El otro lado de la paz. Las lecciones zen de Fight Club

Abstract

This article deals with the value of the individual in the discipline of peace research, which largely focuses on the social and political sphere. Irenology science has developed from wide interpretative frameworks of society, conflicts and violence, which is due to its vocation to achieve a respectable status in the academia, being systematically structured to deduce paradigms and general laws subjected to experimental tests. Even though peace research vindicates its peculiarity as science with values, it has done so almost exclusively from the political and social arena. In essence, this article realizes a modest contribution from the consideration of the importance of finding a balance between the sociopolitical and the individual work. To achieve that aim, this work will analyze and comment Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk. This is a singularly clever invitation to Western individuals, who largely focus on the material and the social side of life, to look at their inner side to develop their best talents. Palahniuk does so through zen philosophy, even though it looks far from the Western world. In fact, the main character is a prototype westerner who accomplishes his trip to self realization through principles such as detachment, learning through one’s own experience and self-knowledge, and the perception of the self as a mortal part of nature and humankind as a whole.