a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[b]Meg Wolitzer

In the apartment, the answering machine blinked fiercely, two gnats drag-raced around the apparently sweet, rotting hole of the kitchen drain, and life was difficult once again, and familiar, and a disappointment.[/b]

In my apartment, it’s fruit flies.

Jules listened to this soliloquy in grim silence; she hardly knew what to say. Ash was describing an enclosed world that Jules too had been given a chance to enter, but hadn’t wanted to. She still didn’t want to, but the descriptions of the closeness and intensity of that world only increased her loneliness. Go on, was all she said.

So he did.

Being here reminded him of how hard the city had been, it’s unyielding surfaces, the relentless need for more and more money just to keep yourself vaguely afloat. The city was not a place for the contemplative or the slow.

Thank God then for the suburbs?

Corporate America had tried to get women to behave as badly as men, Faith Frank said, but women did not have to capitulate.

Though clearly most of them did. If not then some.

Twitter, said Manny, waving his hand. You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

But that’s before you get to the maggots.

All people, male or female, were helpless in the specifics of their own bodies.

Or they certainly were eventually.

[b]José Saramago

If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?[/b]

About what, some might ask.

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

Of course [for many] better that than to reveal them.

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

This thing with no name rhymes with dasein.

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

Go ahead, start with mine.

Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

Or, sure, to hell with you altogether.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones eyes.

And how devastating that can be.

[b]tiny nietzsche

when you can’t see the forest for the suicides[/b]

That and where you can’t see them.

drugs say no to me

And much to my chagrin.

if I had to fight any month, I’d fight august

That and the other eleven.

please don’t pee in the gene pool

Let alone take a dump in it.

I can’t believe the postmodernism I wore in high school still fits me

In other words, better than ever.

forming a nonreligious task force to remind people that they can fuck off

Anyone ever try that here?

[b]May Sarton

Most people have to talk so they won’t hear.[/b]

Or write so they won’t read.

The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive.

Actually, don’t play down the fucking reasons.

Don’t deprive me of my age. I have earned it.

Feel free though to deprive me of mine.

We have to break the mirror to be ourselves…

Right, like there’s not another one soon to follow.

For a long time, for years, I have carried in my mind the excruciating image of plants, bulbs, in a cellar, trying to grow without light, putting out white shoots that will inevitably wither.

Somehow we just know it’s not only about plants.

Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.

True, but how absurd is that.

[b]Dorothy Parker

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.[/b]

Me? I never even came close.

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do;
and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!

Needless to say, some can get away with this while others cannot.

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

Or, sure, wear nothing at all.

There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Make a note of that, Kids.

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

Again and again and agin, for example.

I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.

Either that or isn’t false.

[b]Angela Davis

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.[/b]

Or at least until it doesn’t make much sense to.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensity social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

On the other hand, cue the world today.

One of the reasons that so many people of color and poor people are in prison is that the deindustrialization of the economy has led to the creation of new economies and the expansion of some old ones – I have already mentioned the drug trade and the market for sexual services. At the same time, though, there are any number of communities that more than welcome prisons as a source of employment. Communities even compete with one another to be the site where new prisons will be constructed because prisons create a significant number of relatively good jobs for their residents.

Let’s call it, say, the prison industrial complex. And that’s before we get to all the fucking jails.

Everyone is familiar with the slogan “The personal is political” – not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology.

There’s a cure for that of course: 1] pop culture 2] mass consumption and 3] the worship of celebrity. And, nowadays, not just 15 minutes at a time.

But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite, that democracy from below can challenge oligarchy, that imprisoned migrants can be freed, that fascism can be overcome, and that equality is emancipatory.

Of course it does compete with other messages.

I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.

Gramsci. That’s a name to take me back…

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress.” Karl Popper[/b]

With the possible exception of out in the real world.

“While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.” Karl Popper

Right, like that will ever catch on.

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.” Karl Popper

With the possible exception of “one of us”.

“Silence is so accurate.” Mark Rothko

Like, say, a blank canvas.

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Of course it can never be a combination of both.

“Passions are likened best to floods and streams. The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.” Walter Raleigh

A double entendre if there ever one was.