a thread for mundane ironists

[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. :wink:

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?

[b]Isaac Newton

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.[/b]

We don’t hear that a lot these days, do we?

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.

We still do hear that a lot though.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Where’s the fun in that, he thought.

Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.

On the other hand, there’s that part where simplicity ends and complexity begins.

What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.

Still, it’s quite a few drops now. But point taken.

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.

Not even Einstein figured that part out.

[b]George Bernard Shaw

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.[/b]

Right, he thought, keep telling yourself that.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

Have you found mine yet?

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

I don’t know about art, but that is definitely true about music. And it doesn’t even need to be good music.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

And, as with most such things, we’re stuck in the middle of it.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Tell us about it, right?

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.

Actually, that has never really bothered me. If you get my drift.

[b]Gloria Steinem

What we’re told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question. In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides.[/b]

And, for a few, as many sides as there are people. Though only the most important ones.

I’ve noticed that great political leaders are energized by conflict.

And not just on Twitter.

The root of oppression is the loss of memory.

That’s not even in my top five.

We learn most where we know the least.

You know, if we learn it at all.

The driver, an old Irish woman, the only such cabbie I’ve ever seen, turned to us at a traffic light and said the immortal words, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!”

So that’s where it came from.

It’s important for someone who could play the game - and win - to say: ‘the game isn’t worth shit.’

True, but you still have to play it.

[b]Adam Phillips

The only satisfactions available are the satisfactions of reality, which are themselves frustrating.[/b]

When they are within reach at all.

In Freud’s story our possibilities for satisfaction depend upon our capacity for frustration; if we can’t let ourselves feel our frustration – and, surprisingly, this is a surprisingly difficult thing to do – we can’t get a sense of what it is we might be wanting, and missing, of what might really give us pleasure.

Let’s file this [as some will] under “mumbo-jumbo”. Or [as others will] under “psycho-babble”.

Believing in religion is like believing that adulthood is the solution to childhood.

Or [of course] that dying is the solution to living.

The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.

And in fact [more often than not] their Art isn’t.

Finding hate-objects may be every bit as essential as finding love-objects, but if one can tolerate some of one’s badness – meaning recognize it as yours – then one can take some fear out of the world.

This only works though when you understand what it means.

Everything depends on what we would rather do than change.

For example, how many people here have I changed?

[b]Will Rogers

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket.[/b]

Let us know if you can buy twice as much.

takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.

Or less if you’re lucky.

Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.

Of course back then they didn’t have Don Trump around to drain the swamp.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

The rest is for you to figure out.

The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so that’s the problem.

And I’ll bet it’s only gotten worse since.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re actually paying for.

On the other hand, somebody’s getting it, right?

[b]Thucydides

You should punish in the same manner those who commit crimes with those who accuse falsely.[/b]

Let’s figure out how that might work here.

When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.

Never in other words. Not unlike justice here today.

War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.

Let’s file this one under, “tell us something we don’t already know”.

When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.

That would be most of us by and large.

Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.

Or certainly close enough.

In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action. Their enemies, on the contrary, contemptuous and confident in their ability to anticipate, thought there was no need to take by action what they could win by their brains.

In the other words, the Kids took over. And not just here.