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Zero Hedge – A Maturing Fight Club Community or Just an Excuse to be Rude and Abusive?
Zero Hedge – A Maturing Fight Club Community or Just an Excuse to be Rude and Abusive?
By
Cognitive Dissonance
The title of this essay asks a fair question. For quite a few who comment here on Zero Hedge the ‘Fight Club’ theme appears to be a convenient excuse to verbally bash heads and insult people, in essence to act like the school yard bullies some wanted to be and perhaps might even have been. For others, well………where else can you throw a temper tantrum in public and not be forced to deal with the embarrassing social consequences directly to your face? We’ve all had our moments and I’ve certainly had mine.
Deep down inside all of us is a petulant little boy and girl trying to get out, only for some he or she is more difficult to hide than others. It seems quite a few people who comment here find Zero Hedge the perfect place to let it all hang out and not be forced to clean up their mess afterwards. I suspect the wide open nature of Zero Hedge, meaning no rules and definitely no adult supervision, is the perfect breeding ground for egomania and naval gazing narcissism to run wild and uninhibited. And maybe that’s all we can ever really expect from a virtual Internet mosh pit.
From my point of view Zero Hedge (ZH) is singularly unique in the blogosphere (or anywhere else for that matter) and I’ve often wondered if the readers who visit or comment on The Hedge have ever attempted to look beyond the oftentimes stark brutality on display here and discern what’s really going on in the background. On the surface there appears to be three virtual worlds within Zero Hedge, first and foremost the avatar world of Tyler Durden and Fight Club (FC) that super secret place from which Zero Hedge’s creator posts a steady stream of articles exposing financial and political manipulation, corruption and other assorted skullduggery.
Tyler Durden is the creator’s alter ego here on Zero Hedge, an animated front man modeled after the principal character in the infamous book and movie “Fight Club”. For obvious and not so obvious reasons ultimately known only to him (though we may intuit a few) the blog’s founder has chosen to remain isolated from both the ‘real’ outside world and the universe of his own creation.
Instead he has chosen to speak with a booming and disembodied voice laced with biting sarcasm and unconcealed contempt for all he chooses to skewer, but usually with common sense, logic and verifiable fact, all arch enemies of the lies supporting the Ponzi facade. Howard Hughes, if he were still alive today, would be insanely jealous of the degree of anonymity the creator has been able to maintain over the last two years. It would be easier to find Waldo than ZH’s Tyler Durden.
However, Tyler’s world is isolated from the rest of the FC community with very little cross talk between the creator and the rest of the readership. Except for the occasional comment left by Tyler in an article thread as well as email conversations with tipsters, contributors and other community members, there is very little interaction. And while there are several dozen “contributors” who post to Zero Hedge, to the best of my knowledge all contributors write, post and comment with complete autonomy and freedom. I most certainly do as I please and other than the occasional emailed comment from Tyler I have no contact with him.
The second virtual world, the largest and most complex component of Zero Hedge, is found within the comment section where the general community talks to each other and where the verbal, emotional and psychological abuse is handed out. The third world, a place that’s rarely glimpsed by anyone other than Tyler and company, consists mostly of transient readers who come and go as they please and who rarely if ever interact with anyone else. It is the second world that I wish to explore more thoroughly and at the risk of being summarily expelled from FC as a heretic or traitor I believe it is time to break the rules and talk about Zero Hedge, if for no other reason than to prepare for the gathering storm.
In other essays where I’ve explored our collective insanity I’ve repeatedly asked a bigger and much more uncomfortable question than the title may suggest. Is the at times frightening escalation in rude and abusive behavior in society as a whole just another example of the Stockholm Syndrome playing out? Are the psychologically bloodied and abused of society, and thus by extension some of those who comment here on ZH, trying to gain favor with or appease their abusers in order to deflect or diminish their own abuse, if only in their minds? For many people, particularly the abused (regardless of whether they acknowledge their own abuse or not) these are truly frightening questions because finding the answer requires us all to bare our souls and look deeply within. The abusers within the general population and here on ZH are in effect pleading to their sociopath masters, “See, I’m just like you. I can hurt those around me just like you do so don’t hurt me. You wouldn’t hurt one of your own, would you?” Psychologically the abused are trying to join their tormentors in order to escape the worst of the abuse. When faced with prolonged and systemic pain and suffering the mind often copes by adopting precisely that which it fears the most. In essence this is what the Stockholm Syndrome is all about. If you can’t beat them or even escape then when facing almost certain psychological or egoic damage or death, in order for the mind/ego to survive it must join the tormentor. On an individual level, many surviving victims of childhood or adult on adult abuse often protected their tormentors during the abuse. And often they are at higher risk of becoming abusers themselves; for the children this can occur when they become adults or even when they grow just a bit older and are still considered underage and thus not responsible. And on a national level, a nation surrounded physically or psychologically by perceived enemies and/or with a long history of its citizens being abused and killed (by internal or external forces, it doesn’t matter) will sometimes adopt the methods used against them and act out while carefully wrapping themselves in religious piety and protective and self serving law. In essence they act out the very insanity they find it impossible to escape from. Israel comes to mind, but there are plenty of others. In my opinion contrary to popular belief ‘man’ and his social order are not ‘naturally’ violent and abusive. Or maybe I should rephrase that statement. Contrary to popular belief a healthy man and his social order are not naturally violent and abusive. This clearly implies that we are not a healthy society. In nearly every harmonious and healthy indigenous culture I’ve studied going back thousands of years, violence and abuse was simply not a central part of their society as it is today with ours. And if the reader cannot see the violence everywhere s/he looks this is evidence of the reader’s total assimilation and adaptation to our cultural violence. When it has become so integrated and seamless that it can no longer be seen, our conditioning is nearly complete.
In more healthy indigenous cultures of the past, upon reaching puberty or shortly thereafter, each male child (and in some cultures female as well) was required to pass what could only be described as a trial by fire before being accepted by the greater community as a contributing adult member. While the trial was most certainly physically exhausting and sometimes resulted in severe injury and even death, what was really being tested was the prospective adult’s mental, emotional and spiritual maturity and conditioning. During the years leading up to the trials, which might be conducted individually or with several young adults at the same time, the village at large participated in readying the children for their maturation labors. The entire community understood that its health and very survival depended upon their children successfully passing into adulthood and adding to the communities overall prosperity and growth. But they also understood that a poorly prepared adult could not only be unproductive, thus not contributing to the villages’ standing and development, but he (or she) could be poisonous to the community, causing strife and conflict among members and family. This is why the community as a whole understood there was a shared responsibility to each other and to the group to nurture and raise their collective children. Everyone ‘knew’ at the most basic and gut level that it took the entire village as a living, breathing and codependent entity to help shoulder the burden of the collective and the individual. When one stumbled or fell, all suffered more or less equally. So while the principal burden of properly raising and educating the child fell upon that child’s parents, everyone was expected and willing to join in, thus working to assure the continuation of the community and thus the individual. Family first, followed closely by community, was how they lived their lives and almost always in close concert with nature and the natural world. Supposedly this community spirit still prevails today in our Western culture. But at the risk of sounding like a bitter old man, this cooperative spirit was rapidly fading 50 years ago when I was a young child and it has all but disappeared today, except perhaps in some smaller towns and villages or as small isolated pockets within bigger cities or densely populated counties. The Amish Mennonites come to mind as a modern day example of a mutually supportive and nurturing community that still interacts to a limited degree with those who surround them. As the personal responsibility for our day to day existence has been shifted to ‘they’ and ‘them’, which so often today means all levels of the government and/or the schools as both parents are forced to work in order to keep a roof over their heads, we as a society and a community have become increasingly childlike, even infantile, in mind, belief and deed. We are dying as a people and as a culture, surrounded by our material possessions while long since become spiritually and morally bankrupt and destitute. What’s rarely discussed in our present day culture is exactly what it means to be a modern day adult and, equally important, what our individual and collective responsibilities are as both adults and as fully functioning members of our communities, regardless of whether community is measured by walking distance or national boundaries. As hidden entities attempt to exert more and more control over our lives and minds, we are being dumb downed and infantilized to the point where we are little more than children endlessly engaged in naval gazing and self indulgent masturbation. The inevitable result is that our community is burning down around us exactly as planned. The very same techniques that destroyed indigenous Native American cultures are now being applied to the current population. By this I mean the slow bleeding off of intellectual and cultural independence and self sufficiency which was and is the hallmark of all healthy indigenous cultures. A financial and political belief system based upon exponential expansion and conquest inevitably resorts to enslavement and even cannibalism of its own citizens. If nothing else history teaches us this very well.
So what does any of this have to do with Fight Club and Zero Hedge? Well I suspect Zero Hedge, whether planned or not, is capable of helping us to work through this insanity more or less intact. Or at a minimum to survive whatever comes after society’s great fall. In order to pursue this thought experiment one must ask themselves something that I’ve never seen discussed here or anywhere else for that matter. Why did the creator of Zero Hedge use Fight Club as his central unifying theme? For those who claim it’s all about the fight may I suggest you look just a little bit deeper? Zero Hedges’ Tyler never allows us to peek into his mind by way of editorial comment regarding the community nor does he conduct state of the community reviews. Because I would never presume to know what he is thinking or why he does anything, one is forced to examine his source material, his inspiration if you will, if we are to try to understand what Zero Hedge really might be………or could be. This requires that we pull out our dusty old dog eared copies of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and re-read the original text, then spool up that scratched up DVD copy of Fight Club the movie to refresh our memory of Hollywood’s interpretation of modern day insanity. One needs to do both since there are major differences between the book and the movie, particularly the end. For those who claim that the Fight Club model was used simply to pretty up the place with Brad Pitt’s six pack abs and handsome face or as the means to justify Zero Hedge’s in-your-face sarcastic style of truth mongering, I’d say you don’t recognize the creator’s genius when he beats your face into the concrete floor or he happily pisses in your lobster bisque. After re-reading the book, then watching the movie twice, I suspect the real reason for the Fight Club theme can be found several layers deeper. The disclaimer is that all this is pure supposition on my part mixed with literary flights of fancy. Neither Zero Hedge’s Tyler nor any other Fight Club characters were harmed or consulted during the writing of this essay. In the book Palahniuk explains. “Most guys are at fight club because of something they’re too scared to fight. After a few fights, you’re afraid a lot less.” One simply cannot gaze into the coming financial upheaval with clear eyes and a deprogrammed mind without some serious trepidation and a churning stomach. The movie goes further by explaining the unique perspective fighting with purpose, honor and dignity brings to the mind and soul. “After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down.” Those who profess little to no worry about the killer storm on the horizon are either still fully doped up on propaganda Kool-Aid, in serious denial over the coming global dislocations or outright trolls and psyops disruptors. I hear much false bravado and feigned certainty in many ZH voices in the comment section, though few will admit to it. But based upon what I’ve been reading over the last 24 months, many of us are clearly fiat refugee’s looking for an island of sanity along with the intellectual equivalent of three hots and a cot. Only the sociopaths can look into the face of chaos and sleep well at night. The rest of us need some help to face the gathering storm. In the movie Tyler explains that Fight Club is all about changing boys into men….or rather boys into responsible men with a purpose in life. “Narrator: I can’t get married. I’m a 30 year old boy.’ ‘We’re a generation of men raised by women,’ Tyler says. ‘I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.’” And later, “Fight club isn’t about winning and losing fights. Fight club isn’t about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything.” It appears that we are supposed to be building something here beginning within ourselves. This is boot camp for the spiritually deficient and morally decrepit. “It doesn’t matter.’ Tyler says. ‘If the applicant is young, we tell him he’s too young. If he’s fat, he’s too fat. If he’s old, he’s too old. Thin, he’s too thin. White, he’s too white. Black, he’s too black.’ ……Narrator: This is how Buddhist temples have tested applicants going back for a bah-zillion years, Tyler says. You tell the applicant to go away, and if his resolve is so strong that he waits at the entrance without food or shelter or encouragement for three days, then and only then can he enter and begin the training.”
Is this what’s going on within Zero Hedge? I suspect we are being encouraged to look within in order to discover our inner metal, our backbone and courage, with Zero Hedge itself the dimly lit basement proving ground where we clash with other nameless half dead souls looking for some kind of personal redemption. Are we being groomed to be Project Mayhem space monkeys ready to spread the word and bring about some sort of financial and social equality? Or are we just financial snuff film voyeurs endlessly returning to Zero Hedge for our daily blood and guts adrenalin rush? Is it dead yet? And when can I get a good look at the fiat corpse?
Before the reader brushes away that last paragraph as preposterous and not directed at you, maybe you need to conduct a fearless examination of your own motives for visiting Zero Hedge. All some seem to be doing is picking fights and bullying others while reveling in the present day insanity that presages the pushing of the global reset button. Oh, and working on their “I told you so” speeches. This was not the purpose for Fight Club put forth by Chuck Palahniuk when he penned his novel. The fighting was a means to an end, a tool used to move forward personally and collectively, not simply a fast vehicle to more blood sports and ego boosting.
Why are you really here? What is your real purpose for showing up on Zero Hedge on a daily or weekly basis? Once again this is a reasonable question, one only you can answer but only if you are capable of being honest with yourself. Are you here to strengthen yourself emotionally, mentally and spiritually as you work to prepare yourself and your community for the coming worldwide trials? As corny as it may sound to some, that’s mostly why I’m here on Zero Hedge. I see The Hedge as my virtual community, a place I wish to nurture and grow just as I would my local physical community.
More to the point, are you going to participate in the rebuilding of our physical world by preparing minds (beginning with your own) before they are paralyzed in fear by the coming collapse, the central theme of Palahniuk’s classic and something I believe Zero Hedge’s Tyler is doing? Or are you just slowing down the car a bit to get a better look at the decapitated financial mess jammed under the crushed tractor trailer and school bus strewn all along the side of the road? Look ma, is that a head? Yuck! Go slower for crying out loud, I can’t see a thing.
After several generations of media in-breeding and propaganda conditioning for abject apathy and subliminal boob tube pacification, this blog’s creator, just like Palahniuk’s Tyler Durden, has some very poor raw material to work with despite the lies we tell ourselves and the false bravado we display to each other after our morning preening ritual and in between meals of tasteless bread and mystery meat. As Tyler reminded the Narrator in the movie, “We are all part of the same compost heap.”
Fight Club is far more than just a physical challenge, far more. From the book: “I see the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived,’ he says, his face outlined against the stars in the driver’s window, ‘and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables.’…And this…. ‘If we could put these men in training camps and finish raising them.’…Still more…‘You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.”
Palahniuk spares no feelings and gets down and dirty here in the book. “We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.’ Even more to the point is this quote from the movie. “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.”
This is a theme repeated endlessly in both the book and the movie, that our lives are wastelands and that we have become willing and compliant slaves to the social and political order. Palahniuk holds nothing back in his scathing review of modern man. And when this blog’s creator, through his Tyler Durden alter ego, mocks the insanity of the financial and political status quo, whether he intends to or not, we are being mocked as well. And very often we are blissfully unaware of it because we have convinced ourselves we’re completely different from all the rest of the mindless zombies because…………because why exactly? Might this be just another lie we tell ourselves to kill the pain and get through another day of silent screams and abject misery?
Like the commodities we are to the ruling elite, many of us are packed in like sardines in our own cooking oil. “Home was a condominium on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise, a sort of filing cabinet for widows and young professionals.” We are desperate to kill the pain we share with our fellow canned anchovies and one of the ways is to become material girls and boys. “And I wasn’t the only salve to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue’.
And one more from Palahniuk that hits just a little too close to home. “Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own; now they own you.” Understand that Palahniuk isn’t just referring to physical possessions when he says ‘the thing’ own us. We create a fantasy world view in our minds and then twist facts and information to fit our comfort level. When our controllers turn up the fear we constrict our worldview to conform to their manipulation. It is our denial that ultimately owns us lock, stock and barrel.
Our national fiat credit card, our SUV’s and our flat screen TVs have become 24/7 oxygen masks used to kill the pain of our existence. “Tyler Durden [pointing at an emergency instruction manual on the plane] You know why they put oxygen masks on planes?” Narrator: “So you can breathe?” Tyler Durden: “Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. [in the seat back instruction manual] Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.” Narrator: “That's, um... That's an interesting theory.”
No……it is not a theory at all, but rather a sad fact. It’s all around us yet we claim we’re different, special cases who aren’t affected by the insanity like all the others. We can see the truth and thus we are immune to the disease. But we always seem to miss the big question. How does one see his own insanity when the only measuring stick offered is fundamentally broken and has been created by the insane?
Would we recognize our own insanity when we’re totally immersed in everyone else’s? The creator of the Zero Hedge blog has softened the egoic blow of self recognition when he holds up the mirror by allowing us to believe it is a see through mirror with a view of outside. And in so doing, many of us never find the courage to take a really close look at whom or what stares back.
So how do you escape from your own insanity? How do you break from the herd when all you know is the herd? What does insanity look like? Palahniuk takes us to the edge and shows us the spectacularly warped view, insanity carefully disguised as a 9 to 5 office worker. “What I would do, I say, is I’d be very careful who I talked to about this paper. I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me.”
How many of us have fantasized about getting back at all those who we believe have harmed us, who have exposed our cowardice to all the others, who have not participated in our insanity confirming social rituals, who have laughed at us as we rush for the safety of the pack just as the herd is being corralled for the next culling. All those petty social injustices can finally be rectified, balancing the scales and bringing us back from the edge of the abyss. Instead we mindlessly bang away at any one within reach on Zero Hedge. And we call this awareness? Tell me again how good it is to be so well adjusted to an out-of-control and totally insane world.
But of course we rarely follow the urge to kill. Instead our normalized insanity is repressed or more accurately morphed into something that can be expressed in a more socially acceptable and personal way, as part of our genuine imitation self image. We paint over our madness with pretty colors and pleasing pastels. “I flipped through catalogs and wondered: What kind of dining set defines me as a person?”….And again…“It's just, when you buy furniture; you tell yourself, that's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need. Whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled”…and again…“How embarrassing, a house full of condiments and no food”…and again….” I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of... wherever.
And the piece de la resistance; the mattress warning tag we assume is meant for everyone else, but most certainly not us because we are the end user, the ultimate consumer, the cosmic dead end. Tyler Durden: Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler.
Isn’t this what Zero Hedge does for us on a daily basis as Tyler and his contributors trot out one financial, political and social snapshot of insanity after another for our daily inspection? We declare to ourselves and any other person within blog earshot that we know the truth, that we are one with Tyler, that we see the Golden light and the Silver path to heaven. Is this really true or just a different form of herd masturbation? Are we simply a sub herd of the insane, tightly packed together for warmth in our own little corner of the Zero Hedge insane asylum, our territory carefully marked out in Gold to identify the Zero Hedge tribe? Just because we might be correct about the financial insanity doesn’t by itself make us sane by any stretch of the imagination.
Palahniuk’s Fight Club wasn’t about daily beatings and its attendant letting of blood. Nor was it about humiliation of our opponent or about revenge seeking, flailing about in the dark basement at all the anonymous bags of skin and bones as we feed upon our inner demons. Fight Club was not about posing in front of the mirror admiring our own muscles or beating others simply because we haven’t the courage to strike back at our real tormentors.
Fight Club was and is about personal growth and community, of discovering what we are all made of, of seeking the inner steel and honing it to perfection, then using our newly strengthened muscles to build a tighter more functional community. Fight Club is about creation, not random destruction. When the fight ends we lift our fallen brother from the floor and hold him tight as others tend to both our wounds. And after a while even the fighting is no longer needed, a fact directly acknowledged in both the book and movie when Tyler Durden declared to the Narrator that either they move up to the next level or it all dies a stillborn movement.
This is about teaching each other how to cope, live and love, not to spit on each other because we are too cowardly to fight our mutual enemy. We weep together in bonded self discovery and we become blood brothers in a manner only those who have shared blows and blood can understand. Fight Club is the means to building brotherhood and community, not a means to rage against our frustration and dull the unrelenting pain of our own self imposed impotence. As Tyler Durden explains in the movie, “Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me.
Fight Club is all about pushing beyond the limits we allowed to be set for us many years, even decades, ago and which we are all terrified of crossing. Fight Club is about the process of breaking down and purging, of hitting bottom and then rebuilding. In the movie Tyler tells us to go back to basics. “Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.” From the book: “Disaster is a natural part of my evolution,” Tyler whispered, “toward tragedy and dissolution.’
We think we’ve hit our limit, but we’re not even close. It’s easy to stop now, when every fiber of our being is screaming for us to halt. If success were that easy, everyone would never fail. ‘Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting bottom yet. And if I don’t fall all the way, I can’t be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn’t just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn’t just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can’t just play it safe anymore. This isn’t a seminar. “If you lost your nerve before your hit bottom,” Tyler says, “you’ll never really succeed.” Only after disaster can we be resurrected. “It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.” What I’m feeling is premature enlightenment.
There it is and there’s no hiding from it any longer. Premature enlightenment is that thrill, that excitement we feel in our toes when we begin to discover the truth and we know we’re on to something. We desperately want the pain to stop and this certainly looks like our final destination. Or at least it’s as good a place as any to stop….right? Please, someone tell me the storm has passed and I can come out now. Our biggest fear is that our cowardliness will be so obvious even those trying not to look can’t avoid it.
But it is not our final destination and deep down we all know this. What really scares us to our core, what keeps us tossing and turning in the dead of night, is the knowledge that the spiritual fight of our lives, of our generation, has only now just begun. And we don’t know if we have the courage to initially engage, let alone fight to the bitter end. We aren’t talking about those pitiful sheep and the walking dead any more. Nope, this is all about you and me and us.
There is no escape from ourselves, from our own deep seated fear that we find staring back at us from within our own black abyss. This is why we fear looking within and precisely why we are so easily manipulated. This is where all our personal blackmail material can be found, conveniently stored in our own cerebral lock boxes. And it doesn’t even need to be exposed to be effectively used against us. Just the threat of showing us to ourselves is more than sufficient to keep us all plugging away within our customized hamster trail.
What we are beginning to see and think on Zero Hedge and other blogs is suddenly starting to make sense. This is what Zero Hedge appears to offer, premature enlightenment. But we don’t really know if we have the balls or the courage to do anything about it. This in effect makes us tits on a bull, useless to the bull and to pretty much everyone else. But look we say, they are tits…..as if that makes all the difference in the world and that alone should bring value to an all together useless entity. It’s not the information that makes the difference my friend, it’s the information carrier. This is why the controllers don’t even try to hide their crimes anymore. What are you going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? What are we going to do about it?
How far are we willing to go to find our bottom? What depths of our soul will we plumb for our salvation? These are the questions Zero Hedge’s Tyler asks us on a daily basis. Hour by hour he throws the gauntlet down in front of our faces and asks us to determine how much pain we’re willing to withstand before we let go and are reborn. Tyler can’t do it for us; we must commit and bravely move forward into the fear and pain. “The back of your hand is swollen red and glossy as a pair of lips in the exact shape of Tyler’s kiss. Scattered around the kiss are the cigarette burn spots of somebody crying. ‘Open your eyes’ Tyler says, his face shinning with tears. ‘Congratulations,’ Tyler says. ‘You’re a step closer to hitting the bottom. You have to see how the first soap was made of heroes.’
Under these circumstances there are only two ways to die, by our own hand or by the hand of another. Fear is what controls us and nothing else. What we refuse to face, outright deny, bargain with or flee from has us by the balls. This is why we must jump from the cliff, to face our mortality and be free of deaths grip. We must shed everything if we are to gain anything of substance. “I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions,” Tyler whispered, “because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”
Once we clear all that clutters our mind, only then can we be truly free. “The liberator who destroys my property,” Tyler said, “is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.” Only by surrendering our illusion of control do we gain something even greater. “And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
It's long past the point where people can simply be shown what's really going on and they will understand and embody it. The programming and conditioning has been so thoroughly assimilated that the average person will rationalize away anything contrary to the image of the fantasy world constructed for their mind by their mind. One, two, even 100 pieces of truth will be lost in a sea of propaganda and disinformation repeated endlessly day after day. All we have to do is not look.
Sure people understand that something is terribly wrong. But given the choice between looking into the abyss and floating back into another few hours of mindless bliss, few will choose the path of emotional pain, particularly when they can believe they are already free. How can we expect anyone else to face the pain and shock of their own cognitive dissonance if we aren’t willing to do the same?
So……is it up to you and me to show the way by example? If so, how do we do this? For most of us the fight has been bred out generations ago. This is the purpose of breaking down within Fight Club, to reanimate those dormant DNA strands. Palahniuk explains that those who might possibly resist will only truly fight when cornered and have nothing left to lose. This is when you learn who you really are. “A man on the street will do anything not to fight. The idea is to take some Joe on the street who’s never been in a fight and recruit him. Let him experience winning for the first time in his life. Get him to explode. Give him permission to beat the crap out of you. You can take it. If you win, you screwed up. ‘What we have to do, people,’ Tyler told the committee, ‘is remind these guys what kind of power they still have.”
And what kind of power might that be? What kind of power could a slave possibly posses? I’ll tell you what power. Power enough to change our world while sweeping away our hated tormentors, for we hold an innate and naturally derived power only found deeply within. Besides, we are the machine. “Remember this,” Tyler said. “The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you sleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your calls. We are cooks and taxis drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
Either we begin our own process of deprogramming beginning deeply within, then progressing to those around us willing to listen and learn, or we lie to ourselves that we will survive while all around us are herded off for the next culling. One approach is proactive and supremely liberating, the other narrowly defensive and mind constricting. One doesn’t free oneself from physical slavery until the mind has already been liberated.
The idea that I see bandied around Zero Hedge, of buying PMs and filling the storm cellar with the basics and hunkering down, is just another form of self delusion. One man cannot withstand an assault from his own community let alone the county, state or nation. Either we begin to educate ourselves and our communities now or we will eventually be overrun by those very same communities. First you look within and find yourself, then you find the others and begin rebuilding your community.
05-25-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
- advertisements -
As mentioned somewhere above, FC is different things to different people. It is more art than science.
Whether Cognitive Dissonance realizes it or not, HE is doing exactly what institutions in human societies program others to do...he is looking at FC as a predetermined answer for others to mimic...a dichotomy. By limiting the answer to one of two possibilities, he has already assumed for others what their answer is to be.
The real question or questions he should have posed would be open-ended if he were not just "another lost sheep following the herd" (albeit an articulate one!). Those are, "What does ZH/FC do for you" or "what do you get out of ZH/FC" ???
In any event, I liked ZH more, when the old site was up and running (not the style of that site, per se, but the content among the comments), because there was less "noise".
It was a more intellectual collection of sparring partners, who were well trained in the arts and sciences of finance, markets, trading, and economics. Now you get political hacks here, who know nothing about such topics but want to think they do. Sad commentary -really- and microcosm of the rise and fall of civilizations!
I am scared. And afraid.
I don't know what to do with any certainty. But I try none-the-less.
Great post, CD.
I am scared too. I have no idea what to do. We are all just animals. i know I cannot protect my family, although it is my duty, and my blood. The majority of humans want to obey. They are even more scared than you and I. You and I will lose. Freedom will lose. It will be very painful. I lift my hopes up to the super-organism. We all die. They will die. AI will win. It is for the best. It solves a lot of difficult philosophical problems. Believe in God, if you must. And go with Him, if you can.
love, Theopco
The youth is more slaved then ever..just look at the technology, ADD kids on medical weed, knocked up gfs and a Generation without a VOICE! ..but with student loans, car payments, a hotdog and a mindless opinion.
Caputcha!
..till debt do us part! ;0
CD - goal achieved again
"We are God's unwanted children? So be it!"
thanks again cog for stirrin the pot. good gumbo guys & gals.
Was Fight Club intended as an allegory?
I think many draw vastly different inspirations and observations and conclusions from it, and with any form of art, unless the artist was a dolt, that's the best case scenario.
For me, at its core, Fight Club was a symbolic reminder that a single person can inspire others to revolt against something vulgar and profane, that is the cause of deep disaffection in the core of their lives and existence, and tear it down.
Fight Club was supposed to be satire... we're not meant to take Project Mayhem serious -- it's just a commentary on the nihilism that appeals to modern youth.
The fact that some DO now take such satire seriously is more telling than the original work, without a doubt.
That's where I think you're wrong. Fight club was NOT meant to be taken as satire. The stupid self-cancelling psychodrama was the bone that was cast to normalcy. Somebody was really trying to say something.
Far be it for me to criticize the monetization of rebellion. I am very guilty of it myself. Does that mean I don't believe in it?
Not at all.
http://seenoevilspeaknoevilhearnoevil.blogspot.com/2011/05/25-rules-of-disinformation.html
Good article, Cog Dis, but typically for you overly prolix. The primary focus of Fight Club is self development, in the instant case through overcoming your worst fears by confronting them, which is a widely accepted psychotherapy method. The result is one improved individual, who can then participate in his society, and by doing so, slightly improve that society. You may have taken the Fight Club analogy a little far, and impugned motivations in Tyler that he may not share. As to the site being an actual Fight Club, there is not that much rational disagreement that I can see, except perhaps in the selection of who our enemy is, and I thought everyone knew that he is us (as accurately reported by Pogo long ago). Achieving ego death and redirecting your efforts outwardly to the community allows you to see through a lot of the mind-numbing drivel that is being foisted onto the society in the interest of creating cooperative slaves, but does not give you a silver hammer with which to correct the current direction. What I see as the primary failure of our society, besides being directed by psychopaths in high places (the key people who could really benefit from improved emotional health) is that no one wants to take a long range view anymore. Ever since the credit card (the ultimate layaway plan) came into widespread use, the social attention span has shortened from a committed lifetime of work in a chosen field, to less than the 15 seconds it takes to watch a commercial for the latest 'must-have' electronic gizmo. And with the banks foisting debt on us as pretend money, to the infinite benefit of big government, the collapse of social values is assured, as our leaders now publicly espouse these false values continuously on the lamestream media. With rational thought being denigraded for quick emotional response, the majority of society fail to see that political promises of 'something for nothing' are only lies, and result in the theft of our future. I tend to agree that man is not violent by nature, but he can certainly be quickly trained to it, if made afraid early and often. I am also disappointed by the rude and abusive comments displayed here, and it does seem that the quality of comments is deteriorating, but the sheer number of commenters shows that the site is serving it purpose well.
Arrrggghhhh! You bastards have cloned RE from TBP. I just want some interesting analysis, lively debate and the occasional rant. You lugnuts have turned it into a binary system where ye all agree and sing Kumbaya while giving reach arounds out like candy, or bickering like high school girls about some useless bullshit. My understanding of this site was that it was for the fully developed people who are neither chronologically or intellectually pre pubescent. If you have anything interesting to say about any of the historic events taking place in our world today I would love to hear it. If you have received your world view from Sean Hannity or Whoopi Goldberg you are excused. Regards, Lucas
I've seen FC a hundred times on cable, but I got nothing from this post. I've been coming here for a couple of years, but for the last few months I've ignored the comments. However, there are some great ones in this thread.
These days, I keep my doomer porn to myself, save for the occasional posting of a Fukushima or fraudclosure update. My readers prefer pictures of flowers from my garden.
I've been called insane for disseminating the truths I've learned here, and perhaps I am.
But I'm no longer angry and I thank ZH in part for that. I've accepted the neoliberal ponzi. I still fight it, but with a sense of conviction that not only am I right, but that I am not alone.
My readers prefer pictures of flowers from my garden.
so do some of us. post them here if you please:
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/oer-hedgerow-garden
Hey CD.
Thanks for another thought-inspiring article. The truth is, for all the dirt-digging articles posted here (ZH), we cannot know the truth. From 911 to Bank fraud, from global conspiracies to the overall direction of the market, it is the height of hubris to think that, through logic and apprehension, we should be able to determine the cause of anything, when all of our information, from every quarter, is suspect. All we know is what is demonstrably true. Does the hot chick get her boobs felt up by TSA or not? Are you poorer or richer that you were 10 years ago? Does the government lie to you or not? It is around these empirical truths that we should protest or rally; support the status quo, or rebel.
I know that you are trying to free people's minds. I urge you to continue. Please appreciate that very few who do not already know will listen.
theopco
Honestly, I didn't finish, but I will respond to the first 6 paragraphs...
In general, I think most people are "blowing off steam" and it shouldn't be regarded as anything more sinister. We all have to from time to time. Like I just did in the article about Palin.
Article too long. Did not read.
comment too short. did not read.
Oh ... I think you did.
Thanks CD. Having been here every day from the old blogger site, I must say that the comment quality has diminished with the economy. Early the comments were extremely inciteful and actually led to an expansion of a readers knowledge beyond the brilliiance in the posts. Today it is little more than a (rather humorous) bitchfest with sporadic brain power used. I used to scouer the comments from the hedgies and those in the know. Now I rarely read any at all as the quality is not what it once was.
I think the one thing that is missing in the FC analogy is the guy standing on the stoop. I read ZH for about 2 years before I had the balls to become a member. I thought maybe there would be a rite of passage to be allowed to post. The "old" site had such smart intelligent comments (and the content was truly primary source type stuff) that I thought for sure this really was a "club" with entrance requirements. But then when I saw more and more new members posting, many that add NOTHING to the conversation, I realized that I could easily pass whatever test so I did.
Not sure how many people here have tried to surf, but to me it was the exact analogy. If you paddle out into a "locals" spot and get in the lineup, you better be able to surf as good as the next guy. In that regard I wish folks would keep the chat down (that's what yahoo comments are for), especially that devoted to attacking each and getting back to adding to the discussion. If you can't add, then just sit quiet, maybe there is a topic you can add to in the future. Just my two cents.
The Nietschean spirit that infuses both the fictional Tyler Durden and his Fight Club and the real Tyler Durden and his Zerohedge does tend to bring out the adolescent in us all, as you observe. I have always found this to be troubling in Nietsche. The ethos is invigorating but vague, stirring to action but not directing action to any purpose. To say that we must go beyond Master-Slave, beyond Good and Evil is one thing. To create order or significance out of what will follow is the more difficult task. Without this Nietzschesque ethos (which Max Weber called "charisma"), however, changing the structures that control the function of society is impossible. We must harness this spirit but not be carried away into nihilism. All-in-all a well thought out piece CD.
Resistance is futile...
In the end, nothing really matters.
CogDis: I say fudpacker you say, never mind... Yes, I guess he will visit my brand new little blog.
I just started it up, mentioned it a few times here on ZH (uh, yeah OK, in two cases by rudely butting in line, but that was taken care of by the ZH system, 'scool), and a couple of bullies promptly showed up to "do" me the other times...
I have always hated bullies because I was one of their favorte targets!
***
Your GREAT article came in a 100% timely manner for the Bearing! THANK YOU for sharing your thoughts re how we should cope and and THINK and BE in this ugly-looking reality.
+ 10^10^10^10^10^10
+ 1,000,000! (factorial)
planted
zero hedges
around the cabin...
to keep the moose away
+0
He needs some bitches.
Cog Dis,
Where in ZH is this community building you're referring to? I'm sorry, but typing comments, whether rude or civil, is not solving anything. Nor is it building community ties. The most anyone can say is ZH builds AWARENESS.
Talk about fear... a bunch of annonymous writers are so scared of their own shadow, none of them dare suggest anything resembling action. No offense intended, but join the fight club yourself and stop waiting for someone else to do the work.
Hell, we can bring down fractional reserve lending and consumerism, just by convincing people to opt out -- and it would be in their own best interest to save instead. Not one knee needs to be skinned. All we have to do is take our money out of large banks, and stop buying crap we don't need. That's it. Opt out and it all comes tumbling down, totally non violently. That's the big lie -- the people really have all the power in this relationship.
Thanks, but I don't think we need morality watchtowers or political correctness guards here.
I am able to ignore almost all the annoying posts with ease, just for some it takes a bit more self-discipline to do so.
For the ones who always need a reason and a direction in everything happening around him, think of it as the law of diminishing returns (with increasing comment posts).
CD that may well be true but seldom does true growth come from the "denial" and "schizophrenia" mixed with a dose of paranoria. Yes THIS site is great, but as Frued said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", and sometimes "a movie is just a movie". Entertainment is one thing, to turn it inot "growth", yes in the movies that may well happen. Reality of addictiona denial and self agrandisement usually ends badly, just look at GS or any talking head, corporate CEO or "leader" in today' world.
It is a sick and dark world, and dealing with it is going to take sick and dark ways. It is not a better path of enlightenment.
May I suggest you read the essay. The "tease" doesn't reflect the entire content of the essay. It's intent is simply to grab some one's interest which is then sated or not by reading the content.
it has been a long time since i saw fight club, never read the book.
i don't remember the ending of the movie either but vaguely
remember an impression or core pith as it were or might be. btw
thanks for this writing cd.
the essence of my recollection is that "tyler" was an unconscious
but enlightened?
alter ego, a creation of the mind of the narrator. created out of
his need for a missing enlightened father figure in a "feminized" world.
..
the interesting part for me was the identity conflict the narrator
exhibits and the way it is represented as "fight club", seems to
nicely represent the minds struggle to differentiate a self from the
manners and ways of a social context by fighting with, bare foot and shirtless,
any willing opponent / imagined identity. but never talk about fight club
is a rule, 2x because this would lead to the revelation that the practice
itself is futile in a sense. also the practice of fight club is an atavistic
response to the symbolic realm of language or an avoided level and stage of
development that has castrated the initiated and rendered him unable to
appreciate the symbolic nature, depth and power of language/s. fight club was about
physical fights, not arguments. ( never talk about fight club ).
since we're breaking rules....
the mind turned on itself is the psychological equivalent represented
as in when the mind is looking at its own content, naval gazing anyone?,
this is the essence of the narrators story. i never understood why people
use the term naval gazing as a derision? it is probably one of the best things
one could do. and is .... the key to fight club. ( never talk about fight
club ).
anyway, it seems to be a cautionary tale populated by insane people
who don't know who they are, how or why they got there, but they do know
they are dissatisfied with the state of affairs and our narrator is one
breath away from self destruction which might be his salvation.
( the death of his unconscious alter ego )
just like the "real" world. art imitating life and as pablo picasso said..
"art is the lie that reveals the truth." or like that.
this is all required on the social level because we live in agreed
ignorance concerning time and space and demand of one another
appropriate symbolic displays and responses. we demand it of ourselves
too. it is how "clubs" and classes differentiate members and their status.
it is what differentiates us from other life forms and the universe
itself. ( i don't know why we do it / abandon this other capacity )
oh yea, money and the time context it demands. i guess fight club was
always going to pick a fight with fiat currency, baked in the cake.
and we are all the narrator, the creator of tyler. i think this is
very artistic of the host but the enigma of argumentation being the
medium or milieu of fight club is problematic and runs the risk of becoming
insignificant or as was said above, bitch club.
the comment section in fight club is an absurdity, as it should be and
was probably intended to be. it is treated like the absurdity it is and
that is entirely appropriate in my opinion. what could it be other than
random blows, short jabs and body blows of foul language. it is
"fight club" !! a virtual absurdity but useful for all who are interested.
to the extent that identity is cultural and societally integrated
you have to expect some profound dislocations to take place when the
world around us/you changes so drastically as we have seen and will see.
so, if anyone feels the need to lash out i say get it out in the comment
section. virtual relief is better than disintegrating your narrator.
there is only one tyler and he doesn't exist too.
but then there is this...
.
Dr Helen Caldicott - Fukushima Nuclear Disaster- You won't hear this on the Main Stream News.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ITrXVJMKeQ&feature=player_embedded
.
one more thing. all of it is monitored by the "authorities" which
is one-why i comment here. it is better than having the cell phone number
of your senator or representative. imo. they should know what you really think.
not what you would say to be socially adored, what you think and know.
fight club. with words, absurd, yes, but social identity in interesting times
is an exercise in virtual absurdity. ongoing
"all of it is monitored by the "authorities" which is one-why i comment here. it is better than having the cell phone number of your senator or representative. imo. they should know what you really think. not what you would say to be socially adored, what you think and know."
ya mon. when throwing stones from glass houses, always best to wear a veil, if only to bravely fool yourself anonymous into the deep dark well of truth.
t,
houdini. funny to watch that,
the crowd reaction and all. entertainment, america
had/s talent....
but , @ .."only to bravely fool yourself anonymous
into the deep dark well of truth."
.
that something to think about.
our brave new virtual world, same as it ever was
as in ancient nameless times.
but we are not forgotten children,
no way. the veil is thin and covers very little
to those who have an interest, more like a mosquito
net than a veil. that is my guess.
au contraire mon ami, the finest veils are the ones made from the most delicate lace.
ask Mona Lisa.
that's why i wish more women would jump in the pool and join the fun. cockfighting gets oh so boring after a few rounds. me, i'd rather sit back in the garden and watch the nearly naked ladies light it up for awhile.
this guy is pretty interesting
Ashra Kwesi Reveals "God's Chosen Children" at the Temple of Ramessu - Kemet
(Egypt)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAwXApNGQE0&NR=1
Great article, CD. There's a lot to absorb.
I noticed you quoted Socrates. Allow me to add my favorite of his:
I think I am smart, but a few authors on this site humble me. Many of us on this site need more humility in our lives to make us grow. I talk/write to the corrupted politicians, have filed grievance complaints to state bars on lawyers (more people should do this as the state ethic creeds have unbelievable high standards and anyone can file a grievance), as I absolutely believe the professionals must be held to higher standards than the common man to justify their leadership roles. This site and the authors within provide a safe place for me where I find many people who think similarly and some who challenge me. Maybe this helps me grow; whatever growth may mean.
We and our institutions have fallen very short of our founding fathers' expectations. We have failed our forfathers who bled, sweated and toiled to make this country a better place for their children. I talk to many people with most thinking I am stupid, insane or both. I find 90% do not know or care to know, 9.9% know some, but think the problem is too big for them to address and 0.1% who know, care, want to do something, but do not know what to do. I believe many people on this site fall into the 0.1% category.
I enjoyed your article. I wish there was more we could do.
CD,
Well done. My question on helping others is 'how' without becoming an outcast nutjob and being completely 'tuned out.'
I've slowly educated a close few over months so that they now understand the situation, but that even stretched credibility. Tyler has been instrumental in aggregating valuable factual information to aid such education.
But how to reach out to others and be credible?
Tyler, is it possible in your forum for you to at times show the how?
Zero Hedge is fascinating and kind of a big deal because it successfully incorporates cutting edge elements of extremely influential, older media and networking enterprises including The Well and The Spectator. It's also a good example of how focused, distributed content (over the Internet mostly) is changing the way knowledge is concentrated and accessed throughout the world.
It's subversive of course but it's fairly unique in the way it shines a light on the seemingly incredible power and reach of modern, abstract capital(ism) as it constantly morphs and pings around the globe. Christopher Hitchens once defended his obsession with the importance of all things political by asserting that (I paraphrase) you can't escape politics. Well, I think Zero Hedge is opening a lot of eyes to the reality that at this point in history you can't escape finance.
I dig the Fight Club book and movie but like punk rock I like the reactionary attitude more than some of the more nihilistic elements on display. From what I remember of Palahniuk on the subject, the intended scope of the book isn't particularly grand or comprehensive anyway. But hey, it's a serviceable enough vehicle here.
I have no idea what the right balance of comment policing vs. free-fire expression is for the principals of this site other than what is evident in my own posts. I try not to be too abrasive, try to shed more light than heat and in general treat the whole project with respect.
I miss Marla (hope she's still somehow involved but I smell a soap opera) and sometimes fret when there seem to be less pros and technical specialists around than there used to be. But I think the best is yet to come around here because I think the worst is yet to come out there.
Prolixity has another friend (in addition to myself).
Maybe I'm going to spoil the "wa" here, but....
I do not get the feeling this is soul searching. Instead, I cannot help but think that someone has his expectations dashed, and that once accustomed to praise and endless pats on the back, criticism is a sharp knife that cuts deep.
In a post yesterday, I noticed a CogDis comment “who’s got a fist up your sock puppet ass?”. Of course, in the past, the attacks from him were slightly more benign and slightly more polite, as in “I see you’ve been a member for only eleven days”, the implication being, of course, that anyone who dares to disagree with him, especially on the endless conspiracies for which ZH’s reputation now has been diminished, is a “sock puppet, paid shill, disinformation agent, psy-op” etc.
Thus I can only suspect that what he bemoans is NOT the lack of civility, but rather the fact that there might be cracks in the “happy world” echo chamber and cracks in the façade of divinity.
Endless thought into a problem or an idea is not guarantee of enlightenment, though often that is used as a justification for dismissal of an opposing view. Where I am, a monk will go off for years of meditation, then emerge with the results of his reflections, which time and effort have convinced him are truths. Some people buy it. I say, garbage in, garbage out. Here’s an analogy: Two students sit down to a complex math problem. One can almost immediately see the path to the answer. The other can spend hours considering every possibility. Who wins? Is the uncovering of truth time dependent? No. In life, rather than math, we have opinions, not absolutes. Lots of people forget this, even those who think they don't.
We have been presented with numerous articles speaking of the dangers of “confirmation bias” and other such human frailties, but these articles have always carried the implied or insinuated view that those who do not see the world the same as the author have yet to overcome their biases, and that if anyone had taken the same amount of time to reflect, surely they would have arrived at the same place. Thus anyone who disagrees is either a sock puppet or a sheeple.
While I haven’t done an exhaustive study, I am willing to bet that the comments that draw the largest number of junks are those that question what has become the ZH status quo, which means “Conspiracy is the only truth we know”. Blatant racism gets knocked less than someone who questions the “truthers” or doesn’t think “this is all going to collapse faster than most people think”, or who doesn’t worship at a silver altar, or who doesn’t believe a small group of infinitely intelligent and endlessly evil people control the entire world and all the events that happen in it.
Virtually any event in the world leads to an immediate competition on Zerohedge to see who can come up with the most bizarre conspiracy, which then becomes the community TRUTH, awaiting only the blessing of an Internet Guru to make it gospel. When this happens, those who might otherwise be on the run from the broadcasting of publicly available information on fraud and corruption breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that ZH can be dimissed due to the company it keeps. Now THERE’s fertile ground for a conspiracy theory!
Maybe I am being unfair to CogDis here, but I have read almost all of his articles, noticed most all of his comments on ZH articles, and this is what I cannot help but suspect.
"In life, rather than math, we have opinions, not absolutes. Lots of people forget this, even those who think they don't."
Math can offer a pretty good opinion on how to construct a solid bridge, in the real world.
Conspiracies happen too. Skeptically speaking, it is a good exercise to play `what if`anyway; traders do it for a living. So bring on all your black swan looniest raptures and prophecies for our infotainment, please.
Truth and inane blather on the same page, the reader decides which is which; sounds perfect to me. The `rough` language keeps `Ma and Pater` away too, or holds the turd under their noses if they want to play. Choice.
Regards
chindit13 so nice to hear you again...
I do believe in a few absolutes though, like unconditional love.
I'm in agreement with your "absolute". It took me raising a whole slew of kids, none of them carrying my gene pool, to really appreciate what is possible, and what makes life worth living.
This is a prime example of what I like about ZH. People coming forward and speaking their mind. Opinions that each of us can evaluate to determine our own opinion. I will have to give this one to Chindit because it does appear that CD has engaged in the very activity he is condemning. I'm not saying that there is no merit in his post just questioning his motives. I don't agree with Chindit and CD on everything, but I respect them both.
the problem i've always had with Fight Club was that in the effort to fight the fascists, they became fascists themselves. like existentialism & revolutions, it eventually hits a dead end with no way out, leaving itself to reflect itself in infinite fragments upon fragments to avoid peeping into the eternal void. looking at Chuck P's official fanboy site only confirms this for me. talk about a circle jerk.
now, this may be the Truth on some level, then again, the best soil is made from a good compost. and it's free if you're willing to spend the time with the worms & the flies.
chindit, if you were to investigate this particular train of thought (that obviously fascinates you so much) with a vipassana eye vs. weaving words to win hearts & minds, you might help us all thread the eye of the needle and write a new book, instead of endlessly babbling & battling over the same stories over and over again.
but, unfortunately, as you noted in the last cog stew, you have no interest and will be soon handing in your avatar for good to our Doppleganger-in-Chief.
'tis a pity methinks, but even admist smoke & mirrors, shit stinks i guess.
Indeed Tip E, awareness and equanimity! The two tools that reveal all.
Nice to see you once again visiting my comment thread chindit13.
CD-
Brilliant...but I almost wish you hadn't written it. That way, the jerkoffs who aren't here to be a part of the Fight Club wouldn't know the truth.
The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club...