From artificial happiness to a culture of waste.

Here at home, the rule is to debate all subjects and we never give up during a debate (or clash?); differing opinions are welcome, so the "conversation" is always "hot"My children are well-educated academically, they are cultured, and they substantively support their opinions."

Our enthusiasm for debate may have scared off some of their potential brides over the years, but today Gabriela, Ana Julia, and Claudia, "the girls," our daughters-in-law, are no longer intimidated by us.

About the 'temperatureFrom our discussions, I remember that once Ana Julia, then Mateus's girlfriend, warned a 'potential girlfriend' who was having lunch with us for the first time; she said: “Don't be alarmed, they fight, fight, and fight, but after Celinha serves dessert and they go upstairs to watch a game or a movie, everything is fine.There are three topics of conversation at Sunday lunches: Football, our indelible love for Ponte Preta; Politics and opinions about films.

The only consensus is the BRIDGE, our great passion; in the political arena there are differences - sometimes irreconcilable - we are all on the left, but some of us are further to the left than others.

I will share with the reader our conclusions about FIGHT CLUB, because we believe that the film is not just entertainment or cultural expression; it provokes reflection and questions. 

The film unfolds in a setting of "postmodern societyIn a place where people who disbelieve in teleological metanarratives live, unease is inherent; people seek to alleviate the pain by shopping, developing muscles, in order to become aesthetically accepted by their social group.

The film offers a scathing critique of consumer society. And to understand the critique of consumerism within the film's context, we must consider the dissatisfaction and unease of Edward Norton's character.

Consumption as a way to relieve his tensions – a tool to combat his existential emptiness – is no longer enough to cope with the character's pain, who feels suffocated and imprisoned by a job that also gives no meaning to his life. Not even the various self-help groups he attended alleviate his unease.

And the character, always hallucinating due to insomnia, ends up finding meaning in the future through an ambitious plan to destroy consumer society, which he believes is to blame for his unease. He – and his hallucination, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) – create a fascist organization, devoid of humanist ideals, responsible for providing him with a sense of belonging to a community.

The destruction project enables the Fight Club community to forge a shared worldview and a common understanding of the past and the future. 

Each time we watch the film, a new perspective emerges, but it always brings us back to the thinking of Bauman, an extremely insightful thinker in the analysis of social problems in our daily experience.

In his book "Life for consumptionBauman starts from the premise that we have ceased to live in a society of producers and have moved to a social organization based purely on consumption, in which people themselves have become disposable commodities that need to continually remodel themselves in order not to become obsolete. In his words: "In a society marked by agitation, anxiety, and above all, the inability to obtain a profound experience of happiness and well-being, consumerism emerges as a compensatory way for individuals to achieve a reasonable level of pleasure in their daily lives."

The fact is that our character, our values, and our personality have been colonized by market logic, and all of us, if we're not careful, will end up creating images of ourselves as products to be consumed. 

Bauman states that "...In this age of liquidity, people establish fleeting bonds that can easily be broken, making it convenient to constantly improve their image as a product. The logic of "the less depth, the better" prevails.In the age of liquidity, consumption serves first and foremost to establish our place in society and distinguish ourselves from others; to give an illusion of order to things and to feel like citizens. Multiple stereotypes derive from this, sinceWe are what we consume."We live in a constant fantasy that our lives have to be a work of art, so there is always comparison with the lives of others and the incessant search to achieve what we do not have."

How do we escape this? Well, the way certainly isn't to create a fascist-style organization, nor to participate in one in search of some kind of belonging; the right path is social interaction, both face-to-face and emotional, as well as breaking free from the obsession with "fame" on social media.

We need to free ourselves from the idea that happiness lies in consuming; exchanging emotional interests through goods is deadly for the soul and for life, because it does not fulfill the human need for genuine emotional relationships, and the consequence of this is a society with very high rates of depression and psychological disorders of the most varied and exotic kinds. 

Today we live in a culture of waste, a society of consumers who stifle producers. The consumerist logic states that: those who do not consume are excluded; those who consume escape exclusion; and what is consumed becomes waste. 

These are the reflections.