a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Angela Davis

Radical simply means “grasping things at the root”.[/b]

And then [sometimes] pulling them out.

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?

For some, probably.

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.

Next up: actual options.

If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.

24/7 sounds about right.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible.

More like a faint glimmer these days.

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.

And, from time to time, with a vengence.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“What sort of an age is this where a man becomes one’s enemy only when his back is turned?” Thomas Pynchon[/b]

My own guess: A me, myself and I world.

“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” Simone de Beauvoir

Unless of course you’re a Nazi.

“Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.” Simone de Beauvoir

Of course that can actually be a good thing.

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.”Soren Kierkegaard

They do indeed. Right, Kids?

“The death of dogma is the birth of morality.” Immanuel Kant

On the other hand, what’s more dogmatic than to profess ones moral obligation to act in accordance with one or another Kingdom of Ends?

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ” Immanuel Kant

Deontologically as it were.

[b]Erica Jong

I’ve not ceased being fearful, I’ve gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you’ll die if you go too far.[/b]

Of course now she is right around the corner from The Big One.

There’s nothing good about being ordinary. People don’t respect you for it. People run after people who are different, who have confidence in their own taste, who don’t run with the herd. There is nothing gained by giving in to the pressures of group vulgarity.

True, but, you know, you can only take it so far.

The earth is God’s book but in our blindness, we have obliterated letters so we may say God has abandoned us. It is we who are illiterate.

…as she gets closer and closer to oblivion.

You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependent on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weakness and then you despise him for being human.

Let’s file this one under, “or something like that”.

What we fear we also desire, and what we desire we fear.

He wondered why people say things like this.

Women in America read ‘lifestyle’ pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.

That and [for those who can aford it] plastic surgery.

[b]John Fowles, The Magus

Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.[/b]

My guess: Not just ours.

He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.

Five will get you ten he was a Kid. Either that or Mitford.

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see relationship between objects. Whether the objects love each other, need each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women - and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellow-men. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death.

That and the military industrial complex.

We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did.

This is a good point, right? Besides, there’s always pornography.

The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?

Unless of course there are no other options.

There is no plan. All is hazard.

Not counting all the actual plans that there are.

[b]God

I’m serious. You’re the worst species I ever created, and I made 3,500 different cockroaches.[/b]

Next up: He explains why.

What a fucking nightmare you people are.

Made of course in His image.

I’ve been very unhappy at work lately.

So much for being omnipotent.

I am colluding with Satan.

Who doesn’t know that?

I am not sending a meteor to collide with Earth and even if I do, collision is not a crime.

God. A yuck a minute.

With great power comes no responsibility.

That might explain everything then.

[b]Seneca

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.[/b]

Never actually met one like that myself.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Never actually met one like that myself.

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

If only from the cradle to the grade.
Well, if you’re lucky.

He who is brave is free.

Any brave men here who are not free?

No man was ever wise by chance.

That makes me the first then. If I do say so myself.

If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.

Unless of course the problem is all the others.

[b]Kurt Gödel

The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all. [/b]

Hell, you need go no further than here.

I don’t believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth.

On the other hand, empirically, he did die.

Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.

God knows, right?

All generalizations - perhaps except this one - are false.

Or, sure, perhaps not except that one.

I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife.

Obviously.

I like Islam, it is a consistent idea of religion and open-minded.

Well, he did die 40 years ago.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” T.S. Eliot[/b]

Unlike, for example, genuine philosophy. At least around here.

“The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things.” Plato

Not unlike the imperfect state.

History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.” Edmund Burke

Until of course we became civilized.

“After the collection of facts, the search for causes.” Hippolyte Taine

Our facts he means.

“Who lies for you will lie against you.” John Locke

Worse, they start in on telling the truth about you. Just ask Don Trump.

“The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.” Voltaire

Cue these folks: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon

[b]Neil Gaiman

Now me, said Mr. Vandemar. What number am I thinking of?
I beg your pardon?
What number am I thinking of? repeated Mr. Vandemar. It’s between one and a lot.[/b]

Come on, does that really help to narrow it down?

Not gay, just never met the right woman.

In other words, gay.

Notoriety wasn’t as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.

And we should now, right?

You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter.

And, no, not just in video games.

Nothing the demon could think up was half as bad as the stuff people thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into their design somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse.

Of course that’s when God comes in handy.

I really don’t know what ‘I love you’ means. I think it means "Don’t leave me here alone.”

Or, maybe, sometimes, “fuck me”.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution.[/b]

Especially if they deserve it.

I do believe God gave me a spark of genius, but he quenched it in misery.

That’s quite common some might surmise.

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Anyone recall what that word was?

A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul.

Obviously, there is no name for it.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.

Like what for example?

In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.

Isn’t that really the only way that it can be?

[b]Sad Socrates

Being happy takes work. So does being sad.[/b]

Not unlike all the other emotions that we grapple with.

Why was six afraid of seven?
Because six knew that seven was an illusion and the primacy of dread was the real shadow it lived under; that it just used seven as a foil to mask its existential insecurities.

Of course that’s just common sense.

I perceive that all things are connected; except me to those things.

Me too. Only that’s the good news.

Society is death of the individual.

Probably including ours too.

Your identity is a poison.

Trust me: mine more than yours.

I tried to smile today.

The fool!

[b]Leslie Feinberg

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.[/b]

Though here there’s not much that someone hasn’t been taught.

If I’m not with a butch everyone just assumes I’m straight. It’s like I’m passing too, against my will. I’m sick of the world thinking I’m straight. I’ve worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian.

Nope, can’t identify with that.

More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I’m hit with every day of my life: "Are you a man or a woman?”

Nope, can’t identify with that.
But point taken.

I began to feel the pleasure of the weightless state between here and there.

Or, sure, no doubt about it: I began to feel the pain of the weightless state between here and there.

Everybody’s scared, but if you don’t let your fears stop you, that’s bravery.

You know, when it’s not stupidity.

I know the difference between what I can’t do and what I refuse to do.

Boy, he thought, does that bring back memories.

[b]C.G. Jung

Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.[/b]

Let’s clear this up.

There is a desert on the moon where the dreamer sinks so deeply into the ground that she reaches hell.

You know, that never occured to me.

As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.

Not counting most things of course.

If only a world-wide consciousness could arise that all division and fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin.

Right, and if only we died and went to Heaven.

This experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance.

Anyone here have an example of this?

The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.

And the Academy Award here goes to…

[b]tiny nietzsche

me: I wish there was a day we could dwell on our approaching doom as the cold light of another day slowly ebbs
sunday: hey[/b]

Monday: Hey again.

I guess we can all see russia from our house now.

True, but I’m less than 40 miles from the Oval Office.

hey, the abyss isn’t going to fuck itself

Can that even be done?

there are only two types of people in the world: waves and particles

Not counting the slits and slots.

you texting to me? you texting to me? you texting to me? well, then who the hell else are you texting- you texting to me? well, I’m the only one here. who the fuck do you think you’re texting to? Oh yeah? Okay.

Now, imagine that here: youtu.be/4e9CkhBb18E

find a wasteland, find yourself a wasteland to live in

Does here count?

[b]D.H. Lawrence

It was not woman’s fault, nor even love’s fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in those evil electric lights and diabolical rattling of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy mechanism and mechanised greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and roaring with traffic, there lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the bluebells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron.[/b]

Next up: the rolling and running of plastic.

And however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connexions and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever.

Them and the Mr. Sensitive Ponytail men.

I am quite empty of feeling. I don’t care the slightest bit in the world for anybody or anything except myself. But I do care for myself, and I’m going to survive in spite of them all, and I’m going to have my own success without caring the least in the world how I get it. Because I’m cleverer than they are, I’m cunninger than they are, even if I’m weak. I must build myself up proper protections, and entrench myself, and then I’m safe. I can sit inside my glass tower and feel nothing and be touched by nothing, and yet exert my power, my will, through the glass walls of my ego.

Sure, I tried this, he thought, and look at me now.

There is no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.

Anyone here this is not true of?

Like a great bog humanity swamped her, and she sank in, weak at the knees, filled with repulsion and fear of every person she met.

I think I know her. I might even be her.

I am turned into a dream. I feel nothing, or I don’t know what I feel. Yet it seems to me I am happy.

Dope? Probably.

[b]Edward St. Aubyn

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too small if it’s cherished.[/b]

You tell me about yours, I’ll tell you about mine.

Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state?

And now the states were stacked to the ceiling.

They had never met, but she had come to understand what had driven Victor’s wife to seek refuge in a full set of Snoopy mugs.

Explain this please.

Unlike the riotous appetites of adolescence, his present cravings had a tragic tinge, they were cravings for the appetites, metacravings, wanting to want.

In other words, when not just anything will do. In fact, when almost nothing does.

Other people knew what they were meant to say, knew what they were meant to mean, and other people still knew what the other people meant when they said it.

So, sure, it might happen here.

Most people either felt regret at staying with someone for too long, or regret at losing them too easily. I manage to feel both ways at the same time…

Or [more likely] both at different times.

[b]so sad today

human existence has always been a disaster so at least there’s that[/b]

And, no doubt, probably will be all the way to the grave.

i’ll show you my emptiness if you show me yours

Okay, stark naked works for me.

that which does not kill you but makes you slowly retreat from the world

Or: that which does not kill you but makes you retreat pell-mell from the world

well well well if it isn’t excruciating self-doubt

Again she means.

there are two kinds of people in this world and i don’t understand either of them

And even less do they understand me. You know, if they’re lucky.

would prefer if my actions didn’t have consequences

Maybe after you’re dead.

[b]Tom Stoppard

I burn with no causes.[/b]

Though more with not your causes than not with mine.

But no doubt you have read Kukolnik’s play?
No…I started to read it, but after a while I seemed to lose interest, and I was still on the title.

Not unlike some reactions here to my posts. And [of course] yours.

Mr. Moon felt as if the conversation was a weight he had to drag along on the end of a rope.

If not a ball and chain.

How is a juggler you can’t hear or see or smell or touch different to no juggler at all?

Let’s ask them.

Knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can’t have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth.

On the other hand, does this count?

Schelling’s God is the totality of Nature struggling towards consciousness, and Man is as far as the struggle has got, with the animals not too far behind, vegetables somewhat lagging, and rocks nowhere as yet. Do we believe this? Does it matter? Think of it as a poem or a painting. Art doesn’t have to be true like a theorem. It can be true in other ways. This truth says there is a meaning to it all, and Man is where the meaning begins to show.

Does this mean what I think that you think it means? Or, instead, is it really true?

[b]Ferdinand de Saussure

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.[/b]

Join the crowd.

The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.

But no more so than this is.

The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate and that, therefore, ‘a’ cannot designate anything without the the aid of ‘b’ and vice versa, or, in other words, that both have value only by the difference between them.

Rhymes with intellectual gibberish he thought. Though, sure, who is to say it’s not true?

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law

Not counting “a” and “the” of course.

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas…

Some a hell of a lot more different than others.

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

Though here perhaps with language.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.” John Locke[/b]

And when the law itself is tyrannical?

"Reach what you cannot.” Nikos Kazantzakis

Or, sure, in this day and age, pay others to reach it for you.

“If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.” Simone de Beauvoir

Or, if you live longer than that, see it turn back again into another victory. And then into the final defeat.

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Bertrand Russell

Does what we do count?

“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” Bertrand Russell

You know the ones.

“Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.” Gustave Flaubert

Not unlike our understanding of it.