Fight Club

[u/Casual_Deviant]

[u/Grigorios]

I see everyone discussing the toxic masculinity themes of the book & movie but that's still missing the full depth. Fight Club posits that existential dissatisfaction is a disease of privilege and comfort, and that it breeds reactionary, radical, and authoritarian sentiments. It is a scathingly accurate prediction of what we're living through right now. 

In the words of Fukuyama, which slightly predate Fight Club:

"Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, they then will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy."

[u/MooseBoys → u/Grigorios]

I generally agree with the sentiment. But I feel like that, along with the golden age of the US, ended with 9/11. There is no shortage of things worthy of struggling against nowadays.

[u/Grigorios → u/MooseBoys]

There was no shortage back then. You could have just causes like gay rights. A lot of people didn't engage with those because they had nothing to gain personally. 

[u/MooseBoys → u/Grigorios]

Of course there were certain worthy causes, but none that the majority of people would care about. The commentary is about the cultural zeitgeist of mid-90s consumerism. This zeitgeist probably would have started in the 80s were it not for the constant existential threat of nuclear annihilation.