a thread for mundane ironists

[b]John Locke

The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its Author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting![/b]

Maybe that’s why it caught on.

What worries you, masters you.

So [naturally] I do my best to make it worry you too.

Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.

Or, to put it another way, “how ought one to live?”

All wealth is the product of labor.

True, but it always sounds different when Marx says it.

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.

Like turds as it were.

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.

More and/or less connected to the acts of the body.

[b]Robert Penn Warren

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.[/b]

Let’s decide the implications of this for the present.

They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren’t any other people there wouldn’t be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

If something takes too long, something happens to you. You become all and only the thing you want and nothing else, for you have paid too much for it, too much in wanting and too much in waiting and too much in getting.

Of course we’ll need a context, won’t we?

So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving West. For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the oldfield pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

Or, if you are already there, East.

…a man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.

This and all that they’re connected to down here.

Just tell 'em you’re gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff. Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they’ll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven’s sakes, don’t try to improve their minds.

And now it’s Don Trump’s turn.

[b]Karl Popper

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.[/b]

In other words, our social creatures not theirs.

While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.

Which of course the overwhelming majority of us will promptly ignore.

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

In theory as it were.

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know; our knowledge of our ignorance. For this indeed, is the main source of our ignorance - the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Ignorance again. On the other hand, tell that to Wittgenstein and his poker.

Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world, in spite the fact that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet, responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us.

I suspect however that this will clear up absolutely nothing.

It is complete nihilism to propose laying down arms in a world where atom bombs are around. It is very simple: there is no way of achieving peace other than with weapons.

And they cost money, don’t they?

[b]Charles Darwin

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.[/b]

You know, like I’m doing here. Or is that you?

We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.

Yep, that’s the way the world is, alright, but is that the way it ought to be?

…I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope & believe what he can.

Unfortunately, that does include Kids too.

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

Another rendition: youtu.be/EXJ07w3i6L0

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

And that’s not even counting the monkey on your back.

He who understands baboons would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

Either them or chimps.

[b]P.G. Wodehouse

One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.[/b]

Duly noted.

You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with ‘Welcome’ written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.

And it’s not like I’m charging you.

I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare – or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad – who says that it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.

In other words, some things never change.

Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.

So did his reflection.

You’re one of those guys who can make a party just by leaving it. It’s a great gift.

We need more of them here, don’t we?

Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.

And those were the good days.

[b]Alexandre Dumas

I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.[/b]

In other words, once all those pesky bills are paid.

Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That’s when you shout, “Do your worst, for I will do mine!” and you will be remembered forever.

Perhaps, but most of us have, no doubt, missed our chance.

And now gentlemen, all for one, one for all - that is our motto, is it not?

Great, another Commie. On the other hand…

Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me – indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm – and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.

…if only to put it all in perspective.

But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues? Maximilien asked.
Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.

Let’s file this one under, “touché!”

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.

Death and misfortune too.

[b]Shirley Jackson

You never know what you are going to want until you see it clearly.[/b]

For example, if you ever do.

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.

I know what you’re thinking: dasein.
Sure, maybe.

I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime.

Trust me: Fathers too.

Everything is worse…if you think something is looking at you.

That or better.

Now we are going to have a new noise, Eleanor thought, listening to the inside of her head; it is changing. The pounding had stopped, as though it had proved ineffectual, and there was now a swift movement up and down the hall, as of an animal pacing back and forth with unbelievable impatience, watching first one door and then another, alert for a movement inside, and there was again the little babbling murmur which Eleanor remembered; Am I doing it? She wondered quickly, is that me? And heard the tiny laughter beyond the door, mocking her.

Clearly, the part “inside our head” can be a motherfucker.

Everything that makes the world like it is now will be gone. We’ll have new rules and new ways of living. Maybe there’ll be a law not to live in houses, so then no one can hide from anyone else, you see.

Or, to put it another way, the more things change the more they’ll stay exactly the same. Unless of course [this time] that’s wrong.

[b]Karl Marx

Merely quantitative differences, beyond a certain point, pass into qualitative changes.[/b]

In manifestos for example.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Or something approximating that.

These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Yep, that’s how it works, alright. If not all the more so today.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — bourgeoisie and proletariat.

No, really, that’s how it basically once was.

Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand.

Indeed, and today it just happens to be Trumpworld.

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

Some for the better, some for the worse.

[b]Stephen Fry

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word “stone” for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. “I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent,” oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it.[/b]

Trust me: dasein is in there somewhere. Wittgenstein too.

Knowing those things are going to kill you, she said, and still you do it.
How differently I might behave, Tom said, if immortality were an option.

How might we all, eh?

I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language.

Indeed, like when to us your and when to use you’re. Right, Turd? Let them do all the work.

If I had been psychopathic enough to feel no remorse or religious enough to believe in redemption through a divine outside agency, perhaps I should have been happier; as it was I had neither the consolation that I was free of guilt, nor the conviction that I could ever be forgiven.

That’s more or less normal now of course.

We keep our insignificant blemishes so that we can blame them for our larger defects.

Obviously: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn’t pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts.

Besides, could Amadeus do this: youtu.be/My2FRPA3Gf8

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.” Don DeLillo[/b]

And now of course we can text it.

“All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.” Max Weber

Of course he never actually called this “dasein”.

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”Thomas Pynchon

And not just the fascists.

“I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife.” Kurt Gödel

You can’t help but wonder if he believes that now.

“Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.” Kurt Gödel

Clearly either and/or neither one.

“The mob is the mother of tyrants.” Diogenes

Their mob in other words.

[b]Carson McCullers

Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.[/b]

Or, as likely as not, the other way around.
Well, if you know what I mean.

Any form of art can only develop by means of single mutations by individual creators. If only traditional conventions are used an art will die, and the widening of an art form is bound to seem strange at first, and awkward. Any growing thing must go through awkward stages. The creator who is misunderstood because of his breach of convention may say to himself, 'I seem strange to you, but anyway I am alive.

Or sometimes, sure, it’s all just bullshit.

I wish I was somebody else except me.

Trust me: except me too.

But now no music was in her mind. That was a funny thing. It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go - but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time . . . She wanted to stay in the inside room but she didn’t know how. It was like the inside room was locked somewhere away from her. A very hard thing to understand.

The inside room. Wow. Just the thought of it…

But you haven’t never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don’t love and don’t have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined.

At this point, he thought, I’ll take my chances.

Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing.

But then of course there’s Sisyphus.

[b]Liane Moriarty

You could try as hard as you could to imagine someone else’s tragedy—drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall—but nothing truly hurts until it happens to you.[/b]

You’d think that would go without saying.

It wasn’t logical, but the better you knew someone, the more blurry they became. The accumulation of facts made them disappear.

And you can take that to the mirror.

Did anyone really know their child? Your child was a little stranger, constantly changing, disappearing and reintroducing himself to you. New personality traits could appear overnight.

The post-modern child she means.

Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else.

Not anymore, right?

There were worse things to be than sexist. For example, you could be the sort of person who pinched your fingers together while using the words “teeny weeny.”

We’ll need a context of course.

None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have, and maybe should have taken.

Though some will think about that constantly.

[b]Nikos Kazantzakis

Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.[/b]

You know, if that’s your thing.

You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.

You can even call it art.

Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’
Which of us was right, boss?

Or: Which of them is wrong?

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all is not to have one.

Mine are over there, stacked in the corner.

All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven’t the time to write, and all those who have the time don’t live them! D’you see?

Here of course it’s crystal clear.

You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me.
Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, If you had to betray your master, would you do it?
Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, No, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.

See how ridiculous religion can get?

[b]Jeanette Winterson

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things you must risk it.[/b]

You know, if you dare.

Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l’oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people’s psychology with my own.

Fortunately [or unfortunately] that’s all quite normal.

There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what’s dead. It won’t complain.

You tell me: Is that good to know?

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

And not just Nazis.

There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.

So, Mr. Objectivist, do you?

It’s only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself.

Unless of course it’s the other way around.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.[/b]

Actually, I thought that my own were true sentences. The publishers did not.

Then there is the other secret. There isn’t any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

Unless of course even he didn’t grasp it.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

That tells us just enough to imagine that we know what it means.

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?

In fact why did they make the sea itself so cruel? Or the land for that matter.

My big fish must be somewhere.

Probably right around the corner from your one true love.

The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals.

Tell that to the folks at PETA.

[b]Bernard Malamud

There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go–if there are no doors or windows–he walks through a wall.[/b]

Of course it takes a lot of practice.

Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?

Or whether to look at all.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

If only in an essentially absurd and meaningless world.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Now more than ever for example.

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

If only from the cradle to the grave.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

On the other hand, that’s not always easy to prove.

[b]David Byrne

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they’re singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that.[/b]

That explains why so many actors want to be musicians. What explains why so many musicians want to be actors?

Facts just twist the truth around.

Much as when truth just twists the fact around.

This kind of compartmentalizing—separating one’s livelihood from one’s social aspirations—is part of the reason David Koch, the hidden hand behind a lot of ultraconservatives and, reportedly, the Tea Party movement in the United States, transforms himself into a respected arts patron by funding a theater at Lincoln Center, or why at Swiss bank that helps U.S. depositors avoid paying taxes generously supports symphony halls and the ballet. It’s almost as if there are moral scales, and by tossing some loot on one side, you can balance out the precarious situation your reputation might be getting into on the other.

That’s how it works alright.

You might say that the universe plays the blues.

You might all the more when it shits on you.

It seemed as if Muzak had sucked the soul out of the songs, but in fact they had created something entirely new, something close to what Satie imagined: furniture music, music that was clearly a useful and (to their subscribers) functional part of the environment, there to induce calm and tranquility in their shops and offices.

Well, it could be true.

Around 1900, according to music writer Alex Ross, classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.2 One was expected to sit immobile and listen with rapt attention. Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and opera houses.

Well, it could be true.

[b]Alan Moore

Isn’t it strange how life turns into melodrama?[/b]

More to the point, why do they let it?

I’ve come to the conclusion that what superheroes might be — in their current incarnation, at least — is a symbol of American reluctance to involve themselves in any kind of conflict without massive tactical superiority.

That’s what Don Trump is for. To fuck that up too.

Yes, of course, the whole idea is utterly inane, but to let its predictable inanities blind you to its truly fabulous and breathtaking aspects is to do both oneself and the genre a disservice.

One genre in particular: objectivism

The real curriculum is punctuality, obedience and the acceptance of monotony, those skills we shall require later in life. Oblique aversion therapy to cure us of our thirst for information, and condition us so that thereafter we forge an association between indolence and pleasure. We confuse rebellion with a hairstyle.

And [these days] not just in the red states.

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.

Or at least free to think that we are.

You have waged bitter and undeclared war upon the green, gutting the rain forests, mile after mile, day after day, but know this: the war has come home! It is man’s turn to embrace the scythe.

Or so they keep telling us.

[b]Existential Comics

No, the revolution will not be televised. But it will sure as hell be tweeted about.[/b]

You know, when it actually comes around.

Looking for a fun new hobby this Spring? Try agitating class consciousness among the proletariat to build a militant labor movement.

In Russia for example.

Socrates: “all I know is I know nothing.”
Protagoras: “but don’t you also know that you know you know nothing?”
Socrates: “dude fuck off.”

The very first language game.

Remember, it is actually legal to punch a nihilist in the face.

Indeed, and around here it is more or less obligatory.

I once pushed a fat man in front of a trolley in Vegas, just to watch him die.

Yes, even this is beyond good and evil.

What does it mean to be a philosopher today? Well, it means you are something like twice as wise as the average Joe. Maybe even three times.

Remember when this was actually true?

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.[/b]

Unless of course it’s even more mysterious than that.

And so it was when anyone tried to speak: their minds would become tangled in remembrance. Words became floods of thought with no beginning or end, and would drown the speaker before he could reach the life raft of the point he was trying to make. It was impossible to remember what one meant, what, after all of the words, was intended.

No, this really can happen.

Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because.

Right, like that will actually work.
Well, anyway, it didn’t work for me.

We spent our lives making livings.

Clearly, some better than others. Of course, it’s all rigged though isn’t it?

Isn’t it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we’re doing what were doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?

That will never catch on, right?

And here I am, instead of there. I’m sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won’t be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?

And this is all before the part about falling over into the abyss that is oblivion.