The Philosophy of Fight Club.

Chuck Palahniuk’s classic book was turned into a movie by David Fincher in 1999, and it is still relevant in today’s world. We still have a generation of people suffering doing stuff they hate, to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like. We have not learned to let go of society's assumptions, unlike the protagonist Tyler Durden.

I hope most of you have seen Fight Club, but the basic plot is that Edward Norton plays a depressed white-collar man who suffers from insomnia, on a flight, he meets an interesting soap salesman by the name of Tyler Durden, he soon finds himself living in Tyler Durden’s squalid house after his apartment is destroyed, the two of them then form an underground fight club but their partnership frays because of a woman called Marla Singer who catches Tyler’s attention.

Fight Club and Consumption.

Tyler Durden rejects the idea of consumerism while the narrator is obsessed with buying furniture for his “perfect” apartment. The film takes a critical look into the dark side of advertisements and media. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is when the narrator and Tyler are on the bus looking at an advertisement for Gucci underwear and the narrator asks “That’s what a man should look like?” Tyler replies saying “ Self-improvement is masturbation.”

Most people in the modern world have shoes and clothes that cost a lot of money, the sad truth is that many of us are led to this false bravado that comes with buying expensive shoes and clothes. We attach our self-image to material objects, but the external world cannot define the internal world. Similarly, the self-help movement is a fully-fledged business, it is a multi-billion dollar industry full of seminars and books, you cannot become a millionaire in a year by buying a course, the whole idea of the self-help movement is to create a perception of change, you perceive that you are one step closer to who you want to become when in reality you are one step closer to who you are.

Some books will tell you to affirm and then you might feel good about yourself but then you will go back to the same limiting patterns. Self-improvement is a DIY job, you have to improve by yourself, you cannot read a book and hope for your life to change, self-improvement is not a course, it is a lifelong process.

The Idea of Letting Go in Fight Club.

One of my favourite ideas presented in the movie is the idea of pain. Fighting is a painful act, many of the characters in the movie are bandaged and bloodied, they go to work with stitches and teeth missing. Pain makes us anxious, we want to have control, but I believe to have control, you have to learn to let go of the stuff that does not matter. Most of us, like the narrator, have difficulty in letting go, Tyler emphasizes this in a scene where he lets go of the steering wheel of a car and they crash, Tyler calls this a “near-life experience.”

Letting go does not mean being reckless, it means being able to hold on to important factors of your life and to let go of everything else. You are not in control of the result, then why do you attach so much importance to it? Having goals is good, but having a system is great. My system is simple, my goal of succeeding on Medium will be accomplished if I show up every day and write quality articles.

A system beats having a goal since it gives you a process to achieving your goal, only having a goal is like gambling, you keep on playing the odds up until you hit triple seven, having a system is like having an investment strategy that can be changed according to market conditions, both of them give you a chance to increase your wealth but one is better than the other. A system can complement your goals by giving you a predictable and scientific approach to achieving your goals.

What is your system?

Fighting and Masculinity.

I refuse to believe that masculinity is a social construct, we have lost our primal tendencies, I am not asking men to become feral in their actions, but masculinity should be channeled into constructive and healthy activities. In the movie, Tyler and the narrator get into a fight the first night they meet, afterwards, they feel surprisingly pleasant.

It’s widely known that voluntary exposure to certain forms of pain makes us stronger in the face of adversity, which could be a legit reason to partake in these fights. As the narrator states, “After fighting everything else in your life got the volume turned down.”

Fight Club was so impactful that real-life Fight Clubs started to emerge, a physical fight with the violence and aggression that comes with it helps us to tap into the primal part of our being, later on in the movie we see a video where members of Fight Club pick fights with strangers, interestingly the strangers did everything to avoid fighting, this video was not made to glorify violence, but it does beg the question, is losing our primal touch good? We should be able to find a way to tap into our instincts healthily.

I would suggest making a form of martial arts mandatory in every school so that children can find a way to channel their aggression. Aggression is not bad, the way we channel aggression is what determines our perception of it.

Non-Conformity.

Tyler Durden is a bit like Diogenes, a Greek philosopher who did not want to live by societal norms, they were both non-conformists, Diogenes lived in a barrel, Tyler lives in an abandoned house. I can’t agree with purposely throwing yourself in poverty or in salivating over your opponents using your blood, but I do agree with not living every part of your life like sheep.

The narrator is the perfect example of a conformist, he lives according to society and its trends, the problem with this lifestyle is that we dedicate our lives walking down the paths that people other than ourselves have laid out for us, there is no creativity or authenticity, it is a superficial way of life built on the premise of being accepted by society.

If we let go of these norms we are free in the truest sense, we can do whatever we want with whoever. Sadly, this lacks practicality since society already has a lot of rules for us to follow.

The Conclusion.

Tyler Durden is a very interesting character, Fight Club is the most impactful movie I have seen, the takeaways from this movie are that we should let go, control is an illusion whereas choice is not. You cannot live life by someone else’s’ rules, you should make your own rules based on a mix of gut feelings, experience, and intelligent risk management. You will not be perfect, but you cannot use that as an excuse to quit.