The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw
So I'm going to break the rules and talk about Fight Club. (By the way, I had no idea that Hobbes is Tyler Durden).
One of my favorite passages from Fight Club comes from the narrator:
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
...
Narrator: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
All of the others come from Tyler Durden:
Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. 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.
...
Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
...
The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is - you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. Third rule of Fight Club, someone yells "Stop!", goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes. Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
...
Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me.
...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
...
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.
...
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. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
...
All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.
...
[while burning the Narrator's hand with lye]
Tyler Durden: Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
Narrator: No, no, I... don't...
Tyler Durden: Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
Narrator: It isn't?...
Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.
...
We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra... Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.
...
Tell him. Tell him, "The liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perceptions".
...
Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat. It's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! LET GO!
...
Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
...
Well, you did lose a lot of versatile solutions for modern living.
At one point in the movie, the narrator asks,
If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
This gives me quintessential existential tingles down my deeply intertwingled spine. Every day every one of us wakes up at a different time in a different place as a different person. Progress is what happens when we're not relaxing.
Which brings me back to Renee Blodgett, who also posted,
I used to hide behind my glasses
savoring the distance
until I discovered
other people
used them as microscopesPerhaps it's this transition that remains stagnant,
Not moving on one block.....
Descriptive of life in one word......Perhaps it's my birthday that brings out the glasses,
The desire to hide.....
The desire to stay.....
The desire to stand still......
Smile. Sing. Dance. Calm.
So it goes...
I'm working on a project that involves Fight Club right now. I feel that with a lot of existential things, it's more of a "you have to see it to know it" and you can't really define exactly WHY it's existential, you know? Anyway, great collection of quotes.
Posted by: gina | March 28, 2006 at 08:26 PM