Fight Club: A Method In The Madness?

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that he's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."

I love how +Chuck Palahniuk started that book!

Is it possible to derive something positive from this novel?

It is very agreeable the Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is a rather dark novel. The novel contains elements which has the reader completely shocked by the amount of blood spilling, violence and hatred contained within the book. Now, one would start to ask, "How can anything positive come out of such a dark novel? It's surely impossible!" I've always found that you can make a positive out of anything. No matter how dark and vile something is, you can always flip it somehow, to your advantage.

The overall plot of the book has to do with the narrator having felt the need to transcend the consumerist society he lived in. He kept commenting on how people work harder and harder, only to buy things that they never need. The misery embedded in the narrator was so great, due to the 'asleep' society he was living in, and all the pain was magnified by his severe insomnia. And from all of such darkness he saw in the world, he had to find a way out of it.

He joined various support groups which were linked to medical diseases, such as cancer, meningitis, and so on. Even though he didn't have ANY of those diseases, he still went to them. Why? He wanted to feel belonged. He wanted to get hugged. He wanted to feel love, even though if it was from a stranger. But mainly, he did all of that for the sake of healing his insomnia. It all did help. Although, he ended up meeting a very strange person named +Tyler Durden. After various, peculiar events in the narrators life, they ended up forming a destructive cult.

He started a Fight Club. And from such an underground cult-like gathering of people, he claimed to achieve enlightenment. The narrator said that it's something about getting pounded in the face, having your whole body worn out and weary, that brings you closer to mental transcendence. This brings us to the question: Is there a method in the madness?

What We Can Learn:

Now obviously, I'm not telling you to self-destruct, get pounded in the face or drive a car while flooring the gas pedal to the max. And most definitely not, starting some form of a 'Project Mayhem'. What is interesting though, is that we can direct the philosophy of Fight Club to our own benefit. One of the rules of Fight Club is that the FIGHT DOES NOT END UNTIL YOU GO LIMP! Now that's kind of a scary rule. How much beating does one have to endure, to achieve some sort of elation? After several sessions in the Fight Club, the narrator compared him to enlightened masters such as Krishna and Buddha. This brings us back to the possibility, that maybe with having our bodies go to failure, can we almost be 'reborn' after our bodies gain time to recover. So how are we going to do this, in a HEALTHY way?

If we take all what we learnt here, and apply it to healthy situations, it may reap us great, positive results. What we take from fight club is doing something to the very end. What we take, is pushing all limits until you achieve your goals. We shouldn't take the physical aspects of Fight Club, OBVIOUSLY, but rather the concept behind it. It's all about realizing what your new maximum can be.

The main example would have to do with our goals and dreams. We work towards it until our bodies go limp, but we still move forward. It's never wrong to cry, laugh, shout and smile moving towards our vision. When it comes to the main philosophy behind Fight Club, it means that when it comes to dreams, we have to push ALL LIMITS. Realizing new heights, and understanding that what we thought was our maximum can actually be our minimum, are what separate us from that success we all work for. It was never about constructing a Project Mayhem to destroy civilization, no. It was always about making your life itself a Project Mayhem, where you change the world with constructive dreams, even though some people will be displeased. It's about not denying who you really are. This is about experiencing new things everyday, and coming to the conclusion that no matter how much we think we have life figured out, there's always more to learn. No matter how wise or smart we may be, there are still confines we haven't pushed aside, and there are still restraints we haven't let go of. This is not a Project Mayhem of destroying the world, but a Project Mayhem of destroying the darkness that exists inside you.

Another example would be GOING TO THE GYM! And when you do go to the gym, pretend that you're at fight club. Except, don't get your body limp by punching others at the gym (obviously), but rather work out and work out and work out, until your muscles go to failure. I'm not saying that you should tear your muscles. I'm just saying, don't go to the gym, lift light weights, finish quickly, and get out of there. You need to work on all your muscles as though you are in a fight. You push yourself more and more, until your whole body feels weary. The more you weary out your body, the more awakened, refreshed, and enlightened you'll feel when you wake up the next morning.

All in all, one must learn to fight until he dies. The minute we stop fighting, we stop learning and growing. The minute we stop fighting for life, is the minute we forget what makes us human.