Our Great Depression is Our Lives | The Philosophy of Fight Club
We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives.
Tyler Durden
Fight Club is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. Its iconic film adaptation by David Fincher is considered one of the best movies ever. The protagonist, known as the Narrator, is the typical corporate drone, living a life of work and consumption without significant meaning. There’s nothing he truly stands or fights for, no overarching purpose, except browsing the Ikea catalog and completing his wardrobe. On top of that, he suffers severely from insomnia, hardly feeling awake during the day. He’s the nihilist hero–the consumerist exemplar of modern-day society. And he’s miserable. But then, he meets Tyler Durden.
Tyler opens the Narrator’s eyes to the empty life he’s been living, the meaninglessness of all his material possessions, and the fact that society has cheated its people into believing we’re all going to be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars while the vast majority ends up in lifelong obedience to the system; no greater purpose, nothing to fight for, except the promise of material success and fame, as hollow as these things are. We have no Great War. We have no Great Depression. Our Great Depression is what our consumerist society has made us to be: nihilists with credit cards.
Thus, the Narrator and Tyler start Fight Club, not just for the fighting itself but as a way to escape their existential Great Depression. This video analyzes Fight Club’s position toward consumer culture and related philosophical ideas. For those unfamiliar with the story, this analysis explains and reveals some parts of the plot. If you want to support Einzelgänger, consider joining my Patreon page, which allows access to ad-free videos, bonus content, and free merch. Thank you, and I hope you’ll enjoy this video.
The Great Depression was a time of widespread economic hardship. Millions faced unemployment and poverty, and people struggled to survive and rebuild their lives. Overall, it was a period that tested the strength and endurance of entire societies. Humanity has known many periods of great struggle. The Great War and the Second World War are clear examples. These events aroused common goals: survival, defeating the enemy, and protecting the “good” against the “bad.” Struggles like these were harsh but also gave our lives meaning. There was something to fight for, even if it was just survival.
Take the Jewish psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl, who survived several concentration camps in Nazi Germany: he found meaning in his situation, which gave him the strength to endure the horrors of the Holocaust. Another example is the Crusades, in which thousands of people embarked. The Crusades gave the mainly poor Christians a noble and holy goal: to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule. This religion-driven war shows how religiosity can play a vital role regarding meaning in our lives.
Our lives become something of a ‘mission.’ There’s a quest to be solved, even if that quest means doing religious duties, and there’s a prize at the end of that quest. Life means something. So, how do such circumstances compare to life in today’s consumerist society? Quite early in the story, Fight Club shows the Narrator in his bachelor apartment surrounded by designer furniture, scouring an Ikea catalog and ordering a coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang. “I had to have it,” the narrator admits, as if buying that table had become a necessity, something of the utmost significance.
When he flips through catalogs, he wonders: “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” The urge to buy all this stuff is what the narrator calls the “Ikea nesting instinct.” He admits he’s a sufferer, behaving as if collecting all this meaningless stuff is his highest goal in life. And he’s good at it: “I had it all,” he says, “even the glass dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections.” The narrator’s fixation on buying consumer goods shows the emptiness of his life he desperately tries to fill.
It also shows how he has fallen for the societal narrative that life revolves around, as Tyler puts it, working jobs we hate to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. And so, we may feel complete as human beings when our wardrobes are complete or when we finally find that piece of furniture that defines us. Tyler Durden explains it by saying: “We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear.” End quote.
Although Fight Club emerged in the nineties, its critique is even more relevant today. In the West, at least, we’re still consumers, mostly living our lives from one short-term pleasure to another, without significant meaning or purpose other than enjoyment and happiness; and with happiness, I mean consumerist happiness, which we generate by, well, buying stuff. Companies are ruling the world. Starbucks, IBM, and KFC were already massive during the nineties; now, we have Facebook, Tesla, and Amazon at the top of the corporate food chain. Zuckerberg, Musk, and Besos have become the new feudal overlords.
Countries used to shoot people into space; now, it’s conglomerates. Governments used to spy on their people (and many still do), but now it’s the corporations, too. In a consumerist society, the ultimate dream is becoming rich so we can consume even more, and we pursue it as if ‘rich’ is the ‘new holy,’ the highest thing you can achieve as a human being. We’re not collectively interested in improving humanity, reducing suffering, or making the Earth a better place for all living beings. Maybe as an afterthought, but it certainly isn’t high on the average person’s list.
No, we’re interested in becoming Instagram models and influencers. We want TikTok videos on how to gamble on crypto. We want fake lips and bigger biceps. We want to see MrBeast spending 50 hours buried alive. We are obsessed with self-optimization, if possible, in all areas of our lives. According to a recent YouGov survey, one in three American Millennials want to be famous, and a Pew survey found that getting ‘rich and famous’ is a high priority for 18-25-year-olds. We’re a generation seeking fame as if it’s our ultimate concern.
Being the center of attention is the new sanctity; being irrelevant is a sin. No wonder narcissism is on the rise. Tyler Durden sees this sick culture wasting all this human potential, all this energy, all these lives, grinding away in meaningless jobs to pursue meaningless things, just so some greedy few at the top become richer. In one of the speeches to his followers, Tyler states: “Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.” End quote.
Tyler hates that we have regressed into a species obsessed with lifestyle, hung up on comfort, and attached to meaningless, material stuff such as the Narrator’s “almost complete” wardrobe and his yin-yang coffee table. “The things you own end up owning you,” says Tyler. And so by accumulating all that stuff, we’re essentially building our own prisons. But hey… what else is there to do? What great things do we have to live or fight for as the middle children of history? Our cushy lives offer little of this.
What Fight Club’s antagonist observes in society had already been predicted by a philosopher long before Chuck Palahniuk wrote the book. Tyler Durden’s observations about the emptiness of modern life and his radical call to action closely mirror the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly his concept of the “Last Man.” The 19th-century philosopher wasn’t a fan of organized religion. He especially disliked Christianity. Yet, he feared that a post-religious society would decline into nihilism, which would manifest itself in mediocrity, complacency, and spiritual poverty. The product and flagship of this nihilism was the “Last Man.”
In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race can no more be exterminated than the flea can be. The last man lives the longest. End quote. Nietzsche’s Last Man is a person who mainly seeks comfort and security. He doesn’t take risks. He has no significant ambitions outside of, perhaps, earning more money, getting a better position in the company, or upgrading one’s house. He doesn’t know a Great War, so to speak. He doesn’t seek to overcome himself or create something of significance.
God has become a fairy tale from the past, and he laughs at those still attending church on Sunday while he, himself, wallows in apathy. He’s generally tired of life, as it’s meaningless and empty. And thus, he resorts to short-term sop—you know—the little Netflix series here, the little sip of wine there, and the exciting prospect of collecting that yin-yang table from the delivery guy.
The Narrator epitomizes Nietzsche’s Last Man, as do the men Tyler Durden seeks to liberate through Fight Club. In fact, many of us might recognize the Last Man in ourselves, content with comfort and routine yet deeply unfulfilled. Aren’t most people complacent to a system that tells us that material achievement and consumption is the end-all-be-all? The cure to the meaningless, nihilistic Last Man is the Übermensch, a concept also by Nietzsche.
The Übermensch dares to free himself from the system. He’s independent and authentic. As opposed to the slave morality Nietzsche observed in Christianity, the Übermensch creates his own values and meaning. He’s not a follower of an existing and dominating system, be it religious or political; he creates his own system. Unlike the Narrator, who complacently follows the societal script as a corporate drone, the Übermensch is life-affirming and creative.
If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want?
Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned—Tyler. Tyler Durden wants us to come to action, to rebel against this consumerist Matrix we’re all plugged into.
To do so, we must defy authority; we must ignore what society tells us we should do and be reluctant to think what they want us to think. Are we truly supposed to live this way? Are we supposed to be part of this system of mass self-exploitation and materialism? Don’t we have anything better to do than to follow societal guidelines like the sheep we are: to say what we’re supposed to say, to dress as we’re supposed to dress, to buy what we’re supposed to buy?
Everything is a product these days. Even being “different and rebellious” has become commercialized and connected to brands that will turn you into the rebellious, rugged type, with biker jackets, T-shirts, and tattoos. Ironically, by buying into this supposedly “non-conformist” style, they just plugged themselves into the same consumerist system. Backpacking in Thailand used to be something special. Now, it’s a consumer good subjected to herd behavior.
Consumerism is so all-encompassing that it’s difficult to escape it: it’s challenging not to go along with a culture tormented by an intense desire to shop and spend, where people shape their identities by the consumer goods they accumulate. It’s hard not to conform or go along with the herd. Is there a way out of this cycle of meaninglessness?
Tyler Durden escapes by pretty radical means. He rejects societal norms completely, akin to what Nietzsche proposes with his concept of the Übermensch. You can see this rejection by how Tyler behaves. As the Narrator is the typical consumerist drone, acting in ways to fit the herd, Tyler is non-conventional. The scene aboard the airplane where Tyler and the Narrator first meet shows his total disregard for what’s considered normal, polite discourse.
Tyler doesn’t go along with the whole small talk or light-hearted conversation the Narrator tries to have, which is usually expected when two strangers meet. When the Narrator asks Tyler what he does for a living, Tyler replies: “Why? So you can pretend like you're interested?” Tyler outright rejects materialism. He doesn’t care about luxury items. The house he and the Narrator live in clearly shows. It’s a dump.
But Tyler doesn’t care, as he only seems to need shelter, a place to defecate and have rough intercourse with Marla Singer. He pokes fun at advertisements on the bus and opens up about his ideal world, which is primitive, sustainable, and left with the remnants of a past era. But to get there, Tyler wants to bring about social change, not in a soft manner. He created Fight Club not just because of fighting but as a revolt against society.
Later in the story, Fight Club gives birth to Project Mayhem, a terrorist organization that focuses on sabotage and wants to wipe out all debt so people can start with a clean slate. He wants to reset society. And he finds an army of discontented men willing to help him achieve it. The Nietzschean affirmation of life shines through Tyler’s approach. In his unconventional ways, he persuades the people around him to break free from corporate slavery and mind-numbing occupations and make something out of their lives: to do the things they themselves truly want to do.
To escape the Great Depression of our lives, we must be willing to undergo radical self-transformation and risk everything to pursue our true purpose. We must be willing to let go of old values and create our own, let go of material stuff we don’t need. “It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything,” says Tyler.
A powerful example of Tyler’s approach is when he threatens a convenience store worker named Raymond K. Hessel with a gun, commanding him to study to become a veterinarian, and if he doesn’t, he will die. Raymond apparently had long lost his dream in exchange for financial security and because, as he says, “It’s too much work.” Tyler believes he did Raymond a favor, saying: “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.”
Tyler recognizes the Great Depression in Raymond K. Hessel’s life. Be it through radical means, he offers him a way out. As with real depression, sometimes all we need is immediacy, a profound change in circumstances, a paradigm shift, a situation in which we feel we don’t have a choice but to act. Then, we find that we can do much more than we initially thought.
As Nietzsche reminds us: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Thank you for watching.