The decisive factor is the decision, the freedom of choice, the freedom to come up with

a decision.

It should be I would like to become this way or another in spite of conditions that

should only seem to fully determine my behavior.

I wish to act freely as a responsible being, which is a human being.

I wish to act in a court with heredity and environment using, owing what I become to them,

but also if need be in spite of the worst conditions.

This is exactly what you could watch in the witness under severe extreme conditions

of stress or of a tragic condition.

Just think of people living for several years under the worst conditions of prisoner of

war camp.

There is a whole body of of of psychiatric literature about that, or for that matter in concentration

camps.

And this is what should be acknowledged.

People are free, and if you watch or study the lives of such people in just a detached

down to earth empirically, empirically, scientific way and fashion, other in another way than

you presented it and you commented it in another way, then people get the picture, the impression

of a human being as something, not someone, something that is fully determined, whereas

they don't recognize and acknowledge the freedom and the responsibility, the responsibility

for themselves, the responsibility for making something or someone out of himself.

So your basic philosophy is that life has meaning under all conditions, but how easy

is it when there's a sense of hopelessness, a sense of despair to recognize this meaning?

...