Like steel to extreme heat and intense pressure, people often reform when placed under harsh conditions. This has the potential for proxy effects on moral considerations. This moral reformation is often more of a moral degradation as people revert back to their selfish survival instinct. This is evident in Elie Wiesel’s recollection of his experience as a Jew in the Holocaust. Nazi Germany’s transportation of the Jews into concentration camps was executed with a lack of consideration for comfortability. The train that Elie was being transported in was cram packed so much that the Jews had to take turns sitting, as there wasn’t enough room for them all to sit at once. A poor mother, distraught by the insufferable conditions, started yelling …show more content…
This harsh reaction by the captive Jews reflects a moral degradation, almost certainly onset by the harsh conditions they were unjustly thrown into. However, despite popular intuition, these extremely harsh conditions do not necessitate moral degradation. They can actually assist a person in more broadly applying previously defined moral principles. In the case of Viktor Frankl, prior to being thrown into Auschwitz he mentored suicidal individuals at a psychiatric hospital. He was exceedingly successful at suicidal prevention as the founder of logotherapy, a branch of psychotherapy that is exceptionally good at establishing a sense of meaning in one’s life. Of course, as an Austrian Jew in the 20th century, he was eventually captured by the Nazis and thrown into a concentration camp. In contrast to Elie’s instinctual manifestation of selfish survival instincts, Viktor saw the state of despair of his peers as an opportunity to help people and enrich his own life. Viktor wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, ““Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own