Freedom, Duty, and Fight Club

In the last five hundred years man traded living in a world with few political freedoms but much meaning for a world with many political freedoms but little meaning. For a lot of men, growing up in suburbia, going to college, getting a job, and getting married becomes unbearable when emptied of meaning and purpose. Such was the case with the men of Fight Club.

Sadly there are those who reject meaning in the name of freedom. Why? Because if life has meaning, if the world has order and purpose, and you have a role to play, then you have a duty imposed on you which limits your freedom. Furthermore, if a man is under God, under law, and under a mission, he cannot be what Nietzsche calls the overman, the man who kills God to become a god.

Freedom from meaning was not a freedom our Founding Fathers fought for – indeed that kind of freedom would never have brought the men of the nation together to win our independence. Freedom and purpose can be attained through faithful, filial fraternity as men. If we are not men under God, if we are merely a group of, as they say in Fight Club, “30 year old boys,” then we, our nation, and our families, are in a world of trouble.

As Tyler Durden said:

My dad never went to college, so it was real important that I go. So I graduate, I call him up long distance, I say "Dad, now what?" He says, "Get a job." Now I'm 25, make my yearly call again. I say Dad, "Now what?" He says, "I don't know, get married." We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.