An Appropriate Salute to Terrible Logic

Since last July, I have been avidly following and actively, extensively participating in the national debate around 'Marriage Equality', using my insufferable Social Justice Warrior powers for good, rather than evil. I have a keen interest in the debate partly because I believe that the government should not ban participation in a core social institution and cultural practice on the grounds of sexuality, and largely because I simply love picking apart mystifyingly stupid arguments. And boy am I in luck with this debate! It is a bonanza of inept reasoning and logical fallacy! Be it apocalyptic Christians predicting homogeddon, Bob McCoskrie blathering on about the Gaystappo marching into his bedroom and slapping him every time he tries to use a gendered term like 'father' or 'wife', or Colin Craig whipping his balls out at the AUSA Marriage Bill Debate, it's a veritable Who's Who of WTF.

I, and a number of my friends, have followed the parliamentary process, watching the Readings and Committee Stage debates on Parliament TV. There have been some excellent contributions in the First and Second Readings... then again, there have been confused waffling contributions also. The Bill itself had been amended during the Select Committee phase, and passed the Parliamentary Committee reading without adopting any of the Supplementary Order Papers, and is now set for its third and final reading on the 17th of April (whereupon, if it is voted in as seems most likely, it will become law, and same-sex couples could be married by August).

Until such time, I will be infrequently updating this blog with investigations of the arguments made against this bill.
Part 1: The Lazarus of arguments, The Slippery Slope!
Part 2: The Rugby Bill - An Analogy for Abject Stupidity.
Part 3: If you respect that a minority has the same rights as everyone else, YOU'LL LOSE THE ELECTION!
Part 4: The ANZACs will feel bad if you don't discriminate against the same people the Nazis discriminated against!
Part 5: The government will make saying 'Husband' or 'Wife' a thought-crime!
Part 6: How DARE the government NOT make Gay Marriage a thought-crime?!

Consider it a 'greatest hits' of bad arguments that have amused me over the past year. I hope to give these pitiable protests the salute appropriate to them:

Gay Marriage? May as well name your boy 'Sue'!

A queer sense of persecution

Having spent some extensive time debating the merits of same-sex marriage on the PMNZ page, ground zero of Family First's campaign to valiantly protect marriage from people who want to get married, and advance family values by preventing people from forming families, I've noticed with sad bemusement that they really, really, really enjoy playing the victim. The martyrdom of Saint Me, if you will.

It crops up in a number of ways. At the top, it was displayed in Colin Craig's claim that the vote on the Marriage Equality Bill was a FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY despite the fact that support for the bill was about 65% both in parliament and in public polling. At the coal-face, it extends to opponents of same-sex marriage complaining that gay marriage is being forced on them, without realising the irony of complaining about forced tolerance of other people living their lives as they will, when all they want is the entirely reasonable right to veto the relationships of people they will never, ever meet... O.o

Well, the sense of victimhood at having to acknowledge others' right to self-assertion and self-determination has reared its ugly head again. Following John Key's Gay Red Shirt gaffe a couple weeks back, Bob McCoskrie is upset that there hasn't been public condemnation over the use of the term 'bigot' as a pejorative. This is an example of missing the point that is so audacious, it could only be achieved by ol' Bobby taking the time to carefully line-up his sights on The Point, practising controlled breathing, entering a state of zen to avoid all distractions, and then promptly pulling a 180 and firing his mouth off in a direction diametrically opposed to all recognisable fact!

As a public service, I'll walk through the reasoning behind the Green Party Aotearoa's decrying of John Key's gaffe, and why the same logic doesn't extend to the Dominion Post's political cartoon. First point of order: No, John Key's 'gay red shirt' quip does not make him a homophobe. He appears to be supportive of equality for LGBTs (give him the benefit of the doubt). However, just because he appears to be supportive of the LGBT community doesn't mean he's incapable of saying something stupid, hurtful, or wrong. The beauty of 'freedom of speech' is that it absolutely does NOT come coupled with a freedom from consequence. This means that when you're the nominal leader of a nation, and you say something very, very stupid, it's kind of a big deal. It's a big deal because it's VERY publicly visible, you're an influential figure, and it provides that most wonderful opportunity: The Teachable Moment.

Right, so you know John Key's not a homophobe, so why err'body mad? Because John still made a homophobic comment, and instead of owning it and learning from it (i.e. instead of making an effort to understand WHY it was homophobic and why people reacted to it), he made excuses and effectively blamed others for being upset. Which is something I see entirely too much of. The long-and-short of it is, he used a demographic as a pejorative. He used 'gay' as an insult, as a synonym for 'bad', which enforces the position of homosexuals in society as undesirable outsiders. He may not have been intending to insult the LGBT community, but the use of 'gay' as a pejorative is still an expression of subconscious, societally ingrained homophobia. I suspect no-one wants their sexuality used as a casual insult. I sure wouldn't want to be used as the social boogie-man that people point to in order to say "You don't wanna be like THAT!"

'Gay' is generally a reference to one of two things: being light/joyous/colourful, or being homosexual (the latter may have developed from the former). John Key claims he was using it in the sense that his kids do, to mean 'weird', but this does not reference being joyous, it references homosexuals as something weird, in a derogatory fashion. Sure, you're taking the scenic route to the negative connotation, but you're ending up there all the same. Wanda Sykes puts it more eloquently. Ironically, John Key could've used 'queer', another reference to homosexuals, but one that is a legitimate synonym for weird or peculiar. Of course, it bears mentioning, in considering the two frames of reference for 'gay', that there could well be a third way...

Now, why is the Dominion Post's cartoon different?

John Key used a minority as a pejorative. Tom Scott used pejorative terms as pejorative terms. He implied that being a bible-bashing bigot is a bad thing because being a bible-bashing bigot is a bad thing. Bible-bashers/Bible-thumpers are people who go out of their way to force their faith upon others. Bigots are people obstinately devoted to their own prejudices and often regard members of another group with hatred and intolerance, a term which developed from the original Middle French meaning of a religious hypocrite. The perfect expression of Bible-bashing bigotry in the U.S.A. currently, is the Tea Party, and this was displayed with stark clarity during the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination. At the Fox News debate, the audience of Tea Party Patriots, proud of the US' military tradition, openly booed a serving soldier for publicly admitting to being gay (this would be the bigotry-as-hatred-of-demographic example). At the debate chaired by Wolf Blitzer, the Republican audience who avow so fervently the sanctity of life, cheered at the prospect of letting people die if they could not afford health insurance (this would be the religious hypocrisy version of bigotry). It could easily be said that the Tea Party cost Mitt Romney and the Republican Party the US Presidential election: The hard turn to the extreme right that the bigoted and hypocritical Tea Party is forcing the GOP to take, costs Independent and Moderate votes.

This is not an attack on Christianity, nor does it imply that being Christian is a bad thing. It states that BIGOTRY and HYPOCRISY are bad things, and they ARE. Ignoring the message of love that your saviour graced the world with, in order to use your religion to hurt and belittle others, should be as much an insult to believers as it is to those outside the faith, if not more so.

So really, Bob McCoskrie, you should start pointing your finger at those who actually insult your religion, rather than the people holding them accountable.

Marriage Equality Submission

To the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill Select Committee.

Marriage is more than simply the legal rights and benefits associated with it. Marriage is a social institution and custom that is deeply embedded within our culture. As a cornerstone of our social landscape, marriage helps to define who we, as New Zealanders, are. From birth we are raised to see marriage as the fundamental aspiration, one of life’s most important milestones. We grow up, get educated, have our OE, start a career, get married, settle down and support the All Blacks; this is who we are, the concept of ‘kiwi’ our culture fosters.

As a central and defining element of our normative culture, marriage signifies belonging. We are told growing up that we will find a partner, and when we find the one we love, we will marry them. For those who find love within the same nominal gender, to be told that they may not marry the one they love, is to be told that they are different, that they do not belong in our culture. To be ‘othered’. Although we are all different, we should be treated as equals, deserving of the same respect and dignity, in the eyes of the law. For this reason, I find Civil Unions to be an insufficient measure to address the inequality and discrimination against homosexuals: It arbitrarily and unnecessarily differentiates, for no good reason.

It should be a guiding principle that the law respects us all equally, in our various needs and in our desire to participate fully in public life and all that that entails. Opponents of the bill rightly claim that the law discriminates, and I allow this, with the understanding that the law should only discriminate with good reason, and that there is no sufficient reason to differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual couples in the eye of the law. No good reason specific to homosexual relationships that is not already invalidated by examples of heterosexual couples whose marriages we currently respect.

The Children Argument – Some argue that the purpose of marriage is to have children and raise a family. This is invalidated by the fact that we allow the infertile and the abstinent to marry, as both of my Aunts who are well past child-bearing age have recently done. Not all who marry want children, and the law respects this for heterosexuals. Those in homosexual relationships, however, may end up raising children. Whether this be through conception (artificial, surrogate, or otherwise), or children from a prior relationship, in all cases would it not be in a child’s best interests to provide the stability of a committed and legally respected marriage and the joint adoption this allows?

Religious Freedom – As the law stands, religious celebrants may freely decline to officiate marriage ceremonies, and the bill does not in any way alter that. The bill does not curtail religious freedom, contrary to the hysterics of Family First and their ilk. Ironically, considering such protests, what the bill does is in fact address a CURRENT and EXISTING restriction on religious freedom and practice. Many Christian denominations and congregations do not hold the same anti-gay interpretation of doctrine that is commonly seen in the broader Christian community, and would happily officiate and bless wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. Currently, they are prevented from practicing their understanding of Christianity, purely because of the traditional prejudice our society has held against homosexuality, particularly as expressed by more conservative congregations. The bill actually addresses a curtailing of religious freedom!

Further to this, marriage is not an exclusively religious act. It is, and has always been, a social institution that may or may not contain a religious element. Religion is not a necessary part of marriage, and it seems bizarre that homosexual couples are the ONLY people it is claimed require the permission of the church in order to wed. Atheists may wed, and religious sentiments are never concerned in that question. People from various religions, denominations and congregations may wed, and religious sentiments are never considered there. But if an atheistic homosexual couple wish to marry, people feel that they should not be allowed to do so because of the religious sentiments of people they’ll never meet and whose creed they do not follow? One’s religious freedom ends where it imposes on that of others’.

The Tradition of Marriage – Marriage is a tradition, but it would be a grave error to assume that traditions are static and unchanging. As society changes, its customs change with it, and the traditions that are retained are those that remain relevant. Marriage has existed in countless forms across countless cultures; it has changed as the people that practice it have changed. Traditions are, and should, be maintained only if they possess inherent values worth celebrating, and those values that are harmful should rightly be discarded. Marriage celebrates unity, fidelity, devotion and support, and these are all things that SHOULD be celebrated, and will remain to be celebrated if the bill passes. To deny marriage to homosexuals would be to perpetuate a negative tradition: that of discriminating against and excluding homosexuals from mainstream society. Why should that particular tradition ever be supported?

Extending the tradition of marriage to homosexual couples (or rather, re-extending, as there have been many examples of homosexual marriages around the world at various times in our history) would propagate the positive values of the tradition, it would foster the very things we celebrate about marriage. To oppose this extension is to ignore and curtail the noble values of this tradition in exchange for preserving the most superficial elements, and the ingrained prejudices better left in the past.

The Slippery Slope -  Some argue that allowing same-sex couples to marry would lead to polygamy, incestuous marriage, marriage to minors, and bestiality. This is argued because certain arguments in favour of same-sex marriage could be applied to these groups, but ignores the most important factor of WHY the slippery slope is a logical fallacy: There are different counter-arguments when the context is changed. There is no logical necessity between allowing same-sex marriage and allowing polygamous or incestuous marriage, none at all. They are different situations, and any rational person can differentiate because there are factors relevant to each that are absent in the other. The ‘worst’ that legally recognising same-sex marriages will do is reduce social stigma, and stigma is NOT a sufficient reason to deny marriage rights. There are valid arguments against allowing these groups to marry (that do not apply to marriage between consenting homosexual adults), and thus the slippery slope does not exist. But do please note that ‘the status quo’ is NOT an argument ;)

It is my firm belief that society should be inclusive, not exclusive. As such, where no strong opposing argument exists, we must extend the same rights and respect to all citizens of our nation.
For this reason, I support the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill.

Beware the slippery slope!

Hey folks, another brief update on the marriage equality issue that's flared up in Aotearoa recently. I realise this is all running counter to my normal verbose delivery. I guess it just seems like such a simple matter that I shouldn't need to give detailed arguments for why we should stop withholding this basic right from a minority that harms no-one. Instead of making a case for marriage equality, I find I'm spending a lot more time poking holes in the EXTREMELY poor arguments offered against marriage equality. And by far the most popular argument raised is the dreaded Slippery Slope.

The Slippery Slope argument runs like this: If we allow homosexuals to enjoy the same access to marriage rights as heterosexuals enjoy, then we will absolutely and inevitably slide down the slippery slope into allowing marriage to children, and animals, objects, and abstract concepts. Slippery Slope arguments are, prima facie, poor arguments; any student of critical thinking will recognise a Slippery Slope to be a logical fallacy. You will no doubt have already noticed that the slippery slope makes an argument based not upon the facts pertaining to the current case, but rather the prospect of a future case separate to the one being discussed (usually a more extreme, even hyperbolic example, and frequently unrelated!).

Always poor, when applied to issues of rights and fair treatment, Slippery Slope arguments become absurd! The argument here is that extending access to a legal status to include those previously barred on the grounds of their sexual orientation, will somehow lead to a future state of affairs where people can marry children and dogs. The point being missed here is that adults in homosexual relationships are capable of granting informed consent (they can legally enter into contracts), whereas children and animals most certainly cannot! On the 19th of September, 1893, New Zealand became the first modern nation to acknowledge women's right to vote; 119 years later we have yet to extend that right to children, or animals. Yes, 119 years after New Zealand women won the right to vote, we haven't even extended that same right to sheep! Is it conceivable that we could extend this right to children and animals? For a given value of 'conceivable', yes. Does it logically follow that we will? Not even remotely.

Now I suppose the bigoted could cite an example of voting rights in the U.S.A. where the franchise expanded from land-owning white males, to white male citizens, then male citizens including non-whites, then male and female citizens including non-whites, and Native American Indians, etc. However, this completely ignores the fact that in each and every single case, IT WAS RIGHT AND JUST TO RECOGNISE THESE VOTING RIGHTS. It wasn't a 'slippery slope', because each and every time it was the right thing to do. Women were granted the right to vote, not because it was their turn to sample some good old-fashioned freedom pie, but because women are every bit as capable of making a rational and informed decision as men. Even though America's Supreme Court seems to think corporations are people, and consequently they can buy elections, they still don't get to vote in them.

Hence, the only Slippery Slope argument I will entertain, is thus:

The Tomorrow We Should've Had Yesterday

So, a marriage equality act is to be considered by parliament. The social networks are abuzz with unscientific polling, and even accounting for the younger and more socially liberal demographic found on the hallowed interwebs, the fact that these polls have support for marriage equality outstripping opposition by a margin of about 10-to-1 is quite heartening. It seems, online at least, that people don't really see any problem with consenting adults having their relationship recognised under the same legal category whether these relationships are hetero-or-homosexual. 

However, the debate... those opposed to marriage equality may, according to the polls, be a minority. But BOY are they vocal! Which really makes me wonder.

WHY are they so emotionally invested in the relationships of people they will likely never, ever meet?

Brevity

Oh right, I have a blog... whoops.

I should perhaps fill this thing with the words and the concepts and the amusing pop-cultural references that are all so hip with the kids these days, but you know how it is. Sit down at the computer, brain brimming with ideas, then NEK MINIT... (see what I did there? Not if you live outside New Zealand I guess).

I WILL write more, and soon, I promise.
But just for now, I'll leave you all with an interesting statistic:
The third most common search term that's lead people to my blog, having made the connection five times, is 'prostitot'

Ifuckinghatehumanitysometimes

Thus Spoke Tyler Durden

I don't know how I got away with this, but I managed to write a philosophy essay on Fight Club.

Thus Spoke Tyler Durden: Nietzsche through a modern lens

Friedrich Nietzsche believed his ideas were ahead of their time, that he was in truth writing in a world not yet ready to hear the criticism he was levelling at Western culture, a sentiment articulated most clearly in Zarathustra’s Prologue. His philosophy concerned itself primarily with the ‘Death of God’, nihilism, and the possible responses to it. In particular, he warned against the rise of secular utilitarianism, and as a counter-point offered a new ideal to strive for in the shape of the ‘Superman’, or continually evolving ‘over-man’ that seeks to constantly discard itself and become something more. Thematically, Nietzsche’s philosophy is very much one that deals with the nature of human existence and experience, and like Marx before him, acknowledges the influence of historical circumstance on all facets of Western culture, especially the philosophy and science of the Enlightenment. Given his appreciation of historical context, and belief that his work came before the world was ready to acknowledge it, it is worthwhile to compare the works of contemporary scholars and artists, social commentators dealing with contemporary culture, with Nietzsche’s philosophical works to ascertain the relevance of his views to modern society.[1] For such purposes, I believe contrasting Nietzsche’s philosophy as portrayed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra with the novel Fight Club by author Chuck Palahniuk will serve to show that Nietzsche’s ideas are every bit as relevant today as they were in the 1880s, that society at large is still unready to accept his criticism, and also show where Nietzsche himself proved unable to live up to his own ideals.

Before critically evaluating how these two books compare and contrast, it is worth establishing why these two works in particular are suited to such close comparison. The authors themselves, Friedrich Nietzsche and Chuck Palahniuk are both provocative, challenging writers that confront their readers with uncomfortable issues dealt with in a blunt yet compelling manner. Inescapable in all the works of these two writers is the outright contempt they express for the utilitarian herd, the common man personified in Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the form of the Ultimate Man. Both Fight Club and Thus Spoke Zarathustra focus on a prophetic character heralding a new post-nihilist era of human vitality through a process of destruction and creation, tearing down the old order that Nietzsche would consider the ‘Shadows of God’ in order to establish new values and modes to live your life. The structure of Fight Club, in which the unnamed Narrator interacts in concert and in conflict with what is revealed to be his subconscious alter-ego Tyler Durden, in the process destroying his place of residence, his job, and his previously established world view and manifold of values in order to become Tyler Durden, is itself a dramatic portrayal of Nietzsche’s view on how one should comport their life as a process of destruction of one’s old self and appropriation of the world around you to create something new. 

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is most damning in his opposition to the Ultimate Man, his symbolic representative of secular utilitarianism and the irreligious Christian, characterized as a world-weary, mediocre, enervated man. Throughout Nietzsche’s writings runs this common thread of loathing for the simple, meagre, stupid and altogether common man unwilling to rise above himself, content to work just enough, to pursue pleasure just enough, to rest and live a sheltered, unremarkable life. Those content with mere life and mere health are seen as a perversion and insult to what Nietzsche believes is the only healthy and honest way to live, which is to affirm to the fullest extent an altogether more vital aspect of ‘Life’ and ‘Health’ as driving forces rather than things to be carefully ‘balanced’. It is important to note that Fight Club is situated in a culture informed by, and in fact determined by, a societal change that occurred immediately after Nietzsche’s lifetime that propelled the utilitarian ‘Ultimate Man’ ideal into dominance, namely the rise of the Consumer Society. The ultimate expression of Nietzsche’s Herd Morality, perhaps even his most nightmarish vision come to life, Fight Club exists under the shadow of the utilitarian herd-society where faceless corporations dominate, where space will be explored and exploited by corporate entities and “Every planet will take on the corporate identity of whoever rapes it first... The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Denny’s.”[2] Zarathustra’s warning of the Ultimate Man as being one who takes “A little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams. And a lot of poison at the end, for an agreeable dying.”[3] is realized in the Narrator’s situation in Fight Club, an insomniac begging for “little blue Amytal Sodium capsules” and “red-and-blue Tuinal bullet capsules” to help him sleep.[4] The Narrator identifies he is a part of the consumer culture, a slave to the ‘IKEA nesting instinct’, a man who is owned by the very things he owns.[5] Tyler Durden’s aphorisms recited by the followers of his movement proclaim “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.”[6] Very much in line with Zarathustra’s observation that the Ultimate Man works for entertainment,[7] and the concern expressed in Fight Club is certainly relevant and accurate, as the “Magic System” of advertising that causes false needs is much discussed in sociology, for example by Leiss et al. in Social Communication in Advertising: Consumption in the mediated marketplace.[8] Rather than enduring the hardships that will form better character, the people depicted Fight Club exist in denial of the world’s cruelty. The Narrator resorts to guided meditation to distance himself from pain,[9]> the support groups he attends have sanitized names like “Above and Beyond” rather than “Brain Parasites”, and the cancer victims and other sufferers lie about their prospects, claiming to be improving and on the up-and-up.[10]> Concern about the painful or unpleasant aspects of the world is portrayed as an insincere exercise in vanity, with the observation that “maybe Walter’s thinking about a meatless, pain-free potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone of the Earth’s desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but probably he’s not.”[11] The conditions that motivated Nietzsche’s perspective in the late 1800s are even more prominent now in a media-saturated consumer-culture, and are taking on an increasingly grotesque and cruel form, killing through apathy and complacency. Fight Club highlights the darkest aspects of Nietzsche’s belittling and casually belligerent Ultimate Man, most profoundly with the cynical observation of the Narrator’s job as an automobile recall co-ordinator, where death and human suffering is reduced to a simple equation to make it easier for the perpetrators to manage.

Nietzsche’s response to the Ultimate Man was to propose that mankind fix a new goal, that of the Superman. Rather than a fixed state, the ideal of the Superman is a deliberately unattainable point to focus on, investing the value of pursuit of this ideal in the process rather than the destination. The Narrator of Palahniuk’s Fight Club has literally internalized this process of discarding the old personality in order to obtain the new one, perpetually reinventing himself through the destruction of his previous life. Many aphorisms and desperate pleas by the Narrator and his alter-ego reference this theme, particularly the central mantra of Fight Club:

Deliver me from Swedish furniture.
Deliver me from clever art.
May I never be complete.
May I never be content.
May I never be perfect.
Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.[12]

Perpetual destruction to make way for a new self and a new world truly defines Tyler Durden throughout the novel, it determines the state the Narrator is trying to achieve. In attempting to become his alter-ego, the Narrator destroys his condominium home with home-made dynamite, abandons his support groups, and assumes a new life as founder of underground ‘fight clubs’. When he has achieved this and becomes complacent of what he has achieved, he blackmails his employers, converts his house into barracks, and begins a social guerrilla movement called Project Mayhem with the fixed goal of breaking society up and tearing it down to make way for a new world order. When he has built his army of ‘space-monkeys’ and is worshipped as a hero, he once more plans to sacrifice the life he has, this time decentralising the movement and attempting to martyr himself with the controlled demolition of the world’s tallest building in order to crush a museum and blast free of the grasp of history. Throughout his continual evolution, constant reference is made to destruction and evolution. “At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves”[13], “Disaster is a natural part of my evolution... toward tragedy and dissolution. I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions, because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit”[14],”Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to do anything.”[15] Tyler claims the greatest moment in the Narrator’s life is the point where he inflicts upon himself the greatest physical pain he will ever know with the lye burn, to shock him into acknowledging that he will die some day and to abandon his utilitarian, ‘safe’ preconceptions. To ‘hit bottom’. The most real moment of his life where all that came before and all that will follow is merely a story in comparison. During this process, Tyler details a story of sacrifice that would lead to the discovery of soap, the item synonymous with civilization was discovered through human sacrifice, and without human sacrifice we would have nothing.[16] The Narrator’s/Tyler’s plan to create a new world, is to shock people out of complacency and the herd mentality, to confront people with challenges to awaken in them the will to fight and the sense of power and possibility they possess if only they are willing to suffer and sacrifice. The Project Mayhem homework assignment to provoke fights with strangers in order to show them their power and fighting spirit, and awaken them from the utilitarian malaise, is a more direct and physical version of Nietzsche’s fondness of provoking people intellectually to shock them into a desire to engage with their beliefs and assumptions critically and consider alternative perspectives. This is even more forcefully achieved through the process known in the novel as ‘Human Sacrifice’, where members of the Assault Committee of Project Mayhem seek out individuals representative of the ‘minimum-wage slave’ and hold them at gunpoint, taking their drivers license and leaving them the ultimatum that if they aren’t well on their way to realizing their dreams within a given period, the gunman will return and kill them. This is a far more forceful and external practice than Nietzsche’s urging to follow a personal philosophy of health and evolution.

There are obvious parallels between Fight Club and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Tyler Durden is certainly a modern representation of the creation of an idealized Superman/Overman for one to pursue, but there is still a great deal of difference between the vision portrayed by Palahniuk, and the ideal Zarathustra claims to herald. Tyler Durden is a far more externally-active agent than Nietzsche’s inwardly-focussed Superman. In essence Tyler is more a social activist than a process of personal development. More striking, however, is the fact that although clever and capable, Durden is far less refined than Nietzsche’s Superman drive. Nietzsche strongly supported the ‘noble’ ideal, that he referred to as the ‘Master’ morality, which he described as loving tradition and despising the new, an opinion completely contrasted by Durden’s plan to destroy a national museum because “This is our world, now, our world, and those ancient people are dead.” In this perhaps it can be seen that Nietzsche could not surmount his own desire to hold onto tradition and relinquish history to the flux and flow of time; that he is weak in clinging desperately to history and attempting to fix it solidly when it should be allowed to be destroyed, sacrifice it to affirm the changing world. Even so, the Narrator’s motivation in creating Tyler Durden is a desire to be noticed, to no longer be ‘God’s middle children’.[17] Tyler Durden exists not to embrace the freedom of a post-nihilistic world where God is dead and buried, but to act out in petulant anger to force God to take him back. Not only is the creation of Tyler an attempt to gain God’s notice, the Narrator is unable to continually sacrifice himself and become his alter-ego. In Tyler’s final act, he subconsciously sabotages his attempted martyrdom.[18]

Ultimately, the novel Fight Club is a modern exploration of someone struggling to live up to Nietzsche’s ideal of the Superman, unable to escape the herd society that Nietzsche warned us against. Far from a perfect example of perpetual self-overcoming, this book highlights the difficulties involved in attempting to live your life in pursuit of the Superman, emphasising that it will never be a complete process, that it is one doomed to failure, and that that very failure is perhaps the purpose itself. As we are told in the Narrator’s recollection of the very first time he ‘meets’ Tyler Durden:

One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

Nietzsche was naturally suspicious of universal truths, and perhaps set an impossible goal because a useful lie is enough.

---

[1] The subtitle of Beyond Good and Evil, “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future”, simply begs us to consider Nietzsche’s philosophy in the context of the times we now live in, to see how well his assumption has held up!
[2] Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Adelaide, 1997, p.171.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Trans. Graham Parkes, New York, 2005, p.16.
[4] Palahniuk, p.19.
[5] Palahniuk, pp.43-44
[6] Palahniuk, p.149
[7] Nietzsche, p.16
[8] Leiss et al., ‘Advertising in the Transition From Industrial to Consumer Society’, Social Communication in Advertising: Consumption in the mediated marketplace, London, N.Y., 2005, pp.83-87.
[9] Palahniuk, p.75.
[10] Palahniuk, pp.34-35
[11] Palahniuk, p.55.
[12] Palahniuk, p.46.
[13] Palahniuk, p.52.
[14] Palahniuk, p.110.
[15] Palahniuk, p.70.
[16] Palahniuk, pp.151-152
[17] Palahniuk, pp.140-142
[18] Palahniuk, p.205