a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Timothy Snyder

Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress.[/b]

Ah, the objectivist mind. Especially when it’s in the head of a dictator.

The claim that order is freedom or that freedom is order ends in tyranny.

And that means mine, yours or theirs.

The organization of the camps in the east revealed a contempt for life, the life of Slavs and Asians and Jews anyway, that made such mass starvation thinkable. In German prisoner-of-war camps for Red Army soldiers, the death rate over the course of the war was 57.5 percent. In the first eight months after Operation Barbarossa, it must have been far higher. In German prisoner-of-war camps for soldiers of the western Allies, the death rate was less than five percent. As many Soviet prisoners of war died on a single given day in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War.

Make of this what this what you will.

The Soviets, at least some of them, believed in what they were doing. After all, they did it themselves and recorded what they did, in clear language, in official documents, filed in orderly archives. They could associate themselves with their deeds, because true responsibility rested with the communist party. The Nazis used grand phrases of racial superiority, and Himmler spoke of the moral sublimity involved in killing others for the sake of the race. But when the time came, Germans acted without plans and without precision, and with no sense of responsibility. In the Nazi worldview, what happened was simply what happened, the stronger should win; but nothing was certain, and certainly not the relationship between past, present and future. The Soviets believed that History was on their side and acted accordingly. The Nazis were afraid of everything except the disorder they themselves created. The systems and the mentalities were different, profoundly and interestingly so.

Definitely make of this what this what you will.

All citizens do have a measure of control, at least in democracies where their votes are counted, of how they belong to their nations.

Some considerably more measurable than others.

Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

So, what do you think, for better or for worse?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.” Bob Dylan[/b]

And what could be clearer than that?

“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” Bob Dylan

Well, that and the money to do it.

“Chaos is a friend of mine.” Bob Dylan

When it’s not your mortal enemy.

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

Of course that will sound [to some] like something a blockhead would say.

“The only thing worse than being bored is being boring.” Jean Baudrillard

Worse still: not even knowing it.

“History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.” Jean Baudrillard

For example: re-electing Trump.

[b]Francis Crick

Hemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your hemoglobin and mine are identical, and significantly different from that of a pig or horse. You may be impressed by how much human beings differ from one another, but if you were to look into the fine details of the molecules of which they are constructed, you would be astonished by their similarity. [/b]

Clearly: What to make of it?

God is a hacker, not an engineer.

Why would you hack your own creation?

Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus.

This thing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterior_cingulate_cortex
You know, if it’s true.

Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Even more than you think you are.

You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

But a pack of neurons able to point that out.

A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.

Go ahead, point that out to them.

[b]David Sedaris

The Bible says that it’s all right to cast the first stone if someone dead is telling you to do it.[/b]

We’ll need the chapter and verse of course.

Happiness is harder to put into words. It’s also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I’ve begged them to leave.

Why is this probably true?

If I’m walking down an American street and anyone darker than a peanut shell approaches, I’ll say, “Hello.” This because, if I don’t say it, he or she might think that I’m anxious. Which, of course, I must be, otherwise I’d walk by in silence, just as I do with my fellow Caucasians. Does this make me racist, or simply race conscious? Either way, I’m more afraid of conservatives than I am of black people.

These things can get tricky.

If practiced correctly, generosity can induce feelings of shame, inadequacy, and even envy, to name just a few.

Imagine then practicing it incorrectly.

To spend your days in the company of naked men - that was the life for me.

For others of course it’s naked women.

Often I’d take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face. Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you’re in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can’t be thought of as cute.

He means almost nothing.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” Jean Baudrillard[/b]

Not necessarily a bad thing, he thought.

“Don’t educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price.” Victor Hugo

Imagine him saying that today.

“Nothing in nature is by chance… Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.” Baruch Spinoza

And we know how far some will take that.

“Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” Baruch Spinoza

And we know how far some will take that.

“Nothing exists except through language.” Hans-Georg Gadamer

Here maybe.

“Our society is not one of spectacle but of surveillance.” Michel Foucault

Or, quite possibly, both.

[b]David Bowie

One day in Berlin … Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ … he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer … He said, ‘This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.’ Which was more or less right.[/b]

I like it myself, sure, but, come on.

Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd was the first person in rock I had seen with makeup on. He wore black nail polish and lots of mascara and black eye shadow, and he was so mysterious. It was this androgynous thing I found absolutely fascinating.

Of course we all know his story: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Barre … Pink_Floyd
Or this part of it.

This ain’t rock ‘n’ roll. This is genocide!

You know, for the diamond dogs.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

Anyone here care to rebut this?

The humanists’ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

Let alone objectively.

I want people to hear musicians like Joe Cuba. He has done things to whole masses of Puerto Rican people. The music is fantastic and important.

Decide for yourself: youtu.be/TClq1ASjIHw

[b]Neil deGrasse Tyson from Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

No doubt about it, we’re smarter than every other living creature that ever ran, crawled, or slithered on Earth. But how smart is that?[/b]

And does that even matter?

…I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon, than the number of people who have ever existed in the world. That kind of information makes you think twice about who–or what–is actually in charge.

It’s still God, right?

What we know is that the matter we have come to love in the universe—the stuff of stars, planets, and life—is only a light frosting on the cosmic cake, modest buoys afloat in a vast cosmic ocean of something that looks like nothing.

And then you die.

With only one proton in its nucleus, hydrogen is the lightest and simplest element, made entirely during the big bang. Out of the ninety-four naturally occurring elements, hydrogen lays claim to more than two-thirds of all the atoms in the human body, and more than ninety percent of all atoms in the cosmos, on all scales, right on down to the solar system.

And then there’s the hydrogen bomb.

To picture a pulsar, imagine the mass of the Sun packed into a ball the size of Manhattan. If that’s hard to do, then maybe it’s easier if you imagine stuffing about a billion elephants into a Chapstick casing.

Apparently, there things actually do exist.

…the universe expands forever in every direction for all of time…

Here’s the part I still don’t get: If the universe is all there is, what is it expanding into?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms” Michel Foucault[/b]

The “deep state” some now call it.

"My job is making windows where there were once walls.” Michel Foucault

My job is to smash them, he thought.

“No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” Gabriel García Márquez

Why do otherwise intelligent people say such preposterous things?

“It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Not here of course.

"The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dishonorable works for some of us.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.” Epicurus

This might not always be possible though.

[b]Frida Kahlo

To trap one’s self-suffering is to risk being devoured from the inside.[/b]

If you have anything to say about it at all.

What would I do without the absurd and the ephemeral?

Or, perhaps, what can you do with them?

Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in a wardrobe, where you were ‘sure’ of finding shirts.

Or finding a lion wearing your shirts.

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.

And that is really saying something, isn’t it?

The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become ‘somebody,’ and frankly, I don’t have the least ambition to become anybody.

Let’s hear from the gringos here.

I must fight with all my strength so that the little positive things that my health allows me to do might be pointed toward helping the revolution. The only real reason for living.

And back then the revolution was a real thing.

[b]Philosophical Tweets

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.” Baruch Spinoza[/b]

Same with how thick you slice it.

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.” Baruch Spinoza

And who is that more applicable to here than me?

“Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.” Marcus Aurelius

That and curse the darkness.

“Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.” Marcus Aurelius

Or else, as some insist, you can never have too much.

“Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Cue, for example, the serious philosophers pedants here.

“The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.” Bertrand Russel

True, but even that will only take you so far.

[b]Barbara Kingsolver

You think you’re the foreigner here, and I’m the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I’m a foreigner, too.[/b]

You don’t get this, do you?

If men only knew, modesty makes women fall in love faster than all the cock-a-doodling in the world.

So, has that actually worked for you?

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Of course the more you know what you want, you more painful it is not getting it.

Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.

If only because they don’t seem to know themselves.

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

Time to get out my stopwatch, he mused.

There’s a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it’s true but you haven’t told anyone yet. Of all things, that is what I remember most. It was so quiet.

Me, I don’t have anyone to tell. So sometimes it’s really quiet.

[b]Man Ray

Quote me as much as you like; as a matter of fact I don’t even mind if you misquote me![/b]

Sure, go ahead, misquote me too.

Speaking of nudes, I have always had a great fondness for this subject, both in my paintings and in my photos, and I must admit, not for purely artistic reasons.

Like we didn’t know that.

Is photography an art? There is no point in trying to find out if it is an art. Art is old-fashioned. We need something else.

We still do.

All critics should be assassinated.

Starting now? Or starting here?

I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society.

Talk about a world of words.

In the same spirit, when the automobile arrived, there were those that declared the horse to be the most perfect form of locomotion.

And what spirit might that be?

[b]Nein

Yes, life, you have defeated me. But you’ve got to win by two.[/b]

Just give it time.

Monday just wants you to know. It doesn’t want to be here either.

Again, in other words.

Friday. Everybody’s favorite capitalism.

Not counting Sunday morning perhaps.

If there’s one thing we learned this week, friends, it’s everything we already knew.

And it’s not like we can just skip to next week.

The poets regret to inform you: Every month is the cruelest.

Not unlike every year.

After the revolution, friends, every day will feel like Friday. Until further notice.

Needless to say: Don’t hold your breath. And the best they’ll come up with now is Joe Biden.

[b]Joan Miro

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life. [/b]

Why would anyone look at a picture for a week?

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.

Or, as likely as not, lack of meaning.

A simple line painted with the brush can lead to freedom and happiness.

And a simple word written here?

If you have any notion of where you are going, you will never get anywhere.

Unless, perhaps, you live in the real world.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I’ll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

Sounds more like something he’d like us to believe.

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings.

Fortunately for us, few philosophers are likely to agree.

[b]Douglas Hofstadter

You can never represent yourself totally … to seek self -knowledge is to embark on a journey which … will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described. [/b]

Not totally, but, here, just enough to know the “real me”.

In fact, a sense of essence is, in essence, the essence of sense, in effect.

Not counting all that apriori stuff.

In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.

For some of course that means [and only means] me, myself and I.

You make decisions, take actions, affect the world, receive feedback from the world, incorporate it into yourself, then the updated ‘you’ makes more decisions, and so forth, 'round and 'round.

Until death do you part.

How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some “gullibility center” in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation.

Okay, but what might that cost?

If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don’t have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I’m a little more respectful of ants.

How close is this to being irrational?

[b]Wassily Kandinsky

Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with ‘reality,’ next to the ‘real’ world.[/b]

How about paint by numbers?

The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.

And, believe it or not, not just on Wall Street.

Color cannot stand alone.

Why on earth would it want to?

Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality.

And, given that blue is my favorite color, how ironic is that?

As a picture painted in yellow always radiates spiritual warmth, or as one in blue has apparently a cooling effect, so green is only boring.

What’s that make brown then?

Music is the ultimate teacher.

Not counting country music of course.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

If you look in a mirror long enough, eventually you’ll find yourself avoiding eye contact with your reflection.[/b]

Unless of course you are [among other things] a narcissist.

Feeling nostalgic about my future in the past.

And this too shall pass.

Can you say something sexy in French?
Oui, j’ai mal à la tête.

You tell me.

So little time, so much eternity.

Just not yet.

Pessimist: This will end badly.
True pessimist: This will never end.

I think she has a point there.

I put procrastination on my to-do list, so technically I’m not procrastinating any more.

Let’s just say she’s only fooling herself.

[b]Angie Thomas

People say misery loves company, but I think it’s like that with anger too.[/b]

Well, it is here anyway.

A hairbrush is not a gun.

Not that in particular contexts it can’t look like one.

I hope none of them ask about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend.

Back again to that hairbrush.

Right. Lack of opportunities, Daddy says. Corporate America don’t bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain’t quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don’t prepare us well enough. That’s why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don’t get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It’s easier to find some crack that it is the find a good school around here.
Now, think 'bout this, he says. How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking 'bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don’t know anybody with a private jet. Do you?
No.
Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community, he says. You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

One man’s point of view?

This is exactly what They expect you to do, Momma says.
They with a capital T.
There’s Them and then there’s Us.
Sometimes They look like Us and don’t recognize They are Us.

In other words, you’re liable to get it coming and going.

I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it.

For some though it’s three or more.

[b]Andre Breton

Over and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone- over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience- I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall recognize what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear, so that I alone can answer for its fate?[/b]

Few of course will take it this far.

For me, the single word “God” suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque.

In other words, what others insist is the Devil.

Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.

Right, like crucial distinctions can’t be made.

No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.

Let’s note some actual examples.

The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows.

Yeah, but how important?

I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refused to admit defeat, sets off from watever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.

Sounds rather imponderable to me.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Why do I rock so hard? Because one is a long time dead.[/b]

I hear that.

I do not need a “safe word,” but for you I would suggest two.

Or one that is really long.

“Splainsplainin’” : The tendency of self-righteous people to think that they, alone, are in possession of the truth, and that others who disagree with them should remain deferentially silent.

He means objectivism of course.

It is important, before enrolling in any humanities graduate program, to begin training for a career, ten years from now, that has nothing to do with your degree. Also, you should have at least $500,000 in savings.

You know, being a pragmatist.

When you are no longer needed to build wealth and power for the capitalist oligarchs, your numbers will be systematically reduced through healthcare policy, food scarcity, drug addiction, war, unheralded mass sterilization, and justified despair, as we all know.

For some in the name of God.

As a child, I never won a “spelling bee” because I understood that correct spelling is historically contextual and rooted in imperialism.

As we all know.