"I just want to fit in," says Patrick Bateman to his fiancee in the new film American Psycho after she asks why he must keep his job. But Patrick isn't just talking about his job--he's talking about his life. Everything he does is meticulously thought out and planned so that he resembles the perfect specimen of the American Dream. And just like everyone else in his large circle of acquaintances, he is empty inside. But that doesn't matter because he looks spectacular.

One day after Black Friday, as it was dubbed mere minutes after the stock exchange closed, I went to see American Psycho. The story of man who tries to find humanity by dismembering it piece by piece. Set in the late 80s when everything on Wall Street was still flying high on an economic phenomenon called Reaganomics, the film shows the curious cause of the downfall of humanity: vanity, greed and indifference. Everyone is so caught up in appearance, they dismiss the evil lurking under the surface as something illusory and intangible. It won't touch them because they look so good. And they look like everyone else.

Patrick Bateman doesn't look like everyone else because he's trying to hide his murderous tendencies. He looks like everyone else because he thinks that will make him a real person. As he says over and over in the film, nothing is real to him. Everything is a facade and must be opened up and examined, if only to prove that it is real.

When American Psycho, the novel by Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero), came out in the early 90s, it was dismissed as pornographic and hateful to women by many. So naturally I had to check it out. While many passages read like well-written Penthouse Letters to the Editor, there is a method to the madness. What happens when the human need to achieve and triumph causes humans to become inhuman? Women become objects, just like the cherished clothing, furniture, apartment, appliances and music (in this case, the clean-cut New Wave of the mid-80s) bought with the money that comes with status. Other men are competitors (and also dispatched with the same cold grin) while women are interchangeable.

It's not pretty, but neither is greed.

The people I work with are surprised when I explain that I wasn't in a fraternity in college. For better or worse, I dress like a frat-boy now. Short hair (cut a few years ago because I got tired of that whole shampoo, conditioner, rinse and repeat thing), Dockers, sensible shoes and button down shirts. Last night I showed on of my work friends a video from when I was nineteen and had hair halfway down my back. He stared in disbelief at the guy singing badly into the microphone--that couldn't be me. I look so much like everyone else now.

Patrick Bateman looks so much like everyone else, he is mistaken for other people all the time. And it is this interchangeability of the Wall Street set that saves him from answering for his crimes--even when he out right confesses to them. He has alibis for every night of the week because people who profess to know Patrick Bateman believe they were drinking with him in one of the many clubs frequented by the rocketing Wall Street set. Most nights he is seen in three or four clubs--even if he's in his apartment having sex with a couple of prostitutes and later taking them apart with whichever implement of death suits his fancy for the night.

My wife's boss came in on Friday proclaiming that the sky had, in fact, fallen. All of our clients were broke and couldn't pay for our services anymore. The irrationality of the well-to-do doesn't amaze me anymore, it more often leads me to fits of giggles. All of these numbers that fell into the ocean on Friday aren't who we are--even if we profess to own some of these numbers.

Can we call ourselves human if all we believe in are the things we buy? Are we any better than a serial killer trying to find humanity through murder if all we value are the things we profess to own? If we can't find love, humor and joy in our fellow human beings, then we've truly already lost. Humanity fell to the wayside years ago, and all we do now is cherish the bits and pieces of rubble that hasn't been ground to dust by the hands of time.

Matt Worley has been an Eagle Scout, an honor student, a drunk, a junkie, Axl Rose, Sid Vicious, a frat boy, a sorority girl, a guy named Brian, a college dropout, a college graduate and countless other incarnations. He is at large and claims to be completely sane.