Fight Club, Nihilism, Deep Thoughts, and Me

When I turned 18 my father gave me a birthday card, inside which he had written, “Now I can say I have a man for a son.” Were he still alive he could say that he has a middle-aged man for a son.

Today I turn 38 years old.  Normally birthdays don’t bother me, I couldn’t give a shit.  I’m going bald, my hair is turning gray, none of that stuff really irks me.  But this birthday represents a milestone.  I can no longer say I’m in my “middle thirties.” I am now officially in my “late thirties.” And, in two years, I will be 40.

It’s weird.  When I take stock of my life, on the one hand I think it’s been an amazing ride, and on the other I think it’s completely pathetic.  I was 10 years old when my father was 38, and not only don’t I have kids, I’ve never been married.  He got married when he was 26.  The most expensive thing I’ve ever owned is a car.  All my worldly possessions, the sum total of my life, are either in my apartment in Beijing or in a storage locker in Los Angeles.  That’s it, that’s Lee.

Now, in some ways this is really cool.  It’s like people who go off on a spur of the moment vacation and say, “I only packed a toothbrush!” That, in a way, is the motto of my life.  On the one hand I’ve lived freely, doing whatever the hell I wanted whenever the hell I wanted to do it.  My life has been free of the usual “dead weight” that so many men my age complain about—wife, kids, mortgage, and so on.  I’ve never dealt with any of that stuff.  When it came to life, all I packed was a toothbrush.

But, on the other hand, when I’m older, do I really want to be standing there with only a toothbrush to show for my time in this world?  As most of you know I am an atheist.  I don’t believe in God, an afterlife, angels, goblins, fairies, leprechauns, ghosts, or anything of that nature.  One of the most liberating days of my life was the day that I realized that I mean nothing.  To paraphrase a few lines from Fight Club, I am not a unique snowflake, I am the say decaying organic matter as anything else, and we are all part of the world’s compost heap.  We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the universe.  From Fight Club:

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.

And while some people might find that depressing, it was the happiest day of my life.  I didn’t have to fret about my “reason” for being here.  I didn’t have to consider the meaning of life, because the answer is simple—there isn’t one.  In other words, I could stop searching for the answer to an unanswerable question.  The reason for my life is not to earn the favor of some sky pixie so I can be rewarded in an afterlife.  I won’t be floating around in the ether with all my dead relatives and pets and friends in eternal bliss.  My life is right here, right now, and I want to make the most of it.  From Fight Club once again:

I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, “Why?” Why did I cause so much pain?  Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?  Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love?  I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong.  We are not special.  We are not crap or trash, either.  We just are.  We just are, and what happens just happens.  And God says, “No, that’s not right.” Yeah.  Well.  Whatever.  You can’t teach God anything.

So what gives my life value?  The fact that I say it does.  And this is where my conundrum comes in.  Which do I value more, my own experiences and enjoyment of life, or sacrificing some of that freedom for the security of a wife and kids?  To give you an example, I plan on visiting North Korea as soon as it is feasible.  North Fucking Korea, the world’s last true Stalinist dictatorship, unquestionably one of the worst places on earth.  Only a thousand Americans have ever visited the DPRK, and I want to be one of them.  I’d rather go to North Korea than any other place on earth, for the simple reason that it would be interesting as hell.  Anyone can go to Rome.  Oooh, look, the Vatican!  Now I’m Paris, there’s the Eiffel Tower!  Ooh La La!  Blah blah blah fuckity blah.  Who gives a shit.  North Korea?  That’s fucking fascinating.  We have no diplomatic relations with the DPRK, so if I get in trouble there I have no embassy to complain to.  I could be publicly executed.  This, to me, sounds like the greatest time in the world.  It’s one of the reasons I have currently chosen to live in a communist country, to be able to experience all this stuff firsthand, things that people back home only read about in books or (more likely) see in 30-second snippets on their local newscast while they’re eating dinner.  I want to go to the worst places in the world simply because nobody else goes there.  I guess I’m an egomaniacal bastard, but when someone asks me, “Gee, you’re 40, haven’t you ever thought of settling down?” I want to be able to say, “What the fuck have you done with your life, other than live it according to some arbitrary societal standard?”

North Korea?  Vietnam?  Cambodia?  Bring it on.  A wife and kids and a mortgage?  Terrifying.

I don’t know why growing up is so worrisome.  But, that begs the question, exactly what is “growing up”?  Who says that to be a grown up you have to have a house and a car and a wife and a whole bunch of useless, worthless shit that, in the end, will mean nothing?  Who gives a shit that a few months ago I spent a thousand dollars buying antique Chinese furniture?  It’s wood.  Right now it has value because of its age.  If I was freezing I could chop it up and burn it to keep warm.  To put it another way, I own a wardrobe that’s 130 years old, built when China still had an emperor, before Sun Yat Sen overthrew the monarchy and installed the nationalist Kuomintang.  Chairman Mao wasn’t even born when my wardrobe was built.  And THAT, to me, is fascinating, the number of world events that this wardrobe has experienced. 

I walk past old people on the street here and I think, man, I wonder what those eyes have seen.

Any dickhead can go to Ikea and buy a piece of furniture.  But look what what my wardrobe has lived through—two revolutions, two World Wars, the installation of a communist government, the Cultural Revolution, and the eventual opening of China to the rest of the world.  My wardrobe, at its basest element, is nothing more than a wooden box.  So what is this wooden box, something to be treasured, or just a wooden box?  Because if you can answer that question, you can answer the secret to my life.  To quote Fight Club one final time:

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.”

I have nothing, so I am free to do anything.  The question is, should I want to?

Update: Upon re-reading this post, if I may be so bold, I actually think this is quite profound.

When it came to life, all I packed was a toothbrush.

I think I want that on my tombstone.

The realization for me was that I did not want to be an old man and all alone.  I wanted to have someone to hand off my wisdom and experience and possessions to.  Think about the guy who first bought that wardrobe and how he might have thought knowing his descendants would have it 100 years after he was gone.

I also, because I have doubt about the nature of existence, wanted to leave someone behind to remember me and to continue me.  That if I’m gone but part of me lives on, it’s not as bad.

There are a lot of aspects of the button-down life I don’t like.  But my daughter makes it worth it.  And she gets old enough to where I can explain baseball to her or give her Moby Dick to read or argue with her about President Chelsea Clinton, it will make my life richer.

That’s a really good point.  I’ll give you an example from my life.  My dad used to make the best pancakes.  When we were little my brother and I could wake up every sunday and dad would have made pancakes.  This was his own recipe that he perfected over the years, and it was unbelievable.

It was about a week after he died that my mom realized he’d never written the recipe down.  It died with him.

So if the point of life is to experience as much as you can, and learn as much as you can, wouldn’t it be kinda pointless if you didn’t do something with it, like pass that wisdom and knowledge on to a child?  What’s the point of a lifetime of learning if it dies with you?

I can definitely relate.  Part of my thinks I ought to settle down and do the wife and kids thing… but not yet.  I’m *only* 28 after all.  Right now I’m working on a grad degree and trying to make a respectable CD with my band (if I ever finish that I’ll give you a link Lee, all the songs are about women and drinking and the genre is a blend of hard rock and metal with a touch of Louisiana sludge thrown in, so you’d probably like it).

I’d have much rather spent my entire life as a bachelor than get married to the wrong woman - hence the wait until I was nearly 40 to get hitched.

Why on earth does everyone think you need kids?  20% of the US population does quite well without them - don’t have children just because you think you “have to”.

President Chelsea Clinton

Will never, ever happen…

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.”

Did you even watch Fight Club?  Losing everything, is not about material possessions.  It’s about your mental attachment to material possessions.  It’s about leaving your wallet on the beach in plan view as you swim out in the ocean.  Free to do anything is about cutting the string of worry to your wallet on the beach, because even if you’re in the ocean you’re still on the beach if you are worried about that wallet. 

If I wipe my ass with your toothbrush are you really going to cry about it when you throw it away?

How many times do you check if your wallet is still there in a bar? 

Why do you think at the end of the movie they blew up the financial institutions?

On the one hand I’ve lived freely, doing whatever the hell I wanted whenever the hell I wanted to do it.

Really, why no happy endings, slapping a coworker, showing up and leaving whenever you want, if hot water goes out beat the shit out of the maintenance worker?

Doing whatever you want means, “Trampling on the rights of others.”

I have to run now..

I’ll be back later to talk about why your wrong about those pathetic people who dare to live a different life style. 

Fixed

Did you even watch Fight Club?

I’ve watched it countless times, and read the book about three times, so yes.

Losing everything, is not about material possessions.  It’s about your mental attachment to material possessions.

Which was exactly what I was talking about when I wrote, “Who gives a shit that a few months ago I spent a thousand dollars buying antique Chinese furniture?  It’s wood.  Right now it has value because of its age.  If I was freezing I could chop it up and burn it to keep warm.  … My wardrobe, at its basest element, is nothing more than a wooden box.  So what is this wooden box, something to be treasured, or just a wooden box?”

Which is more important, the wardrobe itself or the mental attachment I have to it?  Which is more important, having people in your life or the mental attachment that you have to those people?  I grew up going to a different school every two years and having to get all new friends, so I break attachments with people quite easily.  So the question then becomes, is the reality of having those specific people in my life more important than just having someone in my life?  Which is more important, the people or the attachment we place on them?

Why do you think at the end of the movie they blew up the financial institutions?

Because the book is about the emasculation of the American male, the forced conformity that stifles the very things that make men men.  It’s about the expectation that you’ll get out of high school, go to college, get a wife, buy a house, and end up with 2.3 children.  It’s about life’s script for what it means to “grow up.” And there are a lot of men, myself included, resent this.  I resent the fact that I often times feel like a loser when I take stock of my life, because I have nothing to be ashamed of.  I’ve seen and done more shit in my life than most people could do in ten.  I’ve visited about 20% of the countries on the planet at one time or another, and there are still about 10 on my list of places to go.  That should have value in and of itself, right, those experiences?

In the book this resentment turns to nihilism.  Simple rebellion and disillusionment and expressions of masculinity (i.e. fighting) snowball into nihilism and destruction and hatred. In the book the narrator says, “I wanted to burn the Louvre.  I’d do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa.  This is my world, now.  This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead” So the book is about this dynamic in society, among men who are told that they are to be defined by their house and their job and their car and their wives and their children, and how some of us can’t fit in to that cookie-cutter.  In the book this turns into Project Mayhem.  But the message of the book rings so true to me, that forced conformity can turn to resentment. 

Why should I feel guilty for living my life the way I see it?  I’m not doing anything wrong.  There isn’t any reason I should feel guilty but I do.  I keep waiting for the moment when I’ll turn into my father and say, “Okay, NOW it’s time to get married and buy a house.” But I’ve been waiting for that moment for over ten years, and now I’m starting to wonder if it will ever come at all.

Here’s three quotes from David Fincher which elaborate on what I wrote above.

I read the book and thought, How do you make a movie out of this?  It seemed kind of like The Graduate, a seminal coming of age for people who are coming of age in their 30s instead of their late teens or early 20s.  In our society, kids are much more sophisticated at an earlier age and much less emotionally capable at a later age.  Those two things are sort of moving against each other.  ~David Fincher, director of Fight Club, interview with Gavin Smith, “Inside Out,” Film Comment, Sep/Oct 1999

[The movie The Graduate] was talking about that moment in time when you have this world of possibilities, all these expectations, and you don’t know who it is you’re supposed to be.  And you choose this one path, Mrs. Robinson, and it turns out to be bleak, but it’s part of your initiation, your trial by fire.  And then, by choosing the wrong path, you find your way onto the right path, but you’ve created this mess.  Fight Club is the Nineties inverse of that:  a guy who does not have a world of possibilities in front of him, he has no possibilities, he literally cannot imagine a way to change his life.  ~David Fincher, director of Fight Club, interview with Gavin Smith, “Inside Out,” Film Comment, Sep/Oct 1999

We’re designed to be hunters and we’re in a society of shopping.  There’s nothing to kill anymore, there’s nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore.  In that societal emasculation this everyman is created.  ~David Fincher, director of Fight Club, interview with Gavin Smith, “Inside Out,” Film Comment, Sep/Oct 1999

A lot of that sounds like me.

I’ll be back later to talk about why your wrong about those pathetic people who dare to live a different life style.

FWIW, I don’t think those people are wrong or pathetic in any sense of the word.  Quite the contrary, I often find myself jealous of them because they seem to content. 

I often wish that I could have just followed society’s script, and I wonder if I’d be happy.  But there’s a wanderlust in me, a desire to always do interesting and different things, and that’s not really possible in suburbia.  Of course, there’s also the part of me that wants a son of my own, and I want to be able to coach his little league team, and have BBQs on the weekends with the neighbors, and all that stuff. 

What I can’t figure out is how to do both of them at the same time.  Or how to let go of one and accept the other. 

To quote Fincher, “Fight Club is the Nineties inverse of that:  a guy who does not have a world of possibilities in front of him, he has no possibilities, he literally cannot imagine a way to change his life.”

I resent the fact that I often times feel like a loser when I take stock of my life, because I have nothing to be ashamed of.

You don’t, so why do you care. 

This it what drives me nuts.  Is all the interfering people who don’t mean anything working into your brain.  I didn’t have my daughter until six years into my marriage.  My wife’s mother and sister all the time keep bugging us about when we going to have kids.  I finally got sick of it, and at a dinner told them I didn’t want kids, because I like fucking (my wife) all over the house and if I had a child I couldn’t do that.

Didn’t go over well with my wife, but it shut them the fuck up.

I’ve visited about 20% of the countries on the planet at one time or another, and there are still about 10 on my list of places to go.  That should have value in and of itself, right, those experiences?

Yes, and it does.  The first book I read that I cared about was “On the Road” I wanted to do that and for awhile I did, and in a small ways that is why I post on the Internet.  I am witting with an ass in China.  I would rather be in a bar in China telling you in person you’re an ass, but I have kids. 

Once those kids, as much as I love them are out of the house.  I am in a R.V. and sending post cards. 

About Mona Lisa, never cared for that painting, but one must know History, and it is our time. 

“Okay, NOW it’s time to get married and buy a house.” But I’ve been waiting for that moment for over ten years, and now I’m starting to wonder if it will ever come at all.

If it does it does if not, does it really matter?

We’re designed to be hunters and we’re in a society of shopping.  There’s nothing to kill anymore

Really, tell that to the poor animals I have waxed with my shotgun. 

there’s nothing to fight,

Tell that to the guy I slapped around last week, but I am the intolerant state.

nothing to overcome,

Yourself, and your limits.

nothing to explore. 

North Korea, and that red head.

In that societal emasculation this everyman is created.

In that societal emasculation LIE everyman is created

~David Fincher, director of Fight Club, interview with Gavin Smith, “Inside Out,” Film Comment, Sep/Oct 1999

What I can’t figure out is how to do both of them at the same time.  Or how to let go of one and accept the other.

You make it sound like you have a choice. 

We just are.  We just are, and what happens just happens.  And God says, “No, that’s not right.” Yeah.  Well.  Whatever.  You can’t teach God anything.

Something I like to read on my Birthday.

Psalm 103

15 As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;

16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.

Happy Birthday, Lee

If it does it does if not, does it really matter?

That’s the question.  I want it to matter, and I think it does matter.  My father was a God in my eyes, and one of the saddest things about my life is that I don’t have him to turn to for advice anymore.

Really, tell that to the poor animals I have waxed with my shotgun.

I think you’re missing Fincher’s point.  To quote something from the movie, he’s speaking in the “hunter/gatherer” sense.  You shot those animals for sport and for enjoyment, not because you were living in a cave and they are your only source of food.

It’s like something a teacher of mine once said about the Founding Fathers.  In their time it was more or less possible for someone to know everything.  Thomas Jefferson was a great example of this.  He damn near knew everything there was to know about every subject, the sum total of human knowledge up to that point.  But our world has become so complicated that it’s impossible for us to do that any more.  So we pick our own little segment of life and focus on it.  In capitalism terms this is “division of labor” so it makes perfect sense that this would function well for a society.  But since we are biologically wired to be cavemen there are some people for whom the ostensibly sterile suburban life holds a certain horror.  And the odd thing is, other than moving around the world a lot as a kid, I come from that suburban world.  I wasn’t rich but I wasn’t poor, my parents never divorced, my mom was a housewife, my dad was the breadwinner, we had a pool in the backyard, and we had pets, and my brother and I both had a car of our own when we were teenagers.  I had it all.  I am a byproduct of the very system that I now question.

The weird thing is that I loved my childhood.  I think I’d be an excellent father, just like my father was to me.  I’d love to give a child the same type of lifestyle and security that I had growing up.  So there is a yearning, if you will, for me to repeat the life that I had when I was younger.

Then there’s the other side of me, which yearns to do something special and interesting and significant.  And I realize that if I ever make the decision to settle into suburbia that my opportunities for doing that sort of thing diminish by an order of magnitude. 

Until now I’ve been able to put off these decisions.  I think what you’re seeing here is an expression of the angst I’m feeling at realizing that I’m not a kid any more, and that it’s really “shit or get off the pot” time. 

In that societal emasculation LIE everyman is created

I have to disagree with you there.  I think that over the last 40 years or so there has been a tremendous emasculation of men.  Little boys are supposed to act like little boys.  They’re supposed to get into fights and set things on fire and break their arms, because that encourages them to act like men.  But all those things are now discouraged by society.  It’s why we have fewer men than women going to college today, because young men are pigeonholed into being “women lite.”

You make it sound like you have a choice.

Well they’re diametrically opposed, so I’m going to have to choose one or the other, aren’t I?

You shot those animals for sport and for enjoyment, not because you were living in a cave and they are your only source of food.

I shoot them to eat them.  I am a cheap bastard, and I don’t like all the crap the put in the meat in the supermarket.  I also don’t see the problem with going to a store and buying food.  Past generations have set it up so I can work and pay someone to find my food.  Now if I didn’t work I could gather from the trash cans and find my food.  People provided services for others for trade with others.  A basket weaver in a tribe in Africa doesn’t hunt they provided a service and a hunter will trade food for that service provided, and that would be the same for the cavemen.  Not all cavemen hunted if they need we would still be monkeys in the trees.  Someone had to advance in higher thinking.  Tomas Jefferson didn’t know everything, did he know how to build a ship, a firearm, split an atom.  His world view was limited also did he know the workings of other cultures in the world.  He was just like us (other than the slave booty calls) with the working knowledge of his world,

If you want to be a hunter then you could work at a slaughter house, but you choose you trade and provide a service that other need.  In return you get paper and can buy food with that paper.  If the lot in your life changed I am sure you will be able to find food and shelter. 

If oil ran out as a society would we find something else to heat our homes, and the week would die.  (Those douche bags with highlights in their hair.)

Then there’s the other side of me, which yearns to do something special and interesting and significant.  And I realize that if I ever make the decision to settle into suburbia that my opportunities for doing that sort of thing diminish by an order of magnitude.

Yes, it does diminish in some ways, but nothing says you can’t do something significant and interesting in suburbia.  I live in the Mecca of suburbia and I am very interesting.  The movie American Beauty is a lie and full of shit.  People are lame in the city as they are in suburbia.

I think that over the last 40 years or so there has been a tremendous emasculation of men.  Little boys are supposed to act like little boys.

There has been an attempt to do this, but this can only happen if you allow your nuts to be placed in that jar.  Men will do anything to get laid even if that means selling out your man hood.  I can’t play that game.  It is too high of a price for a piece of ass.  So I found a woman who likes a man not a metro-sexual.

As for kids pick one up cheep in China, you could be like Indiana Jones in that crappie second movie. 

As for your father it does suck he is not around, no getting around that, but you don’t know what his exact words would be on a subject, but I would be willing to bet you know what his thoughts would be on that subject. 

So what would his thoughts be on your, “Oh God I am almost forty” crises.

One last point, look at that guy from Playboy, Larry King, thought it is grosses the as still knocking them boots, with the magic of those blue, blue pills.

Great post Lee.  I was thinking myself, before I read your update… yes, very philosophical - I LIKE IT!