原刊於《中大學生報迎新特刊2001：中大使用手冊》，中大學生報出版，2001年夏

The movie “Fight Club” is (pseudo?) insightful and critical. When the narrator, i.e. Edward Norton, happens to walk through a nicely furnished room, in which everything has a price-tag and product description; when he admits we used to read pornography for excitation, but now we accept furniture catalogue instead, I would think that it is good that I feel good to be able to read this critical theme from the movie. More importantly, I read this critical theme gladly, which laterally means that we too are sensible to this criticism of the modern society we are in and we are comfortable to be critical.

I bet each and every one of us, when applying for university admission, had inserted the term “critical thinking” in our JUPAS self-recommendation essay. It seems that even though not all of us sincerely have a love of critical thinking, having it would be a bonus to us, or at least the universities and other people would be happy seeing us acquiring or even possessing it. As university students responsible to the society, it seems that we are required to think critically, and to have vivid stance (let alone left or right or middle), and then actualize to our stance in action when necessary. (e.g. when our embassy being bombed). (Only?) in this way, the image, as well as the content, of us as university student could be fulfilled, proudly.

Back to the movie. In the first half of the movie, we could see the wholesale criticism of the modern society, and thereof the formation of Fight Club. When the Fight-Clubmates crush a Starbucks-liked chained coffee shop, they are effectively crushing the coffee shop for me, hence my anger is vented. However, when the narrator is trying to stop his clubmates from blowing the credit card record centre up (their reason of doing so is ‘to eliminate the record of all the unfair financial relationships between big banks and ordinary people’ – ‘commodity fetishism’ of the people is well constructed socially!), but my feeling was getting complicated. The reason why he stops his clubmates from doing so maybe that he is still too emotionally and habitually attached to the capitalistic mode of living, but it is also reasonable for the narrator to believe that even the status quo is unacceptable, his clubmates’ action just does not help. On the one hand, being merely destructive here is by no mean constructive. On the other hand, even if they blow everything up, the world becomes a blank sheet for them to fill all over again, we can still certainly doubt anyone’s own ability in creating a better (regardless of which version of ‘good’), let alone perfect, world. At least from the considerations above, deterring his clubmates from doing that is arguably reasonable, if not beyond reasonable doubt. However, “not supporting their job means only sympathy to the status quo”, that is his clubmates’ logic. To them, one is either a revolutionary comrade or a thoughtless conformist in the capitalistic society.

When I was watching, I also asked myself why it is the person ‘I’ who think should ‘he’ do this, should ‘he’ do that, instead of having ‘I’ myself as the vanguard? Why it is not ‘I’, based on so many soild theoretical frameworks and
criticisms thereby, to take these opportunities to create the order of our society anew? Theoretically speaking, one certainly can explain the way in which our desire to consume is socially constructed within a network of unequal power relation. A long as that construction persists, and as long as we’re living in a way coherent with that construction, the unequal power relation persists or even blossoms. (Examples manifesting your critical mind would be refusing to have meals in McDonalds, as our having meals there would literally support MCs paying of humiliating salary to its workers and letting child labour in Shenzhen over-work to produce Snoopy toys that we love so much). If action is based solely on profound justification, then we may have no excuse to get round. But frankly speaking, to all these questions, I can’t offer a consistent answer. But given the world is so unfair and cruel, if I am satisfied enough knowing I could criticize, and then lay back and relax to leave the real work to others, I should be called Mr. Disgusting.

I have come across an article in《中大三十年》, namely〈犬儒派，你地無料到﹗〉. In the article, the author singled out 2 kinds of people as 2 opposing camps: Student Union’s members and students whom the author called Cynics（犬儒派）. The author didn’t define “Cynic”. However, deduced from the article, Cynics criticize without any suggestion; Cynics stand firm on their ideals without even the intention to give up, not to mention sacrifice, anything; Cynics advocate “the protection of the right not to participate”, etc. On the other hand, the students in the Student Union, according to the author, though are not much more able than the Cynics, they are at least more industrious. While Cynics can only be negative, negating everything they feel like in a position oriented by being opposite to anything, the Student Union members are much more acknowledgeable, they are affirmative, they have their own position and opinion, that guide them to act thereby, blah blah blah…

So much about Fight Club and the Cynics.

If we are serious and critical of our university and even the world, we would probably find them ugly and disappointing as can be. And the question followed would be: what should we do if we are to be responsible for the society? Approaching this question, there are different levels of self-orientation. Generally, but not exclusively, speaking, level one, we can just keep thinking and sitting down; level two, we can have our own established viewpoint but yet not actualized in action; level three, let each and every action of ours reveals our position and viewpoint. I certainly believe that action is a direct way of struggle or manifestation, but not only does the difficulty of action lies in the need of a good plan, collective and massively organized action might even be dangerous of eliminating the will and difference among the individuals involved, rendering agency redundant. Last but not least, the success of any action cannot lack any reasonable ideal. Therefore, thinking is an indispensable element. That’s why I think we should not blame people only if they do not come up with any action. They may have all the reasons well-considered before they decide not to act, their consideration may even be out of your conception, who knows? After all, action should not be exclusively for action’s sake. It would be quite naive to judge only from what’s present, black and white are not the only two colours that exist. And it would be equally no good to be satisfied by merely knowing how to criticize. That action has limitation doesn’t immediately mean action should be abandoned altogether, there is no shield of not acting.

Maybe I am just another Cynic whose ability is only enough to express this is not good, that is not satisfactory. I have to admit that I am also caught in the tension above. If you just have no clue after reading this article, it is
perfectly fine.