Calvin and Hobbes, the iconic duo of “Sunday funnies page” fame, were walking along a dirt trail and Calvin was excited to share a revelation he’d come to: Ethics are overrated! Who needs them anyway! Psh…ethics…and all that goodie-goodie blah blah blah.
Before we continue, ethics is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles. Ethics are the ideas and behaviors we all have as we conduct ourselves each and every day. And it’s more of a catch-all for a whole slew of different accepted systems of behaviors. Forgive me for sounding like Bubba listing the types of shrimp dishes, but you got’chor virtue ethics, intuitive ethics, hedonism, egoism, divine command theories (i.e., religion), Natural Law (which played a major role in the founding of the United States), social contract theory (of Thomas Hobbes’ fame), medical ethics, utilitarianism, Rawl’s Theory of Justice, deontology, and moral relativism.
That’s…that’s about it.
Is this what Calvin was railing against? Well, yeah. And he’d had enough. Calvin’s decided that he’s going to get “his.” Hopping over rocks, he says that the ends justify the means. Pounding a fist on his palm, he announces that he’s a winner and he’s going to reap the benefits of living in a world where there is so much to get. Strolling beside his friend, Hobbes, who is ever the patient listener, he boasts of being a wolf among dogs, in so many words, and how the future can sort out his decisions. I mean, it’s not like he’s going to be around to face that judgement, right?
Right?
Here’s an about-face for you: In the pages of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, Calvin, here, is, in a sense, our favorite antagonist, Tyler Durden. Tyler emerges from the pits of despair our narrator finds himself in. He is the beastly representation of this innate, feral masculinity that exists within all males with a proclivity toward violence and a yearning to inflict order from a place of chaos. Tyler provides an outlet to our narrator’s lack of movement in his life and it takes form in a basement colosseum called a fight club. In this place, men found their outlet. This works on the premise that all men, especially those who are feeling the effects of consumer-induced emasculation, yearn to unleash their inner caveman, which is simply not accurate. Not all men are driven by this, but that’s how fiction works, and, when seen for what it is, a literary vehicle, one can squint and see the powerful nugget of truth there. Men find therapy in physical and mental exertion of the likes rarely found in their day jobs. “After fighting,” the Narrator says, “everything else in your life got the volume turned down.” That is to say, consumerism and materialism became an afterthought. The weekly tearing down and scarring of their bodies became the chiseling of granite sculptors dream of having the opportunity to work with.
“You were never alive like you were [at fight club].”
This, of course, evolves (mutates?) into Project Mayhem, an organization bent on freeing people from the social and financial chains they have allowed themselves to be trapped by. They engage in acts of domestic terrorism, albeit of the variety that they are careful not to include any human casualties. This is not the destruction of life they are after but the forceful induction of freedom on those who can’t bring themselves to accept and adjust to it. When Bob, the Narrator’s first meaningful interaction in this story, was accidentally killed by “friendly fire”during a Project Mayhem mission to attack a popular coffee shop chain, our Narrator had a change of heart. He demanded Project Mayhem disband – death was never a part of the plan. But Tyler had bigger goals. “I’ll bring us through this,” Tyler tells the Narrator. “As always. I’ll carry you – kicking and screaming – and in the end you’ll thank me.”
Tyler, like Calvin, threw caution to the wind and embraced the idea that the ends justify the means. Project Mayhem will succeed, according to Tyler, not because it uses morally justifiable strategies and actions, but because the ends – the throwing off of the shackles of his fellow man and woman – are morally justified in his eyes.
Tyler, like Calvin, made a fundamental mistake. He failed to understand moral relativism.
Who’s to say that the people Tyler wanted to free would be happy with that freedom? After preaching about the inevitability of Project Mayhem’s endgame, the Narrator, who was disgusted by the means used to attain those ends, confronted Tyler.
Calvin, too, was confronted as the path they were walking down narrowed. He was confronted by Hobbes. Hobbes, his best friend, who promptly pushed him down into a mud puddle. Hobbes, who walked by him, smiling, as if to tell Calvin that it’s fine, that Calvin was in his way, that the ends justified the means. But did they? Calvin didn’t think so. Calvin, who believed his ends were the ends. Calvin, who believed his means were justified not because they were morally acceptable to others, but because they justified his ends.
Calvin, stuck in the mud, screaming that Hobbes’ actions were amoral. Tyler, blasted from the Narrator’s thoughts, his endgame sabotaged at the last minute. Maybe morals are relative. And thought that might be a major source of contention between people, might that, in and of itself, be the point?
Books Over Beer 