Chapter 2
The Rodney Dangerfield Factor
Here’s how I summarize Man’s Search for Meaning to my students on the first day of class: Subject to endless tortures and exhaustion in the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl observed that some people, including himself, became stronger in spirit, held on to life, and maintained their moral values while others became dehumanized, apathetic, and spiritually dead. While identifying these two camps of people, Frankl came up with his book’s main argument about the nature of suffering, which is really a moral imperative for all of us: No matter how torturous our circumstances, no matter how deeply we are thrown into the vortex of evil, no matter how utterly meaningless our freak show of a life seems to us, we must find meaning by choosing the appropriate attitude that uplifts our humanity in a way that radically changes who we are, discarding our false necessities, and stripping ourselves bare of all our illusions. The constant and often overwhelming suffering that the world dishes out to us every day is not reason to despair or to become a vicious animal or to embrace the philosophy of nihilism; rather, all the world’s pain and suffering is an inevitable part of life that affords us the opportunity to find meaning, to connect to others, and to become a stronger person so that our new self doesn’t even resemble its previous incarnation. We can and must make this radical change, Frankl argues, by finding a higher purpose, an ideal larger than ourselves. Quoting Nietzsche, he says, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Finding meaning and purpose in the midst of life’s cruelty and evil is what Frankl calls “Tragic Optimism.”
I have yet to make this radical change. Look at my childhood photos and look at me now, and it’s the same expression: a brooding, pissy-faced creature forced to endure This Mistake We Call Life. My parents tried to cheer me up when I was a kid. They took me to circuses, carnivals, puppet shows, but these entertainments only made me worse. Frustrated by my gloominess, my father would say, “Jesus, son, it looks like a birdy went poo-poo on your lip.”
My father was taken back perhaps by my undying sadness, which he didn’t want to see in me. So angered by my moping about, he’d often shout at me “to grow some balls” and “to stop moving like an old lady.” These admonishments in turn made me feel even more inadequate, a condition that I tried to hide by being intimidating and when I couldn’t hide my feelings of self-loathing and rejection I was desperate and this desperation, I’m convinced, gives off a repelling hormone, the Desperation Hormone, which I now surmise made that college girl so repulsed by my existence.
My hero Viktor Frankl would scoff at my self-analysis. He would argue that I am not a victim of the cynicism and despair, that I have the power to free myself of my mental afflictions, that I possess free will. As Frankl observes, “Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.”
I want to believe Viktor Frankl. I really do. But I keep returning to an interview I read with one of my heroes, the comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who said you can’t really change who you are. “You never really change. You’re born a certain way and that’s it.” When I first read this interview in my early twenties, I remember immediately agreeing with Dangerfield. We are creatures molded at birth and we cannot escape who we are fundamentally. So what’s it matter if we embrace Tragic Optimism or not? Why do we give a damn about our choices when the end result of who we are is going to be the same?
Another hero of mine, George Carlin, had a similarly pessimistic view. He famously said, “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.” Carlin is telling us that we’re a doomed species and the best we can do is laugh at our inevitable destruction. When I look at the human race, I often find myself agreeing with Carlin’s cynical pronouncements and the conclusions he draws from them.
So what is it then? Are we free to change ourselves, as Frankl argues, or are we stuck in our predicament? Who am I to believe? Saint Frankl? Or my comedic heroes Dangerfield and Carlin? Do I have to take a side? I love Frankl whose courageous life gives me inspiration for the possibility of a better, nobler existence. But I love my cynical comedic heroes whose nihilistic diatribes have also brought me a sort of cathartic joy. Yes, it’s true. Nihilism when packaged by a master like Dangerfield or Carlin has a pleasure all of its own. Sometimes I’m in a solemn Frankl mood but other times I’m in a more scabrous comedian mood. I’ve got the Frankl Factor inside me, but I also have the Dangerfield Factor. Do I have to pick one over the other?
I’m in my middle age, and I haven’t yet been able to answer that question, so who am I teach Man’s Search for Meaning?
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