Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl · 1946
"Meaning, not pleasure or power, is the primary human drive — findable even under the worst conditions through what you create, what you receive, or the attitude you choose toward unavoidable suffering."
Frankl identifies three routes to meaning: creative values (what you make or contribute to the world), experiential values (what you receive from it — beauty, love, connection), and attitudinal values (the stance you take toward suffering you cannot avoid or change). The third is the deepest because it's the only one that can't be taken from you — when the first two are stripped away entirely, as they were in the camps, the freedom to choose your attitude remains.
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The Selfish Gene (and Memes)
"The gene, not the organism, is the true unit of natural selection — animals are 'survival machines' built by genes to replicate themselves, and culture spreads by an analogous unit Dawkins named the meme."