Thanks for the contribution. Sort of.
[b]Svetlana Alexievich
The body is a vessel for the soul. A home. According to Muslim custom, a body must be buried as quickly as possible, preferably the same day, as soon as Allah has taken the soul. In the house of the deceased, we hang a scrap of white cloth from a nail, and it stays there for forty days. At night, the soul flies home and perches on the cloth. It listens to familiar voices and feels glad. Then it flies back.[/b]
Who thinks this shit up?!
You’re going to say that you’re a tractor specialist, I said to Slyunkov, he’d been a director of a tractor factory, and that you didn’t understand what radiation could do, but I’m a physicist, I know what the consequences are. But from his point of view, what was this? Some professor, a bunch of physicists, were going to tell the Central Committee what to do? No, they weren’t a gang of criminals. It was more like a conspiracy of ignorance and obedience.
Of course here in America that sort of thing couldn’t possibly be true.
The mysterious Russian soul… Everyone wants to understand it. They read Dostoevsky: what’s behind that soul of theirs? Well, behind our soul there’s just more soul.
Does that sound like anyone’s soul here?
Our people need freedom like a monkey needs glasses. No one would know what to do with it.
Let’s run this by the monkeys first.
So…Well…Life went by. The only thing money can’t buy is time. Weep before God or not, you can’t buy it. That’s just the way it is.
Of course money can sure as shit prolong it. Just as a lack of money can sure as shit curtail it.
People always want to live, even during wartime. You’ll learn a lot from living through a war…There is no beast worse than man.
In other words [here and there] not unlike peacetime.
[b]Robert Musil
Slowed down by a sense of hopelessness in all his decisions and movements, he suffered from bitter sadness, and his incapacity solidified into a pain that often sat like a nosebleed behind his forehead the moment he tried to make up his mind to do something.[/b]
What folks like us call a normal day.
We sometimes have a flash of understanding that amounts to the insight of genius, and yet it slowly withers, even in our hands - like a flower. The form remains, but the colours and the fragrance are gone.
I get this, he thought. And in a way I suspect you never will.
For him morality was neither conformism nor philosophic wisdom, but living the infinite fullness of possibilities. He believed in morality’s capacity for intensification, in stages of moral experience, and not merely, as most people do, in stages of moral understanding, as if it were something cut-and-dried for which people were just not pure enough. He believed in morality without believing in any specific moral system. Morality is generally understood to be a sort of police regulations for keeping life in order, and since life does not obey even these, they come to look as if they were really impossible to live up to and accordingly, in this sorry way, not really an ideal either. But morality must not be reduced to this level. Morality is imagination.
Indeed, and what do you imagine it is?
People were always chasing after some leader or another, and stumbling from one superstition to the next, cheering His Majesty one day and giving the most disgusting incendiary speeches in Parliament the next, and none of it ever amounted to anything in the end!
On the contrary, it amounted to any number of completely contradictory things.
She liked to convey that she was well acquainted with the smartness and the manners of the stylish world, but that she had got beyond all that sort of thing. She was fond of declaring that she did not care a snap of the fingers for that, or for herself, or indeed for anything whatsoever. On this account, and in spite of her blowsiness, she enjoyed a certain degree of respect among the peasant lads of the neighbourhood. True, they spat when they spoke of her, and felt obliged to treat her with even more coarseness than other girls, but at bottom they were really mightily proud of this ‘damned slut’ who had issued from their own midst and who had so thoroughly seen through the veneer of the world.
As a damned slut myself, he thought, let’s see through it together.
Now I have something to tell you, her brother said. Every time I’ve had to take part in anything with other people, something of genuine social concern, I’ve been like a man who steps outside the theater before the final act for a breath of fresh air, sees the great dark void with all those stars, and walks away, abandoning hat, coat and play.
In other words, feeling only more or less ashamed.
[b]Philosophy Tweets
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Albert Camus[/b]
Let’s actually pin this down.
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Let’s actually pin this down.
“I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.” Edgar Allan Poe
With friends like this?
“We have art so that we shall not die of reality.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Doesn’t seem to keep folks from going mad though.
“There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Obviously: Including this one.
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” Edmund Burke
That and the occasional dictator.
[b]Nora Ephron
In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind. [/b]
So, how kinky is that?
There’s a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don’t look the way they used to, and it’s not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It’s because of hair dye. In the 1950’s only 7 percent of American women dyed their hair; today there are parts of Manhattan and Los Angeles where there are no gray-haired women at all.
Let’s pin down the significance of this.
You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Why not?
What I’m saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
No you don’t.
Yes I do.
No you don’t.
Yes I do.
You only think you do.
You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
No, what I’m saying is they all want to have sex with you.
They do not.
Do too.
They do not.
Do too.
How do you know?
Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too.
What if they don’t want to have sex with you?
Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
This is still true, right?
The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.
At least six.
When you’re attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.
And that’s well before we get to the id.
…the amount of maintenance involving hair is genuinely overwhelming. Sometimes I think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death.
Look, we all know there really are people like this. And not just Don Trump.
[b]Han Kang
Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn’t even realized was there.[/b]
Just once. Just one fucking time I would like to experience this myself.
I’m fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.
And to think that some are actually able to declare themselves the victor.
A soul doesn’t have a body, so how can it be watching us?
A mere technicality, right?
Can only trust my breasts now. I like my breasts, nothing can be killed by them. Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe. But not my breasts. With my round breasts, I’m okay. Still okay. So why do they keep on shrinking? Not even round anymore. Why? Why am I changing like this? Why are my edges all sharpening–what am I going to gouge?
And the male equivalent of this is…?
I never let myself forget that every single person I meet is a member of this human race.
Indeed, and I never let myself forget that, to any one particular individual, this can mean practically anything.
As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families—they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence.
Or this: As for men who were handsome, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the sons of rich families—they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence.
You know, if you let them.
Sad prose, yes…
[b]so sad today
spoiler: existential crisis[/b]
Spoiler: no shit.
i want to donate all my blood
Tried that twice myself.
if selling out is wrong, i don’t wanna be right
Like there’s even a difference.
bitch i’m famous
Not unlike what we’d all like to be. And not just here.
oops i didn’t mean to be born
On the other hand, now she’s famous.
you say potato, i say inevitable death
Not to confuse them of course.
On the other hand, how much of it [these days] is just a persona?
Yes, this question came up for me, again, just recently here.
Perhaps having to spot online faux personas is something we’ve newly developed as part of our survival toolset, but in this instance Iam, what made you question the validity of persona?
[b]Henri Bergson
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.[/b]
Try to pin that down objectively.
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
If only all the way to the grave.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Sure, why not. You’ll only end up rationalizing all of it anyway.
The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.
Indeed, the idea of lots of things.
Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.
Or, sure, for many, unfortunately.
The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.
What, you thought it was the other way around?
Stuff like this mostly: nytimes.com/2018/04/26/book … roder.html
She seems to be reveling in it now. Less time to be sad.
[b]Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the length of life, but the depth.[/b]
I’ll go out on a limb here and vouch for both.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Poetically as it were.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
In, for example. a wholly determined world. Though “conspires” is a bit of a stretch.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Or, for some, which books he has written.
Or she even.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
This might actually be true.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
And, who knows, perhaps one day it will be.
[b]Nein
We regret to inform you that it’s the end of the week. Not the world.[/b]
Let’s change that.
Let’s be honest: if it isn’t blatantly disregarded, it probably isn’t truth.
You know where that leaves me. Here for example.
Thank you, psychoanalysis. The mother of all fathers.
Not counting mine I suspect.
Be the ontology you want to see in the world.
Try to imagine it.
I suggest taking a week off of Twitter. Realizing what your life has become. Then never doing so again.
Of course that’s what we’re all expected to say.
A beautiful spring day. Should you happen to like beauty. Spring. And days.
I can live with them.
[b]Neil Gaiman
So, he asked. How’s death?
Hard, she said. It just keeps going.[/b]
Jesus, imagine if we are still around to know it.
Fair enough, said Thor. What’s the price?
Freya’s hand in marriage.
He just wants her hand? asked Thor hopefully. She had two hands, after all, and might be persuaded to give up one of them without too much of an argument. Tyr had, after all.
All of her, said Loki. He wants to marry her.
Oh, said Thor. She won’t like that.
The gods as we’d least expect them.
It’s not sipping wine. It’s a mourning wine. You drain it. Like this.
Same as with the harder stuff in other words.
People talk about books that write themselves, and it’s a lie. Books don’t write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you’d believe.
Great, there’s my excuse.
Richard wondered how the marquis managed to make being pushed around in a wheelchair look like a romantic and swashbuckling thing to do.
That makes two of us then.
There is something about riding a unicorn, for those people who still can, which is unlike any other experience: exhilarating, and intoxicating, and fine.
Maybe, but what’s that next to riding a dragon?
Ahhh! but they do say that depression is catching… let’s not be tainted by that brush, huh! 
Apparently, she went through some rather brutal years dealing with both depression and panic attacks. It’s clearly not all just persona. Or [now] a potential cash cow.
It’s just that, like everything else of this sort, we can only hazard a guess regarding what is really unfolding from day to day “in her head”. And in her life.
There are parts of her twitter personality [and posts] that I can truly relate too. And all we can do in situations like this is to take out of others what we first put into them: “I”.
Much like they do with us.
It’s just that, unlike most of us, she is becoming increasingly more “famous”. And that can make her a target for any number of folks for any number of reasons.
She only has so much control over what others will make of her.
[b]Jan Mieszkowski
Kierkegaard: Tuesday must be lived forwards but understood backwards.
Nietzsche: Tuesday cannot be understood.
Beckett: Tuesday cannot be lived.
Blanchot: Tuesday is always already backwards.[/b]
We still have about 10 hours to decide.
Eastern Standard Time anyway.
Hegel: There is no ground of the ground
Lacan: There is no other of the other
Adorno: There is no self in the selfie
Adorno, definitely.
Introductory Philosophy: I’m learning questions and answers
Intermediate Philosophy: I’m learning that answers are questions and questions are answers Advanced Philosophy: I’m learning to question the existence of questions and answers
Let’s pin down ILP here.
Greek philosophy: Can I truly know myself?
French philosophy: Can I truly doubt myself?
German philosophy: Can I truly affirm myself?
American philosophy: I’m selling myself to the highest bidder!
What do you suppose someone would pay for me?
British lit: The flower is a simile
French lit: The flower is a metaphor
German lit: The flower is a metonym
American lit: The Flower® is a brand name
Metonym? This apparently: a word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated. For example, Washington is a metonym for the federal government of the US.
Philosophers: We can’t leave thinking in the hands of the politicians!
Literary Critics: We can’t leave culture in the hands of the politicians!
Historians: We can’t leave knowledge in the hands of the politicians!
Politicians: Look, Ma, no hands!
Actually, they are in our pockets.
[b]Edgar Allan Poe
Philosophers have often held dispute
As to the seat of thought in man and brute
For that the power of thought attends the latter
My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter,
And spite of dogmas current in all ages,
One settled fact is better than ten sages. [/b]
Facts have always worked for me.
Out- out are the lights- out all! And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Of course the worms don’t know that.
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
I’m always up for it.
I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
On the other hand, that’s probably his wont too.
I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.
Nothing to do here but roll the dice.
There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.
Go ahead, ask me about Gary Crigger.