Chapter 4
How Can George Costanza Teach Man’s Search for Meaning Without Being Arrested for Fraud?
Imagine the hubris and fraudulence of me walking into the classroom on the first day of the semester and I’ve got Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning on my syllabus. Knowing something about this book, the students might assume I’m a certain type of person. I believe in ideals. I believe in personal change. I believe in hope. I believe in courage. I believe in moral responsibility. I believe in talking earnestly about Viktor Frankl’s idea of Tragic Optimism, the belief that we can and should embrace meaning and purpose in the face of unspeakable evil and suffering. And I believe that by teaching such a book my students’ lives perhaps will change radically and indelibly.
When all of these assumptions are made about me, there is an implicit statement to my students that I am someone who not only talks about Frankl’s themes, but lives them out. I am a life-affirming humanitarian and a deeply spiritual person who says “yes to life.”
We’ve got a serious problem. I am not that person. In fact, I am the very opposite type of character. I am more like George Costanza. Since the early 1990s people have told me I share certain facial expressions, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and neurotic quirks that remind them of the self-absorbed man-child from Seinfeld. Mind you, these are people who, as far as I can tell, like me and who seem to find me funny because of my tendency to exaggerate my woes and tribulations. But when I read Man’s Search for Meaning, I read about Costanza’s opposite, a very noble man, a survivor of the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl, whose desire is for us to transform ourselves into a type of person who is very un-George Costanza. We read in Frankl’s book that for life to be fulfilling and complete, we must accept death and suffering as part of the deal. Frankl writes: “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.”
Those words damn George Costanza whose single-minded drive for self-preservation and his constant displays of over-the-top cowardice squeeze all remnants of human dignity. In fact, the more undignified and self-centered George behaves, the more funny he is. For example, there is a Seinfeld episode where George, working as a clown for a child’s birthday party, thinks there’s a fire in the child’s home, and George makes a quick getaway, the first to make the escape, with no regard to anyone else’s safety. That’s not a Viktor Frankl move and I’m afraid it’s a move I might make in similar circumstances. So who am I to teach Frankl’s masterpiece? I feel like a vegetarian butcher or some other type of fraud whose phoniness is so egregious that campus police will interrupt me in the middle of a lecture, escort me out of the classroom and lock me up in the holding cell while questioning my credentials to teach a book whose principles I so clearly violate.
I can imagine sitting at a bare desk with a naked light bulb hanging over me while the police chief, holding Man’s Search for Meaning, glowers at me and says, “So you’ve been masquerading as a Viktor Frankl authority, have you now? I think you’re full of shit!”
He then puts a blank sheet of paper on the desk, draws concentric circles and says, “Costanza was a self-centered weasel during season one. By the final season, he was just a more intense weasel than he was at the beginning. That’s a centripetal motion or as you call it the Rodney Dangerfield Circle. And that, my friend, is you precisely.”
And then whisking me away into the cell, he says, “Sit there for a few weeks and contemplate the fraud you’re perpetuating on society.”
I'm reminded of something a friend once told me: We tend to teach (or preach) what we ourselves need to hear, or more deeply embody. What he didn't say (or understand, I think) is that the best teachers are those for whom what they teach is living and real. So in my mind, you are eminently qualified to teach Frankl, moreso than if you were the ubermensch.
Ted Williams was a terrible manager, not only because he was an asshole but, I think, because for him hitting was easy. He just didn't understand that no one else could see the ball like he could, had his hand-eye coordination.
There's a term co-opting by the New Age movement from the Joan Halifax book, "Shaman: The Wounded Healer." The basic idea is that the shaman, or spiritual healer, is one who has been wounded and who has healed his or her own wound. The key is that the shaman must be someone who is wounded, who has had the personal experience of being wounded - otherwise they don't really get it.
This is not to say that you are, or should be, a "shaman" - but the shaman is the transcended state of the wounded one, similar to how Frankl is Dangerfield/Costanza transformed. Now maybe Dangerfield and Costanza don't have the vision to become Frankl, but they have their own version, a "transcended self" - one that has attained a kind of existential liberation from the burden of one's egoic, habitual mental scripts and self-perpetuated patterns of suffering.
You should write a book or blog entry/chapter called the Tao of Costanza. What would a liberated George Costanza look like? One that is still George Costanza, but with a sense of inner freedom and lightness? Not the Summer of George, but the Tao of George, which flows through all seasons.
Posted by: jonnybardo | 02/10/2014 at 08:36 AM
Those words hit home. I indeed teach what I need to hear. I think I read that and many Costanza books.
Posted by: herculodge | 02/10/2014 at 09:16 AM
The imposter syndrome. It is spoken of in Adult Education in relation to the anxiety felt by students, particularly those returning after a long absence, or those who are upgrading after a previous failed experience. I sometimes feel it as well when facing my students. I wonder what I could possibly teach them.
As far as the ideal man compared to our imperfect reality, I would argue that that dichotomy is essential to progression. Declaring victory in achieving the goal would be hubris. Rather, it is the journey that is the whole point.
George's character must always show his traits and tendencies or he ceases to be comic since we see in him our own shortcomings. George must be grasping and self-absorbed. Likewise he must be short, fat, and balding - our modern male shortcomings as represented visually of representative of our inward failures. We carry them with us and George shows that we all suffer from this burden.
Posted by: Dannibal | 02/11/2014 at 04:24 AM
I suppose it's better that I wrestle my inner impostor than simply surrender the George Costanza within. I'm reminded Costanza had an alter ego, a phony character he'd call himself. I think it was Vandalay or something.
Posted by: herculodge | 02/11/2014 at 06:14 AM