And the huge amounts of them, the children and the women, went to the left and off to the extermination camp. And only the men who looked like being able to work at all. There was women kept as well, of course, as well. But, yeah, a lot of the men for working, to work them to pieces. So, you know, that idea that they still had an idea of the usefulness of man. But they didn't have any sort of idea or value, the actual intrinsic value of a human life. And, yeah, I'm sorry, but I think that goes for our leaders now, too. Yep. 100%. So, of course, we're a small lot, but we must, we must fight. We must fight. And we will win. Yep. OK, anybody got any comments or input? Otherwise, we'll say goodnight. I've got other work, of course. Lots to do. Yeah. Yeah. Has anybody got any questions for Liz tonight? Yeah. Margaret's saying, much like the WEF, intrinsic value of humans to them are the only animals to farm. And Margaret, not very good animals either. More to do, you know, with the lame and the, or the naughty animals. IG Farben, thank you, Colin, was the chemical company. They were broken up into, I think, I know that Bayer was one of the companies that they were, they devolved into. And I'm pretty sure that Pfizer has also got some connection back to that company. Because they keep on changing names of companies. I mean, even these days, you know, a company can be hidden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was at an event last night and a guy got up, you know, different people were getting up and speaking and a guy got up and spoke and talked about how he'd researched, like, the top of the, the top of the triangle, you know, if Klaus Schwab and that are second tier, it was all about these people right at the top. And how, you know, what their plans are and all of that. And it sounded very, very grim. And I said to people afterwards, what's the point in researching that? You know, because how are we better off knowing that? I think, yeah, we just got to live our lives and do our best. And, yeah. And like, like Victor Frankl says, just make the most and fight for everything we can. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're saying you haven't got too far into it yet, but he does say, you know, I think, does he say, whatever doesn't kill you? I think it's Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer says, whatever does, you know, in a small amount of words, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And he also, he also quotes Nietzsche. He says, he who has a why to live can bear with almost any hell. Okay. So if you've got a reason to live, you'll make it. You'll make it. You'll make it. But if you've got a whole lot of, we've got to especially watch out for our young people. You know, I would say, buy this book and give it to your young person. Yeah. Because they think, they have no idea of history. They have no, and they're being fed all of this nihilism, is what he's talking about, you know, that there is no spiritual, there is no justice in the universe. Yeah. Just like we're sitting on a spinning ball. Yeah. Or something like that. Because if we're sitting on a spinning ball that we might just fly off at any point or, you know, something from the universe is going to crash into us. And we were, we came from nothing just by chance and it just exploded and it all happened and yeah, all kind of the same. Oh, Nicole Hinton. Yes, go ahead, Nicole. Absolutely, you can. That book was amazing. Yeah, thank you. One thing that I really got out of it was just a, it was a really good story about the human spirit. And I think it's probably worth really studying that man. And one thing that I also got out of it was the ability to create in the suffering as well, which I think is a direct connection to our creator. And that tough time is to be able to, okay, what can I do that can make this situation bearable and to bring some kind of reprieve mentally? Yes. And that's what I got out of that story probably the most. Yeah, I mean the people who were doing, we're doing the legal creativity. Yeah. But, you know, there's people out there building parallel economies. There's people digging gardens. Yeah. And so, you know, but to a certain extent, I think that the only way to finish these people off is to bring them to death. Yeah. But when I say creativity, I also mean, like, say him and his mate, they ended up, okay, well, let's tell a story every day. You know, like that would, you know, that would pass the time, but also make something positive or to both for them to feel a little bit better in that moment. So they made these little, yeah, they had these stories, funny stories, you know. Yeah. And I think those sorts of things are like real key things, I reckon, that if you're going through really tough times is to take some time to be able to have a giggle, you know. Yeah. And I think that's part of the human spirit. That's what makes people, gives them meaning in suffering. Yep. Margaret's also recommending a book by Eric Mehta. I'm not sure how you say that, actually. Anyway, I believe he's the person that said, you know, first they came for the trade unionists. And, you know, I wasn't a trade unionist. And then they came for the, and then the last part is, and then they came for me. And there was no one left. Yeah. Yeah. Very motivating. Yeah. And also, I think this is a great book in that he's very, he talks about collective guilt, which I think the Germans have a lot of it. Even though he says, you know, they, he doesn't, he doesn't believe it's useful because it's always the individual that does the thing, you know, and it's no use saying, oh, well, it's only following orders. Because we've got to think about the people who, you know, the HR head, the boss of, the boss of, what's this called, you know, milk company, and the boss of Fletcher's, who actually put their own names to their private mandates. Yeah. So it only takes one person's bad actions to affect, can affect a whole lot of people. And of course, we know that the big, the big bad actor up the top, but, you know, she's got plenty of, she's got plenty of supporters who are only following orders. So, yeah, it's, we all have to take responsibility for our own actions. I think he's, he's got some great things to say about that at a very deep level. Oh, great. Thank you. You put up the link to Eric's, how would you say that? The Taxus, I would have said. The Taxus. Okay. I'm not, I'm not sure which, which book. He's got quite a few there. Oh, okay. So that's his. Yeah, we'll have to get, sorry, Nicole, I muted you because I thought it was, there was a bit of background, but it wasn't actually you. So sorry about that. If you're not finished, by all means, jump back on. On Nicola, I should say, not Nicole, Nicola. So, anybody else got any questions or? And tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, Erica and I are going to go to the North Shore and try and see, try and see some of a case under section 144 of the Health and Safety at Work Act. That is private prosecution under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act. That'll be exciting. Yes, and it's. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, Gina, I'll talk to you about that later. I'll send it over to you. So, yeah, so that should be, that should be useful. I did hear about, I was, when I was at that thing last night, there was a guy there that, I don't know what his name is, but he got a huge payout from Air New Zealand, apparently. Oh, when was this? So, not that long ago. And then they wanted to re-employ him as well. So, yeah, yeah. So he's an engineer, I think. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. But I don't know that they used unjustified dismissal. Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't, don't know. Yeah. No, this wasn't straight unjustified dismissal. And it was also very interesting from the point of view. Sorry, it's not was because it's about to kick off. It's very interesting that this is under the Health and Safety at Work Act. And it is, but it is a workplace. It's not like, Erika's is not a workplace. It's just, it's a Taupo Denis Club. And it's a civil. And this one, I believe, will be a criminal. It could be a civil. We'll see. We'll see what they put forward, you know, because all we've seen is a beer newspaper report that it's going to be on. The Qantas flight today from Auckland to Sydney. What about the Qantas flight today, Lynette? What happened on the Qantas flight? Lynette's just put it on the screen. Qantas flight. Lynette's just said, did you hear about the Qantas flight today from Auckland to Sydney? Just another distraction. Mayday. Oh. OK. What? Something happened to one of the pilots? They probably won't tell us that, eh? Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I've been flying about this past week. Landed safely. Lynette, did it say anything about what the problem was? Was it pilot illness? Or did they say? Come and tell us. Unmute yourself if you want. Engine problems. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah, they might be lying about that as well. Who knows? Yeah. They're not going to. They're not going to. Yeah, right. They're not going to put their hand up about this stuff. But what needs to happen is the pilots need to blow the whistle. I mean, they must understand by now that what has been done to them, what has, you know, what is the problem for them. Yeah. And they have nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. I think they grounded all the flights in America the other day, but I don't know. Yeah, I didn't. Well, there's been a call. There's been a, and I think the case is ongoing because, you know, these legal cases take a while. They're not immediate to the, what's it called, the pilot's medical licensing lot, whatever they call them, flight safety people. That because they've taken trial medicines, so-called medicines, they're not supposed to fly for a year after that anyway. Yeah. They've been flying illegally. So there's been a call to take them out the air. Yeah. Blitz in the system. We have to un-normalise it, Alicia. Doesn't matter what the media says. We have to do the ultimate. Yeah, they're disturbing, all right. Well, they've all been to university to get their journalistic degrees, you know. Yeah, they've all been MK Ultra, so yeah. Otherwise known as university. It's okay, Alicia. We're not getting at you. No, we're not. As students, see. We're making humour where, yeah, there probably isn't any. Well, that's right. So we always try and, you know, see the bright side of these situations. They give us more information. They give us more material. We've got to know what we're up against. We can't fight if we don't know what they have in mind, you know. Yeah. And you'll have a force field around you anyway, Alicia. You'll be just like, yeah, bulletproof. That's right. Okay, then, guys. Let's say goodnight. Yeah, very good. Thanks heaps, Liz. I'll just kill Facebook. And if you come on Friday, we'll tell you about how the impressions of the Section 144 case. It could be that we haven't much to tell, although it's been said that this was the first part of the case, you would think. And I think that it's about a woman prison officer who was badly beaten up and had arms broken. I think both her arms, by a very violent prisoner. And corrections had been told. They'd let him bang, bang, boot the door down for about two weeks. And I think the staff were saying, hey, this isn't looking good, right? Because it's not like they're electronic doors now, apparently, in the prisons. This man is totally psychopathic. And anyway, he got out and, in the process, beat her up. Yes, when they went to look at the door. And the corrections had been told. It's breaking out. But that was, I think it was 2018. So you can see these things take a long time. Well, they should have been through all of their preliminaries, you know, and have the case ready to run now. OK, we'll see you all on Friday, hopefully. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Liz. And yeah, see you all Friday. We've got a new way of posting the invites. We do an at everyone, which seems to work a little better than the other way. I could only invite 50 people, whereas this way we can notify everybody in the group. So hopefully that's working a bit better for everyone and doing it the day before as well. So, yeah, just to try and let everybody know when we're on. Thanks. Thanks, G. Must catch up. I was going to message you and see how things are going, so I'll do that. Welcome to our Aussie cousin. Oh, that's Ness. And Ness, yeah. Keep in touch with Ness too. But yeah, I know G as well. Or Gina through another group. Yeah. Right. Oh, right. Yes. Yeah. OK, then. Very good. Thanks, everyone. Thanks so much, Liz. Don't work too late, eh? No, I won't. Don't you? Yeah. No. All good. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Bye. See you later. Bye.
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