Bianco Luno is an alter ego used by Seattle philosopher Victor Munuz. The aphorisms above are taken from notebooks written in the 1990s. I came into contact with him through a letter exchange with Olivia, a friend of his.
I am merely quoting from the notebooks. This is not an actual exchange between us. It is just me reacting to what I construe to be a fellow ironist. And how he would react to that I cannot say.
If you wish to explore his thinking today [and in the manner in which philosophy is pursued academically] he can be found at the Seattle Analytic Philosophy Club. Here:
I understood this, in general terms. I knew it was you quoting and reacting. I used his name in the post just to show I knew I was not responding to you.
i actually went to that site and joined earlier. I haven’t gone back and posted yet. I didn’t find a place I wanted to jump in.
I think what we’re up against, Ambig, are the classicists. They’re up against what philosophy promised them what they could be. As Rorty points out: they want something that transcends history. We, on the other hand, simply want to be part of history. We both claim nihilism (me as the nihilistic perspective, you as just plain nihilism).
You think, maybe, that we are right now in the continental D-day on the beaches of the analytic?
The analytic, as it is now, is owned by global Capitalism.
Compassion.
How could Jesus have imagined asking that of us?[/b]
Not only that but dying for our sins hasn’t been all that effectual either. Maybe it is time for Him to come back.
Grist for your mill.
I have sexual feelings for the mentally retarded women I work with, for most young girls, some older women and even certain species of plants, however, my homosexual development was early somewhat arrested, and animals yet don’t do much in that regard for me.
Serial killers obsess me; I catch myself, often unawares, picturing people I pass on the street in all sorts of colorful agony.
I ponder how very adventitious the distinction is between eating and killing, mishap and murder, the private parts of females and public parks…
Put me in Hitler’s place and it probably wouldn’t be Jews—but I would think of some group…
No confession intended.
That more than anything galls you: that I should think that thus I am fully qualified to speak of you.
I’d give you some grist myself but any number of folks here have already made it clear they are qualified to speak of me. Even for me.
Among locally oppressed groups, blacks, animals and the retarded are least suited to this status; Mexicans, women and forests most suited.
You oppress us further by lumping us together.[/b]
Least suited, most suited—locally. What of those not locally? Can it be the other way around? And forests everywhere are oblivious to the predilections of oppression. Or at least the ones locally appear to be.
“You will be misunderstood.”
How is that possible?
Upon first opening its eyes, will a child accept everything it perceives, or does it mistake reality for something else?
There is no other way but literally to take me.
Truths are inveterate killers; they systematically kill each other, and each kills and kills until it is killed.
The last truth is a laugh, entitled to a figure and ripe for misconstrual.
Let’s start here: Some will misunderstand what you mean by misunderstood. And lies will become truths for the child who does not have the capacity to reflect on the gap between words like these and worlds like those.
In any event, the dying will run out of laughs either before or after they run out of truths.
You observe, I rarely talk about ‘justice’.
Be assured, I’m not going to start now.[/b]
But, in a sense, you just did.
For all my solipsism I am remarkably unprivate.
I never confess personal sins or secrets, without having first to implicate you.
I deflect personal responsibility by declaiming our conspiracy.
In this way I can move from the smell of my own farts to the glory of God.
I am not to be trusted; I will stab you in the back the first chance I get.
But my perfume is a real lure, isn’t it?
Why do you keep coming to me?
Why are you so weak?
“From the smell of my own farts to the glory of God.”
Yet another observation I wish I had thought of first.