I’ve noticed that the concept of Thanksgiving tends to be a
bit contradictory. On one hand, we’re supposed be thankful for what we have. On
the other hand, we’re pummeled by ads and promotions for sales in almost every
store in the nation, especially on that one particular Friday after
Thanksgiving. It’s the one day that almost defines us as a nation of consumers,
always wanting more things. Many of my friends went out Thursday night (and
some even earlier than that) to line up outside of big stores like Best Buy and
Walmart so that they would be able to score the best deals. My experiences were
a little different: I simply stayed home, ordered a pair of headphones online
(I actually needed new headphones, you’d be surprised at how often they break),
and watched a DVD. I guess I just felt like I didn’t really need to buy
anything; had I gone to stores, though, I probably would’ve ended up coming
home with half a dozen things that I didn’t need. And one thing I definitely did not need was the Black Friday chaos.
It's almost funny, in a way, what some people will do for good deals.
When I was reading Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, I noticed that he had a particular
distaste for property. Not in the sense that property in itself was evil, but
that it caused a lot of crime and misery for the mankind as a whole. Here was a
man who believed that humans were far happier when they were in their natural
state: solitary, simple, and without any laws or possessions to oppress them.
There were two things that immediately came to mind. The first was the trauma
that is post-Thanksgiving shopping. The second is Tyler Durden’s philosophies.
For those of you who don’t know who Tyler Durden is, he’s the antagonist of the
movie Fight Club. The plot is as
follows: an office worker (the narrator of the movie) with insomniac ends up
befriending a crazy soap salesman (Durden) and the pair end up starting an
underground fight club to channel their aggression. However, Durden has a hidden
agenda: he wants to dismantle the establishments around him so that all men can
be on equal footing again. Here are some of his more memorable quotes:
“The things you own end up owning you.”
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do
anything.”
“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.”
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs
we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
“We are consumers. We’re the bi-products of a lifestyle
obsession.”
The rest of the quotes can be found here.
 |
| Tyler Durden with one of his notable quotables. |
Does that sound like someone familiar? I swear, Rousseau and
Durden could almost be the same person. The narrator of Fight Club ends up losing his home and all his possessions and having
to move into rundown house with Durden. This is very much like what Rousseau
suggests humans ought to do in order to achieve true freedom. However, Rousseau
suggests that each individual person should undergo this task by themselves. In
the movie, the “fight club” that the pair creates eventually becomes an active
agent of mayhem in their society, using less-than-legal tactics to try and
revert society back to a time where a man’s worth was not dependent upon his
possessions. This culminates in Durden’s plan to blow up buildings in the
financial district to erase everyone’s credit card records, thus wiping the
slate clean. I don’t know how Rousseau would have felt about this. It seems to
me like he would have categorized it as a revolution, but is there really any
way to achieve true freedom without a revolution? The difference lies in the concept
of the solitary man and the evils of society. When Tyler Durden and the
narrator formed their club, they essentially created a society, with its own
laws and agenda. The chaos that came from their club can only be ascribed to a
form of tyranny, almost as if they were trying to rule over the people who were
not in their club, or at least force them to subscribe to their point of view.
A look into the chaotic mind of Tyler Durden (warning: language)
So what does this all have to do with Thanksgiving? Our
society is one that promotes equality, in every sense except for economically.
In fact, it seems like our extreme consumerism (capitalism might even be a
suitable replacement for that word, but I don’t want to be stoned) is, both
literally and figuratively, killing people. I’ve read dozens of stories of
people getting trampled to death in the lobby of a Walmart on Black Friday.
Then there are of course the poor employees that have to work retail during
these hectic days who are sacrificing hours they should be spending with their
families, especially when retailers extend sales into Thanksgiving Thursday
(the earliest I’ve seen was 8PM… I mean come on, really?). But is there really
anything that can be done about this type of over-consumerism? Like Tyler
Durden said, we are the bi-products of a lifestyle obsession. This lifestyle
has already been so deeply ingrained into our society that there’s no way to
actually change it. Sure, people have talked about boycotting Black Friday, but
that probably won’t do any good; it’ll just leave more things for other people
to buy. While thriving for a freer, more natural state of being would be ideal,
the only way it could possibly happen is through radical action, much like
Durden’s fight club. And that’s even less ideal than how our society is now.
Maybe we ought to just be thankful for the things we have,
instead of trying to aim for type of lifestyle that’s unrealistic.
Tis the Season to get Trampled. 2012. Web. 24 Nov 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iMTu4ixp9kw>.
Tyler Durden Facebook Covers. 2012. FB Cover StreetWeb. 24 Nov 2012. <http://fbcoverstreet.com/Facebook-Covers/Movies/Tyler-Durden>.
Barryman,
John. "13 Most Brutal Black Friday Injuries/Deaths." 2012: n. page.
Web. 24 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.ranker.com/list/13-most-brutal-black-friday-injuries-and-deaths/john-barryman>.
I really enjoyed reading this post! Not only because I also chose not to take part in the chaos of Black Friday, but also because Fight Club is one of my favorite movies! I can clearly recall all of the parts in the movie where those quotes come up and I think they really do resonate with what Rousseau believes about property. The evilness does not come from simply owning something, but from the power and greed that comes with it. I think that this is a really important concept that a lot of people overlook when analyzing Rousseau. Tying his ideas into a classic movie and into this very modern idea of Black Friday definitely helps to make Rousseau's beliefs a lot more relatable and I think you did an excellent job at connecting him to the modern world.
ReplyDeleteAs for the end of your post, I would say that I absolutely agree with your conclusion and I think that Rousseau would to. Although he addresses that he thinks society is just a hinderance to humanity and causes nothing but chaos and suffering, he does admit that it has become so far developed that it is pretty much impossible to reverse it. I personally could not even imagine living in a world with no capitalism, no government, no societal structures. I believe that if Rousseau were alive today, he too would just sit back on thursday night to watch a movie while judging those lining up for sales at 8pm.
I really liked this post because it made me realize how much we allow possessions to dictate our lives. You make a great comparison between Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality and our nations' consumerism habit. We have become so obsessed with property that the things we have begun to believe that what we own is an extension of ourselves. We associate our personality by what brand we own, what car we drive, what neighborhood we live in. While this is not what Rousseau had in mind when he wrote his discourse, it is surely a result of property and ownership that he would abhor. I remember when I was a kid I was angered that kids who wore the Abercrombie brand were labeled as the cool kids. I made a stand and decided not to wear any sort of advertisement on my clothes. This was really hard because marketing was everywhere. Every time we open a magazine or turn on the television we are taught that we can become a certain type of person through what we possess. That's why Fight Club is so mind-blowing. It reminds its viewers that our beliefs may not be real, merely an extension of some advertisers view of what we should want. Like Tyler says, "the things you own end up owning you."
ReplyDelete