a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[b]Ani DiFranco

Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV. [/b]

And not just The Apprentice.

When I need to wipe my face
I use the back of my hand
And I like to take up space just because I can
And I use my dress to wipe up my drink
I care less and less what people think

Still, not less than I do.

Goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise everytime

Do you think that’s true? About the goldfish?

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I’m much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there’s no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There’s no, like, ‘I’ll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.’

No pop star bullshit here, right?

But as bad as I am, I’m proud of the fact that I’m worse than I seem.

We’ll need particulars of course.

When you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance, you have to believe that mercy has it’s own country and that it’s round and borderless.

Well, let’s just say it sounds like it’s true.

[b]Bjork

I am one of the most idiosyncratic people around. [/b]

Of course it takes one to know one.

If you wake up
And the day feels broken
Just lean into the crack

Let’s exchange cracks.

There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or the right book, and it will understand you.

No, this is actually a real thing.

I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be doing.

Of course others have a say here.

I’ve always had as many powerful, creative ladies in my life as I have men, and you could probably describe some of those relationships as romantic. I think everyone’s bisexual to some degree or another; it’s just a question of whether or not you choose to recognise it and embrace it. Personally, I think choosing between men and women is like choosing between cake and ice cream. You’d be daft not to try both when there are so many different flavors.

Genes and/or memes, he concluded.

Today has never happened and it doesn’t frighten me.

Right, like that can’t change in the blink of an eye.

[b]Ted Chiang

If your ultimate goal in loving God was a reunion with your spouse, you weren’t demonstrating true devotion at all.[/b]

Isn’t that for God to decide?

He tells people that they can no more expect justice in the afterlife than in the mortal plane, but he doesn’t do this to dissuade them from worshipping God; on the contrary, he encourages them to do so. What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.

Besides, what else is there?

Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though sometimes entirely appropriate.

The hand’s dexterity is the physical manifestation of the mind’s ingenuity.

Praise the Lord?

For people like him, Hell was where you went when you died, and he saw no point in restructuring his life in hopes of avoiding that.

And that’s probably the way it turns out to be.

As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.

You know, in the either/or world.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Ignorance is more expensive than education. But not in the United States.[/b]

He means in the red states of course.

Old age is important for realizing that everything you believed is wrong. You wasted your life. And will die alone, unloved, disrespected, and unredeemed.

Well, that’s a start anyway.

The road to oblivion includes many loathsome detours, as we all know.

Not that we are not obliged to take them.

Eat, pray, die of heart disease anyway.

Yes, but then you go to Heaven.

Dear Trump supporters: your vulgarity does not offend me, but it does, in general, subtract from my estimate of your intelligence, such as it was.

Still, this goes [at least] double from them to us.

Dear Americans: If you want to know what you really would have done in the early years of the Nazi regime, consider what you are doing now.

Not counting the good Americans of course.

[b]Mark Manson

The person you marry is the person you fight with. The house you buy is the house you repair. The dream job you take is the job you stress over. Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice—whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make us feel bad. What we gain is also what we lose. What creates our positive experiences will define our negative experiences.[/b]

My guess: It’s probalby more complicated than that.

Rejection exists for a reason — it’s a means to keep people apart who are not good for each other.

You know, when you use it.

We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time. This is part of life.

Let’s change that.

The less you talk about your shame, the more of it you have.

Unless it’s the other way around.

Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.

Yes, there are people who actually do believe this.

We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.

In theory especially.

[b]Natalie Portman

Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset. [/b]

Not counting the Kids of course.

Smart women love smart men more than smart men love smart women.

Not counting me of course.

The moment you buy into the idea that you’re above anyone else, is the moment you need to be slapped in the face.

I’m sorry, but we will need a context.

Love is very much perceived as “I couldn’t control myself; it’s love.” But you can. Everything you do in response is a choice.

Unless, instead, it’s just a “choice”.

Everything you think of that keeps you occupied is a friend.

Could that possibly include philosophy?

I don’t believe in the afterlife. I believe this is it, and I believe it’s the best way to live.

On the other hand, there’s an advantage here in being her.

[b]Woody Allen

I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic. [/b]

Actually this is based on a true story.

Men would make love with any number of women … even total strangers, while females were selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming: “Let us out, let us out!”.

Technically true. Well, not counting the frantic sperm screaming, “Let us out, let us out!”

Human existence is a brutal experience to me… it’s a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it salvation is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most.

Let’s imagine Mia reacting to this.

Child molestation is a touchy subject…Read the papers! Half the country’s doing it!

Who does that remind you of, Jeff?

I think it’s my job or the artist’s job, to try and find some solution or some reason to accept things. But given the grimmest reality, I feel the grimmest facts are the real facts, the true facts: that you’re born, you die, you suffer, it’s to no purpose, and you’re gone forever, ever, ever, and that’s it.

That’s certainly my job here.

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.

That can’t possibly be politically correct.

[b]Werner Twertzog

We shall all hang separately, as we all know.[/b]

At least until the next genocide.

The young are important because they have no memory of freedom.

I don’t recall any when I was young.

Dear America: Your popular cinema turned fascist in the 80s. I blame George Lucas.

Let’s agree to celebrate when he dies.

Orwell. What an optimist.

Actually, it’s the other way around.

Never doubt the willingness of other people to let your children die, horribly, for petty improvements to their self-esteem.

Let’s pin down the source of this.

By 2021 Canada will build a wall, and the United States will pay for it.

Let’s explain why.

[b]Joni Mitchell

I love you when I forget about me.[/b]

Easily one of my favorite lines.

I didn’t like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me…

[i]Let’s file this one under, “on the other hand…”

Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.

My guess: it goes well beyond that.

The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music.

Either that or, for all practical purposes, everything.

You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won’t even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out.

I once adored her myself. You know, from a distance.

I have lost my credibility as a hit maker because of these side excursions into other branches of music…

Of course I never had any hits at all. Well, not counting here of course.

[b]Daniel Kahneman

Do we still remember the question we are trying to answer? Or have we substituted an easier one?[/b]

Happens all the time here, right?

…participants were told that they would shortly have a get-acquainted conversation with another person and were asked to set up two chairs while the experimenter left to retrieve that person. Participants primed by money chose to stay much farther apart than their nonprimed peers (118 vs. 80 centimeters). Money-primed undergraduates also showed a greater preference for being alone. The general theme of these findings is that the idea of money primes individualism: a reluctance to be involved with others, to depend on others, or to accept demands from others.

All one needs to know is that, when money is involved, it changes something.

In a later chapter he describes a massive failure of intuition: Americans elected President Harding, whose only qualification for the position was that he perfectly looked the part. Square jawed and tall, he was the perfect image of a strong and decisive leader. People voted for someone who looked strong and decisive without any other reason to believe that he was.

Next up: the chapter on Trump.

First, people are generally rational, and their thinking is normally sound. Second, emotions such as fear, affection, and hatred explain most of the occasions on which people depart from rationality.

So, did God fuck up?

The idea that large historical events are determined by luck is profoundly shocking, although it is demonstrably true.

Unless of course luck is just another illusion.

Experienced radiologists who evaluate chest X-rays as “normal” or “abnormal” contradict themselves 20% of the time when they see the same picture on separate occasions.

You know, being optimistic.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

Russian lit: It’s my father’s fault
French lit: It’s my king’s fault
English lit: It’s my landlord’s fault
American lit: I don’t know who you are, but it’s your fault[/b]

Let’s put them in the right order.

Aristotle: Philosophy begins when we stop relying on Plato to do all the work
Hume: Philosophy begins when we stop relying on ideas to do all the work
Arendt: Philosophy begins when we stop relying on our friends to buy all the cigarettes

Let’s put them in the right order.

[b]By the time you reach your 20s, you should have:

1. realized you’re not Aristotle and never will be
2. started pretending to understand Hegel
3. developed at least 3 sarcastic quips for when people ask why you study philosophy[/b]

1] Check.
2] Check.
3] Check.

British literature: I’m stuck in the past
French literature: I’m adrift in the present
American literature: I’m destroying the future

I know: What American literature?

The German word for there not actually being a German word for what you’re thinking about.

Again, the German word for everything: dasein.

Hegel: There is no ground of the ground
Lacan: There is no other of the other
Adorno: There is no self in the selfie

More postmodern gibberish.
But points taken.

[b]Edgar Degas

Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.[/b]

Sure, he might mean it.

It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious…he must once more sink himself in solitude.

That goes double for philosophers. At least.
Or not of course.

So that’s the telephone? They ring, and you run.

Not so much today, right?

Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people’s compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?

Must have been a particularly bad review.

One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

How ridiculous is that, he thought.

I’m glad I haven’t found my style yet. I’d be bored to death.

Can’t say that about me, can you?

[b]Harlan Coben

…but when in doubt, you might as well keep an open mind.[/b]

How insane is that, right Mr. Objectivist?

When you’re young, you think you have all the answers. You’re right wing or you’re left wing and the other side is a bunch of idiots. You know. When you get a little older, though, you start to more and more see the grays. Now I understand that true idiots are the ones who are certain they have the answers. It is never that simple. Do you know what I mean?

How insane is that, right Mr. Objectivist?

We don’t pray in foxholes because we are ready to meet our Maker. We pray because we don’t want to.

And how ironic is that? Besides, it doesn’t fool God.

Don’t show me paradise and then burn it down.

That ever happen to you?

I’m not sure we should get camera phones, that’s all.
She hit the remote and the car doors unlocked. She reached for the door handle. Matt hesitated.
Olivia looked at him.
What? he asked.
If we both get camera phones, Olivia said, I could send you nudies when you’re at work.
Matt opened the door. Verizon on Sprint?

This Modern World.

A sign read: YOUR STAY HERE IS TOUCH AND GO—TOUCH AND YOU GO.

Let’s imagine a context.

[b]Existential Comics

Nietzsche: God is dead.
Everyone: wow cool.
Nietzsche: No, not cool you little shits. Now we have to be God ourselves. Can you replace God? No, because are all a bunch of idiots.
Everyone: oh shit.[/b]

A true story some believe.

Online is cool as long as you can manage to use it without reading anything anyone says about anything.

Or, at the very least, not understanding anything anyone says about anything.

Russian literature is amazing because really makes you understand what it is like to be one of those people who can’t remember anyone’s name and is confused all the time.

What the hell does that even mean?!

Capitalism efficiently allocates resources according to our needs and wants.
You can tell because people die of poverty for not being able to afford their insulin while we spend hundreds of millions of dollars making new Spiderman movies every year.

Hey, they don’t call it “the virtue of selfishness” for nothing.

When you are a teenager you read Nietzsche.
When you are in your twenties you read Hegel.
When you are in your thirties you actually read Hegel, because you only pretended to read him in your twenties.

Incredibly enough, I skipped Hegel altogether.

[b]Easiest mistakes you can make in philosophy starting out:

• confusing epistemic subjectivity with metaphysical subjectivity.
• confusing speaker meaning with sentence meaning.
• confusing being able to name drop philosophers in casual conversation with a personality.[/b]

Let’s just saying confusing and move on.