I'm going to post some quotes below from the book Fight Club. I have a few favorites. Here is one of them:
Tyler Durden: 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. 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. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
I'm 33 years old. And I would consider myself a part of this generation. My generation is really really pissed off if you haven't noticed. But, I think most of us don't really know at what.
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Narrator: People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.
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Tyler Durden: All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not. Narrator: Marla just answer the question. Did we ever have sex.
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Marla Singer: Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship, Tyler?
Narrator: Wait. What did you just call me?
Marla Singer: Tyler. Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden, you crazy fuck!
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Narrator: Tyler, what the fuck is going on here?
Tyler Durden: I ask you for one thing, one simple thing.Narrator: Why do people think that I'm you? Answer me!
Tyler Durden: Sit.
Narrator: Now answer me, why do people think that I'm you.
Tyler Durden: I think you know.
Narrator: No, I don't.
Tyler Durden: Yes, you do. Why would anyone possibly confuse you with me?
Narrator: Uh... I... I don't know.[Random flashbacks]
Tyler Durden: You got it.
Narrator: No.
Tyler Durden: Say it.
Narrator: Because...
Tyler Durden: Say it.
Narrator: Because we're the same person.
Tyler Durden: That's right.
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Tyler Durden: 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. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
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Tyler Durden: The things you own end up owning you.
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Tyler Durden: It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
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Tyler Durden: You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?
Narrator: I don't know, I wouldn't feel anything good about my life, is that what you want to hear me say? Fine. Come on!
Tyler Durden: Not good enough.
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Tyler Durden: You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
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Tyler Durden: Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
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Tyler Durden: Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
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Tyler Durden: Did you know if you mixed equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate you can make napalm?
Narrator:No. I did not know that. Is that true?
Tyler Durden: That's right; one can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items...
Narrator: Really?
Tyler Durden: If one were so inclined.
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Narrator: We have front row seats for this theater of mass destruction. The demolition committee of Project Mayhem wrapped the foundation columns of a dozen buildings with blasting gelatin. In two minutes, primary charges will blow base charges and a few square blocks will be reduced to smoldering rubble. I know this... because Tyler knows this.
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Tyler Durden: It's getting exciting now, 2 and 1/2. Think of everything we've accomplished, man. Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.
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Tyler Durden: In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
Narrator: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Showing posts with label Cultural Prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cultural Prison. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Freedom and Sitting Bull
From the perspective of a man who has experienced freedom. And a great account of how our culture forces other cultures to live our One Right Way.
“This land belongs to us, for the Great Spirit gave it to us when he put us here. We were free to come and go, and to live in our own way. But white men, who belong to another land, have come upon us, and are forcing us to live according to their ideas. That is an injustice; we have never dreamed of making white men live as we live.
“White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion. Why has our blood been shed by your soldiers? . . . The white men had many things that we wanted, but we could see that they did not have the one thing we liked best,freedom. I would rather live in a tepee and go without meat when game is scarce than give up my privileges as a free Indian, even though I could have all that white men have. We marched across the lines of our reservation, and the soldiers followed us. They attacked our village, and we killed them all. What would you do if your home was attacked? You would stand up like a brave man and defend it. That is our story. I have spoken.” Sitting Bull
Creelman 299-302
“This land belongs to us, for the Great Spirit gave it to us when he put us here. We were free to come and go, and to live in our own way. But white men, who belong to another land, have come upon us, and are forcing us to live according to their ideas. That is an injustice; we have never dreamed of making white men live as we live.
“White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion. Why has our blood been shed by your soldiers? . . . The white men had many things that we wanted, but we could see that they did not have the one thing we liked best,freedom. I would rather live in a tepee and go without meat when game is scarce than give up my privileges as a free Indian, even though I could have all that white men have. We marched across the lines of our reservation, and the soldiers followed us. They attacked our village, and we killed them all. What would you do if your home was attacked? You would stand up like a brave man and defend it. That is our story. I have spoken.” Sitting Bull
Creelman 299-302
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The Trap
It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man's emotional structure, his character structure. There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: Singing hymns about the suffering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises its congregations; or confessing a semper ignorabimus as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who would be so much different from the man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself—too late. . ..
The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap.
The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?
One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it.
This is done by the Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Meyers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when one falls into the trap.The crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap. WHERE IS THE EXIT INTO THE ENDLESS OPEN SPACE?
The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all. The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:
THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXIT IS. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MOIRE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OR A CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL.
It turns out that the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is WITHIN THE TRAPPED ONES.
All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don't they see and move toward the clearly visible exit? As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep. [pp. 470-471. From The Murder of Christ, 1953.] Wilhelm Reich
How do we get out of the trap? Do you know anybody that is?
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The Heroes Journey
This is going to be sort of a vent and journal entry.
The Heroes Journey: I don’t want to follow the prescribed paths that have been laid out for me by this culture. And I’m really surprised more people don’t feel this way.
Reading other peoples accounts (missionaries, anthropologists, pioneers) of how other cultures lived it’s pretty obvious this culture is pretty pathetic. Most of us have to pay taxes just to live on land. Most of us spend 13 years of our life in a school building learning information we don’t need or want to learn. Most of us work at a job that is so monotonous and mind-numbing that we have to drug ourselves just get through the process. Most of us have to buy and eat foods that have been poisoned with pesticides and herbicides that will eventually give us cancer. Most of us contribute to an economic system that is making the planet uninhabitable for future generations. Most of us will have to use all the assets we accumulated at the job we hated to pay for medicines and housing in our old age (Hell, some of us won’t get the chance to watch out assets dwindle away in our old age. We’ll die before that happens).
This culture really is a death trip. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
There I said it. It’s documented for the world to see. Most people won’t allow themselves ever to say it.
It’s going to be a tough journey. But I won’t go down those prescribed paths. And this isn’t going to be a selfish journey. I would like to see as many people as possible take the heroes journey and reject the prescribed paths too.
Ran Prieur writes: For me, the point of dropping out is not just to selfishly escape while others are still suffering. The point is to get myself in a position from which I can fight better and build the foundation for a society where everyone's free. This world is full of people with the skills and knowledge to build paradise, but they can't even begin, because they would lose their jobs. The less money you need, the more powerful you become.
Ishmael was the catalyst for this journey. It showed me there are other ways to be outside this cultural prison’s walls.
See you on the other side.
The Heroes Journey: I don’t want to follow the prescribed paths that have been laid out for me by this culture. And I’m really surprised more people don’t feel this way.
Reading other peoples accounts (missionaries, anthropologists, pioneers) of how other cultures lived it’s pretty obvious this culture is pretty pathetic. Most of us have to pay taxes just to live on land. Most of us spend 13 years of our life in a school building learning information we don’t need or want to learn. Most of us work at a job that is so monotonous and mind-numbing that we have to drug ourselves just get through the process. Most of us have to buy and eat foods that have been poisoned with pesticides and herbicides that will eventually give us cancer. Most of us contribute to an economic system that is making the planet uninhabitable for future generations. Most of us will have to use all the assets we accumulated at the job we hated to pay for medicines and housing in our old age (Hell, some of us won’t get the chance to watch out assets dwindle away in our old age. We’ll die before that happens).
This culture really is a death trip. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
There I said it. It’s documented for the world to see. Most people won’t allow themselves ever to say it.
It’s going to be a tough journey. But I won’t go down those prescribed paths. And this isn’t going to be a selfish journey. I would like to see as many people as possible take the heroes journey and reject the prescribed paths too.
Ran Prieur writes: For me, the point of dropping out is not just to selfishly escape while others are still suffering. The point is to get myself in a position from which I can fight better and build the foundation for a society where everyone's free. This world is full of people with the skills and knowledge to build paradise, but they can't even begin, because they would lose their jobs. The less money you need, the more powerful you become.
Ishmael was the catalyst for this journey. It showed me there are other ways to be outside this cultural prison’s walls.
See you on the other side.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
When I Grow Up
I'm 32 years old. And looking back to when the question started being asked of me of, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" My answer would've been that I want to help people escape from our cultural prison*. And to help me make my case I would've dug up these question and answers with Ran Prieur.
1.Question: Dropping out is elitist because not everyone can do it.
Ran Prieur: People who make this criticism are failing to grasp the basic situation. This society is a prison. If we're all in prison, and you have a chance to escape, do you refuse on the grounds that not everyone can escape? If you find yourself in an unusually thin-walled cell with good digging tools, you have a moral obligation to escape -- and then to come back and help others escape. That's the key, and the difference between what I call "dropouts" and the elite. The elite don't want us to be free because they depend on our enslavement. I never stop fighting to get people free even when it goes against my shallowest interests. I want my friends to quit their jobs, even though they'll have to move out of their places where I now sleep free on the couch. Life will get more challenging but I'll have closer allies.
2. Question: Isn't it hypocritical, or contradictory, to use the resources of a society you despise?
Ran Prieur: No. What's wrong with taking advantage of something you despise? If you were in a prison camp, would it be hypocritical or contradictory to steal food from the guards? To find ways to avoid forced labor but still eat? If you're Frodo in Mordor, do you refuse to disguise yourself in an orc's uniform because orcs are bad?We are in Mordor. We are in a big prison camp[*] that's very subtle. As I said in the essay: it's not about being pure or avoiding guilt -- it's about getting free. If you're a swallow, living in the woods, and they cut down your beloved woods and put up a bunch of barns, what do you do? You live in a barn! Scavenging is a temporary tactic, an adaptation to this wasteful society. When we can't scavenge, we'll adapt in other ways, surf whatever wave keeps us free.
3. Question: Hey, you preach about separating from the system, but you're on the internet!
Ran Prieur:See the swallow metaphor above. The reason to avoid connections to the system is to maintain autonomy, not to avoid guilt. So I'll use any by-product or resource I can, as long as there few or no strings attached. I'll especially use a resource like the internet, a powerful tool to find allies and to transform human consciousness. As William Kötke says, not only is it OK to use the resources of the present system to build the next one, ideally all its resources would be used that way.For me, the point of dropping out is not just to selfishly escape while others are still suffering. The point is to get myself in a position from which I can fight better and build the foundation for a society where everyone's free. This world is full of people with the skills and knowledge to build paradise, but they can't even begin, because they would lose their jobs. The less money you need, the more powerful you become.
*Daniel Quinn talks a lot about our cultural prison in his trilogy of: Ishmael, My Ishmael and The Story of B.
*To learn more about why Ran is calling our society a prison camp, I would recommend reading The Culture of Make Believe, by Derrick Jensen. This book will forever change the way you see this system that we are a part of.
1.Question: Dropping out is elitist because not everyone can do it.
Ran Prieur: People who make this criticism are failing to grasp the basic situation. This society is a prison. If we're all in prison, and you have a chance to escape, do you refuse on the grounds that not everyone can escape? If you find yourself in an unusually thin-walled cell with good digging tools, you have a moral obligation to escape -- and then to come back and help others escape. That's the key, and the difference between what I call "dropouts" and the elite. The elite don't want us to be free because they depend on our enslavement. I never stop fighting to get people free even when it goes against my shallowest interests. I want my friends to quit their jobs, even though they'll have to move out of their places where I now sleep free on the couch. Life will get more challenging but I'll have closer allies.
2. Question: Isn't it hypocritical, or contradictory, to use the resources of a society you despise?
Ran Prieur: No. What's wrong with taking advantage of something you despise? If you were in a prison camp, would it be hypocritical or contradictory to steal food from the guards? To find ways to avoid forced labor but still eat? If you're Frodo in Mordor, do you refuse to disguise yourself in an orc's uniform because orcs are bad?We are in Mordor. We are in a big prison camp[*] that's very subtle. As I said in the essay: it's not about being pure or avoiding guilt -- it's about getting free. If you're a swallow, living in the woods, and they cut down your beloved woods and put up a bunch of barns, what do you do? You live in a barn! Scavenging is a temporary tactic, an adaptation to this wasteful society. When we can't scavenge, we'll adapt in other ways, surf whatever wave keeps us free.
3. Question: Hey, you preach about separating from the system, but you're on the internet!
Ran Prieur:See the swallow metaphor above. The reason to avoid connections to the system is to maintain autonomy, not to avoid guilt. So I'll use any by-product or resource I can, as long as there few or no strings attached. I'll especially use a resource like the internet, a powerful tool to find allies and to transform human consciousness. As William Kötke says, not only is it OK to use the resources of the present system to build the next one, ideally all its resources would be used that way.For me, the point of dropping out is not just to selfishly escape while others are still suffering. The point is to get myself in a position from which I can fight better and build the foundation for a society where everyone's free. This world is full of people with the skills and knowledge to build paradise, but they can't even begin, because they would lose their jobs. The less money you need, the more powerful you become.
*Daniel Quinn talks a lot about our cultural prison in his trilogy of: Ishmael, My Ishmael and The Story of B.
*To learn more about why Ran is calling our society a prison camp, I would recommend reading The Culture of Make Believe, by Derrick Jensen. This book will forever change the way you see this system that we are a part of.
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