[PenultimateManStanding]

Another terrific metaphorical movie: Charlie where Cliff Robertson played a mentally challenged janitor who gets an intelligence enhancing operation and becomes acutely intelligent. Then he finds out he is going to revert back, lose it all and then die. Sort of like Peak Oil's effect on science: science gets more advanced as the high-energy era unfolds. Great things are learned. Then the energy shrinks and people go back to being, eventually, primitives, and all the knowledge gets lost. Eventually, as Tyler Durden put it in Fight Club, "vines climb the Sears Tower and the freeways fall apart" or something like that.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'A')nother terrific metaphorical movie: Charlie where Cliff Robertson played a mentally challenged janitor who gets an intelligence enhancing operation and becomes acutely intelligent.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'A')nother terrific metaphorical movie: Charlie where Cliff Robertson played a mentally challenged janitor who gets an intelligence enhancing operation and becomes acutely intelligent.

[I_Like_Plants]

I read that when I was about 10, maybe 11. Great book. None of those books are taught in school that I experienced, I discovered Brave New World and 1984 and Animal Farm and all kinds of things, but not in school, on my own.

I think we did part of Death Of A Salesman in my English class in my last year, but it was an advanced class, you had to take a test to get into that class, and it was not considered easy (it was though).

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', 'I') read that when I was about 10, maybe 11. Great book. None of those books are taught in school that I experienced, I discovered Brave New World and 1984 and Animal Farm and all kinds of things, but not in school, on my own.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Actually I started earlier than 5 & 6 because my mother taught me to read. I was charmed by the picture books going back way further. My mom wanted to be a novelist. Though she never did achieve that, she passed on the love of literature to me.

[I_Like_Plants]

We had Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys around but I never read 'em, I was into scientific stuff bigtime. The Life Nature Library, books about airplanes, stuff like that. I widened my reading out later, 11,12, etc years old. I didn't check out Rand until much later, Rand's ideas work fine in a small group, they suck ass as something to base a whole society on.

[PenultimateManStanding]

btw, I have the feeling, not only from what my son tells me, but what I hear from other teenagers, and even posters here in PO.com, that Tyler Durden is some some kind of folklore hero in this crazy age. One thing is certain, Edward Norton is one the most powerful actors going.

[PenultimateManStanding]

There is the rational side of it. The Oil Drum and our own Monte represent the rational side of it. But there is the irrational side of it, and that is the more powerful side. That is the side that will call the shots.

[greenworm]

Great movie. BTW, check out the last scene (buildings tumbling) in slow motion and you'll be in for a surprise, if your a heterosexual male, then it is probably not a surprise you are hoping for.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('greenworm', 'G')reat movie. BTW, check out the last scene (buildings tumbling) in slow motion and you'll be in for a surprise, if your a heterosexual male, then it is probably not a surprise you are hoping for.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')idway though the film we see Tyler working as a projectionist and splicing a subliminal image of a cock into a family movie. Is that really a subliminal image of a cock we see in your own film, flickering for a fraction of a second just before the end credits?

"Oh yeah. There was, if you'll pardon the phrase, a bone of contention about that. A lot of people thought it was too much of a wink and that it was trying to make light of everything that happened before. I never really saw it like that. Yes, Tyler goes too far but ... (laughs) some of the ideas he's talking about are not so bad! They should be ... if not embraced, at least well thought of. So that was our way of saying ... Not that it isn't over, just that the spirit of Tyler Durden is kinda still out there. Yeah - Tyler Durden is alive and well and in the theatre while you're actually watching this movie."

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'm')emorable line, "you are not your khakis."

[I_Like_Plants]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou are not your bank account...
You are not the clothes you wear...
You are not the contents of your wallet...
You are not your bowel cancer...
You are not your grande latte...
You are not the car you drive...
You are not your F#CKING khaki's...

[pillowhead]

I would have to disagree with a lot of what was said in this thread. Fight Club is just an extreme sport, similar to the Jackass movies (that was the whole point: to escape from your office cubicle and test yourself, to feel alive in some way).

This has nothing to do with what we call warfare, especially the 20th Century style industrial slaughter or terrorism of civilian populations which is done from a detached, automated, sterile, control panel. But even in earlier epochs warfare was always accomplished through this detachment based on objectifying the other as inhuman, heretic, etc.

This has nothing to do with so-called "primitive" drives, it is a cultural invention. Without this psychological conditioning and indoctrination, which results in emotional distancing, warfare would not exist because the level of heightened emotion necessary to kill someone face-to-face is difficult to sustain for long periods of time (This is not enough if you want to maintain a standing army required by empire.) That is why empire produces a certain class of humans (soldiers) that function as simple cogs and motivated to kill based on propaganda and ingrained emotional callousness.

Blaming "human nature" is just a misleading cliche. There's no such thing as "human nature." Humanity did not create technology. Technology created humanity. The windmill gives you the feudal lord. The steam engine gives you the capitalist. Oil and the infernal-combustion engine give you the "marriage of nightmare and reason" we call 20th century.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Wasn't there some archaeological study that came out last year which showed a very high level of warfare in prehistoric times? Then of course, there is recorded history, which is full of blood and wars.

[greenworm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'h')oly crap. man! you're right. A big cock! I can hardly believe it, but didn't Tyler Durden do that same thing earlier in the film? Wow, thanks for pointing that out. Did you spot it or did someone point it out to you? Subliminal shit for sure!

[pillowhead]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'W')asn't there some archaeological study that came out last year which showed a very high level of warfare in prehistoric times? Then of course, there is recorded history, which is full of blood and wars.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pillowhead', '
')Of course its full of blood and wars. But its important to understand why that is the case. Prehistoric "warefare" could not possibly measure up with civilized warfare, in its scope and intensity. Sure people get angry and kill eachother, thats one thing. But when you have shamans, preists, kings etc who's role is to manipulate how people think and behave, thats something else.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pillowhead', 'B')ut when you have shamans, preists, kings etc who's role is to manipulate how people think and behave, thats something else.