Fight club is an ever-evolving beast. Upon each viewing of this film, there is always some new insight to be gained or some small subliminal message that becomes apparent. My viewing of Fight Club on Friday was the fourth time I have seen this film and I was surprised to find out that my relationship with the film has changed since my last viewing. Having studied Buddhism in my own free time, it was interesting to see the similarities in Fight Club’s ideology with buddhist ideology regarding finding one’s true self and how our possessions is what prevents us from discovering our true nature.
The one quote in particular in that film that echoes with Buddhist ideology is “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” Buddhists believe that in order to discover what one’s true nature really is, one has to discard everything superfluous from one’s life, useless material possessions and other distractions in particular. Buddhists believe that our unfocused minds are like glasses of water mixed together with sand. Through meditation and focusing one’s attention on the things in life that matter can one be able to allow the sand of distraction to settle and allow our minds to be clear like water. Likewise in Fight Club, Tyler Durden believe in living a simple, stripped-down life and through entering a trance-like state by fighting can one be able see where one’s true heart really lies.
“The things you own end up owning you.” Even after 18 years this quote is still relevant to every confused and distracted person living in a capitalist society today. While capitalism has given people a great deal of abundance, this abundance often results in too many distractions that steers us away from the causes worth persisting for. Education, inequality, the environment. These issues are among the many that are complex in nature and if we continue embracing or distraction-prone ways, we will never be able to interrogate the root causes of each of these issues. Like Tyler Durden would have championed, let us stop basking in the light of the phone screen glow and engage with the world without a filtered lens, embracing it in all its beauty and cruelty.