Finding Meaning In Fight Club

Fight Club is an old film (released in 1999) which is narrated by a lonely, unfulfilled young man (Edward Norton). He hates his job as an insurance executive and finds comfort and escape only in pretending to have a terminal illness so he can attend support groups at night. As he hops from from group to group, he meets another pretender, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who irritates him because she is also a fake.

One day, while returning from a business trip, he meets a fascinating character, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on the plane. They become fast friends, and they start Fight Club, as a kind of protest against the consumer-culture. Fight Club which has its meeting at a bar basements where angry and frustrated men vent their anger and frustrations by having fist fights with each other. Fight Club soon grows in popularity and becomes like a secret society with cross-country branches.

This movie explains to you the meaningless consumer society that we all belong to - which explains our meaningless lives. You'll have to watch this film to understand its message.

This movie teaches you that there is a possibility of living without being employed i.e. having a regular job; although you'd have to live in the fringes of society. It also tells you that there are many people out there just waiting for someone to give them meaning in their lives. People are generally fed up with the superficiality of their existing lives that they are prepared to join a club that promotes destruction - at least it gives some meaning to their pathetic lives.

Tyler Durden says, "...you're not how much money you've got in the bank. You're not your job. You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself.... You're not your name.... You're not your problems.... You're not your age.... You are not your hopes."

What Tyler Durden means is that we are consumers. The government, large corporations that make and sell thing and the media decide what we should buy and how we should live. Thats the only way these governments and big corporations can survive. People are just components of these large corporations and governments - people live to work and to buy things big corporations, governments and the media tell them they should have.

Big corporations have brainwashed people to think like this - buying stuff = success. This is a great marketing strategy because these big corporations make huge amounts of money if people think like that, and most people are too stupid to see that they are just mindless consumers, buying things they don't need and living meaningless lives .

The narrater says, "This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."
What he means is that most people forget that we are all mortal, our ultimate destiny here on earth is to die - everyone has to die one day. If life is short, why are we doing meaningless things (working in a fucked up job), just to buy the things the big corporations tell us that we should buy ? Each time you watch an advertisement, remember this.

Tyler Durden says, "You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

Many people think they are special or strive to be special. Why ? because they forget that they came from nowhere (being born) and they are going to die one day just like all the animals and plants. Nobody will remember them - nobody will care; everyone will just get on with their lives. You think people will remember you and what you've done ? think again. How many of you think of your dead relatives ? or remember what someone great like Winston Churchill or Hitler has said or done ? Most people in the world haven't even heard of these people, and they don't fucking care either.

Tyler Durden says, "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."

He means that you cannot change who you are by adding things to yourself. You can wear cool clothes and drive a cool car. But remember, only the clothes and car are cool, not you. You are still the fucking sucker who paid a fortune for the clothes and car to support the company who sold it to you and the owners of that company. For example, if you stay at a 5 star hotel like the Hilton, does that make you cool ? No. You're a sucker because, the money goes to Paris Hilton and her family and other who own the hotel. You are still a 3rd world monkey, working hard so that all the Paris Hiltons of the world don't have to work. Sucker !

If you understood what I've wrote, then, watch this film. Better still, read the book.

If you still haven't got a clue, continue watching Harry Porter, buy that nice car and compete with your friends about how much money you make.

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