Fight Club

The first rule about Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club. The second rule about Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club. Thus, should I write a book review in the first place? 

Usually book lovers agree that books are better than their movie version. Popularized by the 1999 movie featuring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton  Fight Club is not the exception, despite I saw the movie years before reading the book. A recent interview to Chuck Palahniuk reported in Clash Daily brought up my interest in the story but this time I decided to go for the book. The story of a franchise of clandestine fight clubs were otherwise peaceful people vent their frustrations,  Fight Club illustrates what Kierkegaard wrote about Irony.

"Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude". - Soren Kierkegaard

The irony of a life without major risks but no meaning, a life so boring as to join a number of support groups trying to find novelty. The irony that "the first step to eternal life is you have to die".

Palahniuk tells the story between a regular Joe, the narrator, and his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. A permanent conflict between a typical, boring, uneventful lives and what we would like them to be. We find in their relationship with Marla the struggle between a platonic love and a lusty lover. Or the complex contrast between the beautiful and the ugly as in manufacturing an expensive soap out of human fat.

"Our goal is the big red bags of liposuctioned fat we'll haul back to Paper Street and render and mix with lye and rosemary and sell back to the very people who paid to have it sucked out. At twenty bucks a bar, these are the only folks who can afford it."

A constant battle to be different but as the narrator says:

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile."

Fight Club evolves into a larger goal, Project Mayhem, a project so secret that the first rule about Project Mayhem was not to ask questions about Project Mayhem. 

"The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take control of the world."

The power to control the world was the power to "complete and rightaway destroy civilization to make something better out of this world".

Palahniuk leaves us with a reflection about our own reality.

We are not special.

We are not crap or trash, either.

We just are.

We just are, and what happens just happens.

How do you find meaning in life? Do you need to destroy in order to be? Can we instead learn from our mistakes and grow creating?

Playborhood

Mike Lanza is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with whom I identified, not because his professional career but his devotion to his children and family. Like me, and many parents, Mike was concerned by the few opportunities children have to freely play this days. 

Mike's story came to me after reading an article in the New York Times by Melanie Thernstrom. The story was interesting but had a feeling of critique that I couldn't understand. Mike is not a play expert but a father who is not sitting in his couch whining and waiting for the government to fix his problem, he honestly is trying to provide a safe and fun environment for his kids to play. It was a relief to read play experts like Tim Gill, Peter Gray or  Lenore Skenazy, appreciate what Lanza is doing. 

But Mike didn't stop at doing something for his kids, he wrote Playbordhood. He researched about other initiatives all over the US of people acting and not just complaining. People of different socioeconomic backgrounds, in different setting, with different approaches. His book is not only a collection of stories but a guide for those who want to do something; from selecting the right neighborhood, to creating attractions for kids, to building a community, and more. He lays out a plan on how to create a playborhood. He is not naive in pretending that this is a magic potion that will fix the problem, kids outgrow the attractions, there is fierce competition from electronics, other parents have their own fears and preferences, etc. His message can be summarized as don't give up and keep trying. 

"My approach has been to stay the course as long as the positive response outnumber positive responses outnumber the negative ones. When I do get a specific negative reaction, I try to accommodate whatever complaint the neighbor might have."

Some of the critiques to Mike's solution are that he is an affluent Silicon Valley entrepreneur and thus he can spend lots of money on his playground. Mike challenges this idea not only by recognizing other initiatives with fewer resources but invites people to put their money in their priorities.

"I hope readers of this book will re-evaluate the relative budgets for the inside and outside of their homes. When weather is OK, a great yard is far more important to kids than the inside of the house. Moreover, even in bad weather months, kids don't appreciate expensive decor at all..... Having a great home entertainment system inside the house is attractive for them, but they will benefit far more from a great yard"

One of the key concepts of Playborhood is they are right were children live. Other alternatives like playgrounds and city parks are places where kids can't go on their own at the time they please. Going to those places become a planned activity. People come from different locations making it hard to create a culture of play and a community. Playborhoods have their issues, Mike may have done things differently from suggested by experts but the big picture is that this is an idea to stimulate others to act and improve.

Monica and me visiting Mike's playborhood