A Cynic's Waffling
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.
We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
I love Fight Club. I love it. But while I agree with the holes it explores in our generation’s way of life and thinking, I am also one of the first to admit that I am a part of these problems.
If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, I will explain what I am talking about. Fight Club is about a man with no name. His lifestyle has led to an all-consuming hatred of himself. He’s fractured because he knows on some level that his way of life is not sustainable, because it is based on things that he doesn’t care about.
There is also the really cool theme of fathers and God and men being generally disappointing in every way, but I’ll leave questions of masculinity for another time.
Basically, one thing this book explores, is that the things ‘our generation’ (Here I go, assuming any readers are all the same demographic as me. Typical Gen Y selfishness) subconsciously defines itself by, are really hollow. Is this valid? What are the things that set us apart from our parents and grandparents generation?
Off the top of my head, being as unrehearsed as possible, I would say: the internet, iPhones, and television celebrity chefs. Maybe that’s useless, because I didn’t really think about it, or maybe it casually says a whole lot?
But I’ll tell you a secret… I don’t give a shit.
Yep. Good. I really don’t care. I’m just not interested in justifying the way I choose to live my life. The world has changed, and so what if I use social networking mediums to publicise gratuitous photos of myself? Vanity is as old as time itself, and so long as I can justify my existence, comparisons to people who died for their country can be damned.
Not to mention the fact that I’m sick of being made to feel guilty for being a part of the internet. But because of an ever present Gen-Y hatred, I’m often fighting off apathy. Ignoring the people that tell me that because everything in my life isn’t hard in a way they understand, I’m not really living. And that because I find books like Fight Club relatable, I don’t really understand literature, or culture, so I’m publicly telling them to fuck off.
Yes, I’m gutted that I’m twenty and I’m not a millionaire. And I will wear my guilt on my sleeve until I reach an age where I can complain the about next generation because I don’t understand what makes them tick.