a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[b]Bob Dylan

It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you. [/b]

I can only try to imagine it myself.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

I still don’t know what the fuck that means. But point taken.

You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.

You know, until he went electric.

I failed to communicate, that’s why I chose to leave.

Me, I’m still here of course.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

Not all clouds being created equal. For example, some are attached to tornados.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there’s some kind of change.

There’s some kind of change alright.

[b]Blake Crouch

The box isn’t all that different from life. If you go in with fear, fear is what you’ll find.[/b]

Let’s trade boxes.

I can’t help thinking that we’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.

Don’t get me started!

Perfection was a surface thing. The epidermis. Cut a few layers deep, you begin to see some darker shades. Cut to the bone—pitch black.

A perfect description, isn’t it?

I’ve seen so many versions of you. With me. Without me. Artist. Teacher. Graphic designer. But it’s all, in the end, just life. We see it macro, like one big story, but when you’re in it, it’s all just day-to-day, right? And isn’t that what you have to make your peace with?

Right, like you ever really can.

The older I get, the less I understand.

In other words, not being an objectivist.

Nature doesn’t see things through the prism of good or bad. It rewards efficiency. That’s the beautiful simplicity of evolution. It matches design to environment.

Until it gets to us.

[b]tiny nietzsche

sexually transmitted dementia[/b]

Sure, why not.

a toaster in every bathtub

And, it goes without saying, plugged in.

you, an art critic: bob ross is a hack who uses painting tricks to knock out hotel art
me, an art lover: bob ross is a fucking genius who transcends the genre as well as calms my anxiety about everything

You get this or you don’t.

if you can’t give up on yourself, who can you give up on?

Damn straight.

this feeling is unavailable

Unless of course you’re the exception.

sometimes after a dream I try to figure out what went wrong

Me, I’ll just move on to the next one.

[b]Neal Stephenson

Fighting isn’t about knowing how. It’s about deciding to.[/b]

Or, perhaps, both?

As it turned out, imagining the fate of seven billion people was far less emotionally affecting than imagining the fate of one.

That’s certainly how it can turn out.

From long experience in places like Afghanisatan and Chechnya, Sokolov recognised, in the black jihadist’s movements, a sort of cultural or attitudinal advantage that such people always enjoyed in situations like this: they were complete fatalists who believed that God was on their side. Russians, on the other hand, were fatalists of a somewhat different kind, believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that they were fucked no matter what, and that they had better just make the best of it anyway, but not seeing in this the hand of God at work or the hope of some future glory in a martyr’s heavens.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere, he figured.

When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could have an interesting conversation, or even a friendship, if the circumstances permitted it.

Of course the author knows none of this.

He parks in the far corner of the lot, explaining that it is more logical to do this and then walk for fifteen seconds than it is to spend fifteen minutes looking for a closer space.

You know, when this is actually rational.

The problem of the librarian is that books are multi-dimensional in their subject matter but must be ordered on one-dimensional shelves.

Can anyone explain this?

[b]tiny nietzsche

my horoscope says there’s life on mars[/b]

How about that, Jacob?

it’s not a crisis if you don’t exist

What’s that make death then?

if you get killed in a dream, that’s on you, pal

You being just your brain, right?
Whatever that actually means, of course.

nihilism isn’t given, it’s earned

So, anyone here think they’ve earned theirs more than I’ve earned mine?

I want to dance on my own grave

Also, I want to put the video on youtube.

you say drug induced psychosis like that’s a bad thing

No, only that it can be.

[b]Michelangelo Antonioni

I don’t know whether I am ever bored. I never look at myself.[/b]

Clearly he’s missing the point.

One of the problems of the future world will be the use of leisure time. How will it be filled up? Maybe drugs will be distributed free of charge by the government.

Nope, nothing like that yet.

I never think in terms of alienation; it’s the others who do. Alienation means one thing to Hegel, another to Marx and yet another to Freud; so it is not possible to give a single definition, one that will exhaust the subject. It is a question bordering on philosophy, and I’m not a philosopher nor a sociologist. My business is to tell stories, to narrate with images - nothing else. If I do make films about alienation - to use that word that is so ambiguous - they are about characters, not about me.

A lucky bastard, obviously.

I’m more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents — it’s all so depressing.

My guess: there are exceptions.

In any case, the idea of giving “all” of reality is overly simple and absurd.

And look what happens when some attempt to give that here.

Hollywood doesn’t believe in the death penalty for anyone except people who get cable TV without paying for it. Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

That’s a start anyway.

[b]Krzysztof Kieslowski

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you. [/b]

Actually, neither really comes close. But, hey, different folks, different strokes.

You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn’t matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect…The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film… I’ve been trying to get there from the beginning. I’m somebody who doesn’t know, somebody who’s searching.

Yeah, that woks for me. If barely.

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It’s an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

Let’s file this one under…dasein?

I have one good characteristic: I’m a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole.

In other words, what me and my ilk call an optimist.

I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas.

Can you even imagine that?

This man (Bergman) is one of the few film directors—perhaps the only one in the world—to have said as much about human nature as Dostoevsky or Camus.

You know, if you get him.

[b]PJ Harvey

I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.[/b]

Let alone good philosophy.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I’m myself, and if I don’t, then I give nothing.

Okay, but is that extreme enough?

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.

Right, like there’s nothing to be done about that.

Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great!

Though surely not as great as we feel here.

I feel that my dreamscapes are part of my everyday life, and sometimes I can’t tell the difference.

Tell me about it. You know, as a philosopher.

Well, I’m quite a self-deprecating person.

Shouldn’t we all be?
Well, not counting you of course. Or, for that matter, me.

[b]Ani DiFranco

If you don’t ask the right question, every answer seems wrong.[/b]

We’ll need a context of course. The right one in particular.

Life is a sleazy stranger, who looks vaguely familiar; flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar.

My guess: not necessarily your life.

Lying in bed, you know, you don’t seem so tall.

Especially in the middle of the night.

I think the music industry, for instance, is such a huge, multibazillion-dollar industry and it’s become very, very savvy. There’s a very short grace period in which actual human rebellion or resistance can thrive before it’s co-opted by these huge companies. And all of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it’s part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general.

She means this: youtu.be/SlIiD-_duec
Or she might as well mean that.

Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A little help with this one.

When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong.

I think she missed the point. Or they did.