a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Philip Larkin

Originality is being different from oneself, not others.[/b]

Anyone here actually accomplished this?

I can’t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

This can’t possibly be true, right?

Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.

Yes, but that too shall pass.

In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.

I have never loved. And [to the best of my knowledge] I have never been loved.
Though not much beyond that can I go.

Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It’s terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can’t see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by, and nothing is done. It isn’t as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn’t: it’s just a waste.

I would like to believe that this is true.
Though not much beyond that can I go.

Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

I’ll explain this if you want me to.

[b]Neil Gaiman

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.[/b]

Just not when you die, right?

Normally, in anything I do, I’m fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.

Yep, even for philosophers.

You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate… It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves…You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and…

…and, sure, all the other shit that has ever been said about it.

You know how is it when you love someone? And the hard part, the bad part, the Jerry Springer Show part is that you never stop loving someone. There’s always a piece of them in your heart.

Does Springer know that?

This is a work of fiction. Still, given an infinite number of possible worlds, it must be true on one of them. And if a story set in an infinite number of possible worlds is true in one of them, then it must be true in all of them. So maybe, it’s not as fictional as we think.

So, is this applicable to ILP?

I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.

You know, being optimistic.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

A philosopher must appear to…
18: love Sartre
22: grasp Hegel
26: admire Quine
30: accept that it’s fair banking pays better than philosophy[/b]

Anyone here actually in sync with this? Because I don’t seem to be. At all.

Your childhood ends when you stop being paranoid that someone will read what you’re writing and start praying that at least one person will.

You know, and then you become famous for it.

Aristotle: A = A
Fichte: I = I
Marx: C-M-C, M-C-M
Frege: ⊢∀x∃F[F(x)]
Russell: [p, ξ, N(ξ)]
Lacan: $<>a
Nietzsche: LOL
Beckett: LMAO

All the rest of us: ROFLMAO

In dark times put your faith in
Kant: reason
Hegel: dialectics
Schopenhauer: the certainty of doom
Nietzsche: a lockbox & throw away the key.

So, what is it today…don’t forget to vote?

Philosophy is blind to its
Descartes: own premises
Kant: own premises
Hegel: own premises
Marx: own premises
Nietzsche: own non-existence

Still, there’s no telling what any of them think about it now.

The human condition is shaped by
Sade: a death drive
Nietzsche: a death drive
Freud: a death drive
Žižek: a need for frequent flyer upgrades

Anyone here able to explain this?

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

What is suffering? I’m not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans — small and large, crude and multifaceted — that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at.[/b]

In other words, under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever is it ever morally appropriate to, among other things, consume animals. You know, coming from him.

You do not have to utter anything you do not want to utter, I told her, and she said, Then I would never utter another word again. You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do. Then I would never do anything again.

In a perfect world as it were.

As long as I am thinking, I am alive.

In other words [obviously], for better or for worse.

Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in front of One’s Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.

Let’s add a few hundred more.

Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!

Like [for most of them] you can actually tell the two apart.

It hurts me when you do not want to hurt me.

It must be a sex thing, he thought.

[b]Terry Pratchett

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.[/b]

Provided of course that this is actually true.

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

Especially the crowds here.

The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

And [one suspects] not just on this planet.

Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

What then, Mr. Philosopher?

There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.

Of course he’s just paraphrasing me. Sort of.

In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

And that’s every fucking cat that has ever lived.

[b]George Bernard Shaw

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature![/b]

Actually, that’s quite common.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

Actually, that’s quite common.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Of course no one really knows where to draw the line. Not even those who insist that they do.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

Indeed, there was even a class struggle back then.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

Let’s explain this.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Let’s explain this.

[b]Joseph Heller

I’m not running away from my responsibilities. I’m running to them. There’s nothing negative about running away to save my life.[/b]

Don’t expect them to buy this though.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

Does anyone here know the right answer?

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

Yes, that includes Kids too.

When I was a kid, Orr replied, I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek.
A minute passed. Why? Yossarian found himself forced to ask finally.
Orr tittered triumphantly. Because they’re better than horse chestnuts… When I couldn’t get crab apples, Orr continued, I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn’t matter a bit.
Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks? Yossarian asked again. That’s what I asked.
Because they’ve got a better shape than horse chestnuts, Orr answered. I just told you that.
Why, swore Yossarian at him approvingly, you evil-eyed, mechanically aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?
I didn’t, Orr said, walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab applies in my cheeks. When I couldn’t get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.

Sure, we have our fair share of Orrs here too.
In fact, let’s actually name them.

I used to get a big kick out of saving people’s lives. Now I wonder what the hell’s the point, since they all have to die anyway.
Oh, there’s a point, all right, Dunbar assured him.
Is there? What’s the point?
The point is to keep them from dying as long as you can.
Yeah, but what’s the point, since they all have to die anyway?
The trick is not to think about that.
Never mind the trick. What the hell’s the point?
Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. Who the hell knows.

Truth be told, most things are like this, aren’t they?

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
Pain? Lieutenant Shiesskopf’s wife pounced upon the word victoriously. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.
And who created the dangers? Yossarian demanded. Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead?
People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes right in the middle of their foreheads.
They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony, don’t they?

Of course these things never do get settled.

[b]Existential Comics

Optimist: the glass is half full.
Pessimist: the glass is half empty.
Communist: the bourgeoisie robbed the noble worker of half his glass![/b]

You know, if there are still any Communists around.

And then Jacques Derrida was like, “everything is just opinions and stuff”, which created Postmodernism and destroyed society as we know it.

All that meme shit, right Satyr?

Freedom is:
Hume: acting according to the will.
Mill: the lack of constraints.
Kant: always following all the rules, surprisingly enough.

No, really, what is freedom?

Imagine a world where millions paid to watch the greatest intellectuals in a mental boxing match: rational debate.

In other words, Mr. Objectivist knocked out in the first round. A TKO probably.

[b]Things that keep the existential dread at bay:

1. Love
2. Art
3. Friendship
4. Passionately arguing over the most pointless shit imaginable[/b]

And [admittedly] not just the Kids.

Epistemology in:
Germany: the thing-in-itself is unknowable
France: knowledge is socially constructed
America: the customer is always right

And even when he’s wrong he can always be pardoned.

[b]Sarah Waters

I barely knew I had skin before I met you.[/b]

I wonder [of course] if anyone had ever thought that of me.

And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.

It never really works like that, does it?

Why is it we can never love the people we ought to?

And who the hell might they be, he thought.

Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters’ stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist’s.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone do that here?

Some things are so frightful that a bit of madness is the only sane response. You know that, don’t you?

Oh, yeah. But it’s always easier said than done. Or almost always.

Even ashes are a part of your freedom.

Not that you will know it at the time.

[b]Jasmine Warga

We’re suicidal, not innumerate.[/b]

But, sure, it’s possible to be both.

You’re like a gray sky. You’re beautiful, even though you don’t want to be.

For some though, gray is our favorite color.

Don’t you ever think about that? What if this isn’t the end and we just go on to a place even worse than this one?

I’ll let you know if I do. You do the same, okay?

But just because it’s cowardly doesn’t guarantee it’s going to be easy.

The part that is often overlooked.

Guidance counselors always love to say, ‘Just think positively,’ but that’s impossible when you have this thing inside of you, strangling every ounce of happiness you can muster.

Like the faithful here telling you to “just believe”. That way if you don’t it’s always your own damn fault.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the energy of the universe. And if energy can’t ever be created or destroyed, only transferred, what do you think happens to people’s energy once they die?

It goes into one of the other universes.
Maybe.

[b]Malcolm Gladwell

Character isn’t what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn’t a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.[/b]

Sounds [more or less] like an existential contraption to me.

You can’t concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What’s gonna happen if it doesn’t go right?”

On the other hand, sometimes that is more or less beyond our control.

Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way. I think that approach is a mistake, and if we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgements. We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that — sometimes — we’re better off that way.

I’ll accept yours half way if you’ll accept mine.

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.

If not out and out toppled.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave.

That and who they can pardon.

I feel I change my mind all the time. And I sort of feel that’s your responsibility as a person, as a human being – to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you’re not thinking.

The sheer gall of suggesting that. Right, Mr. Objectivist?

[b]André Gide

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.[/b]

Depending on their options of course. And yours.

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.

But point taken.

The color of truth is grey.

Dark grey as likely as not.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

This sounds like it either may or may not be true. Anyone here care to cite an example.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

Let’s see if we can all agree that’s a perfect description of Don Trump.

Everything’s already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.

Oh, yeah, that’ll work.

[b]Roland Barthes

Today, information: pulverized, nonhierarchized, dealing with everything: nothing is protected from information and at the same time nothing is open to reflection → Encyclopedias are impossible → I would say: the more information grows, the more knowledge retreats and therefore the more decision is partial (terroristic, dogmatic) → “I don’t know,” “I refuse to judge”: as scandalous as an agrammatical sentence: doesn’t belong to the language of the discourse. Variations on the “I don’t know.” The obligation to “be interested” in everything that is imposed on you by the world: prohibition of noninterest, even if provisional . . . .[/b]

This may well be the mother of all “general assessments”. In fact, I dare someone to explain it.

It is my desire I desire, and the loved being is no more than its tool.

True more often than not. But it’s probably best to just keep it to yourself.

It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel.

And a postmodern novel as likely as not.

There is no sadness and no cruelty in that gaze; it is a gaze without adjectives, it is only, completely, a gaze which neither judges you nor appeals to you; it posits you, implicates you; makes you exist. But this creative gesture is endless; you keep on being born, you are sustained, carried to the end of a movement which is one of infinite origin, source, and which appears in an eternal state of suspension.

Which character in which novel does this remind you of?

I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.

Or, sure, the revolutionay darkness.

There is nothing in discourse that is not to be found in a sentence.

Just not in the sentences that we write.

[b]Evelyn Waugh

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn’t end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.[/b]

Just out of curiosity, why is this important to know? Oh, and is it actually true?

Oh, why did nobody warn me? cried Grimes in agony. I should have been told. They should have told me in so many words. They should have warned me about Flossie, not about the fires of hell. I’ve risked them, and I don’t mind risking them again, but they should have told me about marriage. They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children.

Obviously: You’ve either been there or you haven’t.

I haven’t been to sleep for over a year. That’s why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn’t sleep.

Trust me, for some, this is not in the least bit funny.

Comparisons are odious.

Compared to what?

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

I wonder if it is still that way today.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

Personally, I don’t see it catching on.

[b]The Dead Author

Libertarian: someone who is too young to work.
Conservative: someone who is too old to work.
Neoliberal: someone who is too rich to work.[/b]

On the other hand, there can never be too many stereotypes.

Everybody is interested but nobody cares.

Not much [these days] that isn’t applicable to.

Žižek, 2016: Trump will cause revolution in America.
Reality, 2017: Americans miss George W. Bush.

No, really.

What is fascism?
Freud: Death.
Benjamin: Art.
Arendt: Total.
Trotsky: Capitalist.
Hayek: Socialist.
Adorno: Heidegger.
Orwell: Unclear.

Surely, this can be trumped.

Someone drove his Dodge into group of people and Trump’s response was to praise himself for bringing manufacturing back to America.

Yeah, it might be true.

Schrödinger’s Nazi: claiming that they’re laughable basement-dwelling losers while maintaining that they’re a threat to public safety.

Or close enough?

[b]Mary Roach

One young woman’s tribute describes unwrapping her cadaver’s hands and being brought up short by the realization that the nails were painted pink. “The pictures in the anatomy atlas did not show nail polish”, she wrote. “Did you choose the color? Did you think that I would see it? I wanted to tell you about the inside of your hands. I want you to know you are always there when I see patients. When I palpate an abdomen, yours are the organs I imagine. When I listen to a heart, I recall holding your heart”.[/b]

Let’s file this one under, “if you say so”.

Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger.

In other words, lots and lots of taboos.

The point is that no matter what you choose to do with your body when you die, it won’t, ultimately, be very appealing. If you are inclined to donate yourself to science, you should not let images of dissection or dismemberment put you off. They are no more or less gruesome, in my opinion, than ordinary decay or the sewing shut of your jaws via your nostrils for a funeral viewing.

Thank God then for Immortality and Salvation.

I began thinking about my skeleton, this solid, beautiful thing inside me that I would never see.

Give or take the occasional compound fracture.

I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, “I felt at one with the divine source of creation.”

Not unlike the things that folks say here. And, yes, they too expect to be taken seriously.

In the words of the late Francis Crick…You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Including [one would assume] her writing it and you and I reading it.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

Atlas said, Must my future be so heavy?
Hera said, That is your present, Atlas. Your future hardens every day, but it is not fixed.
How can I escape my fate?
You must choose your destiny.[/b]

Either that or shrug.

Something as straightforward as a difference could lead to something as complex as a breakdown.

In other words, a normal day at the Oval Office.

Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip you on the stairs, wake you at night-time. A black hole sucks up its surroundings and even light never escapes. Better then to ask no questions? Better then to be a contented pig than an unhappy Socrates?

Obviously, yes. Clearly, no. Though, quite possibly, maybe.

Creative work bridges time because the energy of art is not time-bound. If it were we should have no interest in the art of the past, except as history or documentary. But our interest in art is our interest in ourselves both now and always. Here and forever. There is a sense of the human spirit as always existing. This makes our death bearable. Life + art is a boisterous communion/communication with the dead. It is a boxing match with time.

Otherwise summed up as “human-all-too-human” art.

It’s the clichés that cause the trouble.

For example, “Don’t forget to vote!”

Human beings often display emotions they do not feel. And they often feel emotions they do not display.

In other words, on purpose.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world–or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin.[/b]

Boiling it all down to dasein. But that’s just me.

I don’t know who made the laws; But I know there ain’t no law that you got to go hungry.

On the other hand, there are laws against stealing.

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can’t expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party’s over and you are with your hostess now.
I’m getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.

He wrote the book, sure; but then walked the talk.

Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Then he added, Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish wonderful though he is.

Just out of curiosity, if you were God, what would you do?

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

Never once in my entire life have I felt like this. You know, so far.

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows.

In other words, not just icebergs.

[b]Philip Larkin

I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It’s very strange how often strong feelings don’t seem to carry any message of action.[/b]

You know, if you’re lucky.

I’m terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I ‘do’ anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time’s - it doesn’t of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn’t matter if you’ve done anything or not.

Let’s be charitable and call it a mood.

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide.

In other words, fuck you.

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

And that’s right around the corner from desperation.
But don’t get me started.

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.

And then every three years after. Excluding Antarctica of course. Well, for most of them.

You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like ‘Finnegans Wake’ and Picasso.

Let’s continue in the same vein. Or, sure, go even farther.

[b]Neil Gaiman

For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.[/b]

Though not just in the Capital Letter World.

It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.

Or: It is a fool’s prerogative to believe truths that no one else will utter.

Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers.

Among other things, let’s examine the implications of that. You know, for all practical purposes.

It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill.

Of course that takes some of us to this: the human spirit.
Whatever that might possibly be.

Liberty, boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.

And even then, he boomed louder, only in the best of all possible worlds.

His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.

An uberboy in the making.