Fight Club: The Utter Chaos of a Free Society – Editorial

Premise

Freedom… everybody wants it, nobody has it. Some might claim they do. But, all it takes is a couple of well directed and sharp questions to prove them otherwise. Nobody who’s a conscious human being is a free being. Some say human consciousness is an error of the evolution. In an unsettling way that’s accurate. Just look at the cockroach in your kitchen or the mosquito on your wall or the bird in the sky. They don’t worry about climate change. They don’t feel stressed at work. They don’t have work. A lizard never commits suicide because it felt catching flies was stressful. Only a human can do that.

All they know is eat, reproduce, repeat and finally die. It’s kind of a peaceful life in their own way. The cockroach doesn’t know that we’ve laced its food. The bird doesn’t know that a hunter has pointed a rifle at, we humans are gonna force them to extinction. Yet, they seem free and happy. Simple yet undeniable truth – ignorance is bliss.

On the same planet, we are born into a tailored world for our needs. Take, for example, just a century or so ago, electricity used to be magic. People used to go to parks in thousands to watch an elephant electrocuted to death (true incident). And laud the person who had that power to bring down the largest walking mammal ever the earth has ever seen by holding a pair of copper wires. Anyway, now you can’t imagine a world without electricity. You wouldn’t be reading this stuff nor will I be writing it. The only difference is Human Consciousness. We observed, learned, adapted and broke the nature to our will in our pursuit of comfort. How dare we say we are free when we are surrounded by things that are not natural at all.

So, in this tailored world, the definition of freedom itself should be tailored to our understanding. That’s what the Fight Club’s infamous protagonist ‘Tyler Durden’ does. If you didn’t watch it till now, you are an endangered species in movie culture.

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Argument

Tyler Durden is the living embodiment of how a free man looks like. He lives in an abandoned house because he only needs a roof with four walls to save himself from sun, wind, and rain. He doesn’t own a car or any property because that’s not who you are. He even said ‘Your job, your bank balance, your house or your car doesn’t define you.’ Such is the bizarre ideology that he burns his own flesh to the bone using chemicals to accept the truth that there’s pain all around us and we cannot run from it. He sells handmade soaps to fat rich people. The soaps are made from the human fat he steals from a liposuction clinic. A perfect example of karma.

And he thinks that the little guy isn’t getting enough credit or freedom he deserves. Little guy means the guy who opens the door for you, the girl who works at the bank for you, the waiter, the bus boy, anybody who works for somebody. Without whom, the system will collapse around us. And it is true. These are the invisible guys that run the world like clockwork every day. We feel for them and we morally support them. And it’s our nature to love the underdogs.

Fight Club: The Utter Chaos of a Free Society

As Tyler starts ‘Fight Club’ for all the little guys to blow off some steam, he emerges a leader to all of them. They obey him and do homework like fight a stranger today, blow off an apple store tomorrow, etc. Things escalate quickly from there and it turns out he had a master plan all along to erase the credits from the banks to bring everybody to the same playing field as the little guys. It might look okay to us. After all, he’s not planning to nuke a country like old Spy movie villains. But that’s the concern I have with freedom. It comes with chaos disguised in insanity. Why?? I thought you might never ask.

Can you imagine waking up in the stone age? Where humans don’t co-operate anymore because there’s no single currency you can trust to trade? You are nothing but an animal with words. We forgot how to hunt when we gave all that up for a comfortable way of food… Agriculture. We might cave into military camps and rations but all it takes is an epidemic. A few hardy survivalists may be able to live for a decade or so before a snake bite or common cold or a black bear passing the road kills them.

And in the name of freeing humanity of this artificial comforts, you are making a choice that’s taking away the same choice from rest of humanity. Who is Tyler to decide how the little guy decides to live? How can one human decide the fate of the rest? Maybe the little guy is working his ass off to keep his dream alive. But because a mentally unstable guy who happens to be a great orator has his own definition of freedom, he’s got to worry about a global economic meltdown? That’s not fair. That’s not what he has trained his whole life for. And again… it’s his choice. The only free thing we have left is making a choice. Nobody or nothing shall take that right away from a human of making a choice for himself/herself.

That’s the price we have to pay for our consciousness. We gave up freedom when we chose a human like ourselves to rule over us as a King. We gave up our freedom when we chose to eat the same thing every day in a new form instead of hunting and foraging. In a way, Tyler Durden was right… comfort makes us weak. But, it also gives us knowledge and a better understanding of the world around us. A fifth-grade school girl knows more about the universe now than Newton did when he ate that fallen apple.

Conclusion

So, what does freedom really means in the 21st century? I don’t think anybody knows. I define my own freedom as everybody else does. For me being fair is important than being free in concrete jungles. You don’t need to liberate the little guy. He’ll find his own way. Just treat him with a little dignity and respect… That’s all anyone can ask. Because it’s only fair.

Image Credits: Elite Column
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