a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Erica Jong

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.[/b]

My guess: the part that revolves around sex.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

She’s probably watching the wrong ones.

I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like “fidelity” and “adultery”, by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that I had him I’d be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner.

Not many men like that around. Right, Mr Reasonable?

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

If only up on their pedestals.

Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it…

Of course this can mean practically anything. In other words, that’s just another plot.

And the crazy part of it was even if you were clever, even if you spent your adolescence reading John Donne and Shaw, even if you studied history or zoology or physics and hoped to spend your life pursuing some difficult and challenging career, you still had a mind full of all the soupy longings that every high-school girl was awash in… underneath it, all you longed to be was annihilated by love, to be swept off your feet, to be filled up by a giant prick spouting sperm, soapsuds, silk and satins and, of course, money.

Let’s pin down exactly how crazy this is.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.” Theodor Adorno[/b]

I know I abjure them.

"There’s nothing more fragrant, more sparkling, more intoxicating than the infinity of possibilities.” Soëren Kierkegaard

Just weighty enough not to be outright silly.

“How the past perishes is how the future becomes.” Alfred North Whitehead

And what might that be?

“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths.” Alfred North Whitehead

Or a fraction thereof.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows." Alfred North Whitehead

Or, for most objectivists, the other way around.

“History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same.” Walter Rauschenbusch

Almost as though it repeats itself.

[b]Nathanael West

…all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust.[/b]

Mike: “There’s a sucker born every minute…and two to take him.”

He thought of how calm he was. His calm was so perfect that he could not destroy it even by being conscious of it.

Needless to say, I can’t even imagine it.

They haven’t the mental equipment for leisure.

Of course with some folks leisure is all they’re equipped for.

…what goes on in the sea is of no interest to the rock…

What the hell does the sea have to do with it?

It’s solitary drinking that makes drunkards.

I’ll drink to that.

Humanity…I’m a humanity lover. All the broken bastards…

Well, we’ve come to the right place here, haven’t we?

[b]Elias Canetti

…no mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men’s places. Thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing figments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view. Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people’s goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of the victim. Novels should be prohibited by the State.[/b]

Starting with, say, the Bible?

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.

Let’s run this here by, among others, Fixed Cross and Mr Reasonable.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open arms into their misfortune?

Well, sure, this might be true. You know, of others.

Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages.

Though no less so than birth.

The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind.

After all, naming something makes it true.

One lives in the naïve notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past.

Trust me: You’ll stop believing that soon enough.

[b]tiny nietzsche

sext: paper or plastic?[/b]

Is this plausible?

a group of college freshmen is called a joy division t-shirt

Remember when it used to be the Beatles?

if I see you in the woods this weekend, run for your life

Or, for that matter, walking down the street.

types of sober:
mostly
kinda
sorta

I’m working on one of them right now.

fucking nihilism, how does it work?

You know, if it fucking works at all.

you throw like a non binary gender

It’s a miracle they can even pick up the ball, he thought.

[b]Günter Grass

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.[/b]

Unless, for some, they’re subpoened by Robert Mueller.

If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.

Hey, buddy, you’re talking about the Son of God!

When Satan’s not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Hasn’t even Satan a right not to be in the mood once in a while?

Well, when you get down there, ask him.

…if I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word ‘doorknob’, because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us…

Maybe, but it’s still a really stupid idea.

…there is also such a thing as ersatz happiness, perhaps happiness exists only as an ersatz, perhaps all happiness is an ersatz for happiness.

Maybe, but it’s still a really stupid idea.

We struck up a conversation, taking pains at first to give it an easy flow and sticking to the most frivolous topics. Did he, I asked, believe in predestination? He did. Did he believe that all men were doomed to die? Yes, he felt certain that all men would absolutely have to die, but he was less sure that all men had to be born…

Wow. Did we have to be born? Not many take it in that direction.

[b]Neil Gaiman

He sighed. It was a long sigh, weary and worldly-wise. The kind of sigh you could picture God heaving after six days of hard work and looking forward to some serious cosmic R&R, only to be handed a report by an angel concerning a problem with someone eating an apple.[/b]

My guess: Eve.

Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

Still, that’s just on this planet.

You can no more read the same book again than you can step into the same river.

Sure, sounds like it might be true.

Bod shrugged. So? he said. It’s only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.

Really, what else is there here but crippling stoicism.

He told me not to seek revenge, but to seek the Buddha, said the fox spirit, sadly.
Wise counsel, said the fox of dreams. Vengeance can be a road that has no ending. You would be wise to avoid it. And…?
I shall seek the Buddha, said the fox, with a toss of her head. But first I shall seek revenge.

Let’s pin down the Buddha’s reaction.

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people’s heads. Perhaps we change the world and perhaps we don’t. We never know. We just make stuff up.

I tried to make stuff up too. And look at me now.

[b]so sad today

I hate everything in a peaceful way.[/b]

Something to strive for, he thought.

let’s roleplay you are not an asshole

Or is that just too great a leap?

hello from across the infinite chasm of meaningless

Thanks, and hello right back at you.

just checking to make sure you’re still not in love with me

Or, sure, hire someone else to check.

is being alive a meme

Or a gene disguised as one.

if you don’t like me I fucking love you

No, I don’t expect you to understand this.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

Today I wear these chains, and am here. Tomorrow I shall be fetterless! But where?[/b]

You know, if it even matters where.

Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all, were the curse of a fiend.

Well, it’s a good thing we never can.

And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into recesses if his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

Wow, he thought, he could be talking about me.

The result of law inviolate is perfection–right–negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain.

Let’s exchange misunderstandings of what this means.

For passion must, with youth, expire.

Yes, even among those for whom it is wasted.

Where was your all-loving god when he was really needed?

He just doesn’t get God, does he?

[b]Jeff VanderMeer

The real reality is something we create every moment of every day, that realities spin off from our decisions in every second we’re alive.[/b]

Not all that far removed then from the unreal reality.

Sometimes you had to keep things from people just so they wouldn’t do the first thing that came into their heads.

And, believe it or not, not just the assholes.

People with packs are people with purpose.

Of course as we all know that can go either way.

Even calling Borne a “he” began to feel faintly ridiculous as he didn’t exhibit the aggression or self-absorption I expected from most males.

Call him “it” then.

Soon after, there comes the crunch of boots, and, disoriented, you shout, ‘Annihilation! Annihilation!’

Black boots in particular.

Among all the impossible things he had already witnessed, what were a few more?

First, of course, define “impossible”.

[b]Existential Comics

Yeah, but when is it going to be socially acceptable to punch a nihilist?[/b]

When has it never not been? Or, rather, the equivalent of that here.

One secret that debate champions don’t want you to know is that you can actually win any debate by shouting “Ad Hominem!” over and over and over again.

Want me to name names?

Nihilism appeals to young people because it is the only way to be smugly superior without having to actually learn or do anything.

You know, all the other nihilists.

Memes are communist because they are entirely public, and the creator of the meme, if they are known at all, has no more say in how it is used than anyone else. No one owns a meme, comrade.

No counting those who pay others to invent them.

Philosophy is love of wisdom
Literature is love of life
Art is love of beauty
Science is love of trying to categorize every single thing like a god damn nerd

Is Einstein still the only exception here?

Science: this is how it is
Philosophy: is it though?
Literature: imagine if it weren’t.
Religion: never!

It’s in the Bible.

[b]C.G. Jung

Funnily enough, “self-criticism” is an idea much in vogue in Marxist countries, but there it is subordinated to ideological considerations and must serve the State, and not truth and justice in men’s dealing with one another. The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.[/b]

Okay, sure, it takes some longer than others to actually figure that all out.

The artist’s life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him; on the one hand, the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life and on the other, a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire… there are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire.

Lucky I was never an artist then.

Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable-perhaps everything.

And, no doubt about it, the more objective it is the better.

The more one sees of human fate and the more one examines its secret springs of action, the more one is impressed by the strength of unconscious motives and by the limitations of free choice.

It thumps you is what it does.

, too, lived—which I had not done before, and which I could still do. I lived into the depths, and the depths began to speak. The depths taught me the other truth. It thus united sense and nonsense in me. I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in this visible world a symbol of my soul, and I am thoroughly a serf, completely subjugated, utterly obedient. The spirit of the depths taught me to say: “I am the servant of a child.” Through this dictum I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need.

It thumps you is what it does.

There is no other way open to us; we are forced to resort to decisions and solutions where we formerly trusted ourselves to natural happenings. Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness-but also the necessity of saying good-bye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature.

Someone pass this along to Satyr.

[b]D.H. Lawrence

Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary points. But nowadays, you may look for them with a microscope, they are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and mechanical days.[/b]

Anyone here still have an extraordinary point?

The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

That’s why you’re here for me, right?

Of course, if I am nothing but an ego, and woman is nothing but another ego, then there is really no vital difference between us. Two little dolls of conscious entities, squeaking when you squeeze them. And with a tiny bit of an extraneous appendage to mark which is which…

Let’s decide:
1] too cynical?
2] not cynical enough?

I am a fool, said Richard Lovat, which was the most frequent discovery he made. It came, moreover, every time with a new shock of surprise and chagrin. Every time he climbed a new mountain range and looked over, he saw, not only a new world, but a big anticipatory fool on this side of it, namely, himself.

Let’s decide:
1] too cynical?
2] not cynical enough?

Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old along with the men that made them… But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard.

So, how does your God measure up?

[b]Delivered helpless and amazed
From the womb of the All, I am waiting dazed
For memory to be erased.

Then I shall know the Elysium
That lies outside the monstrous womb
Of time from out of which I come.[/b]

The womb of All. Nice touch.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Numbers have a way of taking a man by the hand and leading him down the path of reason.” Pythagoras[/b]

We’ll need to see the numbers first, of course.

“The highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to their Divine Nature, not entertainment.” Pythagoras

Never tried that before. But not without good reason.

“Educate the children and it won’t be necessary to punish the men.” Pythagoras

If only in theory.

“Man cannot endure his littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.” Ernest Becker

Still, some of us are doing the best we can.

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself”. Jean-Paul Sartre

Wow, that can’t be good.

“The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.” Anton Chekhov

Wow, that can’t be good.

[b]Edward St. Aubyn

Old enough to remember the arrival of ‘Have a nice day’, Patrick could only look with alarm on the hyperinflation of ‘Have a great one’. Where would this Weimar of bullying cheerfulness end? ‘You have a profound and meaningful day now.’[/b]

Let’s keep that one going.

They had drifted apart, as people do when they promise to stay in touch; the ones who are going to stay in touch don’t need to promise.

Let’s not drift apart here, okay?

An editor sleeping with his writer was not as bad as a psychoanalyst sleeping with his patient, or even a professor sleeping with an undergraduate, let alone a president with an intern.

Two words: Don Trump.

Classically, the patient went into psychotherapy because she was neurotic from the suppression of her perverse desires, now she goes into psychotherapy because she is guilty about not enjoying her perverse desires.

Either way the shrinks get rich.

Something had happened and he, like almost everyone else, had got used to the habit of life. Perhaps that’s all life was: a habit that resisted the adventure of death.

How big a stretch is that? Point taken though.

If anything should take place behind closed doors, it was cruelty and betrayal.

Of course not everyone will agree.

[b]Tom Stoppard

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.[/b]

When, in fact, in some quarters, it is really a convention of assholes.

The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices— after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people’s.
Uncertainty is the normal state. You’re nobody special.
But for God’s sake what are we supposed to do?!
Relax. Respond. That’s what people do. You can’t go through life questioning your situation at every turn.
But we don’t know what’s going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don’t know how to act.
Act natural. You know why you’re here at least.
We only know what we’re told, and that’s little enough. And for all we know it isn’t even true.
For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. it’s the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honored.

Hey, if the shoe fits, right?

Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs, and black holes.

On the other hand, why fifty-five?

Well, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and consequently he would have died anyways, sooner or later. Or to look at it from the social point of view - he’s just one man among many, the loss would be well within reason and convenience.

And who isn’t that applicable to?

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

Not to mention the other way around.

Gallons of ink and miles of typewriter ribbon expended on the misery of the unrequited lover; not a word about the utter tedium of the unrequiting.

Of course now it’s all zeros and ones.

[b]God

Once you’re dead that’s it.[/b]

Cue Nietzsche.

If anyone asks I’m Canadian.

Wow, that’s right across the border!

All men are created equal – A man who own 600 other men

This dude came close: “When George Washington was eleven years old, he inherited ten slaves; by the time of his death, 317 slaves lived at Mount Vernon, including 123 owned by Washington, 40 leased from a neighbor, and an additional 153 dower slaves.”

I am joining the Golden State Warriors.

Look out Lakers!

Admission to Heaven is determined by aggregate number of yellow cards.

Every four years as it were.

In a unanimous 1-0 ruling I have just found that the Supreme Court is going to Hell.

You know, if there is one.

[b]Svetlana Alexievich

If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the State. They belonged to the State.[/b]

The fucking State again! Though not ours of course. Well, not yet.

Do you know that it can be a sin to give birth? I’d never heard those words before.

Still, sooner or later, there’s really not much that you won’t hear.

People aren’t heroes. We’re all peddlers of the apocalypse. Big and small.

Someone’s been tripping on the Bible.

Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population.

Deliberately accidental?

Where are we going to get tens of thousands of dollars if my husband makes 120 dollars a month? One professor told us quietly: “With her pathologies, your child is of great interest to science. You should write to hospitals in other countries. They should be interested.”

Of course it’s a true story.

I’m a product of my time. I’m not a criminal.

Sure that might work.

[b]Meg Wolitzer

What if she’d turned down the lightly flung invitation and went about her life, thudding obliviously along like a drunk person, a blind person, a moron, someone who thinks that the small packet of happiness she carries is enough.[/b]

Well, it does work for some of us. I wonder then if that includes me.

Part of the beauty of love was that you didn’t need to explain it to anyone else. You could refuse to explain.

Perhaps, but only if they let you.

The city was a paradox, though maybe it had always been one. You could have an excellent life here, even as everything disintegrated.

Let’s skip the part about money. You know, this time.

She used to be really dynamic and exciting and filled with promise, but she’s become this ordinary sort of boring person…I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time. I don’t want that to happen to me.

Let’s not go there, he thought.

Standing in the heat and noise, facing the rows of bent heads, Ethan Figman willed himself to leave that long sleep in which you dream that the inhuman things that people do to one another on a distant continent have nothing to do with the likes of you.

Hell, you may even profit from it.

And it was true that if you categorized people by which Disney character they were, then Jonah would always be Bambi. Motherless, graceful, unobtrusive. Ethan–Jiminy Cricket, the annoying little conscience… just look at Ash. In the Disney hierarchy she was Snow White… He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her.

Which one do I remind you of?

[b]The Dead Author

The most successful people I’ve met sleep less the closer they get to death.[/b]

Nope, no can do. No sleep, no dreams.

Just because hope dies last doesn’t mean it won’t die.

Nothing doesn’t die.

What should we do?
Aristotle: Be good
Kant: Do good.
Mill: A good
Nietzsche: No good

It’s not even close, right?

Good that German philosophy is all about not giving in to despair.

Someone explain this please.

You need to change yourself if you want to change the world, but in order to change yourself, you first have to change the world.

Haven’t thought of that in over twenty years.

On this day in 1905, Jean-Paul Sartre started to die, By being born.

Actually, that started on the day he was conceived.