Posts Tagged ‘Tyler Durden’

The Simulacrum of Self in the Quest for Authenticity

Monday, August 24th, 2009

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When I was looking up clips of Fight Club for my first blog post, I found an interesting related video on YouTube. In the clip below, the pick-up artist and personal development guru “Tyler Durden” is giving a speech about the importance of having an authentic identity.

“Tyler” starts off by talking about the liberation he has experienced ever since he decided to entirely stop caring about other human beings and unleash his inner asshole (he doesn’t put it in quite those terms, of course). He implies how this was a wonderful step forward towards becoming more authentic, and now teaches men to be authentic assholes just like him, for the purpose of having meaningless sexual conquests with HB’s (pickup lingo for “hot babes”). You too can become an authentic asshole by attending one of his “bootcamps”…yours now for only $2000! (more…)

Why We Must Talk About Fight Club

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Have you seen the movie Fight Club? The unnamed protagonist lives a modern life of quiet desperation. Working as an auditor for a major automobile corporation, he flies around the country investigating deadly car accidents, to calculate a cold-hearted cost-benefit analysis for whether the company should recall the dangerous cars they manufacture. In response to his meaningless and unethical work, he becomes a hyperconsumer–purchasing his liberation in the form of cute Ikea furniture and a Yin-Yang carpet. He learns to cope with his insomnia (presumably fueled by his inner torment) by consuming cathartic experience; joining self-help groups under false pretense, he finds liberation when he surrenders to his sadness. (more…)

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What is Beyond Growth?

Beyond Growth is a collaborative blogging project focused on critiquing and expanding the personal development field. Noting a lack of critical discourse in personal development, Duff McDuffee and Eric Schiller founded Beyond Growth in the hopes of using it as a platform to foster growth and responsibility. We touch on a wide variety of topics, mostly centered around whatever we are interested in at the time.
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