"You are not your fucking Khakis..."

[UPDATE] I was very tired last night. All of the proper corrections should be made now.

Everywhere I go, I'm always asking people if they know Tyler Durden.

To me, Fight Club was more than just a movie about some frat boys who read a little too much Nietzsche. It means a lot of different things to me. I watched it when it first came out and I didn't really get it. It was 1999--I didn't get much of anything back then. However, a friend of mine bought it for me during Christmas, and when I watched it, suddenly so much became clear. Everything about not having a father figure, hitting bottom, accepting fate--all of that struck very true chords for me. Hell, maybe it's because I'm only a pseudo-intellectual, or like to relish my self-awareness. Whatever it is, this movie speaks to me on a lot of levels.

One thing Dan was mentioning the other day about it was that, for all its ideas about anti-establishment and growing up and what it really means to be a man, it say a lot about how our society (or at least, society at that time) is really very static. I mean, from the 1930's to the end of the Cold War, and maybe even a little later, the western world was in a constant state of social change. Things like prohibition, affirmative action, Vietnam, the Berlin Wall, all of them marking tides of change in the world. Now, those tides have settled. Things don't change anymore. Some could argue that 9/11 changed America. Has it really though? I mean, something tells me Bush would have tanked that country with or without Saddam and Osama. There are so many suicide bombings they don't even faze me anymore. It's like the number of deaths have just become numbers. It's numb, a nothing, a non-event. Maybe that's a little morbid, but it is how I feel.

Now, I say "our society" because though most of the people reading this are in the western world, I think it applies to every nation. I mean no one ever really considers South Africa, or the genocides in the Congo, or any of that. But it's all about looking at the history. The Belgians started a chain of events that has lead to one of the largest on-going genocides in the history of existence. And I love their fucking waffles, too.

I bring it up because it seems to me that we've finally come to that point in the cyclical nature of, well, nature, that we have begun actually criticizing and analyzing the way our society has become. It may be sad that I find most of my inspiration in movies like Fight Club, or The Matrix, or The Graduate (thank you Dan for recommending it). I guess to each his own (though internally, I still feel bashful when telling someone a movie inspired me to speak). But movies like Lord of War, or V for Vendetta, are movies that have similar opinions on the subject. Movies like Lord of War do what Scarface did--both in 1932 with prohibition and 1983 with cocain--by showing an inside look at a subject most people would only look at with a narrow mind.

I guess what I'm getting at is that, I doubt I'm the only person who feels like the world is waiting for something, or someone, to motivate them. 9/11 didn't do it, I'm not sure what or who will. But something's got to give. Maybe in another 10 years, someone will step up and change things. Until then, I guess all I can really do is keep going to the movies.

Peace,

Ramin