Yeah, so after announcing last month that August was going to be Fight Club Month, I disappear for almost three weeks before posting anything to Dead-Logic, and what I wrote had nothing to do with Fight Club.
Or did it? (Warning: film spoilers)
No, not really. But damn it, this is Fight Club month here at Dead-Logic, and I will say that I've been wrestling with myself a lot lately in a rather Tyler Durden-esque way. No, I haven't created a disassociated personality that shares a body with me. I have, however, been struggling with who I am. I think my previous entry hinted at this, if not more. I see who I want to be, what I want to accomplish in life, and much like how the narrator sees Tyler Durden, what I see in my mind's eye isn't (yet) what I see in reality.
"Hey, you created me. I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!"
- Tyler Durden
I have goals. What I see in my mind's eye isn't merely a daydream or fantasy, but something I have set my mind to accomplishing. I haven't created a Nietzschean Übermensch alter-ego to keep myself from facing reality; rather, I live to attain the most Nietzschean of goals: focusing my ambition and drive to carve meaning and purpose out of the blackness and indifference of the universe.
"People do it everyday, they talk to themselves... they see themselves as they'd like to be, they don't have the courage you have, to just run with it."
- Tyler Durden
Here's an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Fight Club:
[David] Fincher said Fight Club was a coming of age film, like the 1967 film The Graduate but for people in their 30s. Fincher described the narrator as an "everyman"; the character is identified in the script as "Jack", but left nameless in the film. Fincher outlined the narrator's background: "He's tried to do everything he was taught to do, tried to fit into the world by becoming the thing he isn't." The narrator cannot find happiness, so he travels on a path to enlightenment in which he must "kill" his parents, his god, and his teacher. At the start of the film, he has killed his parents. With Tyler Durden, he kills his god by doing things they are not supposed to do. To complete the process of maturing, the narrator has to kill his teacher, Tyler Durden.
When I watch Fight Club, I see the concept of killing the Buddha, which I've written about on this blog. For those who haven't read about it:
The concept of killing the Buddha is found in a story from Zen traditions. After years of study and meditation, a monk has what he believes is a great achievement: the ineffable ultimate; enlightenment. But, unfortunately for the monk, this is not the case. His master explains that what he has experienced is fairly common and no real achievement at all. Then the master offers strange-sounding advice: If you meet the Buddha, kill him.
He should kill him because the Buddha he meets is not the true Buddha. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in the way. The Buddha encountered here represents one's expectations, desires and preconceived notions. This Buddha represents a belief one holds because his favorite professor believes it, or "C.S. Lewis said it" or because it's what his denomination believes. This Buddha is the confidence one feels in his worldview simply because he wants it to be true and refuses to consider alternatives.
Many believe in something because they have neither considered it seriously nor scrutinized it objectively, they do not know from where this belief came and they never allow themselves to see that they are making assumptions and that these assumptions might be wrong. They think they've attained enlightenment or have an intimate connection with the eternal logos of the universe. They think they have insight into "ultimate reality." They are convinced they know the will of the divine. More likely, these people just have a Buddha in their way...
According to [KillingTheBuddha.com's] manifesto, "killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God... when people talk about God they are talking mainly about the Buddha they meet." If the Buddha is not killed he will only stand in the way, so complacency and apathy must be destroyed before an honest struggle with the ideas of god, faith, and religion can occur. Bias and personal preference must give way to objectivity.
The Buddhas we meet aren't only concerning our beliefs and assumptions about god, but about anything we think brings us closer to enlightenment and fulfillment. We are satisfied way too easily, as pigs wallowing in mud.
"It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."
-John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861).
Here's the problem: our society offers us a bunch of crap, nonsense, and superficial bullshit to keep our tiny minds happy and relatively inactive. We live in a world of fast food, entertainment at the push of a button, instant gratification. We're told how we're supposed to look, how we're supposed to behave, what we're supposed to like, value, and want. Pass by the magazine rack at the store and see why so many girls feel insecure and inadequate. See why so many guys try to hard to be macho tough guys. I'm not the only person seeking significance and meaning in life: it's a primal human need. The problem is, our culture sucks at meeting that need.
"Self-improvement is masturbation. Now self-destruction..." - Tyler Durden
I don't have to look like Arnold Swarzenegger in his prime - or, ironically, like Brad Pitt in the movie Fight Club - to be healthy, or manly, or tough. Some of the best fighters and martial artists I've ever known look like average guys at first glance, but deep down they are lethal. So why do I feel the need to have six-pack abs? Because that's what our culture has taught me. If I get those abs, it will only be to pleasure myself. It is, as Mr. Durden puts it, a form of masturbation. Six-pack abs are a status symbol, not a necessity. And we know how Tyler feels about that:
Tyler Durden: We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.
Let's not forget one of my favorite Tyler Durden quotes: "The things you own end up owning you." In the search for enlightenment, the Narrator had to kill a few Buddhas. He had to give up his lifestyle obsession. He had to stop trying to be what other people say he should be. He longs for real experiences; he wants to feel. He's lived in a world that's left him cold and numb. He longs for the pain that tells him he's still fucking alive. From this desire, Fight Club is born.
I enjoy the first half of the film much more than the second half. Don't get me wrong, the entire movie is great, but in the first half of the film I find my inspiration. I hear Tyler's ideology, his cry for freedom and his existential revolt against systems of conformity. I feel his need for more out of life.
"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
- Tyler Durden
We are slaves to consumerism and commercialization. After watching the first half of the film, I want to grab all the corporate logos and burn them in effigy while I cry out "FREEDOM!" in my best William Wallace voice. Then I watch the second half of the movie, and I'm reminded of the human condition. All these men who embraced Tyler Durden's vision of freedom allowed themselves to become enslaved by him.
"Fight Club was the beginning, now it's moved out of the basement, it's called Project Mayhem." - Tyler Durden
Tyler was the revolutionary, the path to enlightenment, the Buddha, and the members of Fight Club followed him out of the basement and into the streets, surrendering their will to him. "In Tyler we trust." In doing so, they reveal an all-too-human characteristic: we allow ourselves to become enslaved too easily. Even in the attempt to liberate ourselves, our tendency is to run right back into captivity. How many times does the battered person run into another abusive relationship? Even with the promise of Canaan, we keep looking back to the bondage of Egypt. We want enlightenment, we want freedom, but we settle for too little too quickly. Tyler rebelled against systems of control and conformity, only to lead his disciples into a new system of control and conformity. If the first half of the film is idealistic, the second half is realistic. Project Mayhem points to the human condition: Tyler Durden became the Buddha they refused to kill.
Dead-Logic.com
