Are we Alive?
Are we Alive?
Analysis “To Be or Not to Be”
On Being and the Self
Centuries ago, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, facing intense pressure, asked the fundamental question: “to be or not to be?” This famous soliloquy touches on the fear of the unknown after death, a fear that often paralyzes us and makes us endure life as it is. It highlights how our own awareness can make us hesitant on our journey of self-discovery.
What does science say about the “self”? Very little. Clinical psychology often seeks scientific grounding but remains philosophical. We need a true science of values alongside our established science of facts. This isn’t a new idea; ancient philosophers also sought moral laws to match natural laws. The breakthrough came when philosopher Robert S. Hartman defined “good” in a measurable way. My own research from 1979 to 2005 validated his “value theory,” transforming it into a practical science of values and, by extension, a science of morality—a foundation for future moral education.
I see my role in promoting Hartman’s work as similar to T.H. Huxley’s defense of Darwin’s theory of evolution. I am, in essence, “Hartman’s Bulldog.”
The Individual and the Collective
The individual self cannot be understood in isolation, as poet John Donne noted: “No man is an island.” Our personal identity exists within a social context, influenced by a larger collective consciousness—often called the spirit of the times or zeitgeist. Historically, tribes or nations created this shared identity through traditions and symbols. For example, highly defined “mass minds” emerged in both Germany and America during World War II, though for very different reasons.
As a psychologist specializing in values (an axiologist), I view the self through three core value dimensions: the Feeler, Doer, and Thinker. These sub-selves are shaped by sensitivity, balance, priority, and plasticity. The empathetic Feeler-Self is central, interacting with the Doer and Thinker to build our unique personal identity. However, John Donne reminds us there is more to the story.
The Historical Imbalance of Science
Humanity has thrived with natural science since the Renaissance, but this evolution lacked a parallel science of morality. Values were left to philosophy and religion, creating a dangerous divide. This imbalance gave us medical advances and comforts, but also the moral perils of technologies like genetic engineering and weapons of mass destruction. As one general noted, we seem more skilled at organizing evil than good. A key remedy is to integrate universal, science-based moral education into early schooling, alongside basic literacy and numeracy.
We perceive the world not just with our eyes, but through our values; we are our values. Therefore, understanding values scientifically is the “holy grail” for psychology and the key to a better world. My professional breakthrough came when I discovered Hartman’s Value Profile (HVP), a tool that measures the origins of behavior in our value structures, rather than just surface actions. The mind, not just the brain, is the true puppeteer of our actions.
The Five-Dimensional Self and Global Examples
The individual self is five-dimensional: the Feeler, Doer, and Thinker sub-selves, along with Mirror Neurons, and the influence of the collective nomothetic self. Our values would overwhelm us if not organized by these dimensions, which constantly interact with varying sensitivity and balance to shape our beliefs, emotions, and sense of stable self.
The phrase “no man is an island” gains meaning when we see how the mass mind influences individuals at the level of these sub-selves, shaping consciousness and even our capacity for free will.
- Germany (1920-1945): Nazi propaganda created a powerful, unified mass mind (“One People, One Nation, One Leader”) that most individuals could not resist.
- Egypt (2013): The country faced an identity crisis. Progressive citizens struggled to reconcile secular and religious selves, while conservatives harmonized with the collective religious identity, creating severe societal tension.
- America: Its pluralistic society usually prevents a single, strong collective self from forming. A major exception was the unified national spirit after Pearl Harbor. However, smaller, fleeting “micro-minds” constantly emerge around events like financial crises or social movements. Historically lower societal suspicion in America is now rising due to terrorism and social media, making the population more susceptible to collective influences, much like Germany has been.
This global trend may also foster a countermovement of “internationalists” or “citizens of the world,” which could help reduce cultural paranoia and mass minds geared toward evil.
The full exploration of the self includes biological and spiritual aspects, but the immediate concern is the powerful interaction between individual and collective selves. The potent, if temporary, mass minds of WWII—for both right and wrong reasons—serve as a warning. Without formal moral education, we remain vulnerable to “moral pygmies” and charismatic leaders who can organize evil by manipulating collective hysteria, as seen in historical tragedies like the KKK, witch trials, or financial panics.
The unchecked growth of natural science, combined with the ideological fragility of the human mind—now amplified by echo chambers on TV and online—poses a significant risk. Historical lessons are not enough. We must implement moral education for the young to move beyond being “moral pygmies” and mitigate the dangers posed by uncontrolled individual and collective selves in our interconnected world.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet
One decrease suffering by improving life rather than destroying it. One can lessen significantly or even discontinue one’s overall suffering in various ways, such as dealing with the causes of suffering, moving away from them, making oneself less sensitive to suffering, dealing with one’s perfectionist tendencies, or compensating for the suffering there is in life by creating and augmenting joyful or worthy aspects of life.
To return to Shakespeare’s metaphor, in order not to suffer slings and arrows it is sometimes sufficient, for example, to move out of their way. It is tragic that some people prefer to destroy their lives completely rather than to try to alter them in some of the many ways that it is possible to do so.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, too, there are more options than either to kill oneself or to continue to suffer. But this is a fictional tale.
When reading it, while noting again how narrowly Hamlet conceived his options, I am often reminded of a historical case of a real prince who committed suicide. Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria (1858-1889), was a son of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austro-Hungary (1830-1916), and heir to the throne. He was married, for political reasons and following his father’s wishes, to a Belgian princess whom soon he found he did not love at all. However, his father and social conventions disallowed a divorce and marriage to a woman he did love, and who loved him back, Marie Vetsera. This was not the type of life he wanted. Rudolf chose to commit suicide rather than to continue living like that. Vetsera agreed. They were found dead, together, on 30 January, 1889.
Now that was an odd decision. If Rudolf’s life was indeed too bad to continue as it was, perhaps there was a way of discontinuing that way of living rather than discontinuing life altogether. For example, Rudolf could have left the court with his beloved Marie, travelled somewhere, learned a profession, worked, and lived with and loved Marie.
Of course, doing this would have shaken the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But his suicide also shook the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Leaving the court would have also caused much sorrow to his parents. Yet his suicide also caused much sorrow to his parents. Moving to, say, France, learning a trade, and working would have surely been a big change. Death, too, however, is a big change. Instead of erasing his old life and turning it into death, he could have erased his old life and melded it into a new type of life. It may be difficult, but facing difficulties is sometimes a good thing. And if he indeed loved Marie Vetsera so much that he couldn’t live without her, this option would have enabled them to live together.
Note that I am not claiming here that it is certain that Rudolf would have found the first alternative way of living he would have tried out as sufficiently good. But I suggest that it is amazing that he did not even try any alternative before opting for death. Moreover, if I found my present way of living unbearable, and an alternative one would have also been unsatisfactory, I surely would have tried out several other alternatives as well; perhaps if things did not turn out well in the first option they would have turned out quite well in a second or third try. Yet Rudolf didn’t try even one option.
The Power of the Mind
As isolation deepens, so does our introspection.
The recent holiday offered a strange but welcome psychological break, not from my family, but from the pressure of constant activity. For a brief, lovely moment, the world seemed to stop—I received only one email all day. But this stillness was short-lived. Within minutes, I was consumed by frantic cleaning and reorganizing. By the next day, my mind was a chaotic swarm of “scorpions.” I felt a climbing rage and anxiety I hadn’t experienced since childbirth, and I was rapidly losing all perspective.
I tried to connect by video-calling a friend, hoping it would help. But it wasn’t the same. Without real physical presence, the vital chemistry of human connection was absent: the cortisol jolt, the swift empathy from mirror neurons, the slow-rising oxytocin. The screen blurred expressions and dulled vocal tones, stripping away the layers of resonance we need for true emotional contact. This is perhaps why Shakespeare wrote plays over poems—some thoughts and psychology must be shared in person. Our mental health, empathy, and morality depend on truly seeing the world through another’s eyes.
That’s a fine argument for theatre, but less practical when you’re out of chocolate for bribes, have given up explaining why screen time is bad, are screaming at mildew in the shower, and find yourself rocking in a pile of recycling. My resolve has been weakened by endless thinking, leaving me utterly paralyzed and unable to act.
I am acutely aware that many people right now don’t have the luxury of time to think, talk with friends, or even make tea—they are simply struggling to survive.
As I cried into an empty cereal box, I realized my own busyness has always been a survival tactic. It’s a way to disappear, distract myself, and run from the overwhelming thoughts in my head. Now, as the world forces me to slow down, I can no longer avoid my own mind.
Everything has changed forever—how we relate, create, earn, and live. Both the external world and my internal world are under a microscope. My pressing question isn’t as dire as Hamlet’s “to be or not to be,” but it is: “to think or not to think.”
How willing am I to face the doubts and fears that threaten to consume me? What’s the worst that can happen if I do? In reality, I am safe, healthy, housed, and part of a resilient organization. So perhaps now is the time to pause and remember that thinking itself is neither good nor bad.
This period of isolation and contemplation will eventually end, and busyness will return. When it does, I want to look back knowing I didn’t just cope or get through. I want to know I gave my daughter my full attention, cherished my health, made real memories alongside plans, and—most importantly—turned at least some of these swirling thoughts into meaningful action.
The Power of the Mind
The famous line that begins Prince Hamlet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To be, or not to be, that is the question” is probably the most cited statement in all classical drama. Hamlet’s question concerns suicide: He considers whether “to be,” that is “in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” or, alternatively, “not to be,” that is, “to die, to sleep … and by a sleep, to say we end the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”
I suggest, however, that Shakespeare’s rendering of the issue is wrong and unhelpful. “To be or not to be” is in fact, not the question. It is the wrong question.
Claiming that a question is wrong may sound odd. Surely, answers can be wrong. Likewise, suppositions, views, claims, and assertions can be wrong. But can questions be wrong?
In fact, questions can be wrong in several ways. An important one is this: questions are wrong when what they presuppose is wrong.
All questions include two elements: something unknown, and something presupposed. If there were not something unknown, about which we inquire, there would be no questioning; we would have nothing to ask about. However, if there is also not something presupposed, on which we base the question, again there would be no questioning.
For example, if I ask you what the time now is, I presuppose in this question, among other things, that you have a watch, that you know to read time, and that there is such a thing as time. If I ask whether you got to work today on time, I presuppose that you have work and that you need to get there by a certain hour. If I inquire about the cause of cancer, I presuppose that there is such a disease and that it has a cause.
The presupposed component of a question may be correct or incorrect. If I asked at what hour you robbed the bank, I would wrongly presuppose in this question that you robbed the bank. Likewise, if I asked why you hate me, I would wrongly presuppose that you hate me. When questions are based on wrong presuppositions, the questions are wrong.
Not only answers, views, and claims, then, can be wrong; questions can be wrong as well. Getting our questions right is very important, since wrong questions lead to wrong replies. However, since the presuppositions in questions are often implicit, it is easy not to notice the wrongness of some of the questions we ask.
I think that Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” question is also a wrong question. One wrong presupposition in it is that we can choose only between these two options: either to commit suicide or to continue to suffer the “slings and arrows” of fortune. In fact, however, there often is also a third option that needs to be thoroughly explored: to improve life by changing the actions or circumstances that bring about the suffering.
The third option, then, is to continue living while decreasing suffering. In other words, it is to diminish or stop the suffering not by ending life but by altering it (even fundamentally, if needed).
Power
He and Marie Vetsera noted only the two options Hamlet recites: continuing life as it is or dying. The possibility of a third option, that of changing life and thereby trying to improve it, seems not to have even entered their considerations at all.
I suggested above that people can often take action and change the condition in which they are. That was a third option, besides either suffering or suicide. There are more options, however. For example, a fourth option that is sometimes useful is just to wait. Sometimes there is no need to actively change conditions because they change by themselves. Life is often dynamic; just as it has changed in the past it is likely to change also in the future.
Often, people think of suicide when they are in a crisis. A crisis is defined as a temporary low between two plateaus; it does not continue forever. The trick is to persist through it. Those who make it to its end are much relieved when it’s over, and those who can’t contain it sink. But the difficulty is that within a crisis it is hard for people to identify that they are in one and that eventually there will come a future in which they’ll just look back at it, since in a crisis people often lose perspective. It is all too easy, within a crisis, to fall into feeling that this is the way things will continue on forever, that from now on things will always be bad.
I have recently talked with new parents of a 3-month-old baby. They are good parents, but they told me in tears that they feel that their lives have been taken away from them; they felt that they would never enjoy again an uninterrupted, good night’s sleep; would never return to reading, jogging, or sex; and would never have time for themselves. I was surprised by their surprise when I pointed out that, with time, the baby, like all babies, will grow up, will busy himself with his friends, and they will have difficulties in waking him up to go to school. Many things are temporary, including our condition or mood now, even if, when in it, we find it hard to believe that this is the case.
To be or not to be, then, is not the question. It presents only two alternatives to choose from when, in fact, there are more. It is important to consider all plausible alternatives before making a choice. The “to be or not to be” question is infelicitous in overlooking, even ignoring, some such significant and worthwhile alternatives.
