A Meaningless Existence

Lauren Fisher
Dr. Adam Johns
ENGCMP 0200 – Seminar in Composition
October 16, 2008

A Meaningless Existence

Have our lives lost collective meaning? Are we leading meaningless lives? According to Bill McKibben and Chris Ware, the answer to both of these questions is yes. In McKibben’s novel “Enough” he claims that technology and germline engineering already has and will wipe away the essence of our lives and take away the things we find meaningful. In Ware’s graphic novel “Jimmy Corrigan” he depicts a character that comes from a broken family and is all alone in the world. He tries to fill the empty voids with his active imagination, but he cannot escape the fact that his life is essentially meaningless. I believe that if we allow technology to take over our lives, it will devoid us of real human interactions with friends and family. Also what was once known as a society or community will just become a bunch of individuals living in the same area.

Family life has changed drastically over the years. When you think of a typical 1950’s family, it most likely was a two-parent household consisting of both a mom and a dad. Divorce was not a common thing because people were expected to get married and stay married. The mom would cook and everyone would sit down to a nice family dinner. Then after dinner, the whole family would watch the same TV show. Now compare this stereotypical family to today’s modern family. Households can consist of two parents, a guardian, step-parents, and several other combinations. The divorce rate today is much higher, almost 50% in America. “The invention of divorce as a mass phenomenon made clear that family no longer carried the meaning we long assumed” (McKibben 45). I know that in my family we very seldom will sit down as a family to eat dinner because everyone has different school, practice, and work schedules. Technology developed in the last century has changed the very nature of family-units. The invention of the car offered us the ability to move over great distances in a short amount of time, the invention of radio and television allowed the unlimited choices of a national or a global culture, and the invention of computers enables us to have a wealth of information at our fingertips. But were these new technological advancements worth what we had to give up? Is it worth it to be able to listen to music on your iPod or watch hours of meaningless TV instead of having an intellectual conversation with your family members? Is it worth it to be able to call or text someone on a cell phone then to actually go to their house and visit with them? McKibben thinks that these changes were upon us before we could do anything about them (45). Whether we accept these changes or not, we are still living in a very technologically advanced society and these new inventions and developments are slowly making us question the meaning of our lives.

Jimmy Corrigan is a prime example of a victim of a modern family. His parents are divorced and his childhood was not very pleasant. Because he never met his father, he sometimes has fantasies about what his father might look like (Ware 30) and even vivid images of killing his father (Ware 39). Perhaps Jimmy is trying to take out some of his pent-up frustration on his father in these fantasies because he never had a father figure growing up. As a result of coming from a broken family, Jimmy develops a lifelong obsession to Superman. Superman serves as both a father figure to Jimmy and as God. Typically, superheroes are supposed to be role models because they have good morals and never let you down. However, Jimmy watches his Superman jump off a building and crash to his death (Ware 16-19). Jimmy later has fantasies about a giant Superman who is as tall as a skyscraper and lifts up Jimmy’s house and throws it to the ground (Ware 52-53). Although Jimmy’s mother calls him obsessively and usually more than once a day, Jimmy feels detached from everyone and feels like a loner. He realizes that his life is meaningless and sometimes has fantasies about killing himself, like when he stepped in front of the moving mail truck (Ware 93).

Another way we have lost collective meaning in our lives is through the loss of community and society. McKibben states, “What’s important is that all of these [technological] changes went in the same direction: they traded context for individual freedom” (45). How can our lives possibly be meaningful if they have no context? It seems that the only way to bring meaning to your life is to find something that you’re passionate about and has a personal significance to you. Jimmy Corrigan doesn’t seem to have a friend in the world, but maybe his personal attachment to Superman and his need for wild fantasies is how he discovers meaning in his life. However, instead of having fantasies where life is good and he’s happy living his life, Jimmy’s fantasies are more like nightmares, full of fearful images and circumstances. McKibben tells us that “today’s world leaves us vulnerable to meaningless – to a world where consumption is all that happens, because there’s nothing else left that means anything. In a way that once was unthinkable, we now have to ask ourselves, ‘Is my life amounting to something? Does it have weight and substance, or is it just running away into nothing, into something insubstantial?’ And the only real resource that many of us have against that meaninglessness […] is our individual selves” (45). This confirms that the only way to find meaning is through our individual self. If technology cuts us off from family, society, community, and civilization, the only thing we’re going to be left with is ourselves.

Consequently, if we don’t find meaning in our lives, we will die alone. We are born alone and we will die alone. At the end of your life you really hope that people are able to look back and see it as a meaningful life. Jimmy is convinced that he will never be happy and will die alone. All Jimmy really longs for is a friend in his life and he wants to be Peggy’s boyfriend, but he’s too shy to ask her and tell her how he feels. Jimmy often fantasizes about women, love, and sex and his father is under the impression that Jimmy does have a girlfriend. Jimmy is an example of the type of people who wonder, “If I were to die tomorrow, who would care and who would show up at my funeral?”

McKibben and Ware both show examples of how modern life is lacking true meaning and how people are reacting to this void in their lives. Some hardly notice it and welcome new technology with open arms because they think that technology is the solution and will make things better, faster, and easier. Others are wary to accept these new changes but go along with them anyway. And then there are those who realize that the benefits do not outweigh the costs and our society might be better off if we stick to our original morals and values, such as family, community, and unity. Jimmy lives in a world with very minimal human contact and Ware shows us reads how bleak of an existence he has. If we do not wish to completely lose the collective meaning of our lives, then we must go out there and find personal meaning for ourselves.