a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Brad Thor

Happiness in life is all about three things—something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.[/b]

You know, before you’re dead and gone.

Benjamin Franklin, that those who trade some of their liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. The wisdom of the founders never ceased to amaze him.

Tell that to, among others, the folks back then of color. Or, for some, no doubt, their wives.

Hegelian dialectic—a psychological tool used to manipulate the masses. In this case, you create a problem, wait for the reaction, and then offer the solution. What people historically fail to realize, though, is that those offering the solution are the same people who caused the problem in the first place. They also fail to realize that no matter what the solution is, it always ends up providing its creators with more power.

Next up: Marx reads Hegel.
Spirit meets capital.

If you steadfastly refused to quit, you rapidly narrowed your options to only winning.

On the other hand, in reality…

You ever work with a UN stabilization force? Ash asked. Harvath shook his head. Then trust me. As the old saying goes, you can’t spell unprofessional, unethical, or unaccountable without the UN. The cholera outbreak the old blue helmets caused in Haiti? Over ten thousand dead, and it has spread to the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The rapes and sex crimes they have committed in Mali and everywhere else? The stories of their depravity and brutality are legion.

Let’s put this in perspective. If it’s actually true, for example.

We don’t even use the word terror anymore. There’s only ‘man-made disasters’ caused by disenfranchised groups who are really just ‘misunderstood’.

With the possible exception of Fox News. Where even Christian liberals are terrorists.

[b]Sad Socrates

Men are terrible. Women are terrible. Children are terrible. Life is terrible. Death is terrible. [/b]

You know, if you’re him.
Or, sure, from time to time, me.

I was really disappointed when I woke up and realized dreams were also part of reality.

I live for them myself.

Not trying to brag but I have no future.

Understood.
No, really.

Just trying to assert my dumbinance.

Here?
The Kids.
The objectivists.
KT.
[size=50][though not necessarily in that order][/size]

There’s not enough time in the day to die.

Not counting those who make time.

This is the only place I can comfortably say the word death.

You know, while he still can.

[b]Mark Manson

It’s worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something.[/b]

Fess up, Mr. Objectivist.

Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is apositive experience.

And not just in La La Land.

To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.

Is that an actual thing?

I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating.

Talk about needing a fucking context!

You too are going to die, and that’s because you too were fortunate enough to have lived. You may not feel this. But go stand on a cliff sometime, and maybe you will.

No cliff? Let’s come up with alternatives.

…you can’t build a better mind without challenging your own beliefs and assumptions…

And then this part: Repeat as necessary.

[b]Natalie Portman

I wonder how people decided that women were supposed to shave their legs and armpits.[/b]

And now of course that, uh, other thing.

I think that most women know what happens that leads you to a point where you’re not even looking for intimacy anymore. You’re just looking for the physical side of it and not the emotional side of it.

The girly-men too.

Part of my reason for being vegetarian was because it practices respect and love for life all through the day, so three times a day, you make a decision to eat things that have not been killed.

Tell that to the plants. You know, if you could.

I can sleep a whole day. If no one woke me up, I would sleep for 24 hours. I think it’s a combination of my age and my appreciation for sleep. Sleep is so wonderful.

For me though it’s always about dreaming. My own dreams being rather, well, extraordinary.

I really hate being self-conscious—and being conscious of being self-conscious.

Point taken. But try not being conscious of your own self. Especially one like mine.

I was really excited to get to shave my head - it’s something I’d wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was nice to shed that level of vanity.

Okay, so what’s stopping her now? If not vanity.

[b]Sad Socrates

I’m a glass-is-half-broken kind of person.[/b]

I’m a glass-shattered-on-the-floor-in-a-thousand-pieces kind of person myself.
You know, on the good days.

Life’s too short to be laughing all the time.

Why does that actually make sense?

We’re only related through death.

That and being born.

Every day is the end of the world.

Or, more to the point, every day the world ends for approximately 151,600 of us.

Blah blah depression blah blah anxiety blah blah the world sucks blah blah I don’t want to do anything about it.

Worse: You want to but can’t.

Being alone in hell > Being in heaven with people

For some of us a hell of a lot greater.

[b]Woody Allen

I had an IQ test. The results came back negative. [/b]

Just as Mia had predicted.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

My guess: It’s a joke.

I’ve inherited the worst of each parent. I have my father’s hypochondria and lack of concentration. I have his amorality. I have everything bad that he had. Then I have my mother’s surly, pill-like, complaining, whining attitude.

My guess: Maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s not.

All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that.

Hey, we once had a Faust here. And I have no idea what that means either.

Life is unresolved, confusing, bewildering, puzzling, ambiguous. You don’t really know what’s going to happen. The future is uncertain for everybody.

Next up: death.

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.

I’ve never actually tried to myself.

[b]Noel Coward

It is my considered opinion that the human race is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter.[/b]

Me? Make it a macadamia.

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.

Or: People are wrong when they say the theater is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what’s wrong with it.

We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?

God knows.

The higher the building the lower the morals.

Next up: the penthouse.

Just say the lines and don’t trip over the furniture.

Let’s try that here.

Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

Perhaps he hadn’t thought that one all the way through.

[b]Marlene Dietrich

You can’t live without illusions, even if you must fight for them. [/b]

Indeed, we get that a lot here.

In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?

A little help here please.

To lose your prejudices you must travel.

Still, avoid places that are infested.

Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.

That’ll do it.

In Europe, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman - we make love with anyone we find attractive.

With obvious exceptions. You know, if there are any.

Duties are what make life most worth living. Lacking them, you are not necessary to anyone.

Let’s just say that some take this too far.

[b]tiny nietzsche

the worst career advice I ever got was “get a job”[/b]

Not counting the money part of course.

you can’t spell poseur without u

And try spelling bullshit without it.

we can be nihilists when we’re dead

Maybe, but why take chances?

wake me up when I’m dead

Unless of course you die first.

checking in to see if life is worth living yet

I’ve got that on a timer now.

I am the least worst person in the world

On the other hand, tomorrow is another day.

[b]Edgar Degas

I should like to be famous and unknown. [/b]

Me too. Only the other way around.

I’ll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

Anyone here know?

I put the picture “A still life of a pear” by Edouard Manet there on the wall, next to the picture “Jupiter and Thetis” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

So, what’s the equivalent of that here?

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

So, what’s the equivalent of that here?

A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.

He [must have] said in jest.

The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

My guess: Aside from the obvious reason.

[b]tiny nietzsche

“anything is possible,” he lied[/b]

He should have said “nothing is impossible”, right?

dude descending a staircase

No, not that dude.

work hard
play hard
eat dirt hard
read a book hard
stare into space hard
gaze at flowers hard
introspect hard
be kind to animals hard

Next up: easy.

tie me up and ruin my credit

Or, sure, steal my identity.

my horoscope says give up

Only this time it really means it.

kind of fucking done with july

And, around here, that automatically includes August.

[b]Harlan Coben

What we so admire and call “single minded dedication” was really “obsessive self-involvement”. What in that exactly is admirable?[/b]

My own of course no one understands.

I’d always hated running. Born-again joggers described how they got addicted to the rapture of running, how they achieved a nirvana known as a runner’s high. Right. I’d always firmly believed that–much like the high of auto-asphyxiation–the bliss came more from a lack of oxygen to the brain than any sort of endorphin rush.

Any pathetic runners here?

We know that everything in our lives is complex and gray.

Some clearly more than others.

The pain flooded in again. It was always there, of course. Through the shaking hands and slapping of the backs, the grief stayed by his side, tapping Griffin on the shoulder, whispering in his ear, reminding him that they were partners for life.

Trust him: this is a real thing.

Most people assumed that it would be the opposite—that the victim of such horrific violence would naturally be repulsed by any future bloodshed. But the truth was, the world does not work that way. Violence breeds violence—but not just in the obvious, retaliatory way. The molested child grows up to become the adult molester. The son traumatized by his father abusing his mother is far more likely to one day beat his own wife. Why? Why do we humans never really learn the lessons we are supposed to? What is in our makeup, in fact, that draws us to that which should sicken us?

What say you, Mr. Philosopher?

There was an awkwardness to him, a stoicism that most people, with their need for appearances and fake smiles, found off-putting. Shane couldn’t handle small talk or the excess bullshittery of modern society.

It must be another Shane, he thought.

[b]Bob Dylan

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all. [/b]

My guess: I’ll never be one of them.

I just don’t hear anyone else making the music I’m making in my head, so I’ll have to do it myself.

The rest of course is history.

Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.

So, which book is it?

I wouldn’t even think of playing music if I was born in these times. I wouldn’t even listen to the radio.

That’s now understood, right?

The radio makes hideous sounds.

And not just talk radio.

I never read Freud. I’ve never been attracted to anything he has said, and I think he’s started a lot of nonsense with psychiatry and that business. I don’t think psychiatry can help or has helped anybody. I think it’s a big fraud on the public.

Let’s run this by Tom Cruise.

[b]tiny nietzsche

the sun will come out tomorrow. or it won’t. you can’t trust anything anymore[/b]

Other than mass shootings in America.

some forget to remember, some remember to forget

Actually, it’s the other way around.

what rock did you crawl out from under because I would like to join you

The new optimism.

A$AP Kierkegaard

A little help with this one please.

Nihilism™ the choice of a new generation

Not to worry: I’ll never market mine.

I am having an out of phone experience

Now an actual mental disorder. Coming to a DSM or ICD near you.

[b]Blake Crouch

You know, you remind me of my younger brother. I miss that kid, so much that I sometimes regret killing him.[/b]

Among other things, it’s a hell of a story.

It’s a troubling paradox…I have total control, but only to the extent i have control over myself.

Of course that’s where I come in.

This is best illustrated by looking up into the night sky at stars whose brilliance took fifty light-years to reach our eyes. Or five hundred. Or five billion. We’re not just looking into space, we’re looking back through time.

Let’s pin down [once and for all] if that’s important.

My life is great. It’s just not exceptional. And there was a time when it could have been.
You killed your ambition, didn’t you?
It died of natural causes. Of neglect.

Or, as the Gang of Four once noted, “To have ambition was my ambition”

They say all art—whether books, music, or visual—is a reaction to other art.

So, what do they say about all philosophy?

He thinks how it will be winter soon, and then another year gone by and another one on the chopping block, time flowing faster and faster. Life is nothing how he expected it would be when he was young and living under the delusion that things could be controlled. Nothing can be controlled. Only endured.

Let’s call it a mood. Or, sure, a philosophy.

[b]Ani DiFranco

There’s a paradox in every paradigm. [/b]

Or at least every other one.

I know my mind is made of matter but I need to know exactly what is the matter at its core?

You know, going back to the existence of existence itself.

We have to really be intentional right now about holding the media accountable, and taking back the discourse and terms of discussion. It’s been hijacked.

My guess: It always will be.

Too much is how I love you, but too well is how I know you.

They’re doomed in other words.

It can be very frustrating and very deflating to be constantly defined and described by other people, so I’ve stopped reading anything written about me, and I find it much healthier.

That works here in particular.

My life may not be something special But it’s never been lived before.

Well, compared to most of us nobodies, it’s sort of special.

[b]so sad today

you’re damn right i’m misinterpreting the situation as way worse than it is[/b]

Unless [this time] it actually is way worse.

The internet is cruel, dark and deep,
But I have obsessive thoughts to tweet
And miles of bullshit to go before I sleep.

Besides, she’s now “almost famous”.

my sport is obsessing about shit beyond my control

Me too. It’s just not a sport.

ever just feel tired for your entire life

Me? Only from the day I was conceived.

trying to break up with myself

Me? Until death do us part.

these coping skills may be ineffective as shit but they’re mine

Want to borrow them?

[b]Neal Stephenson

That, as far as she could tell, was the purpose of the religion she had been brought up in: it made people feel better when really horrible things happened, and it offered a repertoire of ceremonies that were used to add a touch of class to such goings-on as shacking up with someone and throwing dirt on a corpse. None of which especially bothered Zula or made her doubt its worthwhileness. Making sad people feel better was a fine thing to do.[/b]

Let’s just leave it that, okay?

Apparently the part of the brain that identified things as funny kept running as a background process even when its contributions were useless.

First, is it true? Second, if so, why does it matter?

Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing—this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing—is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths.

Just a coincidence, right?

Being right does not always bring satisfaction.

Look at your own experience here, right?

Bud’s relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition.

Sounds about right.

All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days, she said, deadpan.

Deadpan is the best she can do. Not unlike all the rest of us.

[b]Luis Bunuel

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all… Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.[/b]

So don’t forget that.

A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.

Think of this as my job here.

The Cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate poetry so deeply.

Not counting the super hero idiots in Hollywood of course.

If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

Right, just flip a coin.

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

Them and political ideology.

I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of work does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, because you’ve heard the call, you’ve got a vocation - that’s ennobling! We should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno - I don’t work. And I don’t care if they hang me, I won’t work! Yet I’m alive! I may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work to do it!

That’s what I call rubbing it in.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” Marcus Aurelius[/b]

As Adolph Hitler might have said.

"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed. Buddha

Typical Buddhist bullshit, he thought. Utterly devoid of all context.

“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” Toni Morrison

Not counting the Kids of course.

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” Toni Morrison

You know, if that is actually an option.

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate." Toni Morrison

As a white nihilist-American myself, it gets more complicated.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." Edgar Allan Poe

Let’s question it.