a thread for mundane ironists

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5101

[b]Haruki Murakami

Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.[/b]

Fortunately [for him] he can still say that.

It’s just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

Tell me about it he thought.

I move, therefore I am.

On the other hand, stopping won’t change that.

My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.

We’ll need to know the question of course.

There are symbolic dreams-- dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities – realities that symbolize a dream. Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe. In the worm universe, there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me.

Until now, that had never once occurred to me.

Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about ‘the Shadow’ in one of his books: It is as evil as we are positive… the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive… The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.

This is obviously more applicable to you than to me. Either that or the other way around.

5102

[b]Sophocles

To never have been born may be the greatest boon of all. [/b]

Hypothetically as it were.

It’s terrible when the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.

Of course that can be said of, among others, everyone.

The happiest life is to be without thought.

Including this one?

Leave me to my own absurdity.

Instead, most insist that you embrace theirs.

Oblivion - what a blessing…for the mind to dwell a world away from pain.

If it even dwells at all.

Which would you choose if you could: pleasure for yourself despite your friends or a share in their grief?

Yes.

5103

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

Twitter is the only place where most of us can afford to pretend to be ourselves.[/b]

This may not be true of course.

Imagine if we had imagination.

Is this as tricky as it sounds?

Intellect is the ability to pretend stupid at the right moment.

I’ll tell you how you’re doing if you’ll tell me how I’m doing.

Life is like a glass half full of emptiness.

And getting fuller all the time.

Perfection is the epitome of platitude.

She must mean yours.

Me: I’m in love, how much will it cost?
Doctor: Well, a lot.
Me: I’m not in love, now how much?
Doctor: You’ll never make that much money.

It’s cost me nothing yet. If you know what I mean.

5104

[b]Martin Buber

You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way-- it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of Heaven.[/b]

Of course it has to be strung entirely in sync with the right interpretation of the right God.

As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.

That can’t be good, right?

“If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul."
Rabbi Nachman

And what time might that be?

Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.

Inscrutably understood as it were.

What, then, does one experience of the You?
Nothing at all. For one does not experience it.
What, then, does one know of the You?
Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars.

Inscrutably understood as it were.

Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself – this is called Lucifer.

This may well explain the birth of the expression, “deep, man”.

5105

[b]Gloria Steinem

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.[/b]

Well, had I had a career, I certainly would have.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn.

Let’s decide what to unlearn first.

Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.

And then this: Women have two choices: Either she’s the right kind of feminist or the wrong kind of feminist.

Women are always saying, “We can do anything that men can do.” But Men should be saying, “We can do anything that women can do”.

When Hell freezes over?

Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don’t.

I know that I do, he thought.

Rich People plan for three generations. Poor people plan for Saturday night.

Well, if they can afford to.

5106

[b] Jan Mieszkowski

Logic: A = A
Ethics: A is good
Aesthetics: A is sublime
Psychology: I desire A
Politics: I rule A
Literature: I’m in mourning for A[/b]

Or, for that matter, Not A.

What’s on the other side?
Epistemology: Can I ever know?
Ontology: Why must there be another side?
Politics: I’ll probably have to kill it.

You know, before it kills you.

Schopenhauer: The will to life
Nietzsche: The will to power
Heidegger: The will to will
Wittgenstein: What will it take to shut you all up?

I’ve narrowed it down to just one thing: Death.

[b]A Brief History of Critical Theory

  1. No.
  2. Well…
  3. No.[/b]

But getting closer to maybe.

Monday is
Kierkegaard: a fount of despair
Nietzsche: evidence of reason’s sick sense of humor
Sartre: nothingness with a fresh coat of paint

Not unlike the other six. Only more so.

[b]How To Make Your Philosophy Tweet Popular

  1. Mention Spinoza, Wittgenstein, or Hume
  2. Complain about Hegel
  3. Affirm nihilism
  4. Delete it[/b]

Or skip right to 3 and then delete it.

5107

[b]Jean Baudrillard

All we have left of liberty is an ad-man’s illusion.[/b]

And even then only if you can afford it.

If you do not lend your car, your fountain pen or your wife to anyone, that is because these objects, according to the logic of jealously, are narcissistic equivalents of the ego: to lose them, or for them to be damaged, means castration.

On the other hand, as somebody once suggested, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.

A surreal description of it anyway.

It is never too late to revive your origins.

Or, sure, just make them up as you go along.

Virtuality is different from the spectacle, which still left room for a critical consciousness and demystification. The abstraction of the ‘spectacle’ was never irrevocable, even for the Situationists. Whereas unconditional realization is irrevocable, since we are no longer either alienated or dispossessed: we are in possession of all the information. We are no longer spectators, but actors in the performance, and actors increasingly integrated into the course of that performance. Whereas we could face up to the unreality of the world as spectacle, we are defenseless before the extreme reality of this world, before this virtual perfection. We are, in fact, beyond all disalienation. This is the new form of terror, by comparison with which the horrors of alienation were very small beer.

Even if this is actually true it may still just be gibberish.

When you take away verisimilitude, you do not automatically find the veridical but, perhaps, the implausible.

Let’s take it away here and see what happens.

5108

[b]Tom Perrotta

I’m halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn’t that I made some mistakes, it’s that I didn’t make nearly enough of them. [/b]

You either get this or you don’t.

Things change all the time - abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn’t do you that much good, apparently.

At least “I” stays the same. Right, Mr. Objectivist?

It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn’t been for the worshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis.

On the other hand, can that part ever really be optional?

It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays.

Trumpworld, for example. Well, while it lasts.

I’ve matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom.

He thought: Never in a million years. He being [among others] me.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she’d booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren’t any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession’s glutted with tenured old men who won’t step aside for the next generation. While the university’s busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you’re unusually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet’s booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn’t even cover the rent.

Worse, you majored in philosophy.

5109

[b]Stieg Larsson

At some point on the morning of the second day she came to a terrifying realisation. She had no idea how it had happened or how she was supposed to cope with it. She was in love for the first time in her life.[/b]

And we know how that turns out.

He’s pulling the load of an ox and walking on eggshells.

That doesn’t even seem possible.

[b]I’ve never had a boy in here, Martin said in a serious voice. I’ve never touched another man, as a matter of fact. . . .except for my father. That was my duty.

Blomkvist’s temples were pounding. He could not put his weight on his feet without being strangled. He tried to use his fingers to get a grip on the concrete wall behind him, but there was nothing to hold onto.

It’s time, Martin Vanger said.

He put a hand on the strap and pulled down. Blomkvist instantly felt the noose cut into his neck.

I’ve always wondered how a man tastes.

He increased the pressure on the noose and leaned forward to kiss Blomkvist on the lips at the same time that a cold voice cut through the room.

Hey you fucking creep, in this shithole I’ve got a monopoly on that one.[/b]

Not quite the way it all unfolded in the film.

The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn’t have a thing to do with reality…

Tell that to the super rich.

Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child’s take on morals and ethics.

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t one of the good guys. At least most of the time.

It would be deplorable if the special interests had the power to silence those voices in the media that they find uncomfortable.

Or not deplorable at all from their point of view.

5110

[b]Stephen Fry

The celibate life allowed productivity, independence and ease free from the pressures of placating and accommodating the will and desires of another: released from the degrading imperatives of erotic congress, a new and better kind of life could be lived. Sex was an overrated bore. ‘Besides,’ I confessed as I ended the article, ‘I’m scared that I may not be very good at it’.[/b]

He thought: I used to be very good at it.

You can almost define a convict as one who lacks precisely the kind of wisdom and self-control necessary to derive long-term advantage from short-term discomfort.

They’ll be saying that of Don Trump someday. You know, with any luck.

A Hungarian Jew, as he looked to observe, is the only man who can follow you into a revolving door and come out first.

Any Hungarian Jews here offended?

The trouble with doing a thing for cosmetic reasons is that one always ends up with a cosmetic result, and cosmetic results, as we know from inspecting rich American women, are ludicrous, embarrassing and horrific.

True, but that can take years.

Cambridge produces martyrs and Oxford burns them.

So, what’s the equivalent of that here?

We all know the indignities to which enslaved humans will submit themselves in order to satisfy their addictions, whether for narcotics, alcohol, tobacco, sugar or sex. The desperation, savagery and degradation they publicly display make truffling pigs seem placid and composed by comparison.

Just out of curiosity, any slaves to philosophy here?

5111

[b]Liane Moriarty

It’s amazing how friends can slip through your fingers, how your social network can vanish like it never existed.[/b]

In other words, if you’re lucky.

Dying was such an elegant way to leave a relationship. No infidelity, no boredom, no long, complicated conversations late into the night. No “She’s still single, I hear.” No running into each other at parties and weddings. No “She’s stacked on the weight” or “She’s showing her age.” Dying was final and mysterious and gave you the last word forever.

That’s true. Though only more or less elegant.

But Grace quite likes the fact that you can think something is one way all your life, and it turns out you’re wrong, it can be something else entirely. It makes her feel free. Nothing is rigid. Things change. You can change your mind. You can change your thinking.

On the other hand, in some places that earns you a trip to the dungeon. And not only Satyr’s.

Their arguments always went like this. The angrier Madeline got, the more freakishly calm Ed became, until he reached a point where he sounded like a hostage negotiator dealing with a lunatic and a ticking bomb. It was infuriating.

Though [one suspects] no less so from his side.

The bills would keep on coming, no matter what else was happening in your life and that was good because it gave you a purpose. You worked so you could pay them. You rested on the weekends and generated more bills. Then you went back to work to pay for them. That was the reason for getting up tomorrow. That was the meaning of life.

No, seriously.

I’ll tell you something, something important. Write this down. You ready?
Yes, yes, I’m ready.
Love is a decision.
Love is a decision?
That’s right. A decision. Not a feeling. That’s what you young people don’t realize.

So, first things first: decide if you feel the same.

5112

[b]Ludwig van Beethoven

The day-to-day exhausted me![/b]

Not any more I’ll bet.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into it’s secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.

He wondered if that was true philosophically.

I despise a world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Believe it or not this doesn’t go without saying.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Even I have to admit that this is true. And I don’t have a spiritual bone in my body.

I cannot bring myself to write for the flute, as this instrument is too limited and imperfect.

It’s a good thing then that my daughter gave it up. True story.

…what is difficult is also beautiful, good, great, etc, therefore every person understands that this is the greatest praise that one can give, because the difficult makes one sweat…

Lots of shortcuts though. Right, Mr. Objectivist?

5113

[b]Andre Dubus III

The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can’t have one without the other.[/b]

Okay, but does that count those who have a whole lot more of one than the other?

Dat’s what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: ‘America, the land of milk and honey.’ Bot they never tell you the milk’s gone sour and the honey’s stolen.

Don Trump will fix all that. Unless, of course, he ends up in jail.

And that’s what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living.

Of course that’s only “human all too human”, right?

[b]…on one side of the page you got your costs and on the other side your benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. That’s all you ever have to do. I live by this.

But what if you don’t know the difference between a benefit and a cost? what if you’ve never been very good at telling a plus from a minus?[/b]

Yeah, what about that?

When I thought of the word “man,” I could only think of those who could defend themselves and those they loved.

Not many places better to start than there.

Different people carry different toolboxes.

One filled with words for example.

5114

[b]Aeschylus

For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one’s life.[/b]

No doubt about it: too close to call.

Nothing forces us to know
What we do not want to know
Except pain

Well, mostly pain.

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

Unless perhaps you have prospered too.

For somehow this is tyranny’s disease, to trust no friends.

Said Don Trump to Mike Flynn.

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

Of course here that can go a bit [even quite a bit] too far.

Suffering brings experience.

For some, tons and tons of it.

5115

[b]Jeanette Winterson

Memory loss is one way of coping with damage.[/b]

And then eventually for all of eternity.

I’m not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me.

Same for me. Unless you count a few threads here.

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.

Not counting God of course.

What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning?

I’d like that to have been said of me. Not yet though.

Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of political life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

Oh, it’s destroyed all right. But that’s yet another thing that distinguishes us from the other animals.

I did not realize that when money becomes a core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results.

They thought: She notes this as though it were a bad thing.

5116

[b]Ernest Hemingway

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.[/b]

Let’s explore this mathematically.

It’s funny, I said. It’s very funny. And it’s a lot of fun, too, to be in love.
Do you think so? her eyes looked flat again.
I don’t mean fun that way. In a way it’s an enjoyable feeling.
No, she said. I think it’s hell on earth.

Clearly, love is hard to pin down.

World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.

Not unlike all the other wars.

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

We’ve got a few of them here, don’t we?

Strong in all the Broken Places

I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

Of course, you all know my own obscene words…

5117

[b]Excistential Comics

What can’t you know?
Descartes: whether you are being deceived.
Kant: things as they are in themselves.
Schopenhauer: why Hegel is popular.[/b]

Just out of curiosity, is Hegel still popular?

How to do philosophy:
Analytic philosophy: replace words with math symbols.
Continental​ philosophy: replace words with more words.

And don’t forget to stir from time to time.

Fuck literature, marry science, kill philosophy.

A word of advice: Pace yourself.

Socialism would be great if it weren’t for the socialists.

Not unlike, for example, all the other “ists”.

Regular despair: I’m depressed.
Existential despair: I’m depressed because of how smart I am.

No, really.

When Republicans talk about how you need to work for everything you get, I close my eyes and pretend they are talking about shareholders.

Not counting Mr. Reasonable of course. :wink:

5118

[b]Michael Lewis

One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks.[/b]

Let’s figure out the philosophical equivalent of that.

He further believed that the only way to get people to believe that you were good for their careers was actually to be good for their careers.

Typical pragmatist.

Thus the only Goldman Sachs employee arrested by the FBI in the aftermath of a financial crisis Goldman had done so much to fuel was the employee Goldman asked the FBI to arrest.

No one here believes that, right?

Investment bankers make money for a living.

That way their sons and daughters can inherit it for a living.

Losing shouldn’t be fun. It’s not fun for me. If I’m going to be miserable, you’re going to be miserable.

The trick though is to actually pull it off.

The difference in Billy wasn’t what had happened to him, but what hadn’t. He had a life he hadn’t led, and he knew it. He just hoped nobody else noticed.

Can they say that about you? Me? Too close to call.

5119

[b]Neil Gaiman

People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.[/b]

No, really, what are dreams?

She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.

Literally infinite maybe. But she’ll come and go.

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.

Come on, ever seen a naked witch on TV?

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

On the other hand, what we need here are more blank threads.

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done.

I’ll try it: dasein, conflicting goods, political economy.

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.

Right, like they all start out the same.

5120

[b]Existential Comics

Jesus: “Love your neighbor.”
Everyone else: “Fuck that, no way! In fact, let’s kill this guy for even suggesting it.”[/b]

Among other things, what Jesus will face when He does come back.

What did philosophers do to relax?
Epicurus: gardening.
Schopenhauer: music.
Nietzsche: hiking.
Kant: work on ethics instead of metaphysics.

At least Kant never stooped to huffing andf puffing.

Maturation is the slow process of realizing how profoundly unimportant you are.

And [fortunately] everybody else.

How to live an authentic life: don’t ever do anything that you were already not going to have done.

Or, sure, maybe not.

Nihilism: nothing matters
Absurdism: nothing matters, but in a cool way.
Existentialism: freely choose among everything that doesn’t matter!

Let’s pick the top three.

Philosopher I would most want to have a beer with: Camus.
Philosopher I would sneak out the back of the bar if I saw him coming: Socrates.

Want to know who I would choose?