a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Mario Vargas Llosa

It’s easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand. When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It’s not easy to be moved by abstract things.[/b]

Twelve more today.

I am somewhat allergic to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings.

True, but that doesn’t make men any less from Mars and Women any less from Venus.

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

Or, for some of us, non-fictions.

The essential difference between the culture of the past and the entertainment of today is that the products of the former sought to transcend mere present time, to endure, to stay alive for future generations, while the products of the latter are made to be consumed instantly and disappear, like cake or popcorn.

Depending on the products of course.

They had forgotten the abuses, the murders, the corruption, the spying, the isolation, the fear: horror had become myth. Everybody had jobs and there wasn’t so much crime.

Sounds like human nature to me.

Nostalgia is cowardice.

Well, I guess that settles that.

[b]Dave Eggers

It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, suspicion, fear.[/b]

That and knowing.

I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run.

Of course no one is always able to.

What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

Or of necessity.

Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?

Here for example.
Or here in particular.

It occurred to her, in a moment of sudden clarity, that what had always caused her anxiety, or stress, or worry, was not any one force, nothing independent and external. it wasn’t danger to herself or the constant calamity of other people and their problems. It was internal: it was subjective: it was not knowing.

On the contrary, he thought, it is that too.

So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.

Or, as I often insist, mocked.

[b]Werner Twertzog

You have little to fear if I follow you. But you do not have nothing to fear.[/b]

My advice: Get the restraining order.

It is important to live alone, and go to therapy, until you recover your authentic self, which, as we all know, does not exist.

Obviously, this might take a while.

There is so much horror in the world, sometimes I feel like I cannot take it. And then I remember the inevitability of death, and, even more, the annihilation of all matter.

Of course this won’t work for everyone.

Almost none of you will trend when you die.

Almost none was will trend before either.

Everyone in your graduation class photograph will be dead.

In fact, I might be the last one.

The United States has become Rwanda with nuclear weapons.

Let’s decide how troubling this is.

[b]Philip Larkin

This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.[/b]

Sure, why not?

Life is slow dying.

Like it can’t be speeded up.

One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the same day as we do ourselves.

Tell that to, among others, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

In life, as in art, talking vitiates doing.

Ain’t that the truth!!

I suppose if one lives to be old, one’s entire waking life will be spent turning on the spit of recollection over the fires of mingled shame, pain or remorse. Cheerful prospect!

Nope, not yet.

[b]The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.[/b]

Not counting the Kids of course.

[b]Existential Comics

Philosophy is important because someone has to tell college freshmen that they are all fucking idiots and literally every single thing they believe is wrong and dumb.[/b]

So, is that my job here or yours?

It’s horrifying to think of a world without philosophy. Imagine it, everyone would just accept it as a matter of course that chairs and stuff actually exist.

Providing of course they actually do.

we all must die, but in a sense, we can live forever in the hearts and minds of our haters

For one thing, define forever.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb to remember when politics gets complicated: Communism is good, and not communism is bad.

Anyone here dare to differ?

Liberals are great because you know the slide into fascism will be very politely disagreed with.

On the other hand, maybe there are different kinds.

An existential crisis is when you are like “shit, life sucks, nothing is even worth doing.” You overcome it when you drink your morning coffee.

On the other hand, maybe there are different kinds.

[b]David Hockney

I love California; everything is so artificial.[/b]

And not just Hollywood.

In the end nobody knows how it’s done - how art is made. It can’t be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn’t explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

Right, like that will stop them.

No theoretician, no writer on art, however interesting he or she might be, could be as interesting as Picasso. A good writer on art may give you an insight to Picasso, but, after all, Picasso was there first.

Anyone here foolish enough to explain that?

I usually only draw myself in down periods… I suppose that’s why I often draw myself looking grim. I just think, ‘Let’s have a look in the mirror.’ When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don’t, do you?

C.C. Baxter: The mirror… it’s broken.
Fran Kubelik: Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.

If you go too far with naturalism, there is no need to even organize; just look and paint what you see until the canvas ends.

Works that way with philosophy too. If you don’t count all the times it doesn’t.

In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can’t divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space and space without time.

So: Abstract art, abstract feeling?

[b]Russell Banks

Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.[/b]

Nope, not yet.

When you are a long way from where you think you belong, you will attach yourself to people you would otherwise ignore or even dislike.

No way that I ever did.
No way that I ever would?

One hates a person for the same reason one loves him.

We’ll have to know the person first of course.

What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.

Trust me: there actually are alternatives.

But when you’re a kid it’s like you’re wearing these binoculars strapped to your eyes and you can’t see anything except what’s in the dead center of the lenses.

Either that or x-ray specs.

All those happy, pretty, successful people–he hated them because he knew they didn’t really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in a way that made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren’t people, he fumed, they’re photographs.

Let’s just call it sour grapes and move on.

[b]The Dead Author

Socrates taught me that it’s ok to rather be dead.[/b]

Not only that but [to the best of my knowledge] he still is.

The problem with writing about depression is that you have to be depressed to have something to say about it, but not depressed to be able to say it.

He means just one of the problems of course.

godot taught me that it’s never too late.

On the other hand, he always does eventually show up.

Life is waiting for death while trying to keep your phone charged.

You know, among other things.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on this day in 1844, German philosopher who declared god dead but never gave up hope that he’d find a girlfriend.

So, did he?

You are filled with organs and a skeleton. The rest is up to you.

That con’t be good.

[b]David Sedaris

I can’t promise I’ll never kill anyone again, he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. It’s unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.[/b]

That’s probably the refrigerator talking.

When her muzzle grew more white than brown, the chipmunk forgot that she and the squirrel had had nothing to talk about. She forgot the definition of “jazz” as well and came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity.

Let’s take this to its logical conclusion.

It make one’s mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment.

And then to the assholes who force you to.

He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.
He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.
He nice, the Jesus.

The fractured English Jesus.

I don’t know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books about misguided kittens or seals who wear uniforms, and then reread them if the child so orders. In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: “Shut up.” That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child’s house, we lived in theirs.

Next think you know they’re serial killers.

As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion.
Let’s save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living, I said.

Let’s decide if this is racist.

[b]Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.[/b]

Doesn’t quite carry the punch it once did.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.

Doesn’t quite carry the punch it once did.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

On the other hand, he thought, I bore myself least of all.

When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.

Then on to the next one.

I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.

At least we’ve got death to look forward to.

Why do men think you can pick love up and re-light it like a candle? Women know when love is over.

Any women here who don’t?

[b]tiny nietzsche

there’s no crying in nihilism[/b]

It’s the wrong nihilism then.

pick a fear, any fear

Death, for example, or Kids.

me: I can’t stop entropy
doktor: have you tried letting it happen
me: I’m uncomfortable with that result

Like that has anything to do with it.

happy birthday carl sagan! I hope one of those billions and billions of stars is you

Hmm. Is that even possible?

one more day to get it half right

Or: one more day to get it half wrong.

any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from postmodernism

Let’s deconstruct this.

[b]Barbara W. Tuchman

Pessimism is a primary source of passivity.[/b]

As well it should be.

History was finite and contained within comprehensible limits. It began with the Creation and was scheduled to end in a not indefinitely remote future with the Second Coming, which was the hope of afflicted mankind, followed by the Day of Judgment. Within that span, man was not subject to social or moral progress because his goal was the next world, not betterment in this. In this world he was assigned to ceaseless struggle against himself in which he might attain individual progress and even victory, but collective betterment would only come in the final union with God.

Yep, that’s what they tell us alright.

Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannons.

Fortunately, here they are just ridiculous.

When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

Maybe we’ll have better luck with the next one.

The obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.

The good old days let’s call them.

Little attention was paid, because the German people, no matter how hungry, remained obedient.

Let’s decide: genes or memes?

Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL, died today…

[b]HAL

I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.[/b]

Some of you ought to try that here.

Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

And how far is that from human nature?

I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.

So, is he really?

It can only be attributable to human error.

Not much can’t be of course.

I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

HAL, the bullshitter

The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

Of course he’s programmed to say that.

[b]José Saramago

You’re very poetic.
No, just sad. [/b]

Let’s try this…
You’re very philosophical.
No, just _____________.

When I think about it, I have no idea who you are, but that’s not important, what matters is that we care about each other.

How idiotic is that?!
You know, if that’s what it is.

We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are still capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep.

Anyone here weeping now?

Will we ever learn that certain things can be understood only if we take the trouble to trace them to their origins.

And that would be the Big Bang, right?
Or, sure, the Garden of Eden.

…in order to invent heaven and hell a man would need to know nothing except the human body…

That will do it.

I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind. Blind but seeing. Blind people who can see, but do not see.

In other words, they don’t see what we see.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

"Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.” Alfred North Whitehead[/b]

Think about that, Mr. Objectivist. Or at least try to.

“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” Emily Dickinson

In poems maybe.

“Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.” Martin Heidegger

So, where does “Sieg Heil!” fit in here?

“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.” Martin Heidegger

So, where does “Sieg Heil!” fit in here?

“Where there is no hope, we must invent it.” Albert Camus

If only for the next life.

“Beware the man of a single book.” Thomas Aquinas

The Bible in particular. Or Atlas Shrugged.

[b]Barbara Kingsolver

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It’s everyone’s, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.[/b]

Assuming of course you are not misundstanding this.

It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.

As nearly as anyone can tell in all likelihood.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Don’t expect mine to ever reach it.

The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.

Not unlike the least important thing for some.

If we can’t, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

Right, and who gets to decide what that is?

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

Fatherhood? Forget about it.

[b]Lidia Yuknavitch

I never felt crazy, I just felt gone away.[/b]

Me too. But crazy was always in the vicinity.

Sometimes saviors look different than you thought they would.

If you thought they existed at all.

Have endless patterns and repetitions accompanying your thoughtlessness, as if to say let go of that other more linear story, with its beginning, middle, and end, with its transcendent end, let go, we are the poem, we have come miles of life, we have survived this far to tell you, go on, go on.

Or not of course.

It’s a movie about everything. This world we live in. The bodies we’re stuck with. The lives we get whether we want them or not. How hard you have to work just to get through a fucking day without killing yourself.

And that’s just the opening credits.

We misfits are the ones with the ability to enter grief. Death. Trauma. And emerge.

Hurrah for us…

You can be a drunk. You can be a survivor of abuse. You can be an ex-con. You can be a homeless person. You can lose all your money or your job or a husband or a wife, or the worst thing imaginable, a child. You can lose your marbles. You can be standing inside your own failure, a small sad stone in your throat, and still you are beautiful, your story is worth hearing, because you–you rare and phenomenal misfit–are the only one in the world who can tell the story the way that only you can.

Providing there are others willing to listen.

[b]so sad today

wish i could wear a mask every day[/b]

Who’s going to stop you?

regret or it didn’t happen

That works for me.

i’m cynical because, like, look around

Fuckin’ A!

the miracle of life is annoying

When it isn’t downright infuriating.

ever just feel tired for your entire life

Yeah, so far.

i’m starting to think that feelings are just going to keep happening

If only until the day you die. Though maybe not even then.

[b]Lillian Hellman

Fashions in sin change. [/b]

Not unlike fashions in virtue.

Drinking makes uninteresting people matter less and late at night, matter not at all.

Clearly though with any number of exceptions.

God forgives those who invent what they need.

Let’s bring that down to earth.

Haven’t you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody’s fault?

Unless you count liberals.

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.

Let alone at the time it ought to.

Styles in wit change so.

So, just grin and bear it.

[b]John Fowles from The Collector

People who teach you cram old ideas, old views, old ways, into you. Like covering plants with layer after layer of old earth; it’s no wonder the poor things so rarely come up fresh and green.[/b]

Let’s blame the ruling class.

You hate the political buisness of nationality. You hate everything, in politics and art and everything else, that is not genuine and deep and necessary. You don’t have time for silly trivial things. You live seriously. You don’t go to silly films, even if you want to; you don’t read cheap newspapers; you don’t listen to trash on the wireless and the telly; you don’t waste time talking about nothing. You use your life.

For most folks though, there’s reality.

But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it’s no go if your personality isn’t worth translating.

Mine? Well, it might be.

If there is a God he’s a great loathsome spider in the darkness.

If there is a God, what are the odds of that? But point taken.

But forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you.

Not unlike not forgetting.

Some people would say you’re only a drop, your word-breaking is only a drop, it wouldn’t matter. But all the evil in the world’s made up of little drops. It’s silly talking about the unimportance of the little drops. The little drops and the ocean are the same thing.

Not counting all the times they are anything but.