From Tyler Durden to Jeff Bezos: Are We Robots to Consumerism?

Finally got around to watching 'Fight Club' during last year's lockdown. Now, firstly, let me say that I really enjoyed it, despite knowing what happens at the end.

It's a good movie, and it's very relatable to many people. Particularly young men. I've written before about a crisis of masculinity in the modern world and a recent New Yorker article that I read made me consider the film's place in all that. What is discusses, essentially, is the idea that Edward Norton's character has to go back to being a real "man" via Pitt's Tyler Durden because he has lost what it means to be a man in a modern world and tries to fulfil his needs via consumerism.

Now, the movie has many interesting concepts and I see why so many people, and I include myself, relate to it. But one thing that it does seem to perpetuate, certainly in the way it is received anyway, is this (very academic, I feel, as in - something people who have never left school have time to think about) idea that any enjoyment of consumerism is filling the void in one's life of meaning and true fulfilment. It's all fake. Really, you're depressed. We as human beings have forgotton who we really are in the modern era. And, well, I just don't exactly buy it, ironically.

Maybe it's just because it is in my annoying nature to be cynical about cynicism, but I just think that, if you analyse real people in the real world, it is perfectly possible to be, for example, very happy with a car you've always wanted, and understand the meaning of living a fulfilling life. In fact, to tell people (and this is largely the middle class, liberal elite telling the working classes) that they are all in boxes in a system that controls them and all their pleasures are false, is incredibly patronising and insulting. Okay, we're all guilty of judgment, myself included (usually brought on by initial dislike of a person) but the way people like, for example, Noam Chomsky, broadcast this idea is just, in my view, ignorant and plain wrong. Not everything has to have some deep underlying narrative, you know. Not everything's black and white. Again, I feel like it's a very academic idea. I know the man who wrote 'Fight Club' wasn't an academic before anyone points it out, but on the whole it tends to be. Remember, as well, that (spoiler) 'Fight Club' ends with a very negative view of Tyler Durden. And, yes, academics are essentially people who've never left education. They've never experienced the real world of working people. And yet they consider themselves experts on it. All the while enjoying their own expensive tastes, might I add.

I think maybe my cynicism comes from the fact that I am technically working class but come from a fairly middle class background and have never really felt I fit in anywhere, so can see it from both sides. Like I say, I can be very judgmental too. But I recognise it as a flaw rather than make a career about it when I have no real reason to understand what I actually mean.

In a strange way, the new space race got me thinking about this. All these billionaires blasting into space when the world was in turmoil, and all the money it cost. But I admitted to myself that I would really love to go to space. And at the end of the day, what these people are doing is making that available to the public one day. Until then, governments paid for this and nobody batted an eyelid. Once, travelling the world was something ordinary people couldn't do, and governments paid for. Now, it is possible for working class people to go to America on holiday. Is that such a terrible thing? Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of the way Branson and Bezos went about their space endeavours, but I thought about William Shatner explaining the necessity of such wonder to mankind, or Elon Musk focussing less on himself and more on making the experience available. Shatner's view was in response to Prince William saying such things should not take place because we need to save the planet first. Okay, nobody can argue with his point, but it's a bit bloody rich, quite frankly, for a member of the British royal family, to deny the possibility of the spirit of adventure to the ordinary man. An elite now making working class people feel guilty for going on holiday in an aeroplane.

Perhaps the new space race isn't about this. Perhaps it's exactly what 'Fight Club' talked about. Men like Bezos and Branson are physical incarnations of consumerism, and this expensive enterprise is just the height of it. But I'm not so sure, really, that that is what's at play. Jeff Bezos may be ruthless man who runs a company that treats its employees terribly and doesn't pay tax, but he's also proof that the result of a teenage pregnancy with a difficult background can one day go to space. The distribution of material wealth in the world is deeply flawed of course, and Bezos and Branson and their arrogance may represent all that's awful about capitalism. But stripped of all that, the new space race was not a realisation of everything 'Fight Club' represents, modern people hiding behind material things and forgetting who they are, or the possibility of that end. I feel, in the long run, It's more baby steps in making what William Shatner called a 'most profound experience' available to everyone. And, when it also contributes to thinking about the future of the human race, is it really forgetting who we are? Not everything is black and white.