In my random internet encounters I stumbled upon an old article that uses “Fight Club” quotations to highlight some tips on life. The author “tones down” some of the better quotations and avoids others all together.
On the surface, “Fight Club” acts as a testosterone driven summer action movie, and as such appeals to the typical 14-21 male demographic. But just under the surface there is some fantastic subtext. Author Chuck Palahniuk becomes a great philosopher of our times through the voice of Tyler Durden. The voice of a psychotic, homicidal manic, but still somehow brilliant.
“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
Get off your ass and do something. Make the changes in your life that you need to be happy. Do something. I love this quote. There are days that I just scream it inside my head while I waste away at work doing mind numbing and repetitive tasks. Life is short and its happening now. Do whatever you can to enjoy it.
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Ah, the consumer frenzy. I am such a victim of this insanity. I don’t need most of the crap I own, or want to own. But everywhere you look you are bombarded with the impulse to buy. Truthfully its probably what keeps the economy going. But its also what keeps us in debt, and what traps us in jobs we don’t like or want.
You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.
The things that define you are deeper than these material things. Those things are statistics, circumstances, and they can all change. I hate the way our culture demands we be defined by our economic status or our career. I hate my current career, and I certainly hate my bullshit, bland, meaningless Khakis, why would I want that to define me?
“I don’t wanna die without any scars.”
Life is kind of supposed to be messy. You have to get hurt sometimes to know the difference.
Am I missing any great quotes?
(Photo by Robert S. Donovan)
I am Jack’s wasted life.
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Tags: chuck palahniuk, consumer frenzy, fight club, insanity, quotations, tyler durden
I think the ideas behind these quotes are good, but in my own personal opinion I think that people focus too much on work in general.
The week is 168 hours long. We spend around 40 of those hours at work. That means we have 128 hours every week that we’re not at work.
Even if a person doesn’t like their job, they only make it worse by spending their 128 free hours thinking about it. I don’t hate my job, but I promised myself that to the best of my ability I forget all about it as soon as I step outside those doors every night. I don’t talk about it, I don’t think about it. My job pays me well, but it doesn’t pay me enough to let it occupy my thoughts when I’m not there.
My job is not who I am… it just pays the expenses for me to be who I am.
I love this perspective, but its hard to separate out something that takes up so much of our lives. Identifying as your job is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that it can be an insurmountable struggle for most of us to just forget about it after the hours of 9-5.
I don’t want to just ignore a chunk of my life. I want to find something I enjoy and gives me a shred of fulfillment.
I do try try to forget about work when I’m not there, but some days are harder than others.
I definitely agree that sometimes it’s hard. Without a doubt.
I’m not saying that someone should work a job they despise, but I am saying that when you don’t let yourself have a mental break from a job, it’s going to be much easier to despise it.
I also strive, though, to not be identified by my job. I’m a computer programmer, but I want people to see me and say “Hey, that’s Jason. He’s a blogger/sports fan/musician/whatever else” rather than “Hey, that’s Jason, he’s a computer programmer.”
Once again, I’m certainly not saying that’s easy, though, but it’s my goal.
And to work toward that goal, I have to think of myself that way. I don’t dislike my job, but I don’t want it to define me.
…and that I can get behind 100 %. All work and no play makes Amanda a crazy person.
Even if someday I find a fantastic job that I love, I still wouldn’t want to be identified as only my career.
Amanda the blogger. Sounds a bit boring without other information.
People are so much more complex than that, and yet the first question most of us ask when we meet new people is, “What do you do for a living?” Can we all agree to stop asking this right away? Get to know the person first!
I think this post is really about social identity. We do this to categorize and organize people into logical groups. I think most people allow their social standing to define their personality identity and self-concept. It is totally understandable though, considering most people don’t know themselves well enough and many others are willing to define a person for them.
The reason people ask about someone’s job is because it has become a part of our culture in which we all agree that a job and how hard you work are assigned as character traits. Obviously this is not always true.
For example, a 35 year old working at McDonald’s may be doing so because he lost his job as a lawyer or got into a bad accident and is recovering. Simply saying he works as a burger flipper would signal to someone that he might lack ambition or not be capable of something better. This person’s abilities and personality are not defined by the job, but for many, it is a way to quickly place this person in a social graph. It is judging, but we all do it.
You know my philosophy has always valued effort more than results. Someone that is trying to do more (no matter where they are in the process) have as much respect from me as those who have achieved success. Also note that success doesn’t mean wealth (another issue our society needs to address).
As for your comment about consumerism, I think you need to check out http://buylesscrap.org. It is a great site that makes fun of the (RED) campaign and shows you how to donate money right to the charity rather than buying red iPods or t-shirts from the Gap.
being a computer programmer myself makes me very proud of my job`*.
my father is a computer programmer for Alwill Software and it is a high paying job,;;