a thread for mundane ironists

[b]José Saramago

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with God, for he doesn’t understand us, and we don’t understand him.[/b]

Yeah, but He started it.

If you don’t write your books, nobody else will do it for you.

Trust me: That’s actually true.

…the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief.

How high up being of particular importance here.

…sometimes we ask ourselves why happiness took so long to arrive, why it didn’t come sooner, but appears suddenly, as now, when we’ve given up hope of it ever arriving, it’s likely then that we won’t know what to do, and rather than it being a question of choosing between laughter and tears, we will be filled by a secret anxiety to which we might not know how to respond at all.

All these fucking years, he thought, and I still don’t.

… that’s how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.

My advice: Don’t count on me.

When we are born, when we enter this world, it is as if we signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf?

Seriously, would you sign it yourself?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” H. G. Wells[/b]

You know, if only that were actually true.

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Give or take a few of the punchlines.

“The world is everything that is the case.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Naturally as it were.

“On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.” Adam Smith

Sounds about right.

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” Soren Kierkegaard

Not to mention the one smack dab in the middle of oblivion.

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” Soren Kierkegaard

Right, like we can even know what that is.

[b]Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Every loneliness is a pinnacle.[/b]

Unfortunately, I’m one of the very few who agree.

A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.

Of course as she understood it integrity involved thinking exactly like she did. And without a smidgeon of irony.

The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrifice.

Unless of course that’s just natural.

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

Again the great irony here being that by its very nature capitalism thrives on the alienation of labor.

Why no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don’t make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.

Again the great irony here being that all others must measure their own values against hers.

Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles?

Hell, I’m always imagining the imbeciles here smiling.

[b]Jessie Burton

In suffering we find our truest selves.[/b]

Oh, sure we do.

Pity, unlike hate, can be boxed and put away.

Never tried that before.

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain, Nella thinks. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Not only that but a lot less time to do something about it.

A lifetime isn’t enough to know how a person will behave.

My guess: A lifetime is all we’ll get.

When you have truly come to know a person, Nella – when you see beneath the sweeter gestures, the smiles – when you see the rage and the pitiful fear which each of us hide – then forgiveness is everything. We are all in desperate need of it.

He wondered if that included him.

My brother knows the danger of having nothing to do.

That and the power to do it.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

McLuhan: The medium is the message.
Debord: The medium will have been the message.
Baudrillard: I’ll have a medium coke and fries.[/b]

Obviously: Baudrillard. Only he preferred Dr Pepper.

[b]How To Perfect Your Writing

  1. Delete the extraneous citations
  2. Delete the weak efforts at satire
  3. Delete the self-congratulatory asides
  4. Admire the blank page[/b]

Or here the blank post.

Descartes: I think therefore I am
Kant: I think I probably am
Schelling: Perhaps I can’t even think
Nietzsche: I can’t even

Of course one of them went insane.

Tweeting is theory.
Deleting is praxis.

Not counting those [these days] who are outright banned.

American novel: I want to be a British novel!
British novel: I want to be a French novel!
French novel: I want to be a Russian novel!
Russian novel: Thank God I’m not a German novel!

Let’s make sense of this.

[b]A Brief History of Poetry

  1. A, B, C, D
  2. AAA BBB CCC DDD
  3. ABAB CDCD
  4. ABBA
  5. AC⚡️DC[/b]

Lyrically as it were.

[b]Lillian Hellman

The only good thing about aging is you’re not dead.[/b]

Not counting all the times you wish you were.

Advances are made by those with at least a touch of irrational confidence in what they can do.

A touch? Let’s pin that down.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.

As for myself, make me an offer.

Nobody knows what you want except you, and no one will be as sorry as you if you don’t get it.

Indeed. And I recall when that was still true of me.

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

Right, like we can actually know what that means.

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.

Right, like we can actually tell the difference.

[b]John Fowles from The Magus

But he was absolutely alone. No one ever wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met.[/b]

That makes at least two of us.

Because they died, we know we still live. Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.

In other words, that Buddha bullshit.

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

For most of course it’s the day they die.

In our age it is not sex that raises its ugly head, but love.

And then, right around the corner, hate.

It was not the mask I was afraid of…but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself.

But mostly, some will insist, women. Here for example.

The thing I felt most clearly, when the first corner was turned, was that I had escaped. Obscurer, but no less strong, was the feeling that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won.

Remember when this was only a man thing?

[b]Sad Socrates

I’m not saying I know, but I’m also saying you don’t know.[/b]

What? Damned near everything I figure.

It’s not true love until you feel nothing.

Or at least barely something.

Most things don’t make sense, they just make rational sense.

Let’s start with, oh, I don’t know, objectivism?

I’m so tired of having legitimate criticisms.

Steer clear of here then.

Sadness sells.

Not unlike happiness for that matter.

You can’t win.

Not only that but you can lose brutally.

[b]Colson Whitehead

It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he’d experienced it.[/b]

Better to just stay dead, right?

The only time “early bloomer” has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing.

Him and Woody Allen.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Maybe someday that will even make sense.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

And of course take you with them.

This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.

Hmm, I wonder what nation that is?

And what else but a being cursed with the burden of free will would wear a poncho.

On purpose in other words.

[b]Viet Thanh Nguyen

You must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp or a reservation or a plantation.[/b]

Clearly more applicable to some than to others.

After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.

On the other hand, there’s always manifest destiny.

These questions required either Camus or cognac, and as Camus was not available I ordered cognac.

Questions about suicide as likely as not.

Some bemoan the brutalism of socialist architecture, but was the blandness of capitalist architecture any better? One could drive for miles along a boulevard and see nothing but parking lots and the kudzu of strip malls catering to every need, from pet shops to water dispensaries to ethnic restaurants and every other imaginable category of mom-and-pop small business, each one an advertisement for the pursuit of happiness.

That’s why we won.

The point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

We just forget what that is. Well, some of us.

Our teachers were firm believers in the corporal punishment that Americans had given up, which was probably one reason they could no longer win wars. For us, violence began at home and continued in school, parents and teachers beating children and students like Persian rugs to shake the dust of complacency and stupidity out of them, and in that way make them more beautiful.

Sure, it might catch on again.

[b]The Dead Author

Kafka taught me that you can be a successful lawyer during your lifetime and a world-famous writer after your death, and people will still feel bad for you.[/b]

Anyone here still feel bad about him?

Remembering is just a more creative way of forgetting.

Well, it certainly can be.

So Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir walk into a bar. Smoking and drinking turn Sartre into a diabetic. He goes blind and is no longer able to write. De Beauvoir takes care of him for seven years until his death in 1980. There’s nothing funny about substance abuse.

Okay, but still not likely to stop me.
Why? Let’s just say I have my reasons.

Melancholia is for romantics, despair is for existentialists, but depression is for everyone.

Or eventually everyone.

German is easy because the word for ‘yes indeed’ (“allerdings”) is also the German word for ‘actually no’.

Like the word “cleave” over here.

Who should we read?
Shakespeare: Homer.
Goethe: Shakespeare.
Tolstoy: Goethe.
Joyce: Tolstoy.
Hemingway: Joyce.
De Beauvoir: Women.

See if you can spot the outlier here.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Perhaps this is the ultimate freedom, eh, Dreamlord? The freedom to leave.[/b]

Indeed, and who doesn’t cherish that here?

Mostly you are what they think you are.

Not to be confused with what you think they are.

Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say they’re scared for the fear to become real.

Other times though it actually takes something frightening.

Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative, or so we presume, for nobody returns to dispute it.

I think I’ll be the first.

I love dreams. I know enough about them to know that dream logic is no story logic, and that you can rarely bring a dream back as a tale: it will have transformed from gold into leaves. from silk to cobwebs, on waking.

So, maybe I’ll tell him about my dreams. No cobwebs yet.

We don’t have a clue what’s really going down, we just kid ourselves that we’re in control of our lives while a paper’s thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they’re tired, or bored.

On the other hand, what if this wasn’t true?

[b]Dave Eggers

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.[/b]

My guess: No one has ever said that of Don Trump’s lies.

You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You know you’ve done nothing good for yourself. That’s the same feeling, and you know it is, after some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished.

Yet here we are day after day after day.

The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.

Admittedly, it doesn’t look good.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

On the other hand, what if it’s ladders all the way down?

Why do you want to be on The Real World?
Because I want everyone to witness my youth
Why?
Isn’t it gorgeous?

He’s got us there, right? And not a damn thing we can do about it.

Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.

Or: Once a year, she remembers that she is going to die. Then she forgets again, because more than remembering she is going to die, she is forgetful.

[b]tiny nietzsche

voids will be voids[/b]

Not counting mine of course.

c’mon, people. the earth isn’t going to kill itself

How much more can we do?

death is just your body rejecting you

But don’t take it personally, okay?

One of the things I enjoy is nothing. Try it.

On the other hand, you’ll have an eternity for that.

things that terrify wild animals:
human scent
headlights
windchimes

In that exact order no doubt.

my horoscope says they will come for me in the night

And not just Bob Mueller.

[b]C.G. Jung

The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of inexorable opposites—day and night, wellbeing and suffering, birth and death, good and evil. We are not even sure that the one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life and the world are a battleground.[/b]

Maybe, but at least most are able to choose sides. Confidently even.

Not everything I bring forth is written out of my head, but much of it comes from the heart also.

And how sloppy is that going to be? Or, rather, sloppier.

I had to follow the ineradicable foolishness which furnishes the steps to true wisdom.

Not much that doesn’t cover of course.

Myths, however, consist of symbols that were not invented but happened.

He means “happened”.

There is no difference in principle between organic and psychic growth. As a plant produces its flower, so the psyche creates its symbols.

Sure, there couldn’t possibly be any difference.

The image of the world is half the world.

Or 60% tops.

[b]D. H. Lawrence

How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.[/b]

So, how am I doing so far?

A curious latency stirred in her consciousness that was not yet an idea.

Let’s keep it that way, he thought.

What we mean is that people may go on, keep on, and rush on, without souls. They have their ego and their will, that is enough to keep them going.

If only on this side of the grave.

Quite frantically, he longed not to be.

Is there any other way?

One is so much harder if one has a touch of the man in one, don’t you think, and more able to bear things. But I’m afraid I’m all woman.

If only on the inside.

That’s the recoil of the same urge. The anarchist, the criminal, the murderer, he is only the extreme lover acting on the recoil. But it is love: only in recoil. It flies back, the love-urge, and becomes a horror.

And then it’s recoils all the way down.

[b]so sad today

so annoyed that fantasy isn’t reality[/b]

Let’s blame God.

if i have to watch my whole life flash before my eyes when i die i’m going to be so annoyed

Though not for long. Well, if death is anything like I think it is.

omg i love your opinion about bullshit

Or here: i love your philosophy about bullshit

the war in my mind says hey

Really? The war in my mind says fuck you.

can’t stop peeing: the musical

Piss on that, right?

there are two kinds of people in this world and i’m hiding from them both

Me too. And with any luck they’re hiding from me.

[b]Paul Schrader

There’s no escape. I’m God’s only man.[/b]

So, does He know that?

I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?

My guess: That happiness is not always what it’s cracked up to be.

Don’t ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

Or here the poster.

Ultimately, it’s an illusion that you can understand yourself.

Or as close to ultimately as I’ve ever been.

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film ‘noir’, as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

I’m glad that’s finally settled, he thought.

When you have people who are embarrassing themselves for a living, who are making themselves look foolish and vulnerable and emotional for a living, your day-to-day reality is going to be a high-wire act. People are going to get in fights. People are going to get upset. People are going to walk off set. People are going to call each other names. It happens on every film that has any emotional people.

It’s a miracle that anything gets filmed at all.

[b]David Sedaris

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.[/b]

So, what’s the equivalent of that today?

I’d tried to straighten him out, but there’s only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

Light beer at that.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn’t like it, and changed.

Right, just like that.

It’s safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won’t be able to smoke anywhere in America.

He figured he wouldn’t be around then and shrugged.

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

Wow, do you think that might be true here?

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren’t.

As for cowboys, that’s Marlboro country of course.

[b]Arthur Rimbaud

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.[/b]

Then no one is. Not even me anymore.

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

If he said so himself.

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am.

Clearly the best one yet.

Love…no such thing.
Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that’s not love. That’s stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn’t exist.
Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.

And even that’s being optimistic.

By being too sensitive I have wasted my life.

That’ll do it.

A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed–and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!

I’m no poet then. Why? Just lucky I guess.