help.”
“You’re a very rich man now, Judas,” she said to my back as I walked out the door. “You are most welcome.”
My motorcycle roared to life with but a thought. My eyes watered as I tore down the tiny Lyceum streets, headed for dear old dad’s place.
The fat fuck looked worried. He could hear the commotion just behind his door, right outside his safe little chamber. But he had no idea what was going on. His fear was maddeningly satisfying. If only he knew what I knew.
By now, the blonde had made it through his guards. After all, she was his guest. Why would they question her presence within his home? If only he knew what I knew! How much more frightened would he be?
But how could he know? We had been so careful. And our plan had worked like a dream. That bastard had never once suspected. Not a thing. He was blissfully unaware that his son had not acted alone, that he had been hired to rob his father. He knew not that the break in had mostly been staged, that without me, Judas would never have gotten in. He had no idea that the two psychics he had hired, the two psychics that I had recommended, were the ones who had hired his son.
I wish he did know. I wish he knew that I was involved. I wish he know that his fucking whipping boy was going to be his end. But he didn’t. And he never would.
The door flew open, the blonde woman strolling in. She was covered in the blood of the guards.
“You!” Royce shouted. “What are you doing?”
“Preparing the way,” Judas said as he stepped out from behind her. The fat fuck’s eyes went wide as he saw his son. “For me.”
The pistol Royce kept hidden under his desk was in his hand. Had it been there since the beginning? He leveled it at his son.
“Die, you mother fucking son a bitch!” The world seemed to die in that instant. All that could be heard was gunfire; the only sight was the flash from the muzzle. Judas seemed not to care as six .45 slugs tore through his flesh. He just stood there, eyes closed. When he opened them, they flashed a bright red, and Royce’s arm fell to his desk. Blood washed his fine silk suit red.
“Gun powder is what is to blame for the lack of civilized combat in our day and age,” Judas said over the fat fuck’s screams. He held up his arm, pointing two fingers in the direction of his yelling father. “Bang.” Royce’s head exploded.
“Leave, Jant,” Judas said. “Your part is done. You’re free.”
I ran out the door, ran away from the fat fuck, ran away from slavery.
I let him lie in his own blood. This crazy fucking scheme had worked. And the only people dead were the ones who were supposed to be.
“Well this was fun,” I said to Kaylee. Something about the way she looked at me bothered me. There was an accusation lurking behind her green eyes.
“You read the book?”
“And burned it. As was the plan.”
“You weren’t supposed to read it. And we were supposed to destroy it.”
“No point in letting a good book go to waste. Besides, Layla seemed fine with the end result.”
“Our employer will not be pleased.”
“Well fuck him.”
Her eyes grew hard, mean. Did she want a fight?”
“I should kill you for disobeying.”
“Listen, sweetheart,” I explained. “Even without the book, I could have fucked you up. Go collect your payment. We’re done here.”
She could feel my power, my raw fury. She knew she was no match. So she walked out of the room, with me close behind. Maybe I could convince her to join me for a drink. God knows I needed one.
An Ode to Academia
This is the one paper that I have even remotely thought of getting published. Since I know that for several reasons it will never be published in some peer reviewed journal somewhere, I want to share it with the world (or the 12 or so people who actually bought this book). A big thank you to Mandie Mims for doing the research and to Dr. Timothy Hoye for grading it (I got an A). So without further ado, I give you:
Breaking Rule Number One: a Philosophical Discussion of
Fight Club
Philosophers throughout the ages have spent their entire lives trying to change the way in which the people around them think. They wrote countless volumes of text enumerating how humans are supposed to live; take a walk through any philosophy section in any given library and just count the number of works written on the human condition. These men and women gave their all to illuminate the truth and enlighten man. Too bad most of them failed.
The word philosophy comes from Greek terms which mean “love of wisdom”. Every individual given the title of philosopher has been someone who did in fact have a profound affection for wisdom and knowledge. But every philosopher was unable to convince others of their way of thinking for one simple reason: they did not live according to what they taught. And this is why they failed.
Perhaps what they taught was impossible to follow. Maybe their thoughts on the human condition were too hard for any mere man to live by. In certain instances, say the writings of Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean Paul Sartre, this is most certainly the case. So what was taught is only possible theoretically, only capable of existing outside the realm of humanity. But where then could these philosophies reside? And how can man truly embrace these revolutionary thoughts?
Literature is how many philosophers got their words and ideas to the masses; Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean Paul Sartre are no exceptions to this philosophical norm. And literature is a place where these radical teachings can still be brought to life, still used to enlighten the members of the human race, so that maybe in some small way man can begin to grasp the meaning behind the words.
These four men changed drastically how the rest of the world views ideas. But the works of these men are confusing, long, hard to comprehend, and at times rather boring. How can humanity appreciate what these men were trying to say if it can barely understand them? The human race is in desperate need of a guide who embodies the core of the aforementioned philosophers’ ideas. There is one such guide: Tyler Durden.
Tyler Durden is the protagonist (some would argue antagonist) in Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 book Fight Club. The character is one part Leviathan (Hobbes), one part Dictator of the Proletariat (Marx), one part Ubermench (Nietzsche), and one part Radically Free (Sartre). Shake well over ice in a high ball glass, and you have a cocktail of mischief, mayhem, and soap.
Durden as Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes was for all intents and purposes a coward. But his cowardice drove him to write Leviathan, one of the first major philosophical and political treatises on social contract theory. In this monumental work, Hobbes lays out what he views to be the only correct way for man to live peaceably with other men: the absolute sovereign. The Leviathan.
“Hobbes envisioned a social contract in which each individual promises each other that their absolute liberty will be surrendered to a central power-the sovereign power” (Moss, 11). There are several key words and phrases in this statement. But the most important is “social contract”, which (in its simplest definition) means an agreement reached between all people within a state. Hobbes was not the first social contract theorist, nor will he be the last. But how he defines this contract is what sets him apart from the likes of men like John Locke and Nicholas of Cusa. Whereas Locke (and Jefferson after him) believed that this contract should be between the people and some form of limited government, Hobbes was of the persuasion that the people should give up all liberties in the face of some all powerful ruler, one to which “all will submit” (Moss, 11).
Why does Hobbes believe that men and women must surrender their liberty absolutely to a sovereign? Because if they don’t, their lives will be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (Moss, 1). This is how Hobbes described the “state of nature”. To him, life was terrible unless one gave up what one thought to be important to one’s sovereign ruler. And here is precisely w
here Tyler Durden takes on the mantle of Leviathan.
According to Hobbes, there has to be a contract, an agreement between the members of a society and their ruler. Tyler provides his members, his subjects with just such a contract: he presents them with a set of rules whenever they meet. The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club; the second rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club; the third rule of fight club is two men to a fight; the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time; the fifth rule of fight club is no shirts no shoes; the sixth rule of fight club is fights will go on as long as they have to; and the seventh rule of fight club is if this is your first night at fight club you have to fight (Palahniuk, 50). For the movie adaptation of the book, there was an eighth rule: if somebody taps out, goes limp, shouts stop, the fight is over (Fincher, film). This was the contract Tyler gave the members of fight club; by following these rules, every man there gave up their individuality to their sovereign.
How is beating the living hell out of one another, whether there are rules or not, any different from the state of nature that Hobbes described? How can Tyler be the absolute sovereign Hobbes was describing when the men in his charge are bloodied and bruised? Because an absolute sovereign is supposed to deliver the men and women, who have entrusted their leader with their very