a thread for mundane ironists

[b]God

Artificial intelligence isn’t a threat to humanity. Natural stupidity is.[/b]

Wow, maybe He does exist!

Next time no assholes.

That means you, Kids.

It’s a well-known fact that the world is full of stupid people, but what may surprise you is you are one of them.

Well, He is omniscient.

The biggest misconception about Me is that I give a shit.

Actually, the biggest misconception [by far] is that He exists.

You should not vaccinate your children unless you are absolutely sure you want them to live.

That won’t change their minds, of course.

I never would have made you this smart if I knew you were going to be this stupid.

What’s the bastard’s point here?

[b]Jackson Pollock

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.[/b]

Some of us will never understand this. I know that I don’t.

I don’t use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident.

Well, good for him.

I don’t paint nature. I am nature.

Of course we’re all nature.

Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we’re living in. All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within.

What does this explain? Something between everything and nothing at all.

The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely.

What future do we point to here?

The painter locks himself out of his own studio. And then has to break in like a thief.

How dumb is that? At least the part that’s not brilliant.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

Philosophy 101: I know nothing
Philosophy 201: I know nothing
Philosophy 301: I know nothing
Philosophy 401: I no nothing[/b]

Philosophy 501: I know and/or no more than you

On Sunday we mourn
Schopenhauer: the death of reason
Nietzsche: the death of God
Beckett: the death of death
Camus: the high price of cigarettes

Not to mention the other six days for many. If only 52 weeks a year.

Know yourself!
Kant: “Know”?
Fichte: “Self”?
Hegel: “Your”?
Nietzsche: “!”?

Come on, really, who care what Fichte thinks.

Assistant professor: Teach like everyone’s watching
Associate professor: Teach like no one’s watching
Full professor: Teach like no one – including you – is even there

Let’s make that apllicable here.

Idealism: I am what I think
Materialism: I think what I am
Psychoanalysis: You aren’t what you think
Existentialism: You can only think what you aren’t, weren’t, and never will be

Though clearly not in that order.

English Lit: You’re meeting your archenemy on the bridge
French Lit: You’re dueling with your archenemy on the bridge
Russian Lit: You’re realizing that your archenemy on the bridge is you

American Lit: nytimes.com/books/best-sell … =Reference

[b]Martin Gardner

All mathematicians share a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics. [/b]

I know I would if I were one.

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures?

Well, who are we to believe in Him?

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads; ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant general the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

Cue, among others, Marx and Engels. And, on the other side, Adam Smith.

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.

Your job: To make sense of this.

The universe is almost like a huge magic trick and scientists are trying to figure out how it does what it does.

There must be at least a half dozen folks here who will swear that they can tell them.

Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality.

Next up: the mathematics of fucking.

[b]Greg Iles

God is all powerful.
God is good.
Evil exists.
You can reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three.[/b]

Unless of course God works in mysterious ways.

Let me tell you a secret, Caitlin. We’re still in the cave. It’s just bigger, and we wear nicer clothes.

Let’s call them the civilized caves.

You can’t build happiness on someone else’s pain.

You can if you don’t know [or want to know] about it.

Emotions are by nature amorphous. When confined to words, our longings and passions, our rebellions and humiliations often seem melodramatic, trivial, or even pathetic.

I know: in one ear and out the other.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children, because they’re more certain they are their own.

That is one way to look at it.

The mills of the gods grind slowly…but they grind to dust.

Of course now there’s only one of them.

[b]Taylor Jenkins Reid

No matter how strong you are, no matter how smart you are or tough you can be, the world will find a way to break you. And when it does, the only thing you can do is hold on.[/b]

If only all the way to the grave.

Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.

Unless of course it’s both.

Just because you can live without someone doesn’t mean you want to.

Unless of course you do.

Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.

Right, as though you always can.

I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?

Needless to say: some people more than others.

Be wary of men with something to prove.

More to the point [here]: Beware of the Kids with nothing to prove.

[b]Janis Joplin

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. [/b]

Of course you may not have the option not to.

The more you live, the less you die.

She was 27 the day she died.

If you’ve got a today, don’t wear it tomorrow. Tomorrow never happens. It’s all the same day.

Missed this one completely.

You know you’ve got it, if it makes you feel good.

Or [sometimes] if it makes them feel bad.

You’re only as much as you settle for. If they settle for being somebody’s dishwasher that’s their own fucking problem. If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be.

Though it does help to have a voice like hers.

As good as you’ve been to this world is as good as it’s gonna be right back to you.

Not actually counting this world of course.

[b]Woody Allen

You know, it’s one thing about intellectuals, they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what’s going on.[/b]

Not counting us of course. Aside from, well, you know.

Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.

Or piss in it.

All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.

If you even know that you are.

I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want.

I’ll take a stab at it: To fucking DIE!!!

Paranoia is knowing all the facts.

Let’s just say that I know more than you do.

The only love that lasts is unrequited love.

I’ll be taking mine to the grave.

[b]Existential Comics

Capitalism began in England around the 16th century. They immediately went on to colonize half the planet in search of new markets, committed multiple genocides, traded slaves, and engaged in constant war.
In school we learn about how communism is evil because of a famine.[/b]

Cue Phyllo?

Philosophers don’t want to admit it, but the meaning of life is quite obviously to maximize capital gains for the shareholders.

Anyone here doubt that?

Are we living in a computer simulation?
No, obviously not.
How do I know?
Because that’s stupid nerd shit, come on.

Besides, we should be so lucky.

[b]A brief history of civility and rational debate in the United States:

  • failed to gain independence.
  • failed to free the slaves.
  • failed to gain the vote for women.
  • failed to gain the 40 hour work week.
  • failed to gain civil rights.
    You can’t debate your way to freedom.[/b]

Let’s debate this.

[b]Number of times the candidate used the phrase “the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism” in their announcement speech:

Bernie: 0
Harris: 0
Warren: 0
Booker: 0
Beto: 0
Gillibrand: 0
Buttigieg: 0[/b]

No, that’s actually true. Republicans too.

Philosophy begins with the question of:
Aristotle: virtue.
Aquinas: God.
Descartes: knowledge.
Heidegger: being.
Sartre: freedom.
Wittgenstein: language.
Foucault: how many things I can shoehorn into this prison metaphor.

Over 50 that I count.

[b]Richard Rorty

At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one’s life fighting social injustice. [/b]

Their injustices not ours.

What counts as rational argumentation is as historically determined and as context-dependent, as what counts as good French.

And certainly as good English.

There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on for ever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction: you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations.

An ironist is born.

Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

Well, that and chance and change.

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

Of course now he doesn’t even have that. If I have a bet to lay.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have an ambition of transcendence.

In other words, he has no principle motive now.

[b]Nikola Tesla

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.[/b]

And the philosophic man? Well, those that come down out of the clouds.

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle.

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Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

And we know how far some take this.

Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine.

And we know how far some take this.

Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.

Though, if so, like him, you and I will be long dead and gone.

Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.

Anyone here know what they are?

[b]Existential Comics

Here are a few small things that everyone can do to help the environment:

  • turn off the lights when you leave a room
  • use a reusable water bottle
  • take the bus instead of driving
  • guillotine the rich
  • recycle[/b]

Let’s put them in the right order.

What would philosophers say about twitter?
Heidegger: it alienated us from authentic being.
Adorno: it destroys genuine dialogue.
Kierkegaard: it distracts us from the real problems of life.
Schopenhauer: how tf does Hegel have more followers than me?!

Let’s put them in the right order.

Obama is the greatest American President because he figured out how to recover from a recession without giving any concessions to the working class, and in fact transferring even more wealth to the rich.

Well, he is a future Bilderberger. If he’s not one already.

Hilarious when people say that philosophy is useless and we shouldn’t bother with it.
Like they looked at the world and thought to themselves “the big problem I see is that too many people are questioning what they are told. People need to think less.”

Or, sure, not hilarious at all.

Science: what is there?
Philosophy: how do we know?
Literature: why do we bother?
Poetry: how can we make it rhyme?

Two words: free verse.

The funniest anti-communist argument is that “it is human nature to be selfish.” As though property rights naturally follow from this fact, and ten thousand workers should devote their lives to enrich the one man who owns the factory, because they are…naturally selfish?

Yep, that’s their argument.

[b]Harlan Coben,

There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can’t know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy.[/b]

I sure as shit know that I am.

Sometimes the loudest cries for help are silent.

And sometimes others don’t even hear them.

So basically your plan is to flail about helplessly.

Or, at any rate, the backup plan.

I used to wonder why Lucy liked those songs so much. You know what I mean? She sits in the dark and listens and cries. Music does that to her…I didn’t understand for a long time. But I do now. The sad songs are a safe hurt. It’s a diversion. It’s controlled. And maybe it helps you imagine that real pain will be like that. But it’s not. Lucy knows that, of course. You can’t prepare for real pain. You just have to let it rip you apart.

Besides, not all pains are created equal.

We get mad at someone for cutting us off in traffic or for taking too long to order at Starbucks or for not responding exactly as we see fit, and we have no idea that behind their facade, they may be dealing with some industrial-strength shit. Their lives may be in pieces. They may be in the midst of incalculable tragedy and turmoil, and they may be hanging on to their sanity by a thread. But we don’t care. We don’t see. We just keep pushing.

Let’s call this “the real world”.

So basically, that entire theory is blown to hell.
Not basically, Win corrected. Entirely.

Basically, yeah, entirely.

[b]Bob Dylan

Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean. [/b]

And let’s not forget what they only might mean.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

Or not repent if that’s convenient.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Me too. Only I have a word for it, don’t I?

You always got to be prepared but you never know for what.

Either that or you know what but all the preparation in the world won’t do it.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.

Of course he’s only paraphrasing, well, lots of people.

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.

That’s me now. But not me then.

[b]tiny nietzsche

rock, paper, unrequited love[/b]

Get the scissors.

if you can’t murder yourself, who can you murder?

You know, if you’re willing to risk prison.

you’re reading van gogh’s name wrong

And, then, the next thing you know, you’re saying it wrong.

keep fast forwarding, there are no good parts

Maybe rewinding?

now I am become death, the destroyer of waffles

Not if you smother them in syrup.

said hey to a bird. it gave me a look that said “humans are untrustworthy”

Probably an owl.

[b]Leonard Cohen

We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.[/b]

Unbearably light was once suggested. In love or not.

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky.

And then…just like that…we’re gone.

I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.

So, if it could be in one word, which word ought it to be?

It’s the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

On the contrary, no can do.

I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.

Imagine then being soaked to the bone.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

My guess: You don’t really have much choice.

[b]Iggy Pop

Your skin starts itching once you buy that gimmick about something called love.[/b]

Or even more without it.

I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there are others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.

Does nothing for me.

I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I’d recorded I’d try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted. So, it’s no surprise to me that he got the hit and I didn’t.

Works that way for me too. And not just here.

I’ve probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.

Of course in there it’s not just piss.

I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don’t believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet.

So, anyone, did they?

Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I don’t scuba, I don’t spear, don’t boat, don’t play basketball or football – I excel at staring into space. I’m really good at that.

I’m staring into space right now. Or will be shortly.

[b]so sad today

i don’t like you anymore and it’s beautiful[/b]

Let’s make that mutual, okay?

by relaxed i mean very anxious

By okay I mean so what?

only coke zero understands me

Me? Diet Mountain Dew.

i was born to give up

Yeah, there’s a gene for that too.

i don’t give a fuck but i totally do

The new normal.

can’t decide if i’ve made enough mistakes yet to go to bed

Keep making them then.

[b]Frans de Waal

Robin Hood had it right. Humanity’s deepest wish is to spread the wealth.[/b]

Back then maybe.

Are we open-minded enough to assume that other species have a mental life? Are we creative enough to investigate it? Can we tease apart the roles of attention, motivation, and cognition? Those three are involved in everything animals do; hence poor performance can be explained by any one of them.

If only genetically.

Those who exclaim that “animals are not people” tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier.

Like this will stop them.

When we see a disciplined society, there is often a social hierarchy behind it. This hierarchy, which determines who can eat or mate first, is ultimately rooted in violence.

For example, politically and economically.

The key point is that anthropomorphism is not always as problematic as people think. To rail against it for the sake of scientific objectivity often hides a pre-Darwinian mindset, one uncomfortable with the notion of humans as animals.

You can still take it too far. Like, for example, the narrator of Savage Kingdom.

The science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov reportedly once said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.”

What’s the equivalent of that here?

[b]Courtney Love

The American public really does have a death wish for me. They want me to die. I’m not going to die.[/b]

Let us know if she does.

What makes the most money for this business? Dead rock stars.

Then this: Did he jump or was he pushed?

I might lie a lot but never in my lyrics.

Let’s pour over them.

I did not want to make the widow record. I still haven’t made the widow record.

Who the fuck would want her to?

I think self-destructiveness is given a really bad rap. I think it can also mean self-reflection and poetic sensiblity. It can mean empathy, hedonism, a libertarianism.

Depending on who you take along for the ride.

The minute I got skinny and got a nose job and became photogenic, and all of a sudden I had a bidding war, and every boy I ever wanted, wanted me.

That’s how it works alright.