McMahon's Search for Meaning: February 12, 2014

02/12/2014

My Daughters Make Me Re-Think a Life of Meaning

Chapter 8

My Daughters Make Me Re-Think a Life of Meaning

I tell my students my “meaning” in life, if I have any at all, is for my daughters to never have to work at Walmart because, rightly or wrongly, Walmart has in my mind become a symbol of evil and a future dystopian America, some horrid chapter out of The Hunger Games. I am discouraged to hear that Walmart is a popular business model for other enterprises to impose substandard working wages on their employees, wages so low that a report recently came out that shows many full-time Walmart employees must supplement their incomes with food stamps.

Walmart should be ashamed of these revelations, but I’m sure it is not since Walmart is a Giant Industrial Sociopath. I’m sure its minions are concerned about how the food stamps story tinges its image while not giving a damn about its employees’ state of hunger.

If I did not save enough money for my daughters to attend college and instill in them a love for learning that would make them aspire for a life beyond the prison bars of a Walmart existence, I tell my students, I would consider myself a failure as a father and as a human being.

So for me, “meaning,” if it exists, is in seeing my daughters flourish, blossom, and bloom into an existence of their own choice and making, and that would be an existence in which there is a huge chasm between them and Walmart.

Indeed, that would give me some meaning, but I’d have even more meaning if I saw a strong moral core in my daughters. If my life was so shabby and loathsome that it influenced them to be vain, selfish, entitled, whining victims, similar to the pissy little brats who are expelled from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, I tell my students, then that would be resounding evidence that I am a failure as a father and as a human being.

I am not a moralist for morals’ sake alone. I see a connection between morality and happiness. In the same Critical Thinking class in which I teach Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, I also teach Eric Weiner’s Geography of Bliss, a travel memoir that examines those countries that are high and low on the Happiness Index and the causes for those countries’ abundance or lack of happiness, and the more I study Weiner’s book, the more clear it becomes that happiness and morality are inextricably linked. The happiest countries such as Iceland, Switzerland, and Thailand teach social reciprocity, discourage envy, and encourage humor, all strong moral agents. The least happy country Weiner visits, Moldova, is painted as a place mired in selfishness, narcissism, envy, and learned helplessness.

So while I struggle to find the heroic meaning as defined by Viktor Frankl, I am comforted to know that I am no nihilist, someone who rejects the idea of right and wrong. I shudder at the moral repugnance of Walmart metastasizing across America. And I recoil equally at the thought of my life being so morally bankrupt that my children turn into the childish malcontents who incur the contempt and loathing of the beloved Willy Wonka.

My meaning may fall short of Viktor Frankl’s noble ideal, but at least I have relative meaning. Absolute definitions elude me for now.

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Does Wanting Nice Cars Make Us Evil?

Chapter 7

Does Wanting Nice Cars Make Us Evil?

In his standup, Louis C.K. says he’s evil because he drives a really nice car that he doesn’t need, that if he were a good person, he’d sell the car, buy a cheaper one, and use the proceeds to help feed starving children. But he doesn’t do that. He keeps his nice car knowing full well that his selfishness results in less charity to the hungry. And therefore, he concludes, he’s evil.

I tell my students that most of us are like Louis C.K. We’d rather use our resources to procure luxuries and comforts at the expense of helping others. Therefore, most of us, according to Louis C.K.’s definition, are evil.

My students will say, “Yeah, but, McMahon, he’s a comedian. He doesn’t really mean he’s evil. He’s just being funny.”

I retort, “But he’s funny because he’s telling the truth. Humor works when it reveals something true about ourselves. A good comedian like Louis C.K. makes us rethink our values and habits by shedding light on them in a new way. So maybe we are evil, or at least selfish, and this state impedes us from finding meaning in the manner that Viktor Frankl defines it.”

I like cars. And I like watches. My Japanese students, many who recognize the expensive Japanese diver watches I wear to class, call me a “Watch Otaku,” which means I have an obsessive’s fanatical devotion to watches, a materialistic hobby that casts doubt on my inner spiritual richness and therefore degrades my credentials to teach a book as precious as Man’s Search for Meaning.

How many starving children could have been fed with the thousands of dollars spent on my collection of Seikos, Orients, and Citizens? Louis C.K.’s words make me laugh. But they also condemn me. I am an unworthy Viktor Frankl disciple.