Fight Club and modern man

I recently watched Fight Club for the first time.  I'd have to say that I liked it, but it's very strange.  The reason I'm blogging about it is because it hit a nerve - the place and plight of men in the 21st century.



The landscape for men has changed very drastically over the last century.  Rolling into the turn of the 20th century, a man was a man.  He was generally some sort of laborer, relying on his superior physical strength to define his station in life.  Over the past 100 years, the need for physical strength has continued to diminish to the point of near obsolescence.  Mental ability is supplanting physical strength in a way that has removed man's corner on the job market.

Women are continually changing what it is they expect from themselves, their relationships, and their work.  This is definitely a good thing for them.  They're a little confused about this new world and their gender role, but it's trending the right direction.  Men, however, are finding themselves behind the times.  They're more than a little confused about this world and their role.  They're playing in it, but aren't comfortable and don't quite know why.

Fight Club tackles this dilemma with its main character (Ed Norton) and his alter ego (Brad Pitt).  What does a man do with millions of years of evolution bottled up inside him?  Everything about his life is not the way it should be.  Sitting at a desk, doing some paper-pushing sort of job, and living in a condo with furniture from IKEA is an evolutionary contradiction.

I think most men can really identify with what is going on for this character, as crazy and exaggerated as it may be.  Who doesn't occasionally identify with the song Synchronicity II by The Police?



Recently, The Atlantic did an article entitled The End of Men.  My wife and I both read it and have discussed it regularly.  I think that it's a little much to say that men are going to become obsolete, but men do need to get with the times because the times they are a changin'.

The interesting thing to me is that this world that we struggle against is one that we created.  Most of the advances in technology, productivity, work conditions, etc. were brought about by men and for men.  The unintended side effects were that our prior advantages in the gender realm have been neutralized and it has taken us away from the activities that took evolution thousands to millions of years to perfect.

There's a little to a lot of Fight Club in all of us.  We just need to figure out how to sufficiently balance that in the modern world.