a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.” Marcus Aurelius[/b]

I think that perhaps I know what he means. At a distance as it were.

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.” Seneca

Of course that’s where I come in.

“No great thing is created suddenly.” Epictetus

Let alone out of nothing at all.

“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.” Julian Barnes

Yeah, I used to think that too.

“Eternity…It has nothing to do with life, I thought; it is the contrary to all life. It is something limitless, endless, a realm of death which the living must look into with horror. Was it here that I was to dwell?” Pär Lagerkvist

Let’s ask him now.

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” Seneca

If only day after day after day.

[b]D.H. Lawrence,

It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear.[/b]

Or, as others call it, free.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

True, but it still pales next to music.

One could laugh at the world better if it didn’t mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

Me, I’ll stick to snickering.

When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.

And how they abound here! Though, sure, include me among them.

But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff’s edge, like Sappho into the sea.

Or, by all means, just skip to the orgasm.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

Thank God [if there is one] that mine won’t.

[b]Diane Ackerman

Suffering took hold of me like a magic spell abolishing all differences between friends and strangers.[/b]

You either speak this language or you don’t.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Technically in other words.

Below us somewhere in the gelatinous phantasmagoria of churning blue, the whales wouldn’t be much aware of the storm.

On the other hand, they can’t hold their breath forever.

Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life a new again.

Either that or throw buckets of shadows into the light.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.

Gorgeous, right.

The idea of safety had shrunk into particles - one snug moment, then the next. Meanwhile, the brain piped fugues of worry and staged mind-theaters full of tragedies and triumphs, because unfortunately, the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, inspire creativity, and heightens the senses. Trusting one’s hunches only seems gamble if one has time for seem; otherwise the brain goes on autopilot and trades the elite craft of analysis for the best rapid insights that float up from its danger files and ancient bag of tricks.

And there it is, coming for me, coming for you.

[b]John Stuart Mill

It’s hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been one of the primary sources of progress. [/b]

That or wars.

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.

The Gods, maybe?

But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.

You worship yours, we’ll worship ours.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.

Like this can only be a good thing.

The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

Tell me that’s not the embodiment of “human all too human”.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

First, however, let’s decide once and for all who the barbarians are. And whether or not instead to simply exterminate them.

[b]Amy Chua

Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.[/b]

Let’s note a few contexts.

Nothing is fun until you’re good at it.

So, are philosophers the exception? Let’s ask the Kids.

But just because you love something, I added to myself, doesn’t mean you’ll ever be great. Not if you don’t work. Most people stink at the things they love.

So, are philosophers the exception? Let’s ask the Kids.

As a purely mathematical fact, people who sleep less live more.

For some though [like insomniacs] in agony.

Every day that you don’t practice is a day you’re getting worse.

Okay, so how is that different from not getting better?

There are all kinds of psychological disorders in the West that don’t exist in Asia.

How about the other way around?

[b]Nein

Say what you will about February. But it’s the one month that knows when it’s time to go.[/b]

On the other hand, it does come around again and again.
Until, for each of, us one by one, it stops coming around altogether

I’m just here for the ontological uncertainty.

The teleological too.

It was the weaponizing of our discontent.

Cue Trump with the football.

I would like to thank the industry. For culture.

Pop? Pop!

You say you want a revolution. But perhaps I could interest you in a weekend.

I’d settle for Friday.

Post-human. Proto-apocalyptic. Charmingly pre-posthumous.

On the other hand, we’re all working on that too.

[b]Samuel Butler

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.[/b]

Well, maybe a few rules.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

True, but not all of them have access to credit cards.

The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.

In other words, unlike cats.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

You know, to the best of our knowledge.

All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Well, as much as you can enjoy life as a survival of the fittest.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

Bone-tired for example.

[b]Robert M. Sapolsky

Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the other factors, biological and otherwise, that fill these pages.[/b]

Thus for my purposes too.

Stress can be bad for you. We no longer die of smallpox or the plague and instead die of stress-related diseases of lifestyle, like heart disease or diabetes, where damage slowly accumulates over time. It is understood how stress can cause or worsen disease or make you more vulnerable to other risk factors. Much of this is even understood on the molecular level. Stress can even cause your immune system to abnormally target hair follicles, causing your hair to turn gray.

Thus [after reading this] adding to your stress.

Eyes often have an implicit censorious power. Post a large picture of a pair of eyes at a bus stop (versus a picture of flowers), and people become more likely to clean up litter. Post a picture of eyes in a workplace coffee room, and the money paid on the honor system triples. Show a pair of eyes on a computer screen and people become more generous in online economic games.

In other words, how can we make use of that here.

…stick your average person in a brain scanner, and show him a picture of someone of another race for only a tenth of a second. This is too fast for him to be aware of what he saw. But thanks to that anatomical shortcut, the amygdala knows . . . and activates. In contrast, show the picture for a longer time. Again the amygdala activates, but then the cognitive dlPFC does as well, inhibiting the amygdala—the effort to control what is for most people an unpalatable initial response.

No, you tell me what that means.

But consider a paper published in Science in 2008. The authors examined the relationship between math scores and sexual equality in forty countries based on economic, educational, and political indices of gender equality; the worst was Turkey, the United States was middling, and, naturally, the Scandinavians were tops. Lo and behold, the more gender equal the country, the less of a discrepancy in math scores. By the time you get to the Scandinavian countries, it’s statistically insignificant. And by the time you examine the most gender-equal country on earth at the time, Iceland, girls are better at math than boys.

No, you tell me what that means.

Look at systematic patterns of cultural variation as they pertain to the best and worst of our behaviors. Explore how different types of brains produce different culture and different types of culture produce different brains. In other words, how culture and biology coevolve.

Cue among others the assholes among us.

[b]Neil Gaiman

He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.[/b]

If only at the right time.

You know what my mum once said? said Rosie… She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied.
And this means…?
Well, she said. It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Anyone here ever tried this?

What’s it like then? asked Old Bailey. Being dead?
The marquis sighed. And then he twisted his lips up into a smile, and with a glitter of his old self, he replied, Live long enough, Old Bailey, and you can find out for yourself.

Of course we never actually do, right?

People talk about escapism as if it’s a bad thing. Once you’ve escaped, once you come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You come back to it with skills, weapons, knowledge you didn’t have before. Then you are better equipped to deal with your current reality.

For example, if it actually works out that way.

I feel like I am involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell me the rules, and who smiles all the time.

Worse: strip poker.

Actually I didn’t shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he could tell I was extremely cross.

And it’s not like that’s against the law.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

A Brief History of Deconstruction

1. (we can’t start with 1 because it bespeaks an unsustainably transparent unity)
2. (we can’t start with 2 because it implies a stable dichotomy between 1 and 1)
3. (we can’t start with 3 because it is a false figure for the dialectic)[/b]

Clearly, not brief enough.

Adorno: There is no right life in the wrong one
Bataille: There is no right life
Beckett: There is no life
Schopenhauer: No

Okay, but look where they are now.

Austrian psychoanalysis: something, something, the drives
French psychoanalysis: something, something, the real
British psychoanalysis: something, something, object-relations
American psychoanalysis: something, something, Disneyland

Or, sure, nothing, nothing.

British ethics: Respect yourself
German ethics: Respect the law
French ethics: Respect the other
American ethics: Do your worst

Though not necessarily in that order.

French philosophy: I think
British philosophy: I feel
German philosophy: I will
American philosophy: You can’t

But they can.

The German word for the realization that you’ve run out of excuses and are just going to have to sit down and write that thing.

Dasein?

[b]Leonardo da Vinci

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets.[/b]

Unless of course you count the real world.

Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame.

Like nowadays that is even possible.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

“I” demur.

He who does not value life does not deserve it.

Right, like any of us asked to be born.

I expose to men the origin of their first, and perhaps second, reason for existing.

Anyone happen to know what they are?

I know that there are numberless people who would, to satisfy a whim, destroy God and all the universe.

Really, really, REALLY think about that.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The secret to happiness is freedom…And the secret to freedom is courage.” Thucydides[/b]

Wow, what could be simpler?!

“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.” Murasaki Shikibu

Unless perhaps in the darkness you can hear them, smell them, touch them, taste them.

“Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.” Georg Wilhelm Hegel

Ours in other words not theirs.

“We think in generalities, but we live in details.” Alfred North Whitehead

That can’t be good. Or, sure, just ignore it.

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” Albert Camus

Unless of course “in your head” they are.

“Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.” Simone de Beauvoir

I know that I am.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.[/b]

Let alone philosophy.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

I’d promise not to ask him why if he’d promise not to tell me.

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.

Imagine then being inside mine.

I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.

We know where that’s going.
Don’t we?

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

One or another God as often as not.

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.

You’d think this would be common sense. But that still leaves options. Or the lack thereof.

[b]Saul D. Alinsky

Some say it’s no coincidence that the question mark is an inverted plow, breaking up the hard soil of old beliefs and preparing for the new growth.[/b]

Name one other.

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule. A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization.

What’s so funny about that?

Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation.

Yeah, about one in a million.

This is the world as it is. This is where you start.

Right, and we all agree what that is.

A free and open society is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises—which then become the start for the continuation of conflict, compromise, and on ad infinitum.

Who does this remind you of?

What the present generation wants is what all generations have always wanted—a meaning, a sense of what the world and life are—a chance to strive for some sort of order.

Cue the fucking idealists?

[b]C.G. Jung

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.[/b]

While, for some women, it’s a piece of cake.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

On the other hand, imagine him running that by Freud.

It is only the things we don’t understand that have any meaning. Man woke up in a world he did not understand, and that is why he tries to interpret it.

So, what do you think, elliptical enough?

Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact they are specialized mouthpieces of State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied.

On the other hand, come on, there are any number of configurations intertwining “I” and “we”. The real conundrum revolves around what to do about “them”.

The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.

On the other hand, come on, there are any number of configurations intertwining “the past” and “the present”. The real conundrum revolves around what to do about “the future”.

Naturally, society has an indisputable right to protect itself against arrant subjectivisms, but, in so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists.

Is there or is there not a post-modern rendition of this?

[b]Existential Comics

What is the meaning of life?
Sartre: to be free.
Camus: to rebel.
Kierkegaard: to have faith.
Nietzsche: to become yourself.
Beckett: I can’t remember, but it was something good.[/b]

Next up: What is the meaning of death?

People: “tell us, wise philosopher, what is the best government?”
Plato: “a monarchy.”
People: “really? who would be king?”
Plato: “ok, hear me out on this one…”

Probably not a true story.

[b]How to be an existentialist:

1. Drink way too much.
2. Smoke constantly.
3. Don’t get enough sleep for ten years straight.
4. Think the reason you feel shitty all the time is because you are, like, a really deep person.[/b]

Anyone here qualify?

Why study philosophy?
Greece: to live the good life.
England: to understand the world.
Germany: to change the world.
America: did u know philosophy grads have the highest average salaries of the humanities?

Spot the outlier?

Idealism: only my mind exists.
Materialism: only matter exists.
Dualism: both mind and matter exist.
Existentialism: god damnit, who cares? Can’t you see that we are going to die any second now?!

Well, that’s true, right?

An existentialist is someone who is in despair despite the fact that they are good looking.

Or maybe even rich.

[b]T.S. Eliot

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.[/b]

Yet some still wield them like hammers.

Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.

Sure, that might be true.

Do I dare Disturb the universe?

Why not? It’s not like you asked to be born.

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

Or: Where does one go from a world of despair? Somewhere on the other side of insanity.

We don’t actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.

Has that ever happened to you?

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.

That won’t last. At least not any longer than you do.

[b]Ali Smith

But news right now is like a flock of speeded-up sheep running off the side of a cliff.[/b]

Where’s Nietzsche when you actually need him?

Nothing comic isn’t serious.

Not counting knock-knock jokes of course.

So that is what history is, people and places that disappear, or are beheaded, or get damaged or nearly do, and things and places and people that get tortured and burned and so on. But this does not mean that history is not the unseen things as well.

Right, like this put’s all of that in perspective.

Maybe it’s easier to talk to someone who won’t ever actually hear what you say.

Or easier still to say nothing at all.

But now we live in a time and in a culture when mystery tends to mean something more answerable, it means a crime novel, a thriller, a drama on TV, usually one where we’ll find out - and where the whole point of reading it or watching it will be that we will find out - what happened.

True, but every once in a while [these days] it’s not a happy ending.

But I’m telling you. I swear, music. I get home, and it’s the music again. Every night I hear it playing. I don’t know what to do about it.
Have you tried dancing to it?

And then there’s always karoke.

[b]Vincent van Gogh

If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.[/b]

Little did he know…

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

If not to break it even further.

Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

Right, and who can’t tell the difference?

So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.

And bookshops actually mattered back then.

I wish they would take me as I am.

With me, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Someday death will take us to another star.

How prescient is that!!

[b]Pär Lagerkvist

Bitter, too, to be forced to acknowledge in one’s heart how little love has to do with kindness.[/b]

No one forces me to of course.

Nothing is more foreign than the world of one’s childhood when one has truly left it.

Me, I’m taking it to the grave.

No, the man said, looking past him with his empty gaze, the realm of the dead isn’t anything. But to those who have been there, nothing else is anything either.

And how ironic is that?

And they are deformed though it does not show on the outside. I live only my dwarf life. I never go around tall and smooth-featured. I am ever myself, always the same, I live one life alone. I have no other being inside me. And I recognize everything within me, nothing ever comes up from my inner depths, nothing there is shrouded in mystery. Therefore I do not fear the things which frighten them, the incoherent, the unknown, the mysterious. Such things do not exist for me. There is nothing “different” about me.

Me more than you for example.

It is incomprehensible that he should want to have these futile people here, and still more incomprehensible that he should be able to sit and listen to them and their stupid chatter. I can understand that he may occasionally listen to poets reciting their verses; they can be regarded as buffoons such as are always kept at court. They laud the lofty purity of the human soul, great events and heroic feats, and there is nothing to be said against all that, particularly if their songs flatter him. Human beings need flattery; otherwise they do not fulfill their purpose, not even in their own eyes. And both the present and the past contain much that is beautiful and noble which, without due praise, would have been neither noble nor beautiful. Above all, they sing the praises of love, which is quite as it should be, for nothing else is in such need of transformation into something different. The ladies are filled with melancholy and their breasts heave with sighs; the men gaze vaguely and dreamily into space, for they all know what it is really like and realize that this must be an especially beautiful poem.

He said rambling on and on and on.

Only the gods have many destinies and need never die. They are filled with everything and experience everything. Everything - except human happiness. That they can never know and therefore they grudge it to men. Nothing makes them so evil and cruel as that men should presume to be happy and forget them for the sake of their earthly happiness.

But not your God, right?