Until the Axe Falls

In the twelfth episode of the fourth season of one of the most influential comedy series of the 20th Century (Seinfeld), George Costanza makes the argument that picking someone up from the airport in New York, or the mere ability to ask for such a pick-up, is the sign of a “binding social contract” that signifies a commitment that runs deep. The one newly chosen to do the task rushes to overperform, offering exaggerated assurances with lines like “I will take care of everything.” In that enthusiasm of lofty promises, the new kid in town may be quite unaware that the ground they stand on is shifting sand, because many histories have been erased for their benefit. The ask and the response lead to castles in the air that rise quickly when there is no knowledge of the ruins that lie beneath, and the one who has been cast aside watches with a distant amusement, for they know the pattern too well, the pattern of concealment and of hiding the past so the newcomer is not frightened away. Erasure is strategic, because the newcomer must be convinced of the permanence, even while the former confidant is still a shadow in the wings. The cruel irony of this performance is in the way there is an attempt to co-opt the abandoned one, inviting them back into the drama not out of reconciliation but out of utility, to calm the newcomer’s doubts, to demonstrate continuity and harmony where only rupture exists. The overlooked, however, refuses to participate in the charade, unwilling to be the backdrop against which the illusion of permanence is staged, and this refusal produces a hesitation the decider tries desperately to hide, disguising reluctance as absence, unwillingness as distance, because to admit it would crack the illusion. What the newcomer fails to see is everything is hidden by the glow of seduction. They fail to notice that every extravagant promise is compensation for an absence of history, fail to recognize that the silence of the displaced is not approval but resistance, fail to see that the one who has selected them has rehearsed this performance before, has spoken similar words to another, and has abandoned when the weight of history became inconvenient. They fail to see the cruel manipulation in attempting to co-opt the forsaken, and they fail to ask why the forsaken resists. Infatuation silences inquiry, and so the castles in the air grow taller, built not on knowledge but on the refusal to interrogate. As Bauman reminds us, relationships in liquid modernity are fragile precisely because they are sustained by immediacy and performance rather than continuity (Liquid Love, 2003). The relinquished, in contrast, sees everything with clarity. From the distance of rejection, they trace the repetition of the cycle, watching with amusement how quickly the newcomer forgets to question. They recognize the excessive declarations as the currency of insecurity, not of devotion. They understand the cruel irony of being invited back into the drama—not as a participant but as a prop, summoned only to soothe the doubts of the newcomer. They see the anxiety because of their refusal to be co-opted. As Ricoeur argued, the stories of the past persist and cannot be erased no matter how carefully concealed (Time and Narrative, 1984). And as Goffman reminded us, the performance of self on the front stage always collides with the reality of the backstage, no matter how carefully managed (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1956). The irony endures: the newcomer blinded by infatuation, the displaced clear-eyed in refusal, and the arbiter thriving in the uneasy space between concealment and seduction—until the cycle inevitably repeats. In the meantime, the one who has been cast aside with the arrival of the newcomer returns to Dylan in his song where he says, “I've given up the game, I've got to leave.”