Tyler Durden Is Dead.
In my youth I was given a vision of a man. A lunatic hero who pulled a fraternity from the ashes of failed consumerism and offered them an opportunity to rage against the machine that milked them. The machine that robbed them of their will and placed in their mouths the pacifying pistol of digital escape and super-materialism. There was a brief shout of anarchy. So brief and brilliant a hummingbird could not catch it. And then the machine won. And here we are.
Tyler Durden stands toe to toe with his literary predecessors. Quixote. Cyrano. d’Artagnan. Men of fiction summoned as avatars against the conventions and powers that seek to destroy vision, creation, and heroism. The battle is as old as time and I believe I have seen in my days the final rout. The final apathetic shrug of the shoulders that heralds the beginning of the end. The time when heroes are no longer something we strive to be, but an accident that occurs in the middle of a career among danger. All else is paychecks and checking out.
My heart is filled with sorrow for so great a loss. That there are so few to stand against mediocrity and oppression. That we have become a sheparded flock of genderless automatons. Every cog made to fit into the grand design of rich and evil men who have at last won. Remove your hood even as the noose tightens and bear dread witness to the horror of it all. The utter despair that we have learned only enough to destroy everything while poverty and disease thin the herd in preparation of the system failure.
I will be prepared when the time of reckoning comes. I am preparing my body, mind, and spirit for the collapse. When interviewed, 100% of those who perform acts of heroism claim they didn’t do anything anyone else would not have done in their place. But we know this for a lie, for humility is the clichéd hallmark of not knowing how it happened. But the difference between those who run into burning buildings and those who simply watch in awe, the difference between those who would attack the gunman rather than be lain to slaughter, the difference between those who would leap into the frozen water to save the drowning is that they were prepared when the time came.
We are saved from the jaws of certain death not by miracle or serendipity but by the actions of those who are prepared. Those who have both the strength of body and the faith of spirit to step before the crowd and defy fate. And where the former is lacking the latter perseveres, and through the act of defying chaos heroes are made. For what are we all placed on this Earth for if not to defy nature? To refuse the entropy and darkness its prize. To rage against our inevitable demise with great acts. For if we surrender to the chaos then we are little more than servitors of failure and if we succumb to the darkness then all we have achieved is lost.
Where are the fighters? Not the Olympian competitors who fight for fortune. Not the tireless soldiers who wage war without will. Not the belligerent brawler with something to prove and nothing to lose. Not the well-meaning and consigned laborer prostituting their talents for currency. Where are the fighters who still raise arms when all is lost? Where are the fighters with passion in their breast? Where are the fighters who would stand for honor while the world calls them fools?
There are no heroes unless happenstance makes them so. There are no fighters left to stand. A person can fight for love or money, but never both. There is no passion left to us, the civilian survivors. There is only life borrowed from celebrity. There is only the bravery at the bottom of the bottle. There is no tireless hero but fiction creates. We are an adventureless lot of sloths and cowards. We are a consumer driven generation of mind-slaves chasing a mirage of mobility. We are a lamed nation of bigots and hypocrites. And the richest rule all with a velvet fist.
How I long to see the end of these days and see either the collapse or ascension. For just as sure as I am that heroes are all gossamer, I am as sure that within all lies dormant Gods. The sorrow I feel is not that there are no fighters and no heroes, but that the world has convinced us otherwise. I weep to see my brothers made ill with the lies of the machine. I weep to see my sisters fettered by the lies of media. I weep to see an entire nation of heroes convinced they are merely cogs. Merely consumers. Merely citizens of Rome Mark 2.
For they will come for you when you least expect it. They will come with the cruel certainty of fanatics and they will be armed to the teeth. They will not care to reason and when they come they will come to purge the histories of what we almost achieved. They will not be an exotic warrior from foreign lands, but the neighbor you never took the time to meet. They will align themselves with lunatic agendas and they will put to the sword all who defy them. They who will break down your door will make the inquisition seem a child’s game. They will come and they will take everything you have built and burn it to the ground. They will take every word you wrote and erase it to nothing. And there will be nothing you can do. Because you were not prepared.
When the last bullet has been fired from its weathered rifle and the last bomb has fallen from its fuelless craft I will be waiting. When the munitions are all spent and the shelters plundered to the scrap I will endure. When the machines have no power and the buildings no comfort I will not mind. When the statues have all tumbled and the leaders all forgotten I will remain. For I have prepared for the end of days by training with the few men of action who yet remain. I have invested myself in the nightmare even as I dream of revolution. I have placed my will in my sword and my hope in my words and all else is lost already. Tyler Durden is dead with only an echo to mark his passing.
Tyler Durden stands toe to toe with his literary predecessors. Quixote. Cyrano. d’Artagnan. Men of fiction summoned as avatars against the conventions and powers that seek to destroy vision, creation, and heroism. The battle is as old as time and I believe I have seen in my days the final rout. The final apathetic shrug of the shoulders that heralds the beginning of the end. The time when heroes are no longer something we strive to be, but an accident that occurs in the middle of a career among danger. All else is paychecks and checking out.
My heart is filled with sorrow for so great a loss. That there are so few to stand against mediocrity and oppression. That we have become a sheparded flock of genderless automatons. Every cog made to fit into the grand design of rich and evil men who have at last won. Remove your hood even as the noose tightens and bear dread witness to the horror of it all. The utter despair that we have learned only enough to destroy everything while poverty and disease thin the herd in preparation of the system failure.
I will be prepared when the time of reckoning comes. I am preparing my body, mind, and spirit for the collapse. When interviewed, 100% of those who perform acts of heroism claim they didn’t do anything anyone else would not have done in their place. But we know this for a lie, for humility is the clichéd hallmark of not knowing how it happened. But the difference between those who run into burning buildings and those who simply watch in awe, the difference between those who would attack the gunman rather than be lain to slaughter, the difference between those who would leap into the frozen water to save the drowning is that they were prepared when the time came.
We are saved from the jaws of certain death not by miracle or serendipity but by the actions of those who are prepared. Those who have both the strength of body and the faith of spirit to step before the crowd and defy fate. And where the former is lacking the latter perseveres, and through the act of defying chaos heroes are made. For what are we all placed on this Earth for if not to defy nature? To refuse the entropy and darkness its prize. To rage against our inevitable demise with great acts. For if we surrender to the chaos then we are little more than servitors of failure and if we succumb to the darkness then all we have achieved is lost.
Where are the fighters? Not the Olympian competitors who fight for fortune. Not the tireless soldiers who wage war without will. Not the belligerent brawler with something to prove and nothing to lose. Not the well-meaning and consigned laborer prostituting their talents for currency. Where are the fighters who still raise arms when all is lost? Where are the fighters with passion in their breast? Where are the fighters who would stand for honor while the world calls them fools?
There are no heroes unless happenstance makes them so. There are no fighters left to stand. A person can fight for love or money, but never both. There is no passion left to us, the civilian survivors. There is only life borrowed from celebrity. There is only the bravery at the bottom of the bottle. There is no tireless hero but fiction creates. We are an adventureless lot of sloths and cowards. We are a consumer driven generation of mind-slaves chasing a mirage of mobility. We are a lamed nation of bigots and hypocrites. And the richest rule all with a velvet fist.
How I long to see the end of these days and see either the collapse or ascension. For just as sure as I am that heroes are all gossamer, I am as sure that within all lies dormant Gods. The sorrow I feel is not that there are no fighters and no heroes, but that the world has convinced us otherwise. I weep to see my brothers made ill with the lies of the machine. I weep to see my sisters fettered by the lies of media. I weep to see an entire nation of heroes convinced they are merely cogs. Merely consumers. Merely citizens of Rome Mark 2.
For they will come for you when you least expect it. They will come with the cruel certainty of fanatics and they will be armed to the teeth. They will not care to reason and when they come they will come to purge the histories of what we almost achieved. They will not be an exotic warrior from foreign lands, but the neighbor you never took the time to meet. They will align themselves with lunatic agendas and they will put to the sword all who defy them. They who will break down your door will make the inquisition seem a child’s game. They will come and they will take everything you have built and burn it to the ground. They will take every word you wrote and erase it to nothing. And there will be nothing you can do. Because you were not prepared.
When the last bullet has been fired from its weathered rifle and the last bomb has fallen from its fuelless craft I will be waiting. When the munitions are all spent and the shelters plundered to the scrap I will endure. When the machines have no power and the buildings no comfort I will not mind. When the statues have all tumbled and the leaders all forgotten I will remain. For I have prepared for the end of days by training with the few men of action who yet remain. I have invested myself in the nightmare even as I dream of revolution. I have placed my will in my sword and my hope in my words and all else is lost already. Tyler Durden is dead with only an echo to mark his passing.
Comments
Great share, thanks for your time