a thread for mundane ironists

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8481

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky[/b]

How about a 1,000?

“If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male’s arrogance made it ‘a discussion’" Simone de Beauvoir

Yo, Mr. Yoho!

If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet." Keith Richards

He means “in the balls” of course.

“It is quite possible–overwhelmingly probable, one might guess–that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology” Noam Chomsky

I know that I have. On the other hand, look at me now.

“One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.” Claude Lévi-Strauss

See, I told you.

“Better to have an open enemy, than hidden friends.” Napoleon Bonaparte

If you know what he means.

8482

[b]Karl Kraus

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.[/b]

Or, today, wikipedia.
On the other hand, what the hell is he talking about?

To be human is erroneous.

Like that makes any difference.

Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.

Let’s make a list.

He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.

Jesus, what if that’s actually true?

I don’t like to meddle in my private affairs.

Unlike, say, ours.

Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them.

Exactly: Contexts!

8483

[b]Jeffrey Eugenides

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It’s the thing that lets us say goodbye.[/b]

A philosophy to die for as it were.

Emotions, in my experience aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” … I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life.

Let’s get started on this, okay?

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

Probably not literally.

In the midst of my skeptical, cynical, often pessimistic nature exists a slender capacity to believe, if only temporarily, in a guiding, unseen power, and whenever this happens, I go with it. That’s what inspiration is. You don’t get it from the gods. You make it.

Trust me: Not all of us.

She’d become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.

Only now she can’t pay the bills.

Don’t waste your time on life.

That’s not as easy as it sounds though.

8484

[b]Shirley Jackson

Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.[/b]

Fate again. Go figure?

I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.

Luck again. Go figure?

To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.

Horror again. Go figure?

Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.

He figured twice as much as friends. Or, for some friends, half as much.

All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.

So, what’s the equivalent of that here?

You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine, is it still in use? You are wondering, has it been cleaned? You may very well ask, was it thoroughly washed?

I can guess where this is going.

8485

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” Fyodor Dostoevsky[/b]

Anyone here understand me?

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.” Claude Levi-Strauss

Let’s decide if that’s still true.

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only passion for life.” Federico Fellini

Well, not counting birth and death of course.

“Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.” Søren Kierkegaard

And even then hardly ever.

“As soon as it has come to the point that the crowd is to judge what is truth, it will not be long before decisions are made with fists.” Soren Kierkegaard

Of course that hasn’t changed.

“People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.” Soren Kierkegaard

I know that I do.

8486

[b]John Dos Passos

People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.[/b]

But only if you have one.

The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.

Or take a sledgehammer to it.

The world’s becoming a museum of socialist failures.

And that was way back then.

Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.

If that’s actually an option of course.

Marxism has not only failed to promote human freedom, it has failed to produce food.

Ask me to explain this.

In certain savage tribes in New Guinea, they put the old people up in the trees and shake them once a year in the spring; if they don’t fall out they let them live another year.

Go ahead, Google it.

8487

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

I don’t trust people who don’t have myopia.[/b]

Good call.

Classical Russian literature is your nearest emergency exit in case of insufferable happiness.

Good call.

2020 feels like one giant leap for mankind towards 1984.

And not just in Portland.

You can only feel truly divine when you know that you’re someone else’s personal demon.

You know who you are, don’t you?
Here, I mean

How many Americans does it take to change a light bulb in November and not screw up like in 2016? Asking for humanity.

Let’s answer for humanity.

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ would still be one of the greatest songs ever even if it were shortened to ‘any way the wind blows’ at the end. Which is about 5 seconds.

Let’s put this in context: youtu.be/thyJOnasHVE

8488

[b]Bell Hooks

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.[/b]

A class thing no doubt.

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

Wow, we see a lot of that here, don’t we?

All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions-and society—so that the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice, and our love of freedom.

Talk about a “general description intellectual contraption!”
One of ours though.

True resistance begins with people confronting pain… and wanting to do something to change it.

You know, instead of just inflicting it on others.

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

And now there’s that other thing.

The intellectual tradition of the West is very individualistic. It’s not community-based. The intellectual is often thought of as a person who is alone and cut off from the world. So I have had to practice being willing to leave the space of my study to be in community, to work in community, and to be changed by community.

You know, if that’s still actually an option.

8489

[b]Malcolm McDowell

It’s always a fascinating subject - a serial killer let loose on a small community. It always holds, it’s always scary.[/b]

Let’s try to explain this.

The thing is, I’ve never been a handsome leading-man type, so let’s not kid ourselves.

Let’s try to explain this.

I like to razz the Trekkies a little bit. Who doesn’t? It’s trainspotting, isn’t it? But they are very well-meaning, actually. I’ve done a couple of Star Trek conventions, and they’ve only been really welcoming.

He means the Trekkers of course.

An actor cannot be a censor. I’m there to interpret.

Not unlike the director.

I never feel I repeat myself. I really go out of my way to amuse myself. I would be bored stiff. If I feel the déjavu when I’m doing something, I stop and rethink and rework it.

How intriguing!

Different directors offer you different things, and it’s not necessarily the most obvious things.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

8490

[b]Werner Twertzog

Farewell, Keith Richards, guitar virtuoso, legendary hedonist, and bog body. May your leathery skin someday provide a jerkin for a downtrodden, Labour Party blacksmith.[/b]

You tell me.

No, cashier, I did not “find everything I am looking for.” But you did not mean it as an existential question. I absolve you.

This ever happen to you?

Dear America: I am tired of your insanity. I am not a “Man of the Left.” I merely hate vulgarity, stupidity, and cruelty. Unfortunately, there is no refuge on this planet but death. And New Zealand.

Yep, that’s what it’s now come to.

Dear Twitter pedants:
I do not make punctuation “errors.”
I make aesthetic choices.
That subsequently change the rules.

Next up: ILP pedants.

Dear American gun fanatics: we all know you will side with tyranny.

Sieg Heil?

Dear America: I shall not accept the outcome of your November election as legitimate unless the United Nations is involved.

Let’s debate this.

8491

[b]Erich Maria Remarque

Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel![/b]

Clearly, not here. Or am I missing the point?

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

Let’s make this one.

Anything you can settle with money is cheap.

Not much that can’t be these days though.

It’s only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

If only until the day you die.

Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.

Let’s reconstruct this into reality.

Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.

Sure, if you’re an optimist.

8492

[b]Daniel Day-Lewis

The more articulate somebody is, the more suspicious I am of them. I like to feel that the important things remain unsaid.[/b]

My guess: you can take this too far.

Acting is about people. Other people. Otherwise, you’re not acting, you’re doing monologues.

Like me, posting here, right?

I am more greatly moved by people who struggle to express themselves…I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion.

Fortunately, in being philosophers, that’s not a concern of ours.

I live in a landscape, which every single day of my life is enriching.

Can you say that?

I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else.

Some are just lucky that way.

I didn’t like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish.

Yo, Kids!

8493

[b]Werner Twertzog

In the US one has no right to healthcare or freedom of expression if it displeases your employer.[/b]

You know, the capitalists insist, for the good of society.

The Germans have no word for Schadenfreude, I am told.

Luckily, they have one for Being There. Or, for some, “being there”.

God, grant me serenity, and thirty-seven million dollars.

Most would settle for thirty seven thousand. You know, right about now, Mr. McConnell.

The self is a myth and happiness is an illusion, as we all know.

It’s actually the other way around.

Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.

Of course your fraction may vary.

I know little about Ted Nugent, but I would like to know even less.

Just let me know when the bastard is dead.
Also, Henry Kissinger.

8494

[b]John Cage

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced…that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson’s statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.[/b]

What is this if not music as an intellectual contraption?

We’re breaking all of the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

I certainly do that here. Unlike, for example, you, Mr. Objectivist.

It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.

Of course here things really may be futile. Well, my things anyway.

Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

How about you and I? Here for instance.

Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.

Fortunately, some of us have no idea what this means.

Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.

Let’s figure out if there is a philosophical equivalent of this.

8495

[b]Terry Eagleton

It is important to see that, in the critique of ideology, only those interventions will work which make sense to the mystified subject itself.[/b]

Or, if you’re an objectivist, not important at all.

If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.

Okay, but I get to pick them.

To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it.

Or something like that.

Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.

“At the level of language”: See, I told you.

If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.

Shit, it would have to be that way.

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology.

Yo, Mr. Objectivist.

8496

[b]Existential Comics

When they fearmonger on left wing radicals “destroying Western Civilization”, remember we destroyed it before when we:

  • educated the peasants
  • abolished the monarchy
  • established democracy
  • secularized government
  • let women vote
    Destroying Western Civilization is good.[/b]

Well, let’s say that it might not be bad.

cats already know the meaning of life but they won’t tell us because they want us to suffer

Yo, Ecmandu!

one thing that billionaires don’t seem to understand is that nobody cares what they think about socialism

Well, not counting the white working class in Trumpworld.

What I learned from:
Socrates: how to curious.
Epicurus: how to be happy.
Sartre: how to be free.
Hegel: how to write very long sentences that people don’t understand.

Hegel to him, Meno to me.
Well, on the philosophy board threads, anyway. :wink:

The reason analytic philosophers never came up with anything analogous to existentialism is because they are all a bunch of nerds, and nerds don’t give a shit about stuff like the meaning of life.

Let alone the meaning of this.

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, who is an expert on human freedom, there is actually no philosophical reason why you have to answer emails at all.

Tell that to Simone de Beauvoir.

8497

[b]Ottessa Moshfegh

I counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me. Amen.[/b]

A prayer, perhaps?

If you want something and can’t have it, want something else.

My guess: It’s almost always more complicated than that.

I learned the long way about love, tried every house on the block before I got it right. Now, finally, I love alone.

Well, the alone part maybe.

I rarely interacted much with anyone back then who wasn’t retarded. When I did, it struck me how pompous and impatient they were, always measuring their words, twisting things around. Everybody was so obsessed with being understood. It made me sick.

Yo, Kids!

People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That’s why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness—because they impair our judgment. Don’t try to think too much.

Well, not counting those who take this too far.

It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails.

We should be able to do that here. Only in regard to the dumbest minds.

8498

[b]Karl Kraus

A plagiarist should be made to copy the author a hundred times.[/b]

Consider plagiarizing me an obligation.

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authors write works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.

Cite one example. I dare you.

Family life is an encroachment on private life.

Shhh. Let’s keep this to ourselves, Jess.

Since the day man first tried to conquer space, the earth has been mobilizing.

Cite one example. I dare you.

Since the day man first tried to conquer space, the earth has been mobilizing.

Cite one example. I dare you.

Medicine: “Your money and your life!”

Let’s change this. You know, if it can be.

8499

[b]Jeffrey Eugenides

Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has.[/b]

I said to my reflection in the mirror
Though not you, right?

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

Anyone here ever write one?

I don’t know what you’re feeling, I won’t even pretend.

Well, that’s a start anyway.

I’m hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.

Same with your posts here, right Kid?

Usually my ideas are small.

Wow, what’s that make yours then, Kid?!

In the end, it wasn’t death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

“Next!”, said the Grim Reaper.

8500

[b]Doth

I am fully prepared to die trying to pet a wolf.[/b]

Or, for others: I am fully prepared to die trying to fuck a wolf.

It’s a perfect night to slip into something more comfortable, like the darkness.

Buck naked of course.

Please, just be the best human you can before your body becomes dirt.

Or ashes as the case may be.

Be the reason why a priest clutches his bible when you walk by.

Piece of cake, right?

As your goth therapist the key to happiness is getting lost in a fog-covered forest & never being seen again.

Or, again, for most of us, a fog-covered urban jungle.

I respect the moon because it controls two of our most precious elements, oceans and wolves.

Plus there’s that astrology stuff.