a thread for mundane ironists

[b]tiny nietzsche

you might be a postmodernist if you don’t actually believe the things you are saying[/b]

Or, far more likely, if you can’t actually believe the things you’re saying.

nothing tastes as good as nothing feels

As opposed to something tastes as good as something feels.

waiting for the detachment to kick in

More than a decade so far.

no shirt, no shoes, no postmodernism

Here though you can be a buck naked Platonist.

trump will probably trip on a staircase or choke on some kfc. that’s how this ends

That it ends is the point though.

you can’t make me exist

I know: Like you would ever want to.

[b]Greg Iles

Thought like that showed me the needless ambiguity of words like space-time. The average person heard a word like that and figured he’d never understand it. But it was so simple. Every place you ever saw was linked to a specific time … the school you visited twenty years after you graduated, the football field you played on, the track you ran – none of them was the same. If they were, you would collide with the generations that had run on them before and after you. The lover you kissed was not the same person he or she was sixty seconds before. In that minute, a million skin cells had died and been replaced by new ones. The smallest slices of space-time separated thought from action Life from death.[/b]

Finally, it’s almost close to being cleared up.

The thing about kicking open a door to the past is that sometimes what’s behind it comes out under its own power.

Let’s confirm this. You first.

When you start talking to yourself in a graveyard, it’s time to go home.

Until one day it is home.

Men fantasize about wanton women, but when they meet one, they’re paralyzed by fear.

Bullshit!
Right?

A man’s biggest enemy is his mouth.

Unless he is armed and dangerous.

There’s no meaning to be found in tragedy. Only in our response to it.

Unless of course there’s no meaning in that either.

[b]Taylor Jenkins Reid

You can only forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past once you know you’ll never make them again.[/b]

Come on, who can ever really know that?

It’s a hard business, reconciling what the truth used to be with what the truth is now.

Next up: reconciling both with what the truth will be.

If she knew how often I was thinking about her, she wouldn’t feel lonely.

If only it really worked that way.

You won’t realize just how young you are until you aren’t that young anymore.

And you can take that to the grave.

It scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it.

Been there, done that. Once, it was twice in the same day.

The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise.

Until eventually, expanding, it swallows the Earth whole.

[b]tiny nietzsche

mumble nihilism[/b]

Ask me to explain.

me: fuck the future
the future: hey

Fuck it anyway.

thursday is the real friday

Mine never is.

a painting that watches you across the room, but also loves you unconditionally

Or: a philosopher that watches you across the room, but also loves you unconditionally.

my horoscope says fuck the police

Imagine then their horoscope.

other things that inadvertently left a starbucks’ cup in the scene:
lincoln’s assassination
battle of waterloo
the last supper

The crucifixion of Christ?

[b]Janis Joplin

Don’t you know that you’re nothing more than a one night stand?[/b]

Then seventy plus years of them.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

Right, like not being one is any different.

I would trade all my tomorrow’s for one single yesterday.

Let’s make sense of this.

You know why we’re stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don’t let themselves feel things.

Let’s pin this down: Genes or Memes?

What we’ve had to do is learn to control success, put it in perspective, and not lose the essence of what we’re doing - the music.

Of course here it’s the philosophy. Or what’s left of it.

I won’t quit to become someone’s old lady.

How about a punching bag? Or is that all just rumor?

[b]so sad today

just when you think life can’t get any longer[/b]

Or shorter as the case may be.

“good” morning

Next up: “good” night.

i’ll be the cruel judge of me, thanks

But, sure, you too.

i came, i saw, i went back to bed

If only 365 days a year.

i’m fun when i’m alone

Trust me: I am too.

human beings just aren’t my thing

Wow, that’s my thing too.

[b]Woody Allen

God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.[/b]

Man and Mia Farrow.

I wish I could think of a positive point to leave you with. Will you take two negative points?

How about a swift kick in the balls?

A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life.

Mine is still around.

Figures tell us there are already more people on earth than we need to move even the heaviest piano.

Okay, but how far?

God is either cruel or incompetent.

Like He can’t be both.

If the world is a progressively realized community of interpretation, then either quadruplictity will drink procrastination or, provided that the nothing negates, boredom will ensue seldom more often than frequently.

Great, another serious philosopher.

[b]Jurgen Habermas

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out. [/b]

Among other things, I beg to differ. And they do too.

The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another.

You know, in theory.

The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

Now that is some serious philosophy.

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas — in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

Fucking philosophers, he thought.

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

That, crony capitalism and the military industrial complex.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

This and the parts about God.

[b]so sad today

maybe if i buy this shit i don’t need i’ll be a whole person[/b]

If not this shit, then that shit.

obsessing over a problem that doesn’t exist

Call this the problem then.

i really liked you. i mean, I didn’t but everyone else is worse

Yes, this can actually happen.

sleeping all day speaks louder than words

So does being awake all night.

many things are the worst

A lot more than things that are the best.

in a complicated relationship with the amount of shit i have to do just to stay alive

Next up: in a complicated relationship with death.

[b]Rene Magritte

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.[/b]

Thanks for clearing that up.

The feeling we experience while we look at a picture is not to be distinguished from the picture or from ourselves. the feeling, picture, and ourselves are united in one mystery.

Especially if you don’t feel anything at all.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well.

For some, even from themselves.

I detest my past, and anyone else’s. I detest resignation, patience, professional heroism and obligatory beautiful feelings. I also detest the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, voices making announcements, aerodynamism, boy scouts, the smell of moth balls, events of the moment, and drunken people.

A metaphor perhaps.

I think we are responsible for the universe, but that doesn’t mean we decide anything.

I think that maybe, possibly this is peacegirl’s point too.

The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb.

That and Trump with his finger on the button.

[b]Harlan Coben

There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.[/b]

Or, far more likely: There is an uncertain fate to the universe and an uncertain randomness.

I’m paraphrasing, but basically Sherlock warned that you should never theorize before you have the facts because then you twist the facts to suit the theory instead of twisting the theory to suit the facts.

Like that will stop anyone here.

An hour before his world exploded like a ripe tomato under a stiletto heel, Myron bit into a fresh pastry that tasted suspiciously like urinal cake.

First we’ll need to know if Myron deserved it.

Did tragedy cause fissures, open them wider–or did tragedy merely turn on the light so you could see the fissure that had always been there?

Yes.

Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.

Though long forgotten.

You have heart disease, people understand. When the brain gets sick, well, it’s almost impossible to comprehend.

Unless, of course, it’s a tumor.

[b]Philosophy Quotes

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” Albert Camus[/b]

Before he commits suicide of course.

“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.” Albert Camus

Well, he couldn’t get them all right.

“Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood; and that for any one to preach to others that which either he has not understood nor they have understood is absurd.” Peter Abelard

Tell that to, among others, the Kids and the objectivists. And, okay, the nihilists too.

“The man of science is a poor philosopher.” Albert Einstein

You know, if we’re lucky.

“We must not allow the ‘irrationality of rationality’ to overtake reason.” Edward Delia

We’ll need a context of course.

“How can an eternal God be the cause of anything evil?” Augustine

Well, he’s either closer to or farther away from answering that than we are.

[b]Bob Dylan

If you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.[/b]

Or, as likely as not here, overestimate.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

Not unlike what the rest of the world owes him.

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Though maybe to tell you when it will stop.

It’s not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you’re a fake, that’s tougher to live with.

Yep, that’s no less an existential contraption.

I was born a long way from where I belong and I am on my way home.

Beautiful…and meaningless.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right, now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself, you decide for yourself.

Let’s decide if that’s close enough.

[b]Leonard Cohen

Well, you know, there’s depression and depression. What I mean by depression in my own case is that depression isn’t just the blues. It’s not just like I have a hangover in the weekend … the girl didn’t show up or something like that. It isn’t that. It’s not really depression, it’s a kind of mental violence which stops you from functioning properly from one moment to the next. You lose something somewhere and suddenly you’re gripped by a kind of angst of the heart and of the spirit.[/b]

He means “darkness visible” of course.

It’s been a long time since I’ve stood on a stage in London. Was about 14 or 15 years ago, I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I’ve taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.

On the other hand, he was Leonard Cohen, right?

I see people allowing their lives to diminish, to become shallow, so they can’t enjoy the deep wells of experience. Maybe it’s always been this way, when the heart tends to shut down. If only the heart shut down and there were no repercussions, it would be O.K., but when the heart shuts down, the whole system goes into a kind of despair that is intolerable.

Whatever that means. But, sure, who can doubt it.

You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.

One of his best: youtu.be/H63dZKnlu_I
It’s filled with them.

It doesn’t matter what you do because it’s going to happen anyway.

Does it matter then what you don’t do?

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows the captain lied.
Everybody got this broken feeling, like their father or their dog just died.
Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long-stem rose.
Everybody knows.

Not counting you of course.
And occasionally me.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.” Benjamin Franklin[/b]

Why? Just lucky I guess.

“There’s nothing more to hold on to, and of course political circumstances just push that boat further out.” David Bowie

Either that or anchor it to shit like Trumpworld.

“I feel that reality has become an abstract for so many people over the last 20 years. Things that they regarded as truths seem to have just melted away, and it’s almost as if we’re thinking post-philosophically now.” David Bowie

I know that I am.

“While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.” David Hume

Hmm, isn’t that what we do here?

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” Democritus

On the other hand, how idiotic is that?

“Only describe, don’t explain.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Let’s explain this.

[b]Federico Fellini

Don’t tell me what I’m doing; I don’t want to know.[/b]

Every once in a while I think I understand this.

I spent my life trying to cure myself of my education.

I actually did.
Well, if I do say so myself.

You exist only in what you do.

Trust me: And in what you didn’t do.

No matter what happens, always keep your childhood innocence. It’s the most important thing.

Man, did I luck out there!

Like many people, I have no religion, and I am just sitting in a small boat drifting with the tide. I live in the doubts of my duty… I think there is dignity in this, just to go on working… Today we stand naked, defenseless, and more alone than at any time in history. We are waiting for something, perhaps another miracle, perhaps the Martians. Who knows?

Indeed. But tell that to the fucking Kids!

I claim the right to contradict myself. I don’t want to deprive myself of the right to talk nonsense, and I ask humbly to be allowed to be wrong sometimes.

In other words, being “human all too human”.

[b]Frans de Waal

Conventions are often surrounded with the solemn language of morality, but in fact they have little to do with it.[/b]

I know: not counting your conventions.

We have a tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a quest for freedom or striving for a virtuous life, but the life sciences hold a more mundane view: It’s all about security, social companionships, and a full belly. There is obvious tension between both views, which recalls that famous dinner conversation between a Russian literary critic and the writer Ivan Turgenev: ‘We haven’t yet solved the problem of God,’ the critic yelled, and you want to eat!’

What would you tell him?

At the time, science had declared humans unique, since we were so much better at identifying faces than any other primate. No one seemed bothered by the fact that other primates had been tested mostly on human faces rather than those of their own kind.

Right, like in so many other incredible ways humans aren’t unique.

I consider dogmatism a far greater threat than religion per se.

We’ll need the particulars of course.

Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain without realizing what is painful.

Just not the sort of empathy that counts however.

It seems safe to say that apes know about death, such as that is different from life and permanent. The same may apply to a few other animals, such as elephants, which pick up ivory or bones of a dead herd member, holding the pieces in their trunks and passing them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, only to touch and inspect the relics. Do they miss each other? Do they recall how he or she was during life?

The truth here may or may not be more problematic.

[b]Lisa Scottoline

I wonder if whoever invented World of Warcraft realizes it’s practice for sociopaths. [/b]

If not instrumental in creating them.

1. I am superior to others.
Circle one:
Doesn’t apply to me.
Partially applies to me.
Fully applies to me.
And:
I would not feel sorry if someone were blamed for something I did.
Circle one:
Doesn’t apply to me.
Partially applies to me.
Fully applies to me.

Which ones are we morally obligated to check?

Listen carefully, I’m going to say three words.
I love you?

I guess we’ll never know.

The look he was going for was Friendly Suburban Dad, because that’s what he was, but he suspected he’d achieved only Cialis Guy.

Would Viagra Guy be even worse?

Do you know what they call people who hoard books? Smart.

We’ll need to know which books of course.

One out of twenty-three is a sociopath and that’s 4 percent of the population, that’s a lot of sociopaths. Anorexics are 3 percent and everybody talks about them.

Let’s change that.

[b]Patricia Churchland

Theorizing is of course essential to make progress in understanding, but theorizing in the absence of knowing available relevant facts is not very productive. [/b]

Cue the endless “general descriptions” here.

The neuroscience of consciousness is not going to stop in its tracks because some philosophers guesses that project cannot be productive.

How can it not be productive?

I had no idea what philosophy was until I went to college at UBC. I first read Hume and Plato, so naturally I was under the misapprehension that philosophers are trying to figure out what is true, and that contemporary philosophers are mainly trying to figure out what is true about the mind. Of course Hume and Plato were trying to do that, hence my misapprehension.

Let’s explain this “for all practical purposes”.

Even philosophers who did not mind psychology, claimed the brain was irrelevant because it was the hardware, and we only need to know about the software.

Let’s let nature decide.

Remember, in the heyday of vitalism, people said that when all the data are in about cells and how they work, we will still know nothing about the life force - about the basic difference between being alive and not being alive.

Not counting the ones here who know everything.

Analyzing a concept can (perhaps) tell you what the concept means (at least means to some philosophers), but it does not tell you anything about whether the concept is true of anything in the world.

I think.

[b]Martin Gardner

The greatest scandal of the century in American psychiatry … is the growing mania among thousands of inept therapists, family counselors, and social workers for arousing false memories of childhoood sexual abuse.[/b]

Unless of course they are true?

The computers are not replacing mathematicians; they are breeding them.

Any offspring here?

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

Nope, don’t believe it.

As I have often said, electrons and gerbils don’t cheat. People do.

As he has often said?!

The violence and double-talk in the Alice books probably does no harm to children, but the novels should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis.

Let’s prove this mathematically.

A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?

Including hip-hop?