[chaostheory]

When a candidate presents himself for training, he must prostrate himself and declare that he is willing to do anything that needs to be done to solve the great matter of life and death. By tradition, he is scowled at by the head monk, who orders him to leave. He persists, he continues to prostrate himself, and after two or three days he is taken in.

Apprentice monks are treated like slaves on a brutal plantation. They must follow orders and never say no. They sleep very little. They rise at four. Most of the time they eat only a small amount of rice and, occasionally, pickles (fresh vegetables and meat are forbidden). There is no heat, even though it can be very cold on the mountain, and the monks wear sandals and cotton robes.

I often wondered where Chuck Palahniuk got some of his ideas for Fight Club

[wwweston]

This kind of stuff in Fight Club is probably done very much on purpose. One big point of the book is that people (and perhaps men in particular) tend to be wired for struggle and a search for (a) meaning and (b) a reinforced identity in a social context. There's a number of ways that can be found, but the training of a monastery, the grind of boot camp, the initiation into a fraternity... that's part of what they do.

As an exercise, the astute reader may wish to translate the paragraph beginning with "Apprentice monks" above into corresponding aspects of Valley/Startup culture.

[javert]

Maybe he just made it up. Maybe the monks got the idea from him.

[lilsunnybee]

> Maybe the monks got the idea from him.

Not really possible since these are centuries-old traditions in many monasteries.

[sanoli]

I often wonder why so many people like Fight Club so much (seriously). I mean, a bunch of my friends think it's the greatest thing, and repeat some of the cra..., I mean, some of the lines all the time (not really, but anything annoying that gets repeated starts to look like it's all of the time). All that fascist streak doesn't even get noticed, and I get confused looks when I mention it. Weird.

[jerf]

Because it's a Good Movie. Seriously. I disagree with it on almost every level from the superficial to profound (not quite all, but even what agreement I have is mostly the identification of problems where I think the solutions are wrong, and yes, I realize the film is not necessarily directly advocating for everything it presents), but it's a hell of a good ride, the twist is well done, and it has an energy that keeps it moving even as it dives deeply into absurdity.

[sanoli]

Yeah, I liked it too. It was a good movie. But notice I was complaining that my friends liked it way too much. To me it was a good movie, and the twist was good too, but, for example, two people I know got fight club tattoos on them.