@ Davidizer13
Admittedly some things don't fit the mold - why don't I have a strong desire to reproduce at the moment and why does Nate claim to hate kids? Furthermore, why do humans take on kids that aren't even their own (adoption). These things are not so well defined and I can't magically pull out an answer from a hat for you.
But I disagree with David here in that I don't believe there is a separate "human" urge or nature in addition to our animal one. All of our nature is instead animal at it's nature as we are animals - we're not vegetables or minerals. And I don't believe that sex is just for the pro-creation of the species either,
Pascal wrote:I will admit that sex in humans isn't entirely for the purposes of reproduction - actually I believe it can be reduced to about three reasons. But when it comes to the topic of adultery, we're talking about pair-bonding and child-bearing. In this situation, one is simply a precursor to the other in order to insure that both partners will remain committed to the child born (given how large an investment a human child is).
Furthermore, animals don't just go after sex because they want to procreate the species either. They too are after it because it feels good and often times (enter the Bonobos) they do it for reasons completely outside of procreation (Bonobos for instance, exhibit sexual relations with all sex combinations across all age groups to manage tensions - they use sex like we use fighting).
Also, it's not about creating the maximum number of offspring - it's about creating the maximum number of offspring that can themselves procreate. That means that your offspring have to make it to maturity, so in humans (where that takes 13 years) you might want to stick around for a while to make sure the mother doesn't die off and leave the child to die as well. In other words, sticking around can have it's advantages.
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And finally, Tyler Durden and the movie he's part of (Fight Club) is far more complex then "psychopath". If that's what you got out of it, I encourage you to give it another watch - this time ripping it apart as though were trying to make a school report out of it.
Warning: Contains spoilers and descriptions about some of the violence included.
[SPOILER]It doesn't surprise me that many people would find Tyler Durden to be the villain]destroy[/I] civilization. At the same time however, it really shows how well we've been pre-programmed to protect 'civilization' and what we'll allow civilization to do that we'd find offensive in an individual.
For instance, if memory serves me correctly, one person is severely wounded and one person is killed in the movie. Tyler Durden actually kills no-one (correct me if I'm wrong, but this is all going off memory).
In order to defend an empty Starbucks however, a police officer does shoot a man who later dies (but he's a police officer, a protector of civilization, and hence we're trained to feel he was validated in taking a life - that's his 'job'). Even when the land-lord comes in, Tyler doesn't hit him, he just takes punch after punch until the guy leaves. The other guy is severely wounded by the protagonist who beats the living !@#$ out of him in frustration (but he's the protagonist and because we can relate to him and his 'normal' life, we forgive him of this actions).
Even in the destruction of the major credit card companies, the director is keen to note that Tyler Durden evacuated the buildings so that no one would be left inside. And in the scene where Durden holds a gun to the shop-clerks head? The director once again goes out of his way to show the audience that at the end of the situation, Tyler didn't have a single bullet in the gun. Tyler had no intention of taking his life. Finally, by the end of the movie, the protagonist can go across the country and finds that random people he runs into support Tyler Durden... Essentially the director is implying that Tyler Durden has democratic majority support as well. The protagonist eventually concludes that the only way to stop Tyler is to take his own life and puts a bullet through his own head - but once again, because he's stopping Tyler we're lead to believe that that's acceptable.
So is Tyler Durden the hero to the average viewer? Nah, they think Tyler is the villain. Tyler is trying to destroy civilization and is hence a terrorist and a psychopath. But the civilization represented by the protagonist and police officer... they were heroes for killing others or at least forgivable for beating the heck out of people. Given that the movie is filled with sex, explosions and sweat, it's easy to assume it's just another Hollywood SFX movie. All bang and no story - but it has quite an in depth story where the director attempts to play the audience like a fiddle. (Or maybe he did it twice and I'm the one confused)
The primary goal of Tyler Durden is actually one familiar to us - he hates materialism and the life devoid of purpose in pursuit of said materialism. In a way, this is summed up with his phrase,
"The things you own, end up owning you."
This all comes down to Tyler planning on destroying the towers for all the major credit card companies (no people inside, just buildings and money), in doing so it would destroy the foundations of civilization that essentially drove people to give up value, purpose and meaning in exchange for materialism. That is, in a way, to regain their souls.
That is, the dilemma Tyler Durden is posing is similar to one familiar to us, but with a different twist. We're used to the question,
Would you lose your soul to gain the whole world?
but in this situation, we have the opposite end of the question,
Would you destroy the world if that would save your soul?
The world here, much like in the other phrase, isn't people - it's things, it's materialism, it's civilization. But because of our social training that would become a far more difficult question to answer. If you were left with a button that could destroy civilization and doing so would save your soul while leaving civilization alone to continue would destroy it - which answer is the correct one?
When you start to look at it from a deeper perspective, it actually is rather deep. So when I saw it, and the towers blew up at the end of the movie, I was cheering - because they were more then just explosion, they were incredibly symbolic. As for Tyler Durden? He no longer needed to be there, he had just completed his goals - that's what makes the end so incredibly interesting (and frankly I like the way it ended better then how I hear the book ended - with no explosions).[/SPOILER]
