a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Sophocles

A man’s anger can never age and fade away, not until he dies. The dead alone feel no pain.[/b]

That’s how it worked alright. And still today.

Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.

Couldn’t say that myself of course.

I will suffer nothing as great as death without glory.

Right, like you can take it with you.

It is a painful thing
To look at your own trouble and know
That you yourself and no one else has made it

Let’s file this one under, “no shit”.

Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time who turns his back on a decent length of life, I’ll show the world a man who clings to folly.

In fact, millions of them.

Come, Fate, a friend at need,
Come with all speed!
Come, my best friend,
And speed my end!
Away, away!
Let me not look upon another day!

“The end.
Beautiful friend.
The end.”

[b]George Bernard Shaw

“My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative evolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.”
[From his will] [/b]

I wonder if he thinks that now?

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

I never leave home without it.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

That tells us a lot, doesn’t it?

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

Ha ha ha.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

Or: Liberty means freedom. That is why most men dread it.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Still, how many more tigers can there be?

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

Here’s a great business idea: love insurance.[/b]

Maybe, but it’s got scam written all over it.

Life is when you’re being simultaneously stalked by your past demons and carefully observed by your future ones.

Think of it as a “tag team”.

Live like there’s no tomorrow. Because there will be.

Of course you can only take this so far.

Your childhood ends when love becomes your biggest fear.

How about yours then?

God is dead, but he’s still laughing at Nietzsche.

Come on, dead as a doornail, He’s still laughing at all of us.

I’m “Thank you, I’m fine” years old.

Let’s pin this down.

[b]Gloria Steinem

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician.
For instance, here’s an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.[/b]

Let’s boot this one over to KT.

Only food and water are more important than music and privacy.

But only all the way to the grave.

As novelist Margaret Atwood wrote to explain women’s absence from quest-for-identity novels, “there’s probably a simple reason for this: send a woman out alone on a rambling nocturnal quest and she’s likely to end up a lot deader a lot sooner than a man would.” The irony here is that thanks to molecular archaeology—which includes the study of ancient DNA to trace human movement over time—we now know that men have been the stay-at-homes, and women have been the travelers. The rate of intercontinental migration for women is about eight times that for men.

Let’s hear from the Real Men here about that.

Suddenly, I began to wonder: If one in three or four American women had an abortion at some time in her life–a common statistical estimate, even in those days of illegality-- then why, why should this single surgical procedure be deemed a criminal act?

Sooner or later though it will come around to this: men can’t, don’t and won’t get pregnant.

We are all trained to be female impersonators.

Unless of course we are all trained to impersonate males.

Anyone who believes we’re living in a postfeminist age will learn that violence against females—from female infanticide and child marriage to honor killings and sex trafficking—has now produced a world with fewer females than males, a first in recorded history.

First [obviously]: Is this actually true?

[b]Adam Phillips

The wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as assaults, to our grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be our most violent form of nostalgia.[/b]

As you might well imagine, I’d settle for being less misunderstood.

Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to the minimum.

Less than zero works for me.

The past influences everything and dictates nothing.

His past maybe.

To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.

Nobody here though, right?

Lovers, of course, are notoriously frantic epistemologists, second only to paranoiacs and analysts as readers of signs and wonders.

Bringing epistemology “down to earth” as it were.

Everybody is dealing with how much of their own aliveness they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves.

Let’s file this one under, “don’t get me started”.

[b]Will Rogers

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.[/b]

Don’t try this with cats.

The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

Well, that and their goddamn stupidity.

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

So, is this true story or not?

A fool and his money are soon elected.

Not to mention re-elected.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

Right, like there’s always only one herd.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Not counting ours of course.

[b]John Searle

One of the many marks of a philosophical sensibility is an obsession with problems which most sane people regard as not worth bothering about.[/b]

My wife used to say that.
A lot.

But could something think, understand, and so on solely in virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding? This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no.

And that’s before we get to the part about determinism.

The best objects to think with are words, because that is part of what words are for. Indeed, it is a condition for something to be a word that it be thinkable.

Let’s think of one that isn’t, Mr. Objectivist.

I have thus defined the concept of the “Background” as the set of nonintentional or preintentional capacities that enable intentional states of function.

Not unlike the background here, he thought.

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

Or the solution posed of course.

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

And not just unicorns.

[b]The Dead Author

Optimist: the glass is half full.
Pessimist: the glass is half empty.
Existentialist: drink.[/b]

Though, in the end, they all still die.

Where American doughnuts have holes, Germans put strawberry jam. Now you know the difference between analytic and continental philosophy.

That and all the technical stuff.

Of course climate change isn’t real if you can afford air conditioning.

And don’t live on the coast.

Believe in yourself as if you didn’t exist otherwise.

I’ll try it if you will.

Most things in life won’t make you happy, get you a job, or answer all questions, but only philosophy is considered useless because of that.

Not counting here of course.

If it can’t also make you miserable, it probably won’t make you happy.

Yeah, there’s always that part.

[b]Thucydides

Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.[/b]

Though not just from Satyr.

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

Talk about phrophetic!

We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing.

I can live with that.

Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most.

Of course we’ll have to run this by Don first.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Let’s file this one under, “and some things never change”.

Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved.

Right, Kids?

[b]Roland Barthes

Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight, 'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.[/b]

Intellectuals!!

…language is never innocent.

And, to paraphrase someone, “including ‘a’ and ‘the’”.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it).

I stopped at “muck”.

Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?

More muck, true, but point taken.

The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition… always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.

In other words, if it means the same to you as it does to him.

When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not emerge, do not leave: they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies.

Worth thinking about?

[b]Sad Socrates

It helps to live with less meaning.[/b]

Less being more of course.

What a fuckshow.

And not just in Moscow, Don.

The only reality you can trust is the one you’re destroying.

Yours for example.

I’m recusing myself from existence.

At least until I’m impeached.

Uncertainty is the glue which holds or doesn’t hold the future together.

You know, much like the past and the present.

Enjoy false truths.

For the next four years say. Or, sure, less.

[b]Philippa Gregory

Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.[/b]

Herbs?

True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree.

Let’s decide what this makes Satyr’s claque.

To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.

That’s worse than being thrown in the dungeon. There. Or, here, being banned.

She looked at me as if for a moment she would seek someone who would understand the dreadful predicament of a woman, in this world ruled by men.

And not just the assholes we have here.

And I am much attached to my cock, brother. Make sure your sister can put another prince in the cradle, he says baldly. Save my balls for her, Anthony!

And then we all became civilized.

Only fools wait when their enemies are coming, to see if they may prove to be friends.

Then call me a fool, he thought.

[b]Evelyn Waugh

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.[/b]

True. Well, unless you count the time I spend here.

I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.

Never thought that yet.

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

Actually, just one particular take on dasein. Though I doubt he knew that.

O God, make me good, but not yet.

So, God either did or He didn’t. Or, perhaps, more to the point, He either does or He doesn’t.

The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what’s been taught and what’s been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn’t know existed.

Of course nowadays we call them Kids. Or some of us do.

To understand all is to forgive all.

Fortunately [or unfortunately] none of us will ever even come close.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?[/b]

Let’s swap anecdotes.

The winged word. The mercurial word. The word that is both moth and lamp. The word that is itself and more. the associative word light with meanings. The word not netted by meaning. The exact word wide. The word not whore nor cenobite. The word unlied.

Guess my word.

There’s so little wonder left in the world because we’ve seen everything one way or another.

She means me, not you. Either that or you, not me.

I think we are worlds compressed into human form.

Until one day we are compressed into nothing at all. Or damn close to it.

[b]I remember once walking out hand in hand with a boy I knew, and it was summer, and suddenly before us was a field of gold. Gold as far as you could see. We knew we’d be rich forever. We filled our pockets and our hair. We were rolled in gold. We ran through the field laughing and our legs and feet were coated in yellow dust, so that we were like golden statues or golden gods. He kissed my feet, the boy I was with, and when he smiled, he had a gold tooth.

It was only a field of buttercups, but we were young.[/b]

Of course most of us were never that young.

Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.

To tell you the truth, that’s all mine is.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

I’m getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.
It’s a bore, he said out loud.
What is, my dear?
Anything you do too bloody long.[/b]

I’ve rarely been bored myself. No, it is pain that will push me over the edge.

Man is not made for defeat.

Not counting all the actual men who are. And more if you count women.

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

Of course in these days, money is often the least of it.

I loved her and I loved no one else and we had a lovely magic time while we were alone. I worked well and we made great trips, and I thought we were invulnerable again, and it wasn’t until we were out of the mountains in late spring, and back in Paris, that the other thing started again.

For some though the other thing is all there ever is.

And we could have all this, she said. And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.
What did you say’
I said we could have everything. We can have everything.
No, we can’t.
We can have the whole world.
No, we can’t.
We can go everywhere.
No, we can’t. It isn’t ours anymore.
It’s ours.
No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.

And isn’t this what some say about the part that I take away? Here for example?

When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.

He thought: Tell me about it!

[b]Michael Lewis

He was the person for whom the clock was always running out, the game was always tied, and the ball was always in his hands.[/b]

Even from his recliner.

The first day after the merger, Brad got a call from a worried female employee, who whispered, “There is a guy in here with suspenders walking around with a baseball bat in his hands, taking swings.” That turned out to be Carlin’s CEO, Jeremy Frommer, who, whatever else he was, was not RBC nice. One of Frommer’s signature poses was feet up on his desk, baseball bat swinging wildly over his head while some poor shoeshine guy tried to polish his shoes.

For some a fucking hero, for others a fucking asshole.

The markets were now run by technology, but the technologists were still treated like tools. Nobody bothered to explain the business to them, but they were forced to adapt to its demands and exposed to its failures—which was, perhaps, why there had been so many more conspicuous failures.

Just not enough to actually matter.

The difference between Strauss and Ranieri? says one trader still at Salomon. That’s easy. Strauss wouldn’t stoop to use the men’s room on the trading floor. He’d go upstairs. Ranieri would piss on your desk.

Let’s come up with the equivalent of that here.

Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself.

In other words, along with everything else.

The U.S. stock market was now a class system, rooted in speed, of haves and have-nots. The haves paid for nanoseconds; the have-nots had no idea that a nanosecond had value.

Though none of them gave a nanofuck.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.[/b]

With absolutely no exceptions of course.

Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.

And my cat was no exception.

There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters.

Exagerated, sure. But let’s decide by how much.

Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks.

Let’s file this one under, “now that he mentions it…”

How do I know you’ll keep your word? asked Coraline.
I swear it, said the other mother. I swear it on my own mother’s grave.
Does she have a grave? asked Coraline.
Oh yes, said the other mother. I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.

Sounds trustworthy to me.

People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.

“In their head”, for example.

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

It took me as long as I had known him to get rid of all of his words.[/b]

So, how long before you get rid of all mine?

I brought the birdcages to the windows.
I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages.
I poured the fish down the drain.
I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars.
I released the insects onto the street.
And the reptiles.
And the mice.
I told them, Go.
All of you.
Go.
And they went.
And they didn’t come back.

Right, like they’d know how.

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.

Like that settles anything.

In the end I was the clay and she was the sculptor, I thought, it’s a shame that we have to live, but it’s a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I’d had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

Take this to mean whatever you need it to mean. Or, more likely, whatever you want it to mean.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

Wow, that can’t be good.

The difference between conceding and accepting is depression.

Well, it certainly can be that.

[b]Haruki Murakami

Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.[/b]

In other words, that tiny fraction of which most of us actually undersatand.

One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.

Of a very probable life.

Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.

Trust me: Some being considerably more empty than others.

Strange and mysterious things, though, aren’t they - earthquakes? We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being ‘down to earth’ or having their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see that it isn’t true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid.

Acts of God the lawyers call them. Now, what do you suppose that tells us about Him?

One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

Naturally as it were.

A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.

Unless you have a time machine.

[b]tiny nietzsche

postmodernism is laughing at us[/b]

And this time not just behind our backs.

Is it today yet?

Well, it is somewhere.

I just sent myself a death threat.

You know, until I get yours, Mr. Objectivist.

How nihilists are born: they don’t give a fuck

Next up: How nihilists die.

the thousand yard sartre

Not only that but no exit.

you have to have character before it can be assassinated

Can this even be trumped?