a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Jeff VanderMeer

We live in a universe driven by chance, his father had said once, but the bullshit artists all want causality.[/b]

Bullshit artists like his father.

The world we are a part of now is difficult to accept, unimaginably difficult. I don’t know if I accept everything even now. I don’t know how I can. But acceptance moves past denial, and maybe there’s a defiance in that, too.

Of course some things are considerably more difficult to accept than others.

The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

Those clever bastards!

The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.

Here where though?

He believed a kind of fragmentation had crept into people’s minds in the modern era.

Gee, you think so?

…is nothing more liberating than playing an illogical game where only you understand all of the rules.

Starting with the definitions, right?

[b]Existential Comics

I’ve always been a big fan of the consistency of the laws of physics over space and time. I hope that sticks around.[/b]

Or at least until we’re all dead and gone.

The best thing about philosophy is that all the great philosophers in history were basically wrong about almost everything, so there’s really not that much pressure to be right.

And we do our bit here to carry that tradition on. Well, you more than me of course.

[b]These right wing “self help” gurus are pretty surreal. They are like:

  1. Exercise regularly.
  2. Focus on concrete goals.
  3. Find supportive friends.
  4. Women are serpentine creatures that undermine society and must be tamed by a dominant will.
  5. Stay hydrated.[/b]

See if you can spot the outlier.

[b]How be an existentialist:

  1. Drink constantly, but because of angst, not alcoholism.
  2. Don’t get any work done, but because of existential anxiety, not laziness.
  3. Sleep with tons of people, but because you are fleeing nihilistic despair, not horniness.[/b]

How be a nihilist? Just double it.

To paraphrase Jean-Paul Sartre, all of the mistakes that I’ve made in my life were made because I wasn’t extremely online enough.

Explain this please.

[b]“…wealth disparity grows to unprecedented levels…”

Republicans: what if we gave tax cuts to the rich.
Democrats: what if instead we did absolutely nothing.[/b]

We don’t call it a two-party system for nothing.

[b]Robert Crumb

I was a child of American popular culture. All I did as a kid was what I could get at the local supermarket or the dime store. Nothing else was seen. Plus what was on television, or the movie theatre. That was it.[/b]

So, what exactly does that explain?

The fine-art world knows very little about the cartoon world.

Let’s decide if that’s understandable.

When people say ‘What are underground comics?’ I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved…we didn’t have anyone standing over us.

A miracle, in other words.

Most of my adult life I had this towering contempt for America.

Of course it’s our constitutional right to.

They can buy talent. You can’t buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people’s talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich.

So, does that make them scumbags?

I knew I was weird by the time I was four. I knew I wasn’t like other boys. I knew I was more fearful. I didn’t like the rough and tumble most boys were into. I knew I was a sissy.

My guess? They let him know it.

[b]Tom Wolfe

To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrara marble evolved into Michelangelo’s David. Speech is what man pays homage to in every moment he can imagine.[/b]

Would you say that?

If language sealed off man from animal, then the Theory of Evolution applied only to animal studies and reached no higher than the hairy apes.

The naked truth, Mr Chomsky?

If a monkey has become a man—what may not a man become?

Or, for that matter, a woman.

Darwin’s goal was to show that all Müller’s and Wallace’s Higher Things evolved from animals—animals even as small as earwigs. He had no evidence, causing him to fall back over and over on the life and times of “my dog”.

Imagine then if it had been a cat.

Huxley became such an ardent Darwinist not because he believed in Darwin’s theory of natural selection—he never did—but because Darwin was obviously an atheist, just as he was.

Huxley, Darwin and now Wolfe. All dead and gone.
So: What say them today about all this?

Subscribing to Darwinism showed that one was part of a bright, enlightened minority who shone far above the mooing herd down below.

Axiomatically as it were.

[b]The Dead Author

The only way to still be free is to make mistakes.[/b]

Well, one of the only ways.

Some people are just bad at smalltalk because they don’t even superficially care about other people.

Sure, go ahead, point the finger at me.

Arranging American celebrities by those that were accused of sexual assault, those that became president, and those that were accused of sexual assault and became president.

What do you say, let’s do it!

Philip Roth has died. Male neurosis caused by entitlement lives on.

As well it should?

Philip Roth taught me that no matter who you are, you will be humiliated and forgotten already in your lifetime.

One man’s opinion?

By age 35 you should be dead.

Or, at the very least, wish you were.

[b]C.G. Jung

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.[/b]

That and owning up to it.

Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.

So, whatever you do, put it to good use.

…there are many people who become neurotic because they are only normal, as there are people who are neurotic because they cannot become normal. For the former the very thought that you want to educate them to normality is a nightmare; their deepest need is really to be able to lead “abnormal” lives.

Normal, of course, being almost anything.

We are always human and we should never forget the burden of being only human.

Human all too human he means.

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.

See what he’s done here? No, of course not.

People think you have only to ‘tell’ a person that he ‘ought’ to do something in order to put him on the right track. But whether he can or will do it is another matter.

Go ahead, try it on me.

[b]Edward St. Aubyn

He was just one of those Englishmen who was always saying silly things to sound less pompous, and pompous things to sound less silly.[/b]

Of course that’s more or less a global phenomenon.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they’re dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

You know, as consolations go.

At the beginning, there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics. In a sense they had succeeded.

We know what sense that is, don’t we?

The claim that every man kills the thing he loves seemed to him a wild guess compared with the near certainty of a man turning into the thing he hates.

Or for some the approximate certainty.

What could he do but accept the disturbing extent to which memory was fictional and hope that the fiction lay at the service of a truth less richly represented by the original facts?

Let’s file this one under, “I guess so”.

We are entering the Dark Ages, my friend, but this time there will be lots of neon, and screen savers, and street lighting.

Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

[b]Existential Comics

It’s absolute bullshit that they have a top hat emoji but no guillotine emoji[/b]

Let’s connect the dots here to, among other things, the Reign of Terror.

One of the most difficult things you can do is be honest with yourself about the reasons you believe what you do.

Actually impossible for some of us.

The weird thing about people who say that nothing really matters is that they seem to have no shortage of opinions of what we should be doing.

Yeah, I used to be just like that.

Marxist analysis of the Avengers movies: they are bad.

Now to convince the masses…

A “middle class” person is just a working class person who the upper class have somehow convinced to look down on working class people.

Hell, and not only if they’re black. You know, in Trumpworld.

…by age 35 you should have robbed your first Bank to finance your underground communist newspaper that you smuggle across the border into your native country from which you have been exiled for political dissent.

And nowadays that’s no longer routine.

[b]Meg Wolitzer

If someone said ‘diametrically,’ could ‘opposed’ be far behind?[/b]

Why wouldn’t it be?

Everyone simply had to wait patiently in order to lose the people they loved one by one, all the while acting as if they weren’t waiting for that at all.

My guess: Only almost everyone.

The city was a paradox, though maybe it had always been one. You could have an excellent life here, even as everything disintegrated. The city at that moment was not a place that anyone would remember with nostalgia, except for the fact that in the midst of all this, if you played it right, your money could double, and you could buy a big apartment with triple-glazed windows that overlooked the chaos.

Unless of course like me you played it wrong and the chaos tagged along.

Though Jonah felt transfixed inside his own childhood, no one else saw him as a child. He was already over the hump of middle age, heading rapidly toward those year that no one like to speak of. The best parts had already passed for people Jonah’s age. By now you were meant to have become what you would finally be, and to gracefully and unobtrusively stay in that state for the rest of your life.

Oh well, so much for “you’re only as young as you feel”.

Is there anything sadder than the scrawniest little piece of uneaten chicken at a dinner party?
Hmm, said Jules. Yes. The Holocaust.

Not for some though.

The past is so tenacious.

Or, from time to time, not tenacious enough.

[b]Harvey Pekar

He wasn’t a man, but a tape recorder, repeating catch phrases and old slogans without any thought to the concepts behind them, a dog stuck in the training of his youth and faithfully executing his tasks long after his master had moved on.[/b]

Most of us in other words.

It’s my perspective: gloom and doom.

For some of us though it’s the other way around.

You do not pursue potential conflict unless you hold power over your foe.

If only in the best of all possible worlds.

Praise from people I respect can get me through times of no money better than money can get me through times of no praise.

Still, sometimes it’s just too close to call.

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.

Let’s just say you can take this to far.

I’ve probably had my day in the sun. I think I’ve influenced a lot of comic book writers.

Make of this what you will, in other words.

[b]Emmanuel Levinas

Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable. [/b]

Among other things, I beg to differ. But, sure, point taken.

I will say this quite plainly, what truly human is – and don’t be afraid of this word – love. And I mean it even with everything that burdens love or, I could say it better, responsibility is actually love, as Pascal said: ‘without concupiscence’ [without lust]… love exists without worrying being loved.

The perfect “general description” of…of what exactly?
In other words, without a context or a point of view.

Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté.

The perfect “general description” of…of what exactly?
In other words, without a context or a point of view.

For others, in spite of myself, from myself.

Not much that doesn’t cover.
Providing, of course, we don’t try to actually pin it down.

…the “small goodness” from one person to his fellowman is lost and deformed as soon as it seeks organization and universality and system, as soon as it opts for doctrine, a treatise of politics and theology, a party, a state, and even a church. Yet it remains the sole refuge of the good in being.

What else [yet again] but the best of all possible worlds.

‘The true life is absent.’ But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this alibi.

Dare me to plug dasein into that! :wink:

[b]Sad Socrates

My brain is interfering with my life.[/b]

Of course that’s just human nature.

Find the me that is not.

I know, I know: Why would anyone want to?

When life feels meaningless, just keep complaining.

Bitterly, for example.

I was never trying to be me.

True, but still more me than you.

Maybe I’d be better off without me.

Let’s try to imagine it.

Ego death is the only way out.

Of what you might ask.

[b]Tom Stoppard

I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder then a man talking nonsense not to himself.
Or just as mad.
Or just as mad.
And he does both.
So there you are.
Stark raving sane. [/b]

Well, I’m glad that’s settled.

I would join Sisyphus in Hades and gladly push my boulder up the slope if only, each time it rolled back down, I were given a line of Aeschylus.

So, would that work for you?

I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.

Or, here, posting.

Why don’t you go and have a look?
Pragmatism?! Is that all you have to offer?

Still, sometimes that is the way to go.

Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite to whom? The Romans were foreigners writing for foreigners two millenniums ago; and for people whose gods we find quaint, whose savagery we abominate, whose private habits we don’t like to talk about, but whose idea of what is exquisite is, we flatter ourselves, mysteriously identical to ours.

It’s funny how these things seem to work.

There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said no. But somehow we missed it. Oh well, we’ll know better next time.

Let’s file this one [immediately] under, “fat chance”.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.” David Hume[/b]

And not necessarily our own.

“All knowledge degenerates into probability.” David Hume

That or death and oblivion.

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.” David Hume

And, no, in fact, not just yours, Mr. Objectivist.

“Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?” Diogenes of Sinope

So, sure, go ahead, hurt mine.

“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” Martin Heidegger

In other words, back then, like him.

“The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockheads set themselves against it.” Jean Baudrillard

If [so far] going back only to the caves.

[b]D.H. Lawrence

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through the door, even when it opens.[/b]

Tell that to those who hurtle right through it.

Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort.

Of course Trumpworld has set a whole new standard.

In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Polish.

A little help here with this one.

She was old; millions of years old, she felt.

My guess: And getting older all the time.

I cannot cure myself of that most woeful of youth’s follies-thinking that those who care about us will care for the things that mean much to us.

Ask me then about “Dina’s list”.

Any inhibition must be wrong, since inevitably in the end it causes neurosis and insanity.

On the other hand, for some, as Joe Strummer once pointed out, “if you’re dumb enough to actually try it.”

[b]Svetlana Alexievich

I remembered some lines from the papers: our nuclear stations are absolutely safe, we could build one on Red Square, they’re safer than samovars. They’re like stars and we’ll “light” the whole earth with them.[/b]

Samovar: a heated metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water in Russia.

We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe?

Of course we were told the same thing here.

There’s a note on the door: “Dear kind person, Please don’t look for valuables here. We never had any. Use whatever you want, but don’t trash the place. We’ll be back.” I saw signs on other houses in different colors—“Dear house, forgive us!” People said goodbye to their homes like they were people. Or they’d written: “we’re leaving in the morning,” or, “we’re leaving at night,” and they’d put the date and even the time. There were notes written on school notebook paper: “Don’t beat the cat. Otherwise the rats will eat everything.” And then in a child’s handwriting: “Don’t kill our Zhulka. She’s a good cat.”

The fucking human condition. If only one tiny speck of it.

That’s where perestroika really took place. 1960s dissident life is the kitchen life. Thanks, Khrushchev! He’s the one who led us out of the communal apartments; under his rule, we got our own private kitchens where we could criticize the government and, most importantly, not be afraid, because in the kitchen you were always among friends.

I guess you had to be there.

The mechanism of evil will work under conditions of apocalypse, also. That’s what I understood. Man will gossip, and kiss up to the bosses, and save his television and ugly fur coat. And people will be the same until the end of time. Always.

That can’t be good.

Sometimes I get strange thoughts, sometimes I think Chernobyl saved me, forced me to think.

Either the best or the worst of all possible ironies.

[b]tiny nietzche

man is condemned to be fucked[/b]

Not only that but from all directions.

move to trash. meet trash. marry trash. be trash

Though not necessarily in that order.

no act of kinkiness, no matter how small, is ever wasted

Not that others will always go along.

can’t I destroy myself in peace?

Sure, can I help?

pornography is the root cause of more pornography

I wouldn’t doubt it.

I wrote a letter to a dead friend. If you don’t have any dead friends, find some.

On the other hand, where to begin?

[b]Robert Musil

His extraordinary indifference to the life snapping at the bait is matched by the risk he runs of doing utterly eccentric things. An impractical man - which he not only seems to be but really is - will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea[/b]

Try this:
1] read the above
2] watch Bergman’s Persona
3] read it again

And since the possession of qualities presupposes that one takes a certain pleasure in their reality, all this gives us a glimpse of how it may all of a sudden happen to someone who cannot summon up any sense of reality — even in relation to himself — that one day he appears to himself as a man without qualities.

Or, more realistically, qualities construed to be basically, say, existential contraptions?

It is life that does the thinking all around us, forming with playful ease the connections our reason can only laboriously patch together piecemeal, and never to such kaleidoscopic effect.

And, for some, literally.

If a person is plagued by religious doubts,as many are in their youth, he takes to persecuting unbelievers; if troubled by love, he turns it into marriage; and when overcome by some other enthusiasm, he takes refuge from the impossibility of living constantly in its fire by beginning to live for that fire. That is, he fills the many moments of his day, each of which needs a content and an impetus, not with his ideal state but with the many ways of achieving it by overcoming obstacles and incidents which guarantees that he will never need to attain it. For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.

You tell me: Does this shoe fit?

…the structure of a page of good prose is, analyzed logically, not something frozen but the vibrating of a bridge, which changes with every step one takes on it…

More to the point, perhaps, analyzed psychologically.

There were moments when life at school became a matter of utter indifference to him. Then the putty of his everyday concerns dropped out and, with nothing more to bind them together, the hours of his life fell apart.

Clearly, for some, school being the least of it.

[b]Nora Ephron

I have no desire to be dominated. Honestly I don’t. And yet I find myself becoming angry when I’m not.[/b]

I’m not even going to imagine that.

I look as young as a person can look given how old I am.

Or [even trickier]: I feel as young as a person can feel given how old I am.

Sometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals love, and sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex. Sometimes I believe that love is as natural as the tides, and sometimes I believe that love is an act of will. Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it. Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.

Still, I’m speculating, sometimes she didn’t believe it at all.

The hardest thing about writing is writing.

Good writing I’m guessing.

When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.

That dasein thing again.

Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.

Yeah, she’s dead now too.

[b]so sad today

me: fuck the haters
also me: the haters are definitely right[/b]

Having your cake and eating it too. Really, don’t leave home without it.

tired or dying? a memoir

She signed my copy.

just checking to see if everything is still fucking stupid and it is

Let’s pin this down: genes or memes?

my expectations are low so that’s good

Not lower than mine, I’ll bet.

a positive feeling can fuck you up forever

I’ll let you know when I have one.

capitalism is making me want to vomit and also buy stuff

Her and millions of others.