a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Zoë Heller

The conclusion of Dowell’s narrative offers not a resolution, so much as a plangent confirmation of complexities. While Ford would certainly have agreed with Dowell that it is a novelist’s business to make a reader ‘see things clearly’, his interest in clarity had little to do with simplicity. There is no ‘getting to the bottom of things’, no triumphant answers to the epistemological muddle offered in this beautiful, bleak story - only a finer appreciation of that confusion. We may remove the scales from our eyes, Ford suggests, but only the better to appreciate the glass through which we see darkly.[/b]

Some [obviously] more darkly than others.

Music, together with certain sorts of majestic landscape, had a well-known tendency to induce such faux-sublime moments: artificial intimations of transcendent truths, grandiose hunches about the nature of the universe. It was all nonsense. Her tears had been no different from the ones people cried at sentimental television commercials. They represented nothing but a momentary and regrettable submission to kitsch.

Hell, even I wouldn’t go that far. Well, maybe on some days.

Up to this moment in her life, Audrey had never evinced the slightest sentimentality about children. Insofar as she had recognized them as an independent category of personhood, she had tended to think of them as trainee humans. Inadequate adults. She loved her own daughters well enough - wanted them to be happy and so forth - but they had failed to inspire in her that mad, lioness passion to which other mothers so preeningly testified. She was still in some shock regarding the servility of motherhood - the sheer, thankless drudgery of it. All the cleaning up of messes she had made and preparing meals she did not want to eat. She fed her girls regularly and diligently brushed their teeth twice a day and made sure they were more or less appropriately dressed for the weather, but beyond a dull sense of satisfaction at having fulfilled her maternal duties, she received no pleasure from performing these tasks. Try as she might, she she could not feel her daughters’ happiness and sorrows as her own.

You get this or you don’t. And that includes fathers too.

If everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed?

Yeah, but with kids? And not just Sheba.

This is madness. You’re making it into something it’s not. It’s all in your mind.
Sheba was about to protest, and then she laughed. Isn’t that the worst place it could be?

Oh yeah…

If this was cynical, then we must allow that all courtship is cynical.

Sure, why not? Everything else is.

[b]tiny nietzsche

love in the time of algorithms[/b]

In other words, no love at all.

dead inside, dead inside
every single one of us
dead inside

You know, being optimistic.

give me the dead of winter

If only in the dead of summer.

people who say “hot enough for ya” hide bodies under floorboards

Let’s explain why.

stay numb

He can count on me.

you swallow eight ghosts a year while you sleep

And not all of them are spiders.

[b]Bjork

I never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature.[/b]

Yeah, most would expect her to say this.

Iceland sets a world-record. The United Nations asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked what do we believe, 90% said, ‘ourselves’. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.

Well, she is, after all, Bjork.

It takes a long time to fully become who you are.

Hell, you might even die first.

I find it so amazing when people tell me that electronic music has no soul. You can’t blame the computer. If there’s no soul in the music, it’s because nobody put it there.

Your job: to find electronic music with soul.

I don’t expect people to get me. That would be quite arrogant. I think there are a lot of people out there in the world that nobody gets.

Including every single one of us of course.

If I had a philosophy, it’s that I support the beautiful side of anarchy.

He wondered: Is that even a thing?

[b]Ted Chiang

The individuals are tragically like marionettes, independently animate but bound by a web they choose not to see; they could resist if they wished, but so few of them do.[/b]

Or, perhaps, not tragically from their point of view.

When the ancestors of humans and heptapods first acquired the spark of consciousness, they both perceived the same physical world, but they parsed their perceptions differently; the worldviews that ultimately arose were the end result of that divergence. Humans had developed a sequential mode of awareness, while heptapods had developed a simultaneous mode of awareness. We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all.

Who the hell really knows what that means, but, just for the record: “Heptapods are an intelligent, space-faring extraterrestrial species in Story of Your Life and the 2016 film Arrival.”

You see, the foundations of our culture were laid in classical Greece, where physical beauty and the body were celebrated. But our culture is also thoroughly permeated by the monotheistic tradition, which devalues the body in favor of the soul. These old conflicting impulses are rearing their heads again, this time in the calliagnosia debate.

One man’s opinion?

If those scientists could come up with some way to turn off the jerk circuit in guys’ brains, I’d be all in favor of that.

Starting with the Kids of course.

No one relishes the prospect of humans being conceived artificially. But can you offer an alternative?

Let’s think up one.

Men are no different from your automata; slip a bloke a piece of paper with the proper figures on it, and he’ll do your bidding.

Even if that bloke’s a woman.

[b]tiny nietzsche

the worst children’s toy to step on is an imaginary friend[/b]

Actually deaths have been noted.

what’s eating søren kierkegaard

God knows.

there goes nothing

Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

tell that fuck camus he can find me at the beach

Yet another rendition of “famous last words”.

we need more bees, but not too many bees, okay?

Anyone here know how many more?

why am I just now hearing about my own death?

All the way back to, “why am I just now hearing about my own birth?”

[b]Mark Manson

People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good.[/b]

Imagine if that happened here.

Essentially, we become more selective about the fucks we’re willing to give. This is something called maturity. It’s nice; you should try it sometime. Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuck-worthy. As Bunk Moreland said to his partner Detective McNulty in The Wire: “That’s what you get for giving a fuck when it wasn’t your turn to give a fuck”.

So, should we give a fuck about this?

…the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.

Like that will ever stop it.

But the problem with entitlement is that it makes people need to feel good about themselves all the time, even at the expense of those around them. And because entitled people always need to feel good about themselves, they end up spending most of their time thinking about themselves. After all, it takes a lot of energy and work to convince yourself that your shit doesn’t stink, especially when you’ve actually been living in a toilet.

At best, maybe.

Because here’s something that’s weird but true: we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don’t trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn’t. And that’s not worth much.

At best, maybe.

Side Note: As a rule, people who are terrified of what others think about them are actually terrified of all the shitty things they think about themselves being reflected back at them.

More like a footnote actually.

[b]Elin Hilderbrand

Women clearly felt things more deeply: they read sub-text where men saw only white space.[/b]

And, as we all know, there are absolutely no exceptions.

Some people don’t like being happy. They’re much more comfortable when they have a problem.

Never been one of those. But: Is that a good thing?

If everyone slept with the person he or she had secretly fallen in love with, the world would be chaos.

Let’s try futilely to explain this.

Every life contains a novel.

If not a plot.

And Margot should have made a rule about no cell phones. What was it about life now? The people who weren’t present always seemed to be more important than the people who were.

Not that they can’t actually be of course.

A garden is not a matter of life or death. It is far more important than that.

Personaly, I can’t even imagine why.

[b]Woody Allen

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. [/b]

Next up: to hate.

How does gravity work? And if it were to cease suddenly, would certain restaurants still require a jacket?

See if you can spot the non sequitur.

I’m awash in self-contempt!

That makes one of us.

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.

The near future for example. Especially tomorrow.

I want to return to the womb, anyone’s.

With the possible exception of Mia’s.

The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New Jersey.

Why New Jersey? No, seriously.

[b]Joni Mitchell

Laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release. [/b]

Yeah, sure.

During times like these, the wise are influential.

Maybe in la la land.

I had made all these rules for myself: I’m not writing social commentary, I’m not writing love songs.

In other words, blah, blah, blah. But point taken.

Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.

Where the fuck is this going?

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

Of course that’s now more or less normal.

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

Though not necessarily in that order.

[b]so sad today

human existence has always been a disaster so at least there’s that[/b]

Yeah, I guess so.

but i love my false conception of reality

Provided of course that it actually is false.

obsessing about moisturizer and death

After all, it’s not like you can do that after you die.

watching myself fuck up in slow motion

Next up: watching yourself fuck up in reverse.

you’re damn right i ignore my basic human needs

Though not nearly as much as she ignores ours.

in the middle of masturbating, i stopped to worry about my future, my health, and whether someone spontaneously hates me, and then started masturbating again

I’m trying to imagine it.

[b]Daniel Kahneman

You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analyzing it. Whether you state them or not, you often have answers to questions that you do not completely understand, relying on evidence that you can neither explain nor defend.[/b]

Let’s imagine that this is actually true.

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1748, the Scottish philosopher David Hume reduced the principles of association to three: resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and causality. Our concept of association has changed radically since Hume’s days, but his three principles still provide a good start.

We’ll need a context of course. No, really.

If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism.

You know, whether it is warranted or not.

…the proper way to elicit information from a group is not by starting with a public discussion but by confidentially collecting each person’s judgment. This procedure makes better use of the knowledge available to members of the group than the common practice of open discussion.

Fortunately [or unfortunately], that’s never been the proper way here.

A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.

Unless it’s nature all the way down.

A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or of any part of it), you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed.

Unless of course nothing could be further from the truth.

[b]Edgar Degas

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations… it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.[/b]

And his men?

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

Things only artists say.

One does not marry art. One ravishes it.

Next up: What one does with philosophy.

Art is the same word as ‘artifice,’ that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

Something stinks here, he thought.

We were created to look at one another, weren’t we?

That and a few other things.

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.

Let’s translate this into English.

[b]Harlan Coben

Daisy wore a clingy black dress with a neckline so deep it could tutor philosophy.[/b]

So, should we be offended?

You want to put people in neat categories, make them monsters or angels, but it almost never works that way. You work in the gray and frankly that kinda sucks. The extremes are so much easier.

No doubt about that…right, Mr. Objectivist?

They’re politicians, Win said. They’d lie and evade if you asked them what they had for breakfast.

But only the liberals of course.

They say you never know how someone will react when the grenade is thrown.

I was actually in a commo bunker that one was tossed into. A “dud” as they say.
Unfortunately for you? ; )

A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.

Not unlike a verdict.

You could trust nature but not man.

Unless of course they’re indistinguishable.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time’.” Ludwig Wittgenstein[/b]

Let’s struggle futilely to explain this.

“Without the past, there is no future.” Confucius

Well, he was, after all, Confucius.

“He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.” David Hume

Imagine him here though.

“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” David Hume

Unless you count death of course.

“Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.” George Berkeley

Solipsistically, for example.

“My criticism of Hegel’s procedure is that when in his discussion he arrives at a contradiction, he construes it as a crisis in the universe.” Alfred North Whitehead

As, for example, it actually was in his head.

[b]Bob Dylan

To live outside the law, you must be honest. [/b]

Let’s decide how far outside. And how honest.

There are things I could say. But I don’t.

Anyone here know what they are?

The worth of things can’t be measured by what they cost but by what they cost you to get it, that if anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and that there are some things that will never wear out.

His faith and his family maybe.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

I’m sorry, but that’s idiotic.

He did ten years in Attica, reading Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich.

Hurricane?

One should never be where one does not belong.

Yeah, but where’s that?

[b]Blake Crouch

Is it possible to outthink yourself?[/b]

Not only that but all the way to the grave?

Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.

Or, for that matter, a newspaper.

If there are infinite worlds, how do I find the one that is uniquely, specifically mine?

It’s probably the one you’re living.

It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to ,and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.

On the other hand, born and bred in the belly of the working class beast, I missed that part.

Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.

Repeat as necessary.

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. To the earth…a million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

Especially not one at a time.

[b]Neal Stephenson

All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.[/b]

I couldn’t have said it better myself, he thought.

The sight of the bare katana inspires everyone to a practically Nipponese level of politeness.

The sword?

Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same.

That’s before the walls of course.

We’re not hunter-gatherers anymore. We’re all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn’t bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It’s our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.

And occasionally a few philosophers.

An old market had stood there until I’d been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

Only in America probably.

Jad said, “The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters.”
Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a room with a madman sorcerer. That clarified things a little.

We have a few of those here.

[b]Michelangelo Antonioni

Neorealism taught us to follow the characters with the camera, allowing each shot its own real interior time. Well, I became tired of all this; I could no longer stand real time. In order to function, a shot must show only what is useful. [/b]

Imagine if philosophers had this problem.

There can be no censorship better than one’s own conscience.

Providing of course that you have one. And it’s the right one.

Before each new setup, I chase everyone off the set in order to be alone and look through the camera. In that moment, the film seems quite easy. But then the others come in and everything becomes difficult.

Actually, that doesn’t surprise me at all.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

Think about how absurd that is.

Women are a finer filter of reality. They can sniff things.

And, these days, even direct things in films.

You can’t go to an LSD or pot party unless you take it yourself. If I want to go, I must take drugs myself.

Anyone here know why?

[b]PJ Harvey

Some people, like Leonard Cohen, write one album every 10 years, and labor over a song for five years at a time.[/b]

Let’s call this an exaggeration. If it is one.

People have this idea of me being some kind of monster, and that’s the complete opposite of who I am.

That probably comes from this: youtu.be/GDxANewC9Gk

The way I make music is unique to myself and the way I have lived my life - no one else would tell that story in the same way that I do.

You tell me.

I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun’s shining. It’s a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.

Works for me.

Never settle for anything less than you want.

Define never. Out in the real world, for example.

I knew what I didn’t want to do—that’s always my starting point.

In other words, the point where most of us end up.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.” George Berkeley[/b]

God willing.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx

And look at Communism today.

“Reason is the inextinguishable impulse to philosophize with whose destruction reason itself is destroyed.” Karl Jaspers

If only philosophically.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor Emil Frankl

Let’s run this by, among others, Nazis.

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

Well, he must know by now.

“Tragedy occurs whenever awareness exceeds power; and particularly where awareness of a major need exceeds the power to satisfy it.” Karl Jaspers

Tragedy and then some.