a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Neal Stephenson

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world… Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.[/b]

Here of course that would be Mr Reasonable.
Or you, right?

No linear indexing system is adequate to express the multi-dimensionality of knowledge, Dr. Waterhouse reminds him.

Tell that to, among others, Ecmandu.

For most of the day and night, time oppresses me. It is only when I am at work on the innards of a clock-or a lock-that time stops.
The clock stops, you mean.
No. Time stops, or so it seems. I do not sense its passage. Then something interrupts me-I become aware that my bladder is full, my mouth dry, my stomach rumbling, the fire’s gone out, and the sun’s gone down. But there before me on the table is a finished clock-" now suddenly a snicker from the mechanism, and a deft movement of his hands. "Or an opened lock.

Yes, more futile speculation about time.

I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible—states of affairs removed from them in space and time—ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pretty high level around the time of the scientific revolution and all that, and stayed there and became more globally distributed up through the Cronkite era, and then dropped to zero incredibly quickly when the Internet came along.

That’s close enough, isn’t it?

Reader, if you don’t know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase your enjoyment in reading this account.

Any databases here?

Do you reject the glamor of Evil, and refuse to be mastered by it?

Or, for some, Good.

[b]Existential Comics

the funniest refutation of Ayn Rand style individualism is that all the people who subscribe to that kind of “rational self interest” always seem to end up bitter and alone[/b]

Yeah, it’s hilarious.

[b]List of things people think are obviously true but at the same time don’t believe in the slightest:

• that we have no free will.
• that nothing matters.
• that all taste is subjective.
• that all we want is to be happy.
  No one believes any of these, although many think they do.[/b]

Any exceptions here perhaps?

How did lions become the symbol of bravery? They are the biggest and the strongest and they use that strength to eat the weaker animals. What exactly makes them brave??

Two words: Water. Buffalo.

Obama thinks “certain left-leaning twitter feeds” are “too far left” just because we want everyone to have healthcare, housing, food, and to rise up in a global proletarian revolution to wash away the oppression of the bourgeoisie and end class struggle once and for all, smh.

Is he a billionaire yet?

Immanuel Kant, trying to figure out if it is immoral to utter the sentence “this sentence is a lie.”

Let’s pin this down categorically

What is political freedom?
British philosophy: liberties not being infringed upon.
French philosophy: people’s participation in politics.
German philosophy: development of social consciousness.
American philosophy: a right wing coup selling off State assets to American companies.

One man’s opinion I’m thinking.

[b]Miles Davis

Keith, how does it feel to be a genius? [/b]

He means their Keith, not ours.

I can’t write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don’t never write for myself.

Anyone here like that?

Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He’s nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I’d do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.

A black thing, he thought. Like with Elvis.

You can’t eat a winner’s plaque.

You have to sell it first.

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can’t do what we do is because they’re so comfortable doin’ what they do.

Jazz philosophers too.

We’re not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.

How true do you think he thinks this is?

[b]Sharon Stone

Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships. [/b]

Here we go again: genes more or less than memes?

Men cannot stand the explosive mixture of beauty and intelligence.

All men of course. Absolutely no exceptions.

You can only sleep your way to the middle; you have to claw your way to the top.

Anyone claw their way to the top here?

To really achieve any level of greatness, you have to be willing to say yes no matter who says no, and to say no no matter who says yes.

Actually, it’s the other way around.

I’ve fallen in love with my horse. It’s a safer bet. We all know from my illustrious past that I should be sticking to men with four legs.

How about we not go there, okay?

I’m very old-fashioned. Occasionally I do wear underwear.

Let’s decide if that counts.

[b]Sad Socrates

The end of the day should stay where it is.[/b]

Though mine never does.

Love is bad for the environment.

Hate may well even be worse.

I’m fluent in don’t talk to me.

Me? I’m fluid in fuck off.

Tomorrow will take care of itself if you live for now.

Not our tomorrows of course.

You can train your mind to be less stressed.
And then train your mind not to care.
Eventually you can train your mind to die.

Or, sure, you can’t.

Anything is real if enough people die for it.

What would you die for, Kid?

[b]André Aciman

You’ll kill me if you stop.[/b]

Or, as often as not, if you don’t.

We belonged to each other, but had lived so far apart that we belonged to others now.

Yep, that’s how it can turn out of alright.

Whoever said the soul and the body met in the pineal gland was a fool. It’s the asshole, stupid.

No, really, where do they meet?

Fear not. It will come. At least I hope it does. And when you least expect it. Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.

As though it has a mind all its own.

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end?

You know, if there even is an end.

If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you.

In, for example, a fairy tale.

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments

Forbidden things are open to the imagination.[/b]

You bet they are.

God isn’t what they say, she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis. I said that I wasn’t sure I would be able to choose. Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

Next up: the psychology of objectivism. Though pretty much the same thing.

Sorry solves nothing.

Or, in some cases, next to nothing.

Another thing: the kids from school had pictures of themselves—a lot of pictures. Their parents documented every minute of their lives. Some of the kids even had photos of themselves being born, which they’d brought to Show and Tell. I used to think that was gross—blood and great big legs, with a little head coming out from between them. And they had baby pictures of themselves, hundreds of them. These kids could hardly burp without some adult pointing a camera at them and telling them to do it again—as if they lived their lives twice, once in reality and the second time for the photo.

Meanwhile, there are these kids: worldhunger.org/world-child-hunger-facts/

So peaceful, the streets; so tranquil, so orderly; yet underneath the deceptively placid surfaces, a tremor, like that near a high-voltage power line. We’re stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we’re always on the alert. Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

You can’t even imagine it, can you?

At our school, pink was for spring and summer, plum was for fall and winter, white was for special days: Sundays and celebrations. Arms covered, hair covered, skirts down to the knee before you were five and no more than two inches above the ankle after that, because the urges of men were terrible things and those urges needed to be curbed.

Come on, it’s not completely irrational, is it?

[b]tiny nietzsche

I like my coffee like I like my universe, dark and empty[/b]

Me, I like my water like that too.

the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting people to care about your taste in music

Spot the non sequitur yet?

let’s fuck december up

Let’s exchange ways.

there are two kinds of people in the world: the ocean

Or three if you count me.

if you look around the room and can’t tell who is cursed, it’s you

Or, here, the board. And it’s definitely not me.

is there postmodernism on mars?

That was before the last extinction event.

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people’s minds. It’s best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you’re safe. That doesn’t leave you very much to believe in, but that’s scientific too.[/b]

Thank God for science, right?

Grades really cover up failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not. But if the grades are removed the class is forced to wonder each day what it’s really learning. The questions, What’s being taught? What’s the goal? How do the lectures and assignments accomplish the goal? become ominous. The removal of grades exposes a huge and frightening vacuum.

Maybe, but I’m still grading you here.

First you get the feeling, then you figure out why.

Next up: First you get the thought.

To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting.

Not much that isn’t applicable to. If not here.

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outwards from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

You know, if someone cares about fixing motorcycles.

My favorite cure for boredom is sleep.

Next up: His favorite cure for insomnia.

[b]Julian Assange

Knowledge has always flowed upwards to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves. [/b]

I know, let’s change that!

To be alive as a human being is to know, in the same way as it is to have a heart that beats.

More to the point [mine] lies in assessing all of the things you can’t know. For example, beyond all doubt.
If you know what I mean.

Let’s talk about Donald Trump. What does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind? He represents American white trash, which Hillary Clinton called ‘deplorable and irredeemable’. It means from an establishment or educated cosmopolitan, urbane perspective, these people are like the red necks, and you can never deal with them.

The dumb fucking “masses”, he thought. They’ll always be around. Like objectivists. Or, here, Kids.

I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.

Of course I have my own rendition of that here, right?

In fact, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, total arms exports from the United States in terms of the dollar value, doubled.

In a word: Bilderberg.

The Obama administration has attempted to prosecute more journalists and journalistic sources under the same Espionage Act she was being investigated under in all previous presidencies combined.

In a word: Bilderberg.

[b]tiny nietzsche

where’s sartre with the motherfucking dope?[/b]

Isn’t he dead now?

my horoscope says I don’t exist

How about yours, Jacob?

attack of the 50ft nietzsche

Better still the 50ft Schopenhauer. Or, best of all, the 50ft dasein.

I’ll be outside if you need to calm down

Or, me, over at KT.

It’s a Cognitive Dissonance, Charlie Brown

Go ahead, ask Lucy.

it’s beginning to look a lot like dystopia

Me, I’m still dreaming of a white dystopia. Maybe this year.

don’t unforget me

Again for example.

[b]Heraclitus

Because it is so unbelievable, the Truth often escapes being known.[/b]

I know that mine is. And, believe it or not, not just here.

Day by day, what you do is who you become.

No, as often as not, you do what you think you have become.

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.

We’ll need a context of course. Or, rather, a few of us will.

A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.

Not that most of us will ever find it.

Those who approach life like a child playing a game, moving and pushing pieces, possess the power of kings.

You know, whatever that means.

Those who are awake all live in the same world. Those who are asleep live in their own worlds.

Come on, those of us who are awake may well live in all sorts of very, very different worlds.

[b]Kathy Acker

I find waiting unbearable because it makes me passive and negates me. I hate being nothing. [/b]

Let alone for all of eternity.

Dreams are manifestations of identities.

On the other hand, what else would they be?

There are times when the law jeopardizes those who obey it.

For example, the class struggle. Or what’s left of it.

The whole world is men’s bloody fantasies.

And it’s not a video game.

…'cause humans, above all, fear intelligence. how humans, scared out of their minds, gather whatever intelligence they can put their hands on and put it all in a central penitentiary named facts.

My facts, your facts, their facts. Lock 'em up!

In such a society as ours the only possible chance for change, for mobility, for political, economic, and moral flow lies in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in the use of fictions, of language.

I get that more than you, don’t I?

[b]Abbie Hoffman

My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.[/b]

Of course, here, kids are one thing while Kids are another thing altogether.

Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.

Cue the Secret Service no doubt.

Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.

While, in turn, making a complete mockery of the language they wish to impose on you.

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

Oh, sure it is.

Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.

Someone here try it and get back to us.

The only way to support a revolution is to make your own.

And, boy oh boy, do we have some revolutionaries here!!

[b]tiny nietzsche

nothing means everything to me[/b]

Me? Double it.

abyss. we’re on it

And, then, one day, tumbling over into it.

live first, die last

Naturally as it were.

when’s a good time to fall behind?

Long, long before you get ahead.

what idiot called them pharmacists instead of pill poppin’ daddies?

Fess up, pill poppin’ Kid.

I thought I had a fetish once, but it turned out to be an obsession

Let’s pin down the difference.

[b]tiny nietzsche

baby’s first hatchet[/b]

Baby’s first slippery slope?

if you look around the woods and can’t figure out what the most fucked up animal is, it’s you

No doubt there’s the equivalent of that here.

these are the unemployment checks of our lives

Here though the economy is still booming. You know, thanks to Trump.

good names for pets:
chiaroscuro
fucker
kierkegaard

Or, sure, really, really bad names.

mean something to somebody else

On another planet, if possible.

all hands on dick

I know: By coincidence…

[b]Douglas Adams

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.[/b]

The definitive history of, well, something.

Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.
Ah, well, I’m not sure I believe that.

Challenging an objectivist…

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

Death and the puddle. Anthropomorphically as it were.

What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
Ask a glass of water!

Does this make sense?

Life is wasted on the living.

Remember when it used to be just the young?

Life, said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it."

Of course some of us don’t make it this far.

[b]Bob Dylan

I do know what my songs are about.[/b]

On the other hand…

The best songs are the songs you write that you don’t know anything about.

More contradiction, eh Ecmandu.

If ever asked to look at yourself, don’t.

After all, look what it did to me.

I used to think it’s better if you just live and die and no one knows who you are.

In other words, no one that counts.

He hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re having a good time.

And not just on Maggie’s farm.

You will find God in the church of your choice.

You know, if He actually does exist.

[b]so sad today

no of course i wasn’t honest about how i feel[/b]

After all, it may not even be possible.

listen, don’t make me regret pretending i have no needs

Now that gets tricky.

i have no self-esteem but i do have an ego

Now that gets tricky.

you’re never alone with fear of abandonment

Next up: fear of attachment.

when i’m simultaneously trying to get attention and hide from the world that’s the real me

Some of us here, right?

watching myself fuck up in slow motion

Then rewinding it again and again and again.

[b]Jack Finney

If we believe that we are just animals, without immortal souls, we are already but one step removed from pod people.[/b]

Well, then that’s what we are. You know, if that is what we are.

Would you have references?
I’m awfully sorry but I haven’t. I just arrived in New York, and don’t know a soul. Except you. I smiled but she didn’t smile back. She stood hesitating, and I said, It’s true that I’m an escaped convict, an active counterfeiter, and occasional murderer. And I howl during the full of the moon. But I’m neat.

And neat ain’t nothing, right?

The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing, he said reflectively, but I’m not sure it will ever figure itself out. Everything else, maybe—from sub-atomic particles to the universe—except itself.

Let alone the mind of a body snatcher.

I was stunned. I was, and I knew it, an ordinary person who long after he was grown retained the childhood assumption that the people who largely control our lives are somehow better informed than, and have judgment superior to, the rest of us; that they are more intelligent. Not until Vietnam did I finally realize that some of the most important decisions of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than, and who are not more intelligent than, most of the rest of us. That it was even possible that my own opinions and judgment could be as good as and maybe better than a politician’s who made a decision of profound consequence.

Damned if I didn’t learn this in Vietnam too. Not only that but while I was there.

Why do you breathe, eat, sleep, make love, and reproduce your kind? Because it’s your function, your reason for being. There’s no other reason, and none needed.

And, as likely as not, in an essentially meaningless world.

Relationship building at a distance, through the filter of a computer, is ultimately ineffective for the sincere friend seeker, but it is ideally suited to the sociopath whose powers of manipulation are enhanced when he can operate not merely behind his usual masks but behind an electronic mask as well.

Let’s go so far is to actually name the sociopaths among us here. Starting with the most obvious.