The First Rule Of Fight Club Is To Talk Incessantly About How Great The Movie Is

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I watched Fight Club again. By "again," I do not mean for the second time. 

Conservatively, I would estimate that I have seen Fight Club well over 100 times. If the fact that I put Fight Club in the DVD player and have it playing in the background as I paint is factored in, that number zooms past 1,000.

I am not exaggerating.

That little piece o' info probably brings up questions as to my sanity for many people, and questions as to my taste in movies for many others.

Most people, most normal people, do not get Fight Club...the way I get it.

That is not a claim into some special insight that others are not astute enough to pick up on. No, that is rather a realization that I get a bit more out of watching Fight Club than most people I've met who have also seen the film.

Probably an indictment of my less-than-stellar intellect, that.

Fight Club is not a movie to me. Fight Club is the single most important life affirming philosophical treatise I have ever encountered.

David Hume is no doubt doing triple lutzes in his grave.

I have stated that Fight Club is a philosophical treatise out loud, to intelligent, educated, experienced people-of-the-world on many, many occasions and I have seen eyes roll like basketballs spinning around in a half-speed Gravitron.  

Those same people will often ask me (usually with a tone of incredulity) if I've ever studied Voltaire or Rousseau, read the works of Socrates, Plato or Aristotle, know who Francis Bacon or John Locke or William James were, if I've ever been exposed to the writings of James Allen, Nietzsche, or Goethe - or if I've even read Chicken Soup For The Soul.

Of course, of course. Hell, I have a copy of the works of Baltasar Gracian on my nightstand. I have Bergson's statement, "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." framed and hanging on a wall in my house.

The words of great thinkers have always interested me. Some have had great influence on me and the way I live my life. However, it was while viewing Fight Club that I finally found the answer to the most important questions.       

If you have not seen Fight Club, you need to do that now. Stop reading this and download or rent or buy a copy of Fight Club, and watch it.

There are some people, even some of the people responsible for the creation of the movie, who say the message of the movie is ambiguous.

There are some people who say it's just a movie, and parrot Marshall McLuhan's old chestnut, that the medium is the message. 

Old McLuhan was wrong. The medium is not the message. The medium is just a means of conveying the message. 

The message, for anyone paying attention, is clear as the brightest, sunniest day in the history of bright, sunny days. 

Watch Fight Club until you get past the idea that the story concerns itself with a psychotic insomniac who cannot appreciate how good his life is and thus must learn about true suffering, watch it until you get past the idea that it's about bored dudes getting together to pummel each other for stress relief, watch it until you get past the idea the story is about one man who inadvertently creates a doppelganger due to his reaction to the crassness of modern society, watch it until you get past the idea that the story is about consumerism and capitalism stripping us of our primal humanity and how society has to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt, watch it until you get past the idea that the story is about the modern corporate workplace being dehumanizing, watch it until you get past the idea that the story is about the emasculation of the typical American male, watch it until you get past the idea that the story is about the disruption of the male psyche caused by the collapse of the nuclear family.  

Fight Club is not about rejecting mainstream society, not about embracing anarchy, not about culture jamming, not about pranking or goofing on corporations, not about reconstructing society or reinterpreting social mores in the light of the restructuring of gender roles in the 21st century. 

Fight Club is not about sexual identity, structural functionalism, nihilism, existentialism, challenging taboos, or becoming an iconoclast.

                                       *Spoiler Alert*

I typed that right there because if you have not watched Fight Club, and did not take to heart what I wrote just 8 paragraphs ago, and you keep reading, the following is going to reveal a few key plot points.

Fight Club is not about two men who share philosophical insights with one another. The protagonist and the antagonist in this movie are one and the same. Every word Tyler Durden says to the narrator (let's call him "Jack"), every word Jack says to Tyler Durden...they are saying to themselves.

Watch the movie with that firmly in mind, that it's one man talking to himself, trying to teach himself...something. 

In the movie, which by the way is an extremely rare example of a movie actually exceeding it's source material, we meet a man who has never learned how to be himself, how to be comfortable in his own skin.

Through a convoluted though extremely entertaining series of vignettes, David Fincher takes Jim Uhls' screen treatment of Chuck Palahniuk's book and teaches something tangible, something very, very valuable.

Fight Club is about one man searching for, and finding, himself. 

It would be easy to assume that Fight Club is about a man fighting himself, but that is not the case. He has to fight through himself - who he thinks he is, what he thinks is important, etc., but he's not fighting himself, he is finding himself. Because he's lost.

It's spelled out in the first line of dialogue in the movie: "People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden."

The answer is no, but the twist is, it's actually "not yet", because he's Tyler Durden - but he doesn't know it because he's lost.

That's it. One lost man, adrift in a vast ocean on a small boat.

The thing is, the boat is not without a rudder - in fact, it has sails, oars, a motor, maps, navigational tools - everything a boat should have to be useful.

But the man, the man has no idea how to use any of it. The only thing he knows about the boat is how to be in it. 

He has no idea where he's going or what he is even looking for, if he's looking for anything at all. 

Hell, he has no idea why he's even on the boat.

It's really simple though, the lesson. If you're lost, adrift on a boat...there are only two things you can do if you want to stay sane.

Learn how to make use of the boat, or learn to enjoy being adrift.

Take responsibility for being on the boat. To spell it out a little clearer, you're an adult now - stop blaming society's ills for your ills. 

It's almost Buddhist. That which is external is not what will bring you happiness. It's within you.

Do not live in fear.

Be free.

Make these your primary action items.