a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then it might be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas.[/b]

On the other hand, stuck on what?

It was the ghost of rationality itself … This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.

Spooky, isn’t it?

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.

There must be a half-truth in there somewhere.

Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

This fucking myth again, he thought.

Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it’s a shame more people don’t switch over to it.

Of course we know why, don’t we?

Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know so well, what a mind thinks is as dominated by biological patterns as social patterns are dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by inorganic patterns.

Those goddamn genes and memes again!

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Three keys to success: read, read, read.” Vladimir Lenin[/b]

The right books of course.

“When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.” Jorge Luis Borges

Grimmer still: my own rendition of it.

“The art of writing is mysterious, the opinions we hold are ephemeral…” Jorge Luis Borges

So, is this a universal truth?

“To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” ― Lao Tse

The devil here being in the details.

“Reality is not always probable, or likely.” Jorge Luis Borges

Not counting death of course.

"Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.” Immanuel Kant

Yeah, sounds like something he’d say.

[b]Julian Assange

If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth. [/b]

We’ll need a context of course.

Every War in the past 50 Years is a Result of Media Lies.

That and the military industrial complex.

You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you.

In theory as it were.

One of the best attributes of human beings is that they’re adaptable; one of the worst attributes of human beings is they are adaptable. They adapt and start to tolerate abuses, they adapt to being involved themselves in abuses, they adapt to adversity and they continue on.

The rest being, as they say, history.

The emails that give evidence of access for money and how Hillary Clinton herself benefited from this and how she is benefitting politically, are quite extraordinary.

Next up: Joe Biden.

The only way to keep a secret is to never have one.

Among other things, this is far too extreme to be true.

[b]Pythagoras

Do not despise anyone: an atom shadowing. [/b]

A little help with this one please.

There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras.

Am I the only one here who understands that?

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons.

My guess: pi.

As the sea-crab swimmeth always against the stream, so doth wit always against wisdom.

Hey, Kids, what do you think?

Above all have respect for yourself.

You know, if you deserve it.

The earth affords a lavish supply of riches of innocent foods, and offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass.

Pythagoras for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“I think you should be serious about what you do because this is it. This is the only life you’ve got.” Philip Seymour Hoffman[/b]

And how ironic is that?

“What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely is not universality but circularity.” Willard Van Orman Quine

A world of words, right?

“I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don’t believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet.” Iggy Pop

Let’s finally pin this down.

“It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.” Gabriel García Márquez

Or, rather, it once was.

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Right, like they are all exactly the same.

“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.” Jean-Paul Sartre

My guess: for better or for worse.

[b]Lynda Barry

A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect. [/b]

Yep, that’s always been my experience.

Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.

Or [this time] the objectivists.

I remember my comic strips being called “new wave.” It bugged me.

Even though [back then] it was.

I started doing cartoons when I was about 21. I never thought I would be a cartoonist. It happened behind my back. I was always a painter and drawer.

Lucky for us.

I was unable to sleep and I would stay up and draw these little cartoons. Then a friend showed them around. Before I knew it I was a cartoonist.

Or [never in a million years]: I was unable to sleep and I would stay up and write philosophy essays. Then a friend showed them around. Before I knew it I was a philosopher.

My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.

Yes, of course she’s kidding.

[b]Phil Ochs

One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.[/b]

Our own message preferably.

In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion
One of the shadiest of these is the liberals
An outspoken group on many subjects
Ten degrees to the left of center in good times
Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally
Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic

You decide: youtu.be/0nFvhhCulaw

And if there’s any hope for America, it lies in a revolution, and if there’s any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara.

Know the backstory here?

It’s always the old to lead us to the war
It’s always the young to fall

In particular the young without college deferments.

The final story, the final chapter of Western man, I believe, lies in Los Angeles.

I guess you had to be there.

Beneath the greatest love lies a hurricane of hate.

And not just in Dallas.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.” Hannibal[/b]

Not counting miscarriages of course.

“Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.” Bertrand Russell

I’m rather skeptical of dogmatism myself. Just not objectively.

“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.” Jean-Paul Sartre

The perfect compromise?

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

Let’s explain how that’s done.

“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.” Homer

Nope, not yet. And, truth be told, not even close.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” Carl Jung

Or, here, I will.

[b]Douglas Adams

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.[/b]

How to put this in perspective, he wondered.

We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.

About practically anything, he suspected.

There’s always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it’s with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it’s one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.

Alas, this is an all too real thing.

All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.

Yet look how many folks here alone claim to know everything about it. And, no, not just the Kids.

But the plans were on display…
On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.
That’s the display department.
With a flashlight.
Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.
So had the stairs.
But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?
Yes, said Arthur, yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.

You want this to be a true story, don’t you?

Did I do anything wrong today, he said, or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?

Anyone here know for sure?

[b]Bob Dylan

Frank Sinatra sang to you, not at you, like so many pop singers today. Even singers of standards. I never wanted to be a singer that sings at somebody. I’ve always wanted to sing to somebody.[/b]

Well, in that sense, here, some post to us, others at us.

Some things are too terrible to be true.

Let alone universally true!

Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.

How about walls?

If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.

Fuck all that, he thought.

The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don’t think they have titles.

Unless you’ll settle for “rich and powerful”.

I’m not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.

He means “me” of course.

[b]Blake Crouch

We live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.[/b]

Comfortably oblivious for example.

Is there a fate worse than being halfway evil?

Being halfway good?

The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that all possible realities exist. That everything which has a probability of happening is happening. Everything that might have occurred in our past did occur, only in another universe. What if that’s true?

I know, let’s start living our lives as though it was.

There is no such thing as real taste or real smell or even real sight, because there is no true definition of ‘real.’

Right, see how far that takes you.

And still, he was here. And by virtue of that fact, or rather because of it, this place wasn’t perfect. His experience, there was darkness everywhere human beings gathered. The way of the world. 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.

Six feet under in particular.

You can reign in hell here on the outside, or serve in heaven, back in Pines.

Let’s think of a third option.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said.” Voltaire[/b]

Fuck it, let’s say it anyway.

“We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.” Jorge Luis Borges

Now of course that includes women.

“Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin.” Robert Green Ingersoll

Take that, Mr. Objectivist!

“By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.” Desiderius Erasmus

Take that, Mr. Objectivist!

"Truth is a property of sentences, since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.” Richard Rorty

Even I think this goes too far.

"The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.” Richard Rorty

Here, for example, many don’t even come close.

[b]Erin Morgenstern

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. [/b]

Not my words though, right?

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.

But not what I tell them to see, right?

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

And that includes the clowns of course.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.

Nothing new here, is there?

We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.

If only from the day we are born.

The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.

Naturally as it were. And, then, from time to time, unnaturally.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The future has no other reality than as present hope, and the past is no more than present memory.” Jorge Luis Borges[/b]

And then right up to the day we die.

“To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Of course he’s only paraphrasing Slavoj Žižek.

“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Of course he’s only paraphrasing me paraphrasing William Barrett.

“Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.” Henri Bergson

Uh, no shit?

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Henri Bergson

Of course we’ll need to redefine endlessly here.

“The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers who go beyond it.” David Hume

Let’s not mention any names, okay Fixed Cross?

[b]Neal Stephenson

In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences.[/b]

It would have to be that, right Kids?

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The relativist or the universalist?
He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning.

I dare you to bring this down to earth.Or, sure, you can dare me to.

…to insist on everything’s being reasonable, in a world that wasn’t, was, in itself, unreasonable.

And that’s only up until breakfast.

These simple terms—“come about,” for example—denote procedures that are as complicated and tradition-bound as the installation of a new Pope.

I know: Go figure.

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.

Someone run this by Pedro I Rengel. How about you, Ecmandu?

…he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it’s happening to him. Very post-modern.

If not downright fucking weird.

[b]Miles Davis

With “We Are The World,” I can’t even eat when I watch that on television. If I’m eatin’ some food, I have to put it down. I feel very strongly about that. [/b]

Of course there are white folks who feel the same.

Sometimes [playing free] doesn’t happen, because maybe a guy’s wife’ll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody’s completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there; if it’s balanced right, it’ll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can’t do it.

Not to worry: We’re not expected to understand it.

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they’re full of chords. I can’t play them…I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

Well, I think I do understand this. Though, sure, what are the odds?

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself.

Or, here, to post like yourself.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.

The Woody Allen Syndrome some call it.

If I hear a song like “Time After Time.” I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin’ this song. I said, “God damnnnnn!”

youtu.be/aBsCqTlepPs How about you?

[b]Joan Baez

You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live.[/b]

Of course now that is just a cliche.

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.

Of course now that is just a cliche.

Action is the antidote to despair.

You know, if that is actually an option.

As long as one keeps searching, the answers will come.

If only back in the Sixties.

I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?

Right, Kids?

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.

Right, and look where we are now.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“All knowledge degenerates into probability.” David Hume[/b]

Except of course when it’s the other way around.

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” David Hume

Only the oyster doesn’t know it.

“It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.” David Hume

That stands to reason of course.

“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.” Albert Einstein

I dare you to believe that.

“There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.” Jorge Luis Borges

You know, whatever that means.

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.” Jorge Luis Borges

Once in a blue moon for example. Or twice.

[b]André Aciman

Did I want him to act? Or would I prefer a lifetime of longing provided we both kept this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not-knowing, not-not-not-knowing? Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can’t say “yes,” don’t say “no,” say “later.” Is this why people say “maybe” when they mean “yes,” but hope you’ll think it’s “no” when all they really mean is, Please, just ask me once more, and once more after that?” [/b]

Pathetic, isn’t it?

I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together–it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.
But you’re doing it now–in a way.
Yes, in a way–that’s how I always say things: in a way.

In a way, that’s applicable here too.

Everyone goes through a period of Traviamento - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.

That’s me, he thought.

Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning seemed light-years away.

Time playing tricks on us.

We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.

Let’s trade instruments.

Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.

Next up: Time makes us bitter.

[b]Nein

Dystopia. I thought it’d be smarter.[/b]

Well, Trump is one in a million.

The poets regret to inform you that truth is beauty. Beauty is truth. And the ugly truth is, well, philosophy.

Seriously.

If you need me, I’ll be spending some quality time. With space.

From dust to dust as it were.

I’m just here for the ontological uncertainty.

Teleologically as it were.

Friday. Casual capitalism.

Not counting the sweatshops of course.

A gentle reminder to look on the bright side. And take note of how dark it is.

If only all the way to the grave.