Death March: Preamble
Classic Gin
Monday, 2005-01-03 | Classic Gin
| "...the endless chain of society's loathsome taboos...the doomsday glow of sunset in the Persian Gulf." |
As we say in the business, 'we have much to discuss.'
Settling into my monastic existence, my self-imposed exile on the frontier of the old world, and then returning to civilization, to the old ways--to the midwest and the city that made me and unmade me--has helped me to become aware of a certain necessity. That necessity is, plainly put, the demystification of one of the organizing conceits of my life.
Character in films and books often have credos or maxims that they repeat, affirm or deny and, in the course of doing so, are eventually defined by. Tyler Durden in the seminal Fight club has several, some of the more memorable of which are, 'you decide your own level of involvement' and 'the first rule of Fight Club is, "you do not talk about Fight Club."' During the film, i.e. as the character lives and dies, he is defined by these credos or maxims that he affirms and that others deny. When the movement's founder warns its rank-and-file that in Project Mayhem they decide their own level of involvement and thus are entirely responsible for their decisions, he disassociates himself from his movement in the same breath that he claims total and undeniable responsibility for it; his character is neither responsible for the actions of his subordinates whose only standing order is to decide their own level of involvement nor is he anything less than totally responsible due to his own decision to commit himself to integral involvement. Thus the 'life' of Tyler Durden is organized by his credo: he is everything and nothing, a figment of an imagination and an effective agency all at once--a fiction and an actor.
I here submit that people in the real world (i.e. people who are not characters in films or short stories) carry on in a similar manner; if real people did not organize their lives by affirming or denying credos and thus define themselves in relation to others, it would make no sense to us when we saw characters in poems or plays doing this.
Some time ago I invented a credo for myself. It's more like a catch-phrase, really, and ultimately is less than a maxim; it expresses a certain sensibility or aesthetic in its polysemy rather than a dichotomy. Put another way, where the credo 'you do not talk about "Fight Club"' urges us as auditors in the world of Tyler Durden to take up one side of a dichotomy (i.e. to talk or not to talk about Fight Club), I have seen that my credo or catch-phrase has the effect of urging my real world auditors to consider my private aesthetic sensibilities and judge me according to their own criteria.
When I have said 'death march' I have often been greeted with contemplation rather than agreement or disagreement. It should be clear by now that this sort of thing is unacceptable; a credo is not a credo or a maxim or anything but a sort of nebulous token, a meaningless bauble of vain speech if it does not demand affirmation or denial from its auditors.
So, in order to shore up my credo, to make a dichotomy of my 'death march,' I am as of now setting myself to the task of making it a point of contention. If what I'm planning for this week on DemonGin is carried off successfully, I'll have converted the pithy-but-vague 'death march' into an irresolvable point of contention; I'll have transformed it into suitable kindling for the darting, contagious fire of argumentation--the one that has been burning since the first angry man turned the back of his hand to his enemies and his finger to the envious gods and made war with words.
My attempt will follow a simple trajectory and move through a series of smaller, subsidiary arguments that I have been composing during the past week. I shall begin (tomorrow) by discussing the old, fundamental arguments and how they relate to two important -isms, Fatalism and Nihilism. Once I have proven that Nihilism is incorrect and that Fatalism is unavoidable if a man decides that virtue and piety are suitable goals for himself (it should take about two or three days), I shall proceed to argue that a man's agency is his only and most important responsibility and that the 'mind forged manacles' of slavish devotion to inherited notions of posterity is a great and immanent threat to this agency.
Finally we shall see that 'death march' is an exhortation to act and to do so to the best of one's ability and that the affirmation or denial of this exhortation is at stake whenever the words are uttered.