Tyler Durden’s Wisdom on Consumer Experience
By Bobby Riley | October 30th, 2009
Tyler Durden has a moment in the Book/Movie Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk where he says:
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” Regardless of what generation and our experiences, I beleive he is talking to us all.
Luckily the candid, but faithful Tyler doesn’t leave us in despair, he works throughout the story to discern false from truth and fake from real. Below are some of his antidotes to avoid the identity traps that keep us from being truly creative or innovative of offering a meaningful experience. I think it is safe to say no one wants to spend the day engaged in mundane productivity in pursuit of a meaningless consumer existence.
Below are some helpful Tyler insights to help us push past a meaningless consumer existence and hopefully closer towards a set of experiences that matter as people, designers, brand purveyors, enthusists and consumers.
I want to credit Brain Clark for his ingenious breakdown and framing these Tyler insights as the 8 Rules of Innovation. The quote I pulled above inspired me to use his structure and add my own thoughts to it.
Layer the following inventory aside your world, initiatives, brand and lives. What do you think?
1. “No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide, even if it’s hard.”
I think letting go of Crazymakers may be the biggest challenge (a concept this book The Artists Way talks about). They are those personalities or even projects that create storm centers. They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive and powerfully persuasive. And for the creative person in their vicinity, they are enormously destructive. ”Crazymakers create dramas–but seldom where they belong. Crazymakers are often blocked creatives” or brands themselves, just following, biting or putting their thumbprint on someone elses original idea, next best trend or fashion. ”Afraid to effectively tap their own creativity, they loath to allow that same creativity in others. It makes them jealous. It makes them threatened. It makes them threatened at your expense.”. Those are the hardest distractions to let go of in my experience.
2. “No fear! No distractions! The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide!”
Seriously, lets remember not to break the first two rules.
3. “I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”
Perfection is personal, so even if you achieve it– It will not likely be interpreted as such by others. Anyway if your going to grow as a creative person or brand, you’re going to make mistakes. It’s also been said that we should all start making twice as many mistakes as soon as possible if you want to have an innovative breakthrough. The entrepreneurial spirit is Magis! Always something more, something greater.
4. “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
Often it’s not until a series of our small plans fail that we realize it might be about something bigger. I always consider myself to be the biggest obstacle in any creative initiative. I am always trying to get out of my own way. When I loose myself, things tend to flow much better and I am often psyched on the results.
5. “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.”
When we don’t loose ourselves (in a good way), we build shrines around ourselves. Satisfied with where we have “arrived” and what we own. Tyler also said “The stuff you own ends up owning you” . I think we all rather be defined by what we accomplish and create for the world? Something we can consider true innovation.
6. “People do it everyday, they talk to themselves… they see themselves as they’d like to be, they don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.”
I think the point rewinds back to point 1. Get out of the shadow of crazy making projects and people. Do something original, inventive, innovative. Do You!
7. “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”
Wearing engineered denim, collaborative footwear and a cult perspective tee, doesn’t make you creative in the same way lacing yourself up in a fine a Zegna suit won’t make you a shrewd and attractive business man. The adobe creative suite or rss feed count on you Mac won’t do it either. (It’s worth mentioning those things in and of themselves are fine. In fact I have been a consumer and designer of such product myself). Creativity and innovation is about hard work. It’s personal vision communicated by daily life, not defined by scale of opportunity, but quality of response. It’s intensely personal not vague fashioning of words or visual impressions. It’s the hard work of self-reflection. Who you are, what you want and how does it fit into the world at large.
8. “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
Check out the following youtube clip “Live Like Your Going to Die” by William Shatner to get into the spirit of this last point.
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