a thread for mundane ironists

[d63]

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.

[d63]

Think about those among us who have attempted to stuff the classical perspective down our throats.

[d63]

Whether it's about the objective, the logical, or the scientific method, it's always the best knowledge that money can buy.

Therein lies the importance of the nihilistic perspective.

[d63]

If we push this world beyond the next creative hymen,


we prove that we are more than meat-bots.


I mean think about it:





why is psychology so dead-set on proving that we are little more than meat-bots?

why was Volchok so dead set on proving it to us if he didn't think he stood something to gain?


why did Mo so desperately want to establish an objective standard of beauty?

Because corporations love a sure thing.

[d63]

The ironist,


according to Rorty,





stands against systematization.

[d63]

Sorry, ambig,


can't figure out if I'm a pragmatist or nihilist or both.


But I'm quite sure it will all work itself out.




It always does.


But we have to participate.

[d63]

Copping off of Rorty who copped off of Kuhn:


what is normal philosophy if not corporate philosophy?



We have every reason to go for abnormal philosophy.

[d63]

[d63]

Our ambition is quite different from their ambition.


And we have every reason to keep it that way.

[d63]

Anyway, Ambig,


Love ya man!



Gotta let this go.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno

Compassion.
How could Jesus have imagined asking that of us?

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.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno

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.

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.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno:

You observe, I rarely talk about ‘justice’.
Be assured, I’m not going to start now.

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.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno

History and mathematics.
Less pain per se is caused by immolating two people than by starving one.
It takes many more gassed to equal one starved.

Well, I don't know about "per se", but they all sound rather unpleasant to me.
Shall we begin our calculations then before or after __________________? [insert human atrocity of choice please].

A soft dew and the patience of eternity may overcome a "hundred-ton hammer".
How many people in the world knowingly starve themselves?
How many starve to death?
...then, who starves them?

Let's do the math...historically:

According to reliable sources, 6,000,000 children starve to death before their 5th birthday each and every year. That's 60,000,000 each decade and 600,000,000 each century.

I suspect few do so intentionally. And it's not so much who starves them as who does nothing to stop them from starving.
That's most of us. But, of course, not intentionally. For "I", the way the world works is simply overwhelming.

[Moreno]

Bianco Luno

History and mathematics.
Less pain per se is caused by immolating two people than by starving one.
It takes many more gassed to equal one starved.

Well, I don't know about "per se", but they all sound rather unpleasant to me.
Shall we begin our calculations then before or after __________________? [insert human atrocity of choice please].

A soft dew and the patience of eternity may overcome a "hundred-ton hammer".
How many people in the world knowingly starve themselves?
How many starve to death?
...then, who starves them?

Let's do the math...historically:

According to reliable sources, 6,000,000 children starve to death before their 5th birthday each and every year. That's 60,000,000 each decade and 600,000,000 each century.

I suspect few do so intentionally. And it's not so much who starves them as who does nothing to stop them from starving.
That's most of us. But, of course, not intentionally. For "I", the way the world works is simply overwhelming.

anorexia could be seen as starving onself to death. I think one could also make a case that the standard american diet is a kind of starving to death, though it tend to take decades before the incredible pain sets in.

[iambiguous]

anorexia could be seen as starving onself to death. I think one could also make a case that the standard american diet is a kind of starving to death, though it tend to take decades before the incredible pain sets in.

Intent is what counts here. Most anorexics become obsessed with being thin in a culture that values thin women and thin girls. For some, sure, the "complex" may run deeper and involve suicidal tendencies. This however is largely a reflection of dasein. But I would certainly make a distinction between anorexics here and starving children there. The 600,000,000 children who died in the 20th century had not yet reached their sixth birthday.

[Moreno]

]
Intent is what counts here. Most anorexics become obsessed with being thin in a culture that values thin women and thin girls.

It's in that culture, but that is at most one of the causes, and I don't think it is always a cause. And it is often fatal. At some point the body must be screaming that it is threatened and yet this is gone past. I can't see this as other than a willingness to potentially die rather than live without control or with more weight, etc.

For some, sure, the "complex" may run deeper and involve suicidal tendencies. This however is largely a reflection of dasein. But I would certainly make a distinction between anorexics here and starving children there.

yes.

The 600,000,000 children who died in the 20th century had not yet reached their sixth birthday.

[/quote]yes, if this group is choosing to die, we are dealing with some kind of supernatural form of choice.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno

The compunction to shield from horrifying thoughts, art-objects, substances, experiences...:small children and women...
If I didn’t feel that an eight year old ought to be introduced to pornography at the first spark of curiosity, toured through a slaughter-house as part of a school field trip, permitted to drink and drive, make free use of any mind-altering substance or medium (e.g., television) as might encourage them to dream of worse things, witness an execution or shadow an ambulance—if I might have my way and every child learn by watching its parents copulate about the beginning of its history, and curiosity only determine not just which but the order of its objects—if I expected much result from this, then I would not object to the request that my writing be more accessible.
But although I am able to vouch for its usefulness in a small chamber of my heart, I expect it everywhere else to convey back to the keen ears of haters the sympathy scrutable in the lined faces of the "innocent" and "sensitive", who alone can appreciate what horrifies and outrages; the others, who define and hoard "horror" and "outrage": poseurs all.

Is it good or is it bad that only the tiniest fraction of the world's population will read this stuff? And among them only a fraction still will be poseurs. And only a fraction still more will be moderators.

[Moreno]

Bianco Luno

The compunction to shield from horrifying thoughts, art-objects, substances, experiences...:small children and women...
If I didn’t feel that an eight year old ought to be introduced to pornography at the first spark of curiosity, toured through a slaughter-house as part of a school field trip, permitted to drink and drive, make free use of any mind-altering substance or medium (e.g., television) as might encourage them to dream of worse things, witness an execution or shadow an ambulance—if I might have my way and every child learn by watching its parents copulate about the beginning of its history, and curiosity only determine not just which but the order of its objects—if I expected much result from this, then I would not object to the request that my writing be more accessible.
But although I am able to vouch for its usefulness in a small chamber of my heart, I expect it everywhere else to convey back to the keen ears of haters the sympathy scrutable in the lined faces of the "innocent" and "sensitive", who alone can appreciate what horrifies and outrages; the others, who define and hoard "horror" and "outrage": poseurs all.

Is it good or is it bad that only the tiniest fraction of the world's population will read this stuff? And among them only a fraction still will be poseurs. And only a fraction still more will be moderators.

This is not really a response to your question, but a response to this guy....

Some of his wording is interesting and sometimes I get a new angle on an old issue, but
he seems to be posing as something.

something a little Nietscziean, someone likely to be rejected and projected on. A bit of an outsider, I tell it like it is swagger
that so far is not justified by insights.

[iambiguous]

This is not really a response to your question, but a response to this guy....

Some of his wording is interesting and sometimes I get a new angle on an old issue, but
he seems to be posing as something.

As this:

As logician the imperative is to labor the obvious; as poet to make it cryptic.

At SAPC, the logician appears; here the poet. And that is because here less is obvious.

Or so it seems to me.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno

While I do not easily suffer from an -ist attitude, I am susceptible to the autistic disorders that assail estranged existences.

Do the autistic assail an estranged existence? It would seem they make these distinctions from an entirely predictable point of view.

I used to notice more.
My sight is not as impressed as before by what is commonly in focus for us.
I see patterns pretty clearly.
Answers crowd my mind before a single genuine question can enter.
Before the fierce white light cauterizes her retina and renders her sensible, a mad person must cup her hands to her eyes to hear.

Or cup her hands to her ears to see. However, what does she cup to her mind to think? And wasn't it Emile Cioran who marveled at Nietzsche's luck to have died insane?

[Moreno]

This is not really a response to your question, but a response to this guy....

Some of his wording is interesting and sometimes I get a new angle on an old issue, but
he seems to be posing as something.

As this:

As logician the imperative is to labor the obvious; as poet to make it cryptic.

At SAPC, the logician appears; here the poet. And that is because here less is obvious.

Or so it seems to me.

Sure, I can enjoy cryptic. Or perhaps ambiguous writing, or even polyphonic or multi-interpretable. I can enjoy that. It's just he seems self-infatuated without the necessary depth. I don't get much new, yet, from him.

I won't continue what are basically value judgments without argument, but could you give me an example of something from him that was cryptic, but you felt was very useful or insightful?

[iambiguous]

Sure, I can enjoy cryptic. Or perhaps ambiguous writing, or even polyphonic or multi-interpretable. I can enjoy that. It's just he seems self-infatuated without the necessary depth. I don't get much new, yet, from him.

Maybe, but you might as well argue over what a particular poem or song "means". Sometimes words circling around and around something is just the authors way of suggesting there's no place to land. The words nudge you more toward a subjunctive reflection on the world. And that is as useful as it needs to be as far as I am concerned.

For the other stuff, you can always flip over to the SAPC. For me though he is less effective communicating there than here. And back then this guy was rather contemptuous of me.

[iambiguous]

Bianco Luno

A little bit of sexism.
"They don’t need your sympathy, they need your humiliation.
Learn to crush all that makes you most male.
How can you maintain your dignity in the face of that? Your dignity is the very thing in the way.
Be crushed and you shall crush, and you must crush what is male in them to have yours vindicated.
This can only be achieved by a kind of spiritual self-violence, though they—being what they are: averse to sudden movements—will not stand for this.
But always remember, be courteous, for even if you fail at the bigger task (and you will), if you do this at least, you will be well thought of.
And isn’t this what you want? No? Tell me, you pathetic creature, you."

Is this quoted in first person, second person, third person?...singular, plural?...past, present, future? Or is it a biological fact in which philosophical speculation is quite beside the point?

[Moreno]

Maybe, but you might as well argue over what a particular poem or song "means". Sometimes words circling around and around something is just the authors way of suggesting there's no place to land. The words nudge you more toward a subjunctive reflection on the world. And that is as useful as it needs to be as far as I am concerned.

But this is a defense of cryptic. I have no problem with ambiguity and crypticness, per se. I just don't see much depth.

I can read a good poem with a lot of ambiguity or layers and then I can read a bad poem with the same things. The better poems must handle the language in beautiful ways, but they are also more likely to stimulate my mind in ways the crypticness of a poor poem will not.

So the issue is not degree of clarity. The issue for me is, does the guy have anything interesting in his cryptic language?

What have you found that was useful, profound, deep in some of his cryptic writings? What did it mean to you? What did it do?

For the other stuff, you can always flip over to the SAPC. For me though he is less effective communicating there than here. And back then this guy was rather contemptuous of me.

[/quote]I am not surprised he expressed contempt. That seems to be part of his persona and or real personality. I would hope that someone who could communicate valuably cryptically could also do that with clarity.