Meaningfulness Buffers and Crisis of Meaning Mediates The Longitudinal Effect of Covid-19 Stress On General Mental Distress

Background: Reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are diverse. People who experience the situation as stressful (COVID-19 stress) appear vulnerable to developing general mental distress. Moreover, existential crises can arise. The identification of buffering factors and their effect over time is therefore highly relevant. The current study examined longitudinal protective effects of meaningfulness and self-control and negative effects of crisis of meaning on general mental distress. Methods: N=431 participants from Germany and Austria (mean age: 42 years) completed an online survey in both April/May (T1) and July/August 2020 (T2). We examined (i) whether two personal resources, meaningfulness, and self-control, measured at T1, moderated the longitudinal effect of COVID-19 stress (T1) on general mental distress (T2), and (ii) whether crisis of meaning (T1) mediated the latter effect. Results: Meaningfulness and self-control predicted lower symptoms of anxiety and depression over time, and crisis of meaning predicted higher symptoms. Meaningfulness but not self-control buffered the longitudinal effect of COVID-19 stress on general mental distress. COVID-19 stress was associated with crisis of meaning which, in further consequence, predicted general mental distress three months later. Conclusions: Meaningfulness and self-control appear to have generally protective effects on psychological distress. Moreover, meaningfulness seems to be particularly protective when people feel burdened by the situation. Strengthening this resource is thus especially appropriate for vulnerable populations. Measures that support meaningfulness will also prevent the emergence of crises of meaning, which can be triggered by acute stress reactions and appear to affect mental health in the longer term.

Identity, Belonging, and Conflict

The concept of community is a controversial concept in terms of social sciences. However, today, when considered together with the concepts of identity and belonging, it can be said that the community has strong connotations. Where the community begins and ends is explained by the concept of boundary. The inside or outside of the border is a map of meaning. Because giving meaning to complex nature and society is one of the most important needs of human beings, the crisis of meaning created by modern times for humanity has led to the strengthening of grand narratives. The narratives, which propose various ways of life for the salvation of humanity, especially make use of symbols and symbolic forms. Because symbols are carriers of meaning, in this study, the identity factor, which constitutes the essence of the endless conflicts in the world, has been investigated with the symbolic constructs of the ideological view. For this, a connection has been established between identity, belonging and the community, which includes the meaning of collective action.

Reconstructing Professional Philosophy: Lessons from Philosophy as a Way of Life During a Time of Crises

This article reflects on the way the Covid-19 hecatomb has disclosed and unraveled the ongoing crisis of professional philosophy, and suggests some lessons that might be taken from the pandemic, urging academic philosophers to take action regarding the future of their work in philosophy departments and institutions. In the first section of the article, we highlight some lasting criticisms to academic philosophy and explore one particular nasty thorn in the side of philosophers doing the kind of work that might speak to broad audiences facing a crisis of meaning and living: the rush to publish instead of “perishing” without a secure academic position. In the next section, we discuss philosophy as a way of life (PWL) as an alternative nascent field in academic philosophy that, while garnering respect and recognition within the academy, has regained connections with a broader public desperate for ways to chart their own paths of meaningful living, especially when facing a deeply challenged and fractured world. PWL helps address the crises of meaning many in the academy face (both teachers and students) and the absence of rich philosophical reflection and communities in the broader public, which otherwise all too easily fall prey to hucksters, con-artists, and authoritarian and conspiratorial forces. We argue that this kind of wholistic critical development of PWL from the ancient world is designed to enact a prefigurative or eutopian politics. We conclude by situating our recommendations into a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy needed at this critical cultural moment.

Crisis of meaning in connection with mental distress of a modern man

In contrast with the contemporary spirit, which directs a person towards their own needs, satisfactions, and desires, logotherapy views the person and its life as an assignment. Man is not an individual "for himself" (according to Freud, the main internal motivational force is "the will of pleasure" and "the will of power" according to Adler), but a being of sense or a being for someone or something. According to Frankl, the purpose is defined as tasks, which life sets us in a precise moment and in a precise situation. These are tasks requiring a responsible reaction and a specific realisation of values. Each of them is unique. Each individual is responsible for a task, and only he can respond to it in a responsible man-ner. In this sense, life can be seen as a chain, whose links are the tasks themselves. Each in-dividual is unique, with a unique goal in life, which consists of individual, equally unique tasks. The centre of logotherapy is future - tasks and meanings. The founder of logotherapy is Viktor E. Frankl, who was a doctor of medicine and doctor of philosophy, and a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna. The third psychotherapeutic school in Vienna - logotherapy - is based on a holistic approach to an individual, which means that it analyses a person on a physical, mental, and spiritual level. Spiritual dimension is, among others, a place of realisation of responsibility and freedom or space of realisation of actual possibilities and tasks. Existential crisis, exis-tential vacuum, and noogenic neuroses are issues and mental problems, which originate from the spiritual dimension. This means failing to perceive and failing in life as an assignment. The empirical part of the research, which is based on the psychometric instrument LOGO-test, performed on two hundred re-spondents, gave us the results that even 24 percent of respondents are in various mental distresses and seriously existentially endangered. The paper highlights the most problematic areas and causes for such mental distress. The COVID-19 pandemic only deepened and revealed this crisis of meaning.

Exploring the Etiological Pathways of Problematic Pornography Use in NoFap/PornFree Rebooting Communities: A Critical Narrative Analysis of Internet Forum Data

Problematic pornography use (PPU) has been extensively studied in terms of its negative implications for various life domains. The empirical literature reveals measured outcomes of interpersonal and intrapersonal dysfunction in participants’ everyday living, supporting its classification as a disorder. The increasing number of complaints around PPU opens the door to the creation of online self-help rebooting communities. This qualitative study aimed to provide a better understanding of this behavior by investigating potential etiological pathways contributing to the onset of PPU, as they were expressed by members of the online NoFap/PornFree self-help communities with self-perceived PPU. The critical narrative analysis reveals a complex web of mutually informing causal connections. The dialectical relationship between situational resources, material conditions, and an embodied spectator gives rise to an online persona with motivations of self-exploration, experimentation, and socializing. A sense of vulnerability rendered the use of pornography as a means of escape and validation. Furthermore, commitment to abstinence, framed by the notions of recovery and relapse, was found to be a major factor for maintaining distress. The study highlighted the need for a thorough understanding of the etiological pathways of PPU for a more effective and targeted intervention. Moving beyond biomedical conceptualizations suggests an intervention whereby PPU is placed in a context of a crisis of meaning.

The Power of the Sacred

“Disenchantment” is a key term in the self-understanding of modernity. But what exactly does this concept mean? What was its original meaning when Max Weber introduced it? And can the conventional meaning or Max Weber’s view really be defended, given the present state of knowledge about the history of religion? This book attempts to divest this concept of its enduring enchantment. The first chapters of the book deal with three empirical disciplines—history, psychology, and sociology of religion—to develop an understanding of religion that then lays the groundwork for chapter 4, which amounts to the most thorough study ever undertaken of Weber’s views on disenchantment. It turns out that Weber’s use of this term was highly ambiguous and that his grand narrative leading from the prophets of ancient Judaism to the crisis of meaning on the eve of World War I collapses when we recognize this ambiguity. This makes it possible to construct an alternative that takes into account the dynamics of ever new sacralizations, their normative evaluation in light of a universalist morality, and the dangers of the misuse of religion in connection with the formation of power. This book constitutes a challenge—for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Mística na tradição ocidental em Lima Vaz

This Work aims at reflecting on mystics, within the Western tradition, departing Lima Vaz’ thought, in order to try identifying the function that rested reserved to Mystic Experience, in the Modern Society, Society that, as It purposes Itself destroying the Sacred one up the World, has put aside Religion as a factor of legitimation regarding to public sphere. Its purpose is recovering some historical-philosophical aspects regarding to Christian Tradition in order to understanding better the level regarding to crisis of meaning of this Society can be linked to the progressive lack concerning the originary relation of the Human Being with the Transcendence Itself since that this lacking subverted the constitutive nucleus of its own identity as an open. We may assume that this Reflection of ours will be turned on contributing for reflecting of the Christian Mystics et its contribution for the dialogue with the plurality of the actual ways of spiritualities, in front of crisis concerning the contemporaneity.