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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
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:>) I was waiting for someone to bring this up and I recognize you humor. My comment below is meant for the general audience.
But of course they did talk about fight club, so much so in fact that it exploded into hundreds of cities across the nation in under a year. Remember that Tyler/The Narrator didn't begin to visit the various Fight Clubs until the end of the movie. The clubs spread on their own because people talked about Fight Club. This was made very clear in the book though much less so in the movie.
So when I hear people say "The first rule...." I laugh because they don't quite understand the book or movie.
I think it says something that it wasn't brought up earlier.
Your point above is why I almost, but not quite, wish that you hadn't written it...there is a fine line one has to walk in a place like this.
I have thought about many of the issues you raised. It will be interesting to see where this all leads.
I can't speak for others but I *needed* this site to be caustic and astringent. I'm not a finance guy. I'm an engineer. If I'd wanted more than anything else to make money I'd have become a lawyer. Or some kind of finance guy which I didn't really perceive could be compensated the way that it is. I didn't. Beyond a certain level of comfort I just don't care that much.
Both on this site and elsewhere I read a lot of people writing with utter contempt of "sheeple". Now, to a certain extent, this disdain is merited. But a lot of the people not clued in to how corrupt and precarious this country's economy is are people like me. They spent years being told that they could just keep putting money away and it would pretty much take care of itself. These people don't *want* to have to consider nightmare scenarios. They want to think of their wives, girlfriends and children, books, ideas and music, everything that brings fulfillment and interest to their lives. There are supposed to be adults, establishments, sober solemn figures who keep things in balance. Only there aren't.
2008 was the end of that for me. I watched my seldom tended nest egg collapse and the more I investigated the more I realized that I couldn't trust that there was some boring gray establishment that ran things without fear or favor to everyone's long term benefit.
Zero Hedge was part of breaking free of that inertia, that desire for security and safety. Sometimes the verbal fights were turnoffs. But I needed to have my preconceptions challenged. This and other sites did that and enlightened me. My ignorance of the jargon of finance was nearly total at first. I've been taught a lot. I thank all of you who have helped.
In the spirit of questioning basics: maybe people can be content with becoming better, without putting their life on the line to "better their community" or whatever you're proposing. That might mean not commenting at all. And that's what most people do. With a few hundred K visitors per day, there are only a few hundred commenting, and mostly by a few rabid ones, which you're probably right are the unhappiest (the mean ones).
Your point still stands that people have to look within, but it's also true that people that stood out when the naked power of government came out got their head taken off. Yet the optimistic thing is that society has continued to get better (see The Rational Optimist and The Improving State of the World) -- a sort of cultural survival of the fittest -- not in a Marxist, idiotic sense, but because of individuals scraping by against the elites. Sure, there are cycles of death and destruction, and that sucks.
So I think you conflated rabid, mean commenters, with a lot of people just floating by in life, for purposes of self-preservation. They come here to read the real news, and there's nothing deeper than that.
CD
What in the hell are you trying to pass off on us you worthless piece if s#@t? That article doesn't deserve to wipe my a$$.
Just kidding. I thought it fit the tone. It is a very good and thought provoking article. I find myself visiting ZH to find some sort of truth in all the insanity around me. I walk around in total amazement at how people will just roll over and take the crap as if it doesn't have any impact on them or the ones they say they love.
I like to read not only what Tyler posts but also the commentary. It helps me deal with the fact that everybody around me seems to be willfully blind or sleeping . When I try to get them to open their eyes they either don't want to hear it or they give me the blank stare with a courteous "uh huh". All the while they are thinking I'm nuts. This site helps me to keep from pulling my hair out when somebody tells me" oh we there is nothing we can do about it".
While there are some abusers out there I tend to think the majority of us are here to seek some sort enlightenment. We know the game is rigged and it will someday fall apart. I just hope when that day comes I/we are ready.
Thanks for the essay CD
Excellent post CD,
I stopped reading the comments section months ago, I can get this drivel on yahoo message board if I want to waste my time.There's a few good post but they're few and far between anymore. To bad, the comment section use to be one of the better parts of the site.
Junk away, I'll never see it.....
Well, we'll be thankful your Grace deigned to enlighten us this one last time. Prick. Good thing it's not really a fight club, you'd have sore dentures.
The "threaders" on Zero Hedge are so far and above the average intellectual muck being posted on the internet today, it is not fair to even compare.
There have been some great financial blogs putting out real info and numbers long before ZeroHedge existed (Financial Armageddon, EconoMonitor, etc) and some great individual posters (The OZ, Undertaker, Stockwatch from WSJ Blogs) but NONE of them have measured up to the tenacity and depth that ZH has shown.
It seems like those with an agenda, seem to be good at recognizing symptoms, but not interested in the cause (see N. Roubini, Dr-Dud)
If this is truly fight club, then it will only get stronger or will be beaten to a pulp by outside influences.
Fighting amongst ourselves, with an overemphasis on "identifying trolls" makes the site weak.
When posters on this site argue, it reminds me of the desparate angry man who robs a gas station of 40.00 instead of targeting the ones who made his life nothing more than a series of dwindling choices.
Hitting an enter button with a snarky comment does not make one a member of "fight club", though it is good entertainment.
Ah fuck it, go ahead and junk me.
I need to learn to take some pain.
The comments section of ZeroHedge used to be one of the best parts about this site. I used to find the comments section equally as insightful as the articles. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case and I for one don't think ZeroHedge is as good as it used to be. Don't get me wrong the content of the articles is outstanding and still worth coming back for. But the comments section used to either shine more light on the topics of the articles, or it would provide valid dissent. I agree CD, nowadays the comments section rarely contribute anything anymore, and TBPH, I don't even read them anymore.
There is still lots of terrific insight that can be found in the comments. The only difference now is that there are so many more comments and with volume comes a decline in quality, therefore a little more digging is required to find the gems...and yes, that may involve a little digging through mud.
Popularity: That's the price of success.
Which Native American culture showed intellectual or cultural independence? Where was self sufficiency (marked by a complete lack of trade) ever a virtue?
It seems like you need to check your premises. The Native Americans weren't the all-knowing magical being you seem to want to make them out to be. Rather, they were the societal DREGS of a once great culture that fell apart some two centuries prior to the arrival of white settlers.
Also not sure why you seem to think it is healthy to force all children to endure mortal danger prior to being accepted as adults. That is cult behavior, not symptomatic of a healthy culture. A healthy culture is one that respects individual rights and natural law to the fullest. We had that in this country (to some extent) 100 years ago. If you took out the brutish reality of racism, then we had it to a rather full extent. And indeed, we were healthy in all arenas save where whites mixed with blacks in a culture of hatred.
And as to the Fight Club theme, every man fights for his own reasons. Those reasons are his own, and are not to be judged. You decide your own level of involvement in Project Mayhem. If you want to take what you have learned out into the real world, more power to you. Just beware that that is DANGEROUS. You might end up like Robert Paulson. Or maybe you'll survive, and have a role in bringing down the fascist enterprise that would enslave us all.
If one wants to avoid being infected by the insanity that is prevalent in society, one needs do no more than find a couple of sound premises (such as the fact of self ownership, and the fact of individual ownership of goods as an extension of the self), and use logic to extrapolate a set of rules for one's existence. You will likely find that you are able to almost instantly penetrate any logical fallacy, any trick used to justify the existence of the insanity we see around us. Hell, I started out as a liberal, indoctrinated by my high school politics class. Then I was introduced to libertarianism by a respected friend in college. Over time, I found myself drifting from liberal-libertarian all the way down the "Nolan chart" to centrist libertarian. I then discovered the non-aggression principle. At first, I thought it was asinine. But then, I tried the thought experiment described above, and starting with just two natural laws, self ownership, and ownership of property, I derived the NAP. This revelation launched me from centrist libertarian into anarcho-capitalism. Using the same method, and a little critical thinking, I could discover how such a system would work, and found that it closely matched previous work by such great thinkers as Mises and Rothbard, and further, it greatly resembled the oldest form of law in the world, Xeer (which was apparently independently discovered by the Austrians, as none of them knew about Somalia's obscure legal system at the time, though slightly different in that they included modern societal structures like companies).
Christ, you still feel impotent after being here for a year, I feel sorry for you. You should know by now what is going on, and you should know exactly how to deal with it. Hell, I don't even need my job any more. I saved and underconsumed, and now I have enough money to become 100% self sufficient. In fact, my job now holds me back from fulfilling my goals, because of all the time I must spend there. But I will continue to do it, because I love it. But there is nothing but that love holding me there. If some idiot troll managed to get me fired tomorrow, I would be HAPPY, because I have made a PLAN, and I will get to implement it. That prospect excites me. It's like getting corporate sponsorship and having Fight Club every night.
Now, as I make it to the end of your long article, and look back at the title, I wonder where it went awry? I thought you were going to discuss the community and it's purpose, but it seems to me like you just went off into some literary criticism, and talked a bit about what the book should have meant to us, and then shoehorned in the last paragraph about how worthless our attempts at capital preservation and survival are.
So I guess we should all just throw out our gold, silver, and anything else we have stored, and sing Kum-bay-ah? Seriously, what was the point of this article? Describe it for me in three sentences or less.
You're mentioning the Hopewell, the mound building, 7 foot tall skeleton burying kind? I've never heard of a Pan American civilization theory involving them, only that there is evidence in the graves of trade with both coasts.
Got any links?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture
sweet, thanks TM
I toured Dixon Mounds in gradeschool and have had a curiosity for the topic ever since.
Looks like you've meandered into every ism there is, to no avail. I know of a really good, 66-book compendium you might try.
sorry CD haven't read your article yet, but i shall--If your title represents the content, i just wanted to say BRAVO for you, and your courage to discuss the grace of and our need for shared decency.
Bravo CD!!!
I often say that we are only as sick as our deepest darkest secrets. Any person, group, community or nation that cannot discuss anything and everything about itself is by definition dysfunctional. The question then becomes simply how much.
I felt after two years that someone needed to discuss the subject. I figured it would bring out the trolls and I wasn't disappointed. That's fine. But once something is out in the open suddenly many people feel more comfortable talking about it. Group dynamics 101. So I decided to go first.
It was so good to read your essay CD! You keep reminding me of Rollo May CD! I wonder if you have read The Courage to Create --this book was one of my favorites and it has a similar message for all of us.
Also, there is an old Southern tale called Epamanondous (not sure if that is the spelling) goes like this
One day Epamanondous was given some fresh butter by his grandmother and by the time he got home, it had melted. His mother said, ' Epamanondous, next time your grandmother gives you some butter, you carry it down to the river and wrap it in leaves then soak it till it is cool before you bring it home.'
Another day, his grandmother gave Epamanondous a new puppy. So, Epamanondous took the puppy down to the river, wrapped it in leaves, and soaked it til it was cold...' His mother said, 'Oh Epamanondous, next time your grandmother gives you a puppy, you take a rope and put it around the puppys neck and let it walk home with you.'
Later the grandmother gave Epamanondous a piece of cake to take home. Sure enough, Epamanondous wrapped a rope around the cake and dragged it home...
And the moral of the story is: use your mind to think, not to become a robot.
I didn't read the fight club book, but i did see the movie, and I think in the movieTyler became discouraged by the the FC community became Epamanondous clones.
Bravo CD!!!
Thank you.
The book and movie, while close in many ways, diverged at the end with the movie going completely off in a tangent. The book did not end with skyscrapers being destroyed by controlled demolition. Aside from the many comments from people that did not actually read my essay at all, I suspect several people watched the movie, but never read the book. I often refer to the book in the essay, but people are still thinking movie.
One really does need to read the essay a second and third time to get everything out of it. There is a lot in there. And then read Fight Club the book.
Now *that* is fascinating, ZCog! (I read the essay, not yet the book or the movie) This comment explains a whole nother level of zh I've always wondered about: the way Tyler's essays vary in viewpoint, sometimes almost complicit in aspect, with TPTB outlook. Usually I take this as a type of sarcasm; sometimes I just go "hmm"... well, the possibilities abound. Adopting both book and movie would provide enough cognitive dissonance for just about any group of people! Again thanks to all at zh for creating and maintaining this outstanding oasis during this glimpse of time.
When I took a Shakespeare class in college we were instructed to read each play three times. Now you are telling us to read your essay three times.
Sorry, CD, but you are no Shakespeare, sir!
And you really do take yourself much too seriously. That's a character flaw by which I cannot abide. Already too much verbiage and too many comments here and now I've added to the pile.
(Telling myself to STFU). Speech is silver, but silence is golden. Ah, that's better.
Even a pile of shit has something to offer. So dig in and enjoy.
I love ZH, but there are times I go out, come back to the computer, read ZH headlines and I want to:
1) buy gold;
2) buy food; and
3) buy guns, or
kill myself.
Perhaps negativity begets negativity.
The system is rigged. It's corrupt. I get it.
Perhaps show us how to beat the corrupt system. Show us unsung heroes of the battle, not just the herd chasing Netflix.
If mere news or mention of the reality that lay ahead makes you want to "kill yourself"...Then how the fuck do you expect to deal with the ACTUAL reality when it arrives?
Think of this as a sparring session before the real fight. If you can't take the punches with the safety of a computer monitor to buffer you, how are you gonna take it when it's coming at you in 3D?
Toughen up. Don't buy a gun and gold and food to hide in a hole. That makes no sense.
I disagree. Let a smile be your umbrella and your ass will get soaking wet.
and hungry
and probably dead
So get your ass into road gear and buy those things you were talking of. You or I, or even you and I cannot defeat the system. Best we can do is opt out, starve it of funds and fuel. It must (and will) collapse under its own hubris. Only Barnes can kill Barnes. Step aside as the leviathan crumbles and be ready for the games to begin as the dust settles.
I've already prepped.
My point is, are we facing a perpetual Joplin, Missouri? Does the storm ever end? Do the flood waters ever recede? Does the tsunami ever retreat?
As much as I like it, I sometimes feel ZH is a glass-half-empty site.
The storms end when you die (admit it - we'd all become bored in a world without graft, greed, corruption, apathy, ignorance, stupidity, and irrational selfishness). Until then, think of the world as a campsite - leave it cleaner than you found it (in one way or another).
Yes the storm will recede, as I and others have commented (and the opportunities should abound). But ya gotta make it through to the other side!
Breaking faith in the long-standing system is hard, and it is a mighty struggle for folks that are decades invested in fiat-denominated securities.
I think we all want to see each other through to the other side. The day-trader mentality exacerbates the corruption and adds to the anxiety by obscuring the fundamentals.
Being prepped, you can be a powerful encourager.
Nice tome...a bit long and a bit secular its remedial thoughts for me, but well done.
I'm a (relative) noob here, and have certainly had my tangles with a few. I don't regret melees that stem from substantive discussion, however. Never drop and f-bomb, as I find no use in that.
As the saying goes, bad money drives out good. Well, bad commentary drives out good, and the concentration of insight-providers is being diluted. My response is to ignore the garbage and look for the nuggets (they're here).
ZH is iconic for its consistency in bringing into view the landscape as it is unfolding. That is why I'm here often, post regularly and read what the experts here offer.
I don't think we can know the diversity of circumstances reporting in on the site, but every avatar has an unmistakable personality and most bring something to the discussion. If we were a physical community, I think we'd find a surprisingly strong allegiance to one another in the dawning TEOTWAWKI...
-in my sopwith camel
Couldn't agree more...
DaddyO
My simple observation is this. In all my travels I have never been to a city where everyone wanted to eat at the same restaurant.
ZH is no different. There is some shitty food here but an awful lot of good food too.
I'll have mine to go please ;-)
So you don't mind if I take your chair, then?
Wow. Thank you, ZCog. I come to learn, and have never been disappointed. I share the passion for zerohedge and your essay explains a lot of that, along with underlying story I've always wondered about. zerohedge really stands out in the crowd.
'Why are you really here? What is your real purpose for showing up on Zero Hedge on a daily or weekly basis?"
Well, this, your latest offering is one of the reasons I come here.
Thoughtful, carefully crafted and thought provoking writing, with the intent to foster inner growth.
A far cry from the "Me first, where's mine. up yours" attitude that sometimes overtakes this
place and makes it like driving on the freeway.
Thank you CogDis, for this post and all you do here.
ZH is of interest to me because the site's content is unique and educational. I read the comments because, 1) I have learned a lot from some posters & 2) they include some good humor. However, the manifestation of my ZH experience in my real life is tangible. I think most serious participants here probably communicate their ZH experience more than they realize in daily interactions. And a lot of financial industry players follow this site; e.g. I know The Squid does.
My point is that maybe the tangible real life significance of ZH is quite real but somewhat subtle. Victims of our Big Bank controlled system spread the word of how the injustice works. Perpetrators begin to realize their safe business of exploitation is getting more dangerous. Hopefully there is a better chance of change if both extremes come to understand the other has the same veracity of information.
Or maybe we are just a community of people who know we are fucked but want to complain about it for entertainment.
Time will tell. Thanks Tyler.
"2) they include some good humor."
--
Yup, got to agree there, this is one of the funniest sites on the net, constantly LOL when reading zh comments.
I spoke a girl last year, typical ill-educated distracted self-absorbed 17-year-old vain idiot (not being mean, she really was an idiot) who said, "you're a really negative person you know", to which I just laughed.
It was meant to be negative and insulting but to me it was genuinely funny. I'm sure she thought I was out of my mind, to not be the least built phased by it.
The sheep-people simply don't grasp the outstanding humor, simplicity of finality of a total systemic failure and State demise. It really isn’t that bad.
When I was young I actually drowned, I fell in deep water, could not swim, held my breath, panicked, struggled like crazy, then gave up and just ‘breathed’ in the water, lungs filled, and I sank to the bottom.
And it FELT great!
The panic and fear of breathing was what was HORRIBLE, but the breathing, even though it was water and would kill me, felt absolutely fantastic -- I knew I was going to die from it though, but I felt the greatest relief that the panic has stopped. I had completely given up on life.
My feet finally hit bottom, my legs reflexed or spasmed on their own at that point, and I shot all the way back to the surface, and went unconscious and was fished out and saved.
I’ve never looked at life and death and suffering the same way since. Life is fatal and dying actually feels just fine, once the panic and fear is gone with. I’ve also never been afraid of death since this.
You've got to see the bright side of it all. There is infinity outside, and surprise surprise, it’s also inside you.
And that’s not possible for us, to be embedded in infinity, unless we are also infinite in some respect.
So for me the 'negative' is no different to the 'positive'. They are in fact both totally irrelevant and watching anyone preoccupied and deluded with either is damn funny to me.
That is the 'proper' approach to all this.
Wow! Thank YOU.
Well I probably should have died in a long, drawn out, high-speed car accident when I was young and there is a real peacefulness afterwards when just being alive is quite enough...peaceful, clear and amazing. But that perspective doesn't last long. However, I very much believe that state is achievable on a permanent basis through Christ, and only through Christ. I am supposed to point that out to people so there it is.
So I agree with you: "There is infinity outside, and surprise surprise, it's also inside you." Good luck to you.
Still, the Global Elite Bankers can suck my dick!
Well, I'm no Jesus disciple, I like the idea of Jesus's words though, but good luck to you also.
+1
Having a bozo button will allow the trolls to be filtered.
Trolls bring out more responses on average than most...some are clearly plants by experts, but they bring out a lot of insight. You can always junk 'em...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLgsDv0VlRc&feature=related
There is no ''hitting bottom'' in the ''bottomless pit''.
no reduction of the bloated tit
Compelled by love, the meaning of life.
Born dead, no call to ...die twice ...die twice.
Risen in agreement, there is no lie.
Without mercy there is no call, '''let us all rise!''
Coming brightness. Coming Glory ...darkness will not exist.
Fear not, stand fast, do no harm, ...be legit.
This generation shall see, The Truth is not a choice.
...as with man, there is a voice.
Fight Club is crying ''Bitchez! Bitchez! Bitchez! ...time to get sane.''
Time is upon this generation, ...divest out of this latter rain.
There is no bottom in the bottomless pit...
Yeah, there is no bottom to the bottomless pit...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClQcUyhoxTg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4royOLtvmQ
i like it
CD
I don’t have time today to read the whole thing. But in the front end, I question your views of those who enjoy the fight. I have had two people that I discussed fights with that gave these two interesting views. One was a “normal” male who would go out on Saturday night to bars to get in a fight. He enjoyed it. The other was a paroled felon who said he had killed someone in prison. He stated he liked to fight because he enjoyed (my word) the sound and the feel of his fist, when face bones crunched.
There be all types CD, and thankfully some are like you regarding the Fight Club.
Not sure what you are talking about exactly since your comment discusses a physical fight.
There are many passive/aggressive people, some who might even comment here on ZH, who are cowards when it comes to a physical fight, but are more than happy to bully, brow beat and intimidate when online. I think of them as broadband cowards.
Bottom Line: ZH is like WikiLeaks. It has done much more proportionate good for the world, than harm. If I had a bottle of Campari here, I would raise an iced glass to Tyler Durden. Cheers Tyler.
Cog Dis, that was brilliant. Love it to bits! I came here to learn. As soon as I got broadband in 2008 I started following links and got here via KD. I reckon I've read more in the last three years than I ever did for my degree. I too bemoan the poorer quality of the more recent comments, but there are wonderful gems amongst the dross. Thank you Cg Dis. Please stay with us!