First Draft
We live in a messed up world. The Government has the lies prepared, because they want to blind us from the truth, the truth that we are the ones who can change the rules. Fight Club, a book that had a character called Tyler Durden, he had an idea the made people from different positions in society be his disciples and followed what he said. Tyler was the savior to those people, he was the messiah and his ideas convinced them to change, to hit rock-bottom, to free them from the stress that most people in the society suffers from. Although Tyler’s rhetoric idea might be 20 years old and might be unacceptable to some people, he still has a point in how people have the fear of death that blocks them from being free, how people are powerful but they are not seeing it and how he describe humanity as having a spiritual depression.
Fight Club, speaks about a character (The Narrator) that is suffering from insomnia, he ends up going to AA meetings and rehabs centers to relief his stress, he meets a guy named Tyler Durden, both decide opening up a fight club in a basement of a bar. However, then Tyler becomes in control of a lot of people which he uses them to cause mayhem around the city and (The Narrator) has found that Tyler was actually his split personality. The story goes as how (The Narrator) tries to stop Tyler’s activities, however, it was already late. Tyler was spreading his rhetoric idea around the country like flu. Since (The Narrator) was going to cure meetings, you’d realize that the fight club meeting that was created under the bar was kind of like those meetings, however, instead of talking there was fighting. In a way, it was a way to relief those men from stress, making them feel free, each night the number of members increase, and even though, the first rule of fight club is not to talk about fight club. Tyler wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, his idea was that we had to lose our self in order to live free. The idea of that one day we are going to die, it’s not an idea, it is the truth. However, many people don’t feel comfortable of hearing that they are going to die, they just don’t accept the fact, Tyler was right when he said: “You have to give up! You have to give up! You have to realize that someday you will die, until you know that, you are useless.” This is the truth, one way to challenge yourself is to ask yourself, how would your life be if you had one week left? This explains Tyler’s idea about death, that if we didn’t go through a near death experience we will never be born free again. Tyler had this idea in his head, as long as you live within your limits, within your fears, you will never be free. Tyler’s point of view of society was that people never embrace pain, everyone tries to run away from pain by any means, shop more or spend more. People are weak, they can’t take any pressure, they were brought up upon dreams that they are going to be rich or become Rock stars, which is not going to happen. This exactly what society backs up, by showing all these false advertisements which make people run after different products they don’t even need and I personally have this problem too. These extra purchases puts people in debt with their low salary jobs that makes them work like animals, Tyler said: “Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The queen is their slave.” This beautiful saying talks a lot about our society, you can see how the people are the government’s slaves, working in their lousy jobs like worker bees and they don’t get paid for the effort they do. The most beautiful part about it is leave, people can leave but nobody does, the question is what is holding them? As a college student, our parents knew the path after high school was join the university, like we are prisoners, nobody told us to do whatever we want after high school. We have all these powers and capabilities, but because we are afraid of being criticized we live between metal bars. We were brought up on working harder, if we didn’t do well in something, they told us to work hard. Nobody told us to stop working, nobody told us that to live free you have to give up the idea of self-improvement, and that what Tyler said: “Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.” Backing up what Tyler said, a Portuguese poet named Fernando Pessoa known as one of the greatest Portuguese poets of modern time, said in one of his poems: “In order to understand, I destroyed myself.” Tyler had grown this idea of destruction in his mind, that’s why fight club wasn’t all what was in Tyler’s plan, he ended making another organization called Project Mayhem, which ended being like a terrorist organization in the sake of warning people that they could live free. In addition, the ones who were in that organization were called space monkeys, as the monkey who were first sent to space. They are the risk takers, as Tyler opinion of not taking any risks, you won’t go anywhere. In addition to the idea above, even though that Tyler’s rhetoric idea is 20 years old we can still observe today that it is functioning. For example, we can conclude from all these organizations which the world is fighting and calling them terrorist are those with such idea, trying to recruit people so they can be free and give world freedom too, which personally I don’t like being part of it, furthermore, I believe that Tyler went very far on this idea when he started making that organization, because not everyone would agree with you, and you can’t force them by causing terror and fear for those people, I believe it’s something between you and yourself, that’s it was called self-destruction and not destruction of others. Anyway, these organization that popped up in the world today similarly had the same way, but there opinions could be different, however, their approach is the same, by causing disturbance and destruction to push their point of view. The difficult part is when the rhetoric idea is spread the leader no longer matter, because the recruits are still going to do what they were programmed to do, this is exactly what happened when (The Narrator) tried to stop Tyler, it was too late. Work Cited1. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. London, UK ;W. W. Norton, 1996. Print.
2. Leonard, Annie. Story of stuff. New York; Free Press, 2010. Print. 3. Arunkumar Lakshminarayanan. Quora. 8 August 2012. Web. 4. Pessoa, Fernando. GoodReads. Quotes. Web. 5. Joshua Fields & Ryan Nicodemas. The Minimalists. Fight Club's Tyler Durden is a Minimalists. Web. |
Furthermore, the difference between self-improvement and self-destruction stands on this quote when Tyler said: “Self-improvement is masturbation, now self-destruction is the answer.” Masturbation is self-pleasuring, a way to give yourself satisfaction. However, after all this wasted time and energy this self-satisfaction fades away like bird feathers. Self-improvement is the same when you spend time and effort just to show how you improved yourself but not others, while self-destruction could actually hurt the person but the benefits will be for others.
What I personally experience and I believe the majority of people have is the issue of stress. Stress is what generates worry and fear, what causes most of our stress is our jobs, our daily basis of our life’s or even the people that we live around. When (The Narrator) went to his doctor complaining of how insomnia is making him suffer and not being able to sleep, he insisted on taking sleeping pills, those sleeping pills is exactly the same thing as limited time satisfaction i.e. masturbation, in fact those pills could be one of the reasons of causing stress. However, the doctor insisted not to give him any pills, and the doctor proved that insomnia is the minor issue, he had to find what is causing it. Stress is what makes us live in a hurry, we want to get things done quick, in addition, one of Fight Club’s benefits on its members is that from now and on as said: “Even a week after fight club, you've got no problem driving inside the speed limit. You get the finger from other drivers. Total strangers hate you. It's absolutely nothing personal. After fight club, you're so relaxed, you just cannot care.” This proves that fight club is not just any club, it is a club that heels you. Stress leads to depression, depression makes us behave stupid. When we are depressed we go to the easiest solution, which is avoid thinking about it and go have fun, however, the fun part is what even makes us more depressed because we consume, consume and consume. As Annie Leonard said in the story of stuff: “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction our ego satisfaction.” Moreover, what we are doing is we fall in a trap and from in there we create our own trap and trap ourselves. This basically when in the book of Fight Club (The Narrator) Condo exploded, he was thinking of all the stuff that were in that condo from furniture etc. This quote which actually explains how the flip happens, “The things you own end up owning you.” Overall, I believe that Tyler has a really nice point of view, he shows how we are brought weak, we are afraid, we are stressed and we are depressed because none of what we’ve been told could actually happen. However, as I mentioned earlier that the idea of mayhem and destruction does not actually suit me, I believe that it is a mistake to cause terror and hurt people to awaken them but that is just a prove to show that some people today have the rhetorical idea as Tyler did. Long story short, Tyler was a great example, he was like the spiritual guidance to the lost ones, he freed them from what society suffers today and made them free. If I to choose a side I would say Tyler was right, he was right in the stuff that made us weak and afraid of the truth but now we know, we know that this is our life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. |