a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Doth

Take a moment to apologize to your body for your brain’s bullshit.[/b]

I tried this once. And look at me now.

The ghosts of my past, present and future better haunt me tonight or don’t waste my fucking time.

Well, maybe next year. You know, if I’m still around.

I have said this before but it bears repeating: give women swords.

Kill Bill Vol. III

What idiot called it a human skull instead of an anxiety cabin.

Some scientist no doubt.

I like my women like my wolves, wandering around the woods at night and could kill me at any moment.

Wow, does that not bring back memories.

What you do at night is between you and the fucking moon.

And God of course.

[b]Camille Paglia

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts. [/b]

Well, as some insist, she is basically a reactionary.

The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.

Great, another “true mission”.

Rule of art: Cant kills creativity!

Their cant of course.

When feminist discourse is unable to discriminate the drunken fraternity brother from the homicidal maniac, women are in trouble.

And when the fraternity brother drunkenly commits rape?

Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.

And teenage girls?

Lacan , Derrida and Foucault are the perfect prophets for the weak, anxious academic personality, trapped in verbal formulas and perennially defeated by circumstances. They offer a self-exculpating cosmic explanation for the normal professorial state of resentment, alienation, dithering passivity and inaction.

Sure, he thought, even intellectual quacks get it right occasionally.

[b]Robert Macfarlane

The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies – from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space – have already creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world.[/b]

Next up: the whole brain.

Yet there is also something curiously exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realization that you do exist – as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist.

Nope, never felt exhilarated so far.

The unknown is so inflammatory to the imagination because it is an imaginatively malleable space: a projection-screen onto which a culture or an individual can throw their fears and their aspirations. Like Echo’s cave, the unknown will answer back with whatever you shout at it.

Another path to dasein in other words.

We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places - but we are far less good at saying what places make of us…

There’s a reason for that. But [no doubt] mine isn’t yours.

Kimmeridge (n.): 'The light breeze which blows through your armpit hair when you are stretched out sunbathing’

Well, that’s what it is now.

Reading kept him alive, she said, right till the end.

More to the ploint, it didn’t keep him alive forever.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

New Year’s Resolutions should be
Kant: categorical and imperative
Schelling: an exercise in self-abnegation
Beckett: mocked out of existence
Camus: a good excuse to smoke[/b]

All of the above, right?

I asked the class what Walter Benjamin means when he says that capitalism is a religion. A student answered with one word: Christmas.

And, now, 365 days a year. Or, next year, 366.

All I want for Christmas is
Leibniz: a perfectly rational language
Hegel: a perfectly determinate negation
Marx: a perfectly dynamic model of labor
Nietzsche: a perfectly good excuse to ignore you clowns

Next up: All we want for next Christmas.

Ancient philosophy: Is this the real world or shadows on a cave wall?
Enlightenment philosophy: Am I awake or am I dreaming?
Modern philosophy: 'Pics or it didn’t happen.

And, even then, only on Twittter.

[b]Holiday Values

1. Peace
2. Joy
3. Goodwill toward all

Holiday Realities

1. Social anxiety
2. Financial anxiety
3. Anxiety anxiety[/b]

You know, under capitalism.

Nothing says “Happy Holidays!” like philosopher socks.

etsy.com/market/philosophy_socks

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.[/b]

And the winner is…

Oh, the laws of physics and of logic…the number system…the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.

Yeah, right.

Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it’s a shame more people don’t switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.

But then there’s the stuff that I point to.

You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.

You meaning, among other things, not me.

You look at these mountains now, and they look so permanent and peaceful, but they’re changing all the time and the changes aren’t always peaceful. Underneath us, beneath us here right now, there are forces that can tear this whole mountain apart.

And inside us: dasein.

The truths Phaedrus began to pursue were lateral truths; no longer the frontal truths of science, those toward which the discipline pointed, but the kind of truth you see laterally, out of the corner of your eye. In a laboratory situation, when your whole procedure goes haywire, when everything goes wrong or is indeterminate or is so screwed up by unexpected results you can’t make head or tail out of anything, you start looking laterally. That’s a word he later used to describe a growth of knowledge that doesn’t move forward like an arrow in flight, but expands sideways, like an arrow enlarging in flight, or like the archer, discovering that although he has hit the bull’s-eye and won the prize, his head is on a pillow and the sun is coming in the window. Lateral knowledge is knowledge that’s from a wholly unexpected direction, from a direction that’s not even understood as a direction until the knowledge forces itself upon one. Lateral truths point to the falseness of axioms and postulates underlying one’s existing system of getting at truth.

Of course lateral is everywhere in the is/ought world.

[b]Tana French

I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.[/b]

And not always consciously.

I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect.

On the other hand, noticing when you’re miserable…

Our entire society is based on discontent. People wanting more and more and more. Being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their décor, their clothes, everything – taking it for granted that that’s the whole point of life.

In other words, go out and buy something.

What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this – two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

Duplicitously as it were.

There’s a Spanish proverb, he said, that’s always fascinated me. ‘Take what you want and pay for it, says God.’ I don’t believe in God, Daniel said, but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.

Not counting the part where you can’t have something you want if you had all the money in the world.

My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.

So far, nothing.

[b]God

Jesus wants to write an editorial condemning Trump, but he’s afraid he’ll lose the support of evangelicals.[/b]

Let’s make sense of this.

Here’s wishing the President a cold, lonely, miserable, desperate, self-loathing, scandal-ridden, dementia-fueled, sclerotic, septic, syphilitic, leprous Christmas.

Any news on that?

I’ll stay out of politics when politics stays out of Me.

[-o<

Overwhelming evidence suggests a startling number of people are capable of ignoring overwhelming evidence.

My guess: in the billions.

God rest ye merry congressmen,
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Trump’s behavior
On this Impeachment Day.
And save us all from Cheeto’s power
That led the world astray.
Oh findings of blackmail and fraud,
Blackmail and fraud.
Oh findings of blackmail and fraud.

Someone run this by Wendy.

Intelligence looks in a mirror and sees ignorance.
Ignorance looks in a mirror and sees intelligence.

And not just at the carnival.

[b]Heraclitus

It is in changing that things find purpose. [/b]

Right, like that actually explains anything.

Change alone is unchanging.

And, with this, the birth of word games.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Tell that to Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Doctors cut, burn, and torture the sick, and then demand of them an undeserved fee for such services.

Alas, some things never change.

Time is a game played beautifully by children.

Do they know that?

Under the comb, the tangle and the straight path are the same.

How about the brush?

[b]Julian Assange

If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-back ed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces - forever. [/b]

His deepest apologies to George Orwell. But point taken.

I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.

I don’t know about crushing, but I do enjoy making fools out of the objectivists.

Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.

Not to mention the Russians and the Chinese.

You can’t do anything sensible until you know what the situation is that you’re in.

In other words, you’re fucked.

I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism.

In other words, he’s fucked.

Here then is the truth about the Truth; the Truth is not bridge, sturdy to every step, a marvel of bound planks and supports from the known into the unknown, but a surging sea of smashed wood, flotsam and drowning sailors.

And that’s just our truth.

[b]tiny nietzsche

If you are an imagine dragons fan, I’m sorry that happened to you[/b]

For some of course it is entire genres. And, no, not just country music.

who can you terraform if you can’t terraform yourself?

Anyone here done it?

when you can’t see the mountains for the rocks

Or, going in the other direction, the atoms for the rocks

we should avoid doing this again

Let alone repeatedly.

merry christmas, abyss

And, of course, happy new year.

if you have the opportunity, don’t give anything to a libertarian

Let alone a nihilist?

[b]Norman Mailer

The paradox is that no love can prove so intense as the love of two narcissists for each other. [/b]

Either a paradox or a contradiction in terms.

I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

Of course he hadn’t yet reached puberty then.

There are these two kinds of patriotism. There’s blind patriotism, unflagging patriotism. And then there’s the patriotism that says I live in a democracy and it’s very important for the health and the life of this democracy that it get better all the time, not get worse.

There must be three then if you count mine.

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

We’ll need a question of course.

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

If only among New York intellectuals.

Growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth.

Okay, but death is definitely second.

[b]Douglas Adams

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.[/b]

True story.
Nest up: inept sloths.

The point is, you see, said Ford, that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.

Yep, tried that too. Still waiting.

Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

I call them distractions myself.

Exactly, said Deep Thought. So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.

We’ll need a context of course.

Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.

We’ll need a context of course.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

Of course most scientists aren’t blind. If you know what I mean.

[b]tiny nietzsche

scrooge: you! you there, boy! what day is this?
boy: fuck you, boomer[/b]

Now of course I know what he means.

the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the abyss

And then one day…

the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the abyss

the enemy of my enemy is a dumbass

Pick one: Phyllo or Karpel Tunnel

all I want for christmas is the void to negate me

Alas, all I want for christmas next year is the void to negate me

my sex tape is just me reading at the library

Buck naked with a hard on, he mused.

drugs mean never having to say you’re vibing

Like I would ever be vibing without them!

[b]Bob Dylan

Never make it perfect. [/b]

Of course: not counting you, Mr. Objectivist.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

The pragmatic idealist as it were.

Too much information about nothing.

Better that perhaps than too little infomation about everything.

We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it - everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.

Next up: We don’t see the people that virtue destroys.

There’s only one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.

What a coincidence, same here.

I don’t have the kinds of relationships that are built on any kind of false pretense, not to say that I haven’t. I’ve had just as many as anybody else, but I haven’t had them in a long time.

Hmm, why do you suppose that is?

[b]Murray Gell-Mann

Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.[/b]

Unless of course you’re doing it wrong.

Modern education is like being taken to the world’s greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu.

Let’s explain this.

Sustainability is living on nature’s income rather than living on its capital.

Let’s explain this.

Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.

Trust me: not just in Trumpworld.

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

Wow, that might even be applicable here.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.

Anything especially striking and remarkable here?

[b]so sad today

just when you think life can’t get any longer[/b]

A new decade will do that.

the enemy of my enemy also probably sucks

Now that’s the spirit!

when i was in the womb it was a simpler time

Simpler still: before you were even conceived.

let’s pretend i’m better looking than i am

So, is she?

i find dead people more relaxing

Naturally as it were.

when i hear people talk i honestly feel like i’m from another planet

Either that or want to go to another planet.

[b]Camille Paglia

There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.[/b]

Talk about “ludicrously binary”!

A woman simply is, but a man must become.

Talk about “ludicrously binary”!

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be ‘fixed’ by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature’s fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept.

Eroticism: the intellectual contraption.

Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.

Definitely maybe, perhaps?

The artist makes art not to save mankind but to save himself. Every benevolent comment by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others.

Things only particularly obtuse intellectuals say?

If someone offends you by speech, you must learn to defend yourself by speech.

Right, like that will settle it.

[b]Robert Macfarlane

My sense, I say to Christopher, is that the search for dark matter has produced an elaborate, delicate edifice of presuppositions, and a network of worship sites, also known as laboratories, all dedicated to the search for an invisible universal entity which refuses to reveal itself. It seems to resemble what we call religion rather more than what we call science.[/b]

My guess: that’s debatable?

Something I heard an archaeologist say in Oslo about deep time returns to me: Time isn’t deep, it is always already all around us. The past ghosts us, lies all about us less as layers, more as drift. Here that seems right, I think. We ghost the past, we are its eerie.

Let’s imagine the deepest time of all.

…to understand light you need first to have been buried in the deep-down dark.

You go first.

For deep time is measured in units that humble the human instant: millennia, epochs and aeons, instead of minutes, months and years. Deep time is kept by rock, ice, stalactites, seabed sediments and the drift of tectonic plates. Seen in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains rise and fall. We live on a restless Earth.

And then the deepest time of all: oblivion.

…perceive no opposition between precision and mystery, or between naming and not-knowing.

Of course that will never catch on. Nor should it, he insisted.

From my heel to my toe is a measured space of 29.7 centimetres or 11.7 inches. This is a unit of progress and it is also a unit of thought. ‘I can only meditate when I am walking,’ wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the fourth book of his ‘Confessions’, ‘when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.’ Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal entry describes going out for a wander and finding himself ‘so overwhelmed with ideas’ that he ‘could scarcely walk’. Christopher Morley wrote of Wordsworth as ‘employ[ing] his legs as an instrument of philosophy’ and Wordsworth of his own ‘feeling intellect’. Nietzsche was typically absolute on the subject - ‘Only those thoughts which come from ‘walking’ have a value’ - and Wallace Stevens typically tentative: ‘Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around the lake.’ In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing.

On the other hand, knowing what?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

"My opinion is a view I hold until I find something that changes it.” Luigi Pirandello[/b]

Could it all really be as simple as that?

"Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.” Luigi Pirandello

I know that mine are.

“We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.” Mencius

I know that I do.

“Opportunities? I make opportunities.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Not unlike the Grim Reaper.

“The problem, of course, with the idea of nature versus nurture was that it posed a choice between determinisms.” James S.A. Corey

Is this true? Let’s flip a coin and find out.

“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.” Jose Ortega y Gasset

Or, sure, lots and lots of both?

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

“What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream.[/b]

Nothing new here though.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can’t reason without them.

Though not necessarily in that order.

Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked” but…but what?…Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others—a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.

Little objectivists in particular.

John looks at the motorcycle and he sees steel in various shapes and has negative feelings about these steel shapes and turns off the whole thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now and I see ideas. He thinks I’m working on parts. I’m working on concepts.

Yo, promethean!

The real ugliness lies in the relationship between people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use.

Or, every once in a while, the real beauty.

Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum.

Well, that’s good news, right?