Except for everyday that ends with "Y"- I question the human motive- actually more like the ulterior human motive, since that seems to be what actually drives us to turn a motive into an action.
I was skimming through my archived blogs, and I knew at one point or another I must have written something pertaining to this topic, and lo and behold I have. I decided to resurrect this previous blog, not because I am running out of ideas or topics to discuss, but because I feel like I have slightly augmented my stance.
Fight Club Blog:
I think we all have a Tyler in us; we just keep him or her tamed, caged and locked up most of the time. I loved it when Edward Norton’s character said just as the condo blew up, "there goes a house with all the condiments and no food" and when Tyler (Brad Pitt) says "only when you have lost everything are you really set free" and also when says, “Only after disaster can we be resurrected”. I think I can go on and on about how many “ah ha” moments this movie has. Even though this movie sought out male audience members, as a girl I can relate to the inner tension every human has with his/her own self. I might be over analyzing here but I think the crazy state Edward Norton was in and his pseudo imaginary friend, Tyler, being so sadistic is not as Hollywood as you would like to think. Matter of fact it is real, just not in the blood goring, let’s join an underground Fight Club, kind of way.
We suppress agony, frustration, sexual desires, animalistic outrages; we question faith, religion, the existence of God and ultimately the truth about our state of mind (or lack thereof). We inadvertently deny such bottled up tension, and dismiss acts of violence as being cannibalistic. Beating a man to death for the pleasure it gives yourself is vicious, because what separates man from beast is the brain God gave us in order to use reason, have judgment, and believe that bad people end up playing poker with Satan for all eternity (I am sure hell is a lot worse than gambling with a man with red horns, a tail and a pitchfork).
Action has a birthplace: the mind. Every thought that emanates from your mind has the power to transform into an action (even speech is an action), but it is motivation and consequences that either push you or dissuade you from carrying through. From the most explosive to the most benign and flagrant of thoughts, we all have them, but don’t always act upon them.
Even impulse is not impulse, it has gone from being something that the mind created to something that the body communicated. Yet the basic inklings of those thoughts permeate through your action. For example, if you are angry at someone you may want to go sleep it off, light up a cigarette, write them an angry letter, avoid them, call them and try to communicate with them, pound a punching bag or a concrete wall, but really deep down inside you want to ring their throats, you want to jolt out the nastiest words and bite off their ears Mike Tyson style. But these are just hermits in your mind, instead you act in the manner expected of you (yes psycho paths and people who have wrong wirings in their brain, like sex predators, rapists, kleptomaniacs, etc are exceptions).
If everyone acted on impulse and instinct and listened to their Tyler’s, the golden rule of Fight Club would be broken: everyone would be talking about Fight Club, because everyone would be in it.
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I still agree with what I previously wrote, we are still caged up in many ways. But I think it is ultimately for our own benefit.
The contagion of bad thoughts spreads like lava in the mind, slowly burning down the principles and the values you uphold, provoking you to act like an unleashed caged beast. But generally speaking those thoughts are reserved in the subliminal attic of the human mind, because society (law enforcement), faith and belief in Heaven and Hell deter you from turning into a maniac. We all want to be knocking on Heaven’s door when the sand of our time has run out, and so we keep the fissures in our morality in check, not conceding to any fiend outburst.
It’s really hard work, if you think about it, being righteous, virtuous and generally good- but this topic has been dealt with since the ancient Greeks (when they weren’t busy having group orgies and drowning themselves in wine) who devoted a good deal of their time to the understanding of Humans in their nature and in their nurture. So I am not going to list what they believed and said, nor list what school of thought each bona fide philosopher subscribes to, because that would turn this into a regurgitation of information and not experience.
Simply, I am a believer that Humans are inherently good, not evil- we live in a world where we are fully capable of choosing good or evil, and most of the time we chose to be good.
3 comments:
Your Fight Club post is one of my favourites (and not only because of the sexiness of Brad Pitt in the movie), and I love how you've revisited it.
Being good and righteous is not so hard when you're a child, but once you've tasted the sweet temptation of sin, you realise how much easier, more superficially rewarding it can be to stray from self-control and simply act on impulse.
Despite the fact that it is easier, doesn't mean that it is more natural though. I agree with what you say that human beings are inherently good, and which is why I personally believe that a presumption of innocence, 'Innocent until proven guilty', is always better not only at prosecuting criminals but also protecting innocents.
But to defer naivete, sometimes that 'just one more' dance with the Devil murders the natural innocence within, making room for the imposed corruptness of the material world. After all, we are all born of Original Sin.
I think that any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
the rules that society has enforced on us for thousands of years serve the purpose of creating order and peace amongst a species that is naturally chaotic and violent. but there is a fine line between creating order and creating a sedative. and i feel that over the course of time, as civilizations came and went, we as a species have become overly submissive to things that we call "social norms". and that, to me, is the saddest reality of all.
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