Hi everyone! You know me and my tendency to find common structures in things.
Yesterday I was reading about Le Bon Bock (1873), a painting (now in Philadelphia) by E. Manet, which was a big success after the dramatic events in Paris (the Paris Commune, 1871, see here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune). It’s been seen as a Type, a sort of philosopher, happy to be quiet, thinking, having a pipe and a good beer.
Then I got questions from my daughter about the Fight Club movie (1999), a huge source of disagreements at the time. I made a web page (in French : https://www.maison-page.net/FC.html), my theory was that the film was a way to dismiss, back to back these two attitudes :
- Being a stupid “capitalist consumer” happy donkey, the unthinking bored dork whose motto is : “Buy things, obey the rules and shut up”.
- Being a dumb nihilist : the excessive-behaviored “useless anarchist” who needs the system (because he wants to “change” it).
What’s the point?
Well, for me, both (the painting/the movie), each in its era, says the same thing implicitly.
Manet painted a guy who is refractory to any form of domination – showing a way out of the boring back-to-back Fight Club criticism. The world is maybe absurd, but there’s a third path, out of the opposition : dumb consumer/dumb rebel.
Waldgänger uses the forest is an article where I explained what is this “Forest Goer” : you stay in the world, but you don’t believe in its bullshit anymore. You step aside… inside your mind. You don’t “quit”, you don’t rebel : you watch and don’t believe in what to see.
Inner retreat. You need it sometimes!…
Thanks for reading!
a french toolbox 