a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Heraclitus

It is weariness to keep toiling at the same things so that one becomes ruled by them.[/b]

Tell that to the wage slaves.

Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, one living the others death and dying the others life.

No, seriously, what the fuck does that mean?

Life is a child moving counters in a game.

Among other things, not here it isn’t.

Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.

Checkers? That far back?

Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.

Where’s he going with this?

Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

I know that I do.

[b]Criss Jami

To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.[/b]

Either that or get divorced.

Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.

Let’s bring that down to earth.

The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.

Let alone gloating about it.

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.

Fierce pedants in particular. Right, Prismatic?

Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.

Well, sort of.

When you’re the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.

Me. Here. He concluded.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.” Samuel Beckett[/b]

In the words, the lucky ones.

“Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.” Samuel Beckett

Or, sure, fuck first.

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” G.K. Chesterton

Come on, for most soldiers, looking back or going forward, indoctrination is indoctrinbation.

“War is what happens when language fails.” Margaret Atwood

All the way to the bank, as it were.

“How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? That became for me the real measure of value.” Nietzsche

Spirit? Right.

“In logic, there are no morals.” Rudolf Carnap

Except, for countless millions, in their head.

[b]Edward Snowden

The authoritarian one believed that an individual’s rights were basically provided by governments and were determined by states. The other society - ours - tended to believe that a large portion of our rights were inherent and couldn’t be abrogated by governments, even if this seemed necessary.[/b]

And then there are the folks like me.

If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.

First, of course, we’ll need to know what those beliefs are. If you know what I mean.

Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

So, don’t forget to vote!

The issue is we’re losing leverage. Governments are increasingly getting more power and we are increasingly losing our ability to control that power, and even to be aware of that power.

So, don’t forget to vote!

It’s really hard to take that step—not only do I believe in something, I believe in it enough that I’m willing to set my own life on fire and burn it to the ground.

And how scary is that? After all, “one of them” could be thinking the same thing.

Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we’ve been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

My guess: It’s all about the Benjamins.

[b]Norman Mailer

We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.[/b]

Dumb things intellectuals say.
Uh, right?

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Either that or to rip it to shreds.

Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.

Any biologists here able to confirm this?

No heart is so hard as the timid heart.

Among other things, this makes absolutely no sense.

If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

He means a philosopher of course.

I respect most boxers because they’re violent people who learned to discipline themselves … a good boxer is an artist … Boxing is existential - some fights are better than others.

Next up: the toreador.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.” Rudolf Carnap[/b]

Cue [among other things] dasein.

“If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.” Luigi Pirandello

And not just the Communists, right?

“Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom and happiness”. Jean-Paul Marat

Talk about a double edged sword.

"It seems that the inevitable fate of man is never to attain complete freedom: princes everywhere tend to despotism and the people to servitude.” Jean-Paul Marat

Just short of determinism as it were.

“Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live” Hans-Georg Gadamer

See, didn’t I tell you?

“It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition.” Hans-Georg Gadamer

See, didn’t I tell you?

[b]Douglas Adams

Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n. One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.[/b]

Of course, like me, you night call it something else.

I don’t go to mythical places with strange men.

Neither do I. Though I insist that the women be strange.

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

Probably a British thing.

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

Well, ever once in a while, I’m forced to.

Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.

And lovers of zeros and ones…?

A fragrant breeze wandered up from the quiet sea, trailed along the beach, and drifted back to the sea again, wondering where to go next. On a mad impulse it went up to the beach again.

Not much can’t be anthropomorphized these days, right?

[b]Brent Weeks

Do you know what punishments I’ve endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men’s most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn’t tolerate my existence.[/b]

I wish I could say that.

Why is it, my shadow-striding friend, that we don’t fear dreams? We lose consciousness, lose control, things happen with no apparent logic and abiding by no apparent rules… We don’t fear dreams, but we do fear madness, and death terrifies us.

I know why I don’t fear mine.

Relationships are ropes. Love is a noose. - Durzo Blint

What’s that make divorce then?

Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well.

If a bit repetitively.

A man’s greatest treasures are his illusions - Durzo Blint

In other words, once you’ve sunk that low.

You’d be surprised at what you’d do to stay alive.

Sure, once I was.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.” David Ricardo[/b]

You know, for some of us.

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil

And then this part: dasein.

“When it is useful to them, men can believe a theory of which they know nothing more than its name.” Pareto

And not just value ontology.

“Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason.” Pareto

And not just the value ontologists.

"Conscience whispers, but interest screams aloud.” Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Pick one:
Wall Street
K Street

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” Hannah Arendt

You know, like I do.

[b]Murray Gell-Mann

The persistence of erroneous beliefs exacerbates the widespread anachronistic failure to recognize the urgent problems that face humanity on this planet.[/b]

Their erroneous beliefs for example.

If you know the wavefunction of the universe, why aren’t you rich?

A little help with this one please.

Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they’re never really certainties.

Next up: Actual cause and effect.

Bush is a nice fellow who gives very good parties. I just wish someone would find him a better job than running the country.

Next up: …well, you know who that is.

In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object; that’s how we measure it.

That explains…what exactly?

While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that.

But not here, right?

[b]Camille Paglia

It’s so tiring to make love to women, it takes forever. I’m too lazy to be a lesbian. [/b]

They wouldn’t have her anyway.

Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses woman’s ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all of men’s relationships with women.

Come on, it’s not entirely untrue.

When it defines man as the enemy, feminism is alienating women from their own bodies.

Right, like most feminists do that.

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. “I’m this way because my father made me this way. I’m this way because my husband made me this way.” Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.

Let’s pin down the perfect balance here. You pick the context.

Repression is an evolutionary adaptation permitting us to function under the burden of our expanded consciousness. For what we are conscious of could drive us mad.

Some will get this more than others.

Wearisome as it may seem, women must realize that, in making a commitment to a man, they have merged in his unconscious with his mother and have therefore inherited the ambivalence of that relationship.

Okay, but what if it isn’t psychobabble?

[b]Nein

If you plan to quit Twitter in 2020, there’s something you should know. You won’t.[/b]

Let’s make that a challenge.

I was told there’d be meaning.

First of course we’ll need to know who told him.

A gentle reminder that if you let some idiot on Twitter ruin your weekend: it’ll probably be you.

Or: A gentle reminder that if you let some idiot on ILP ruin your weekend: it’ll probably be me.

Friday: ja.
Casual: nein.

And, no, not just in Germany.

Another day. Another failed social experiment.

Fucking liberals, right?

Yes, sir, we found your truth. But it says it never heard of you.

That is actually applicable to me.

[b]Randall Munroe

A 1-watt laser is an extremely dangerous thing. It’s not just powerful enough to blind you—it’s capable of burning skin and setting things on fire. Obviously, they’re not legal for consumer purchase in the US. Just kidding! You can pick one up for $300. Just do a search for “1-watt handheld laser".[/b]

Okay, Kids, get back to us on this.

Lastly, we need to know the strength of gravity on Dagobah. Here, I figure I’m stuck, because while sci-fi fans are obsessive, it’s not like there’s gonna be a catalog of minor geophysical characteristics for every planet visited in Star Wars. Right? Nope. I’ve underestimated the fandom. Wookieepeedia has just such a catalog,

Sure, I believe it.

If you set out a cup of warm water on Mars, it’ll try to boil, freeze, and sublimate, practically all at once. Water on Mars seems to want to be in any state except liquid.

Any truth to this?

In the Clarendon Library at Oxford University sits a battery-powered bell that has been ringing since the year 1840. The bell “rings” so quietly it’s almost inaudible, using only a tiny amount of charge with every motion of the clapper. Nobody knows exactly what kind of batteries it uses because nobody wants to take it apart to figure it out.

No, seriously: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell

For starters, would your soul mate even still be alive? A hundred billion or so humans have ever lived, but only seven billion are alive now (which gives the human condition a 93 percent mortality rate). If we were all paired up at random, 90 percent of our soul mates would be long dead.

Something to think about? You tell me.

Every night, around midnight GMT, the Sun sets on the Cayman Islands, and doesn’t rise over the British Indian Ocean Territory until after 1:00 a.m. For that hour, the little Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific are the only British territory in the Sun.

Actually, I didn’t know that.

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.[/b]

And now all the way to the White House.

There is no perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way.

What’s that make the smartphone then?

A slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, “If you don’t whip me, I won’t work.” He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work.

Capitalism in a nutshell, perhaps? That and the part about paying the bills.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20–20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination—“unstuckness,” in other words—are completely outside its domain.

And that’s before the trek to the is/ought world.

Degeneracy can be fun but it’s hard to keep up as a serious lifetime occupation.

Especially when there are kids involved.

The idea that “all men are created equal” is a gift to the world from the American Indian.

Maybe. Maybe not. But look at them now.

[b]Nein

You could always try Fatalism. [/b]

After all, who could blame you?

For sale: a year. Practically new. But not quite what I wanted.

I’ve got one for sale too. And I’ll throw in last year and next year for free.

I think I liked you better as an algorithm.

Of course that’s quite common these days.

For everything: there’s a time and place. For nothing: there’s Twitter.

And, for the Kids, there’s ILP.

After the Revolution, friends, there will be no more Mondays. Just proto-Tuesdays.

Except for the ruling class.

Don’t worry: every time a German verb separates, a compound noun is formed.

Male and female.

[b]Tana French

One of my da’s tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.[/b]

How is that different from completely fucking up your life? You know, if there is a difference.

I can’t explain the alchemy that transmuted one evening into the equivalent of years held lightly in common. The only way I can put it is that we recognized, too surely even for surprise, that we shared the same currency.

This is as obscure a way in which to describe as any other.

We think of mortality so little these days…
I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones.
"Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I:
As I am so will you be…”

Let’s bring that back.

My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind.

They know who they are. If they even existed at all.

I’m amazed this guy manages to get out of bed in the morning without working himself into a panic attack over the chance that he might trip on the bath mat and stab himself through the eye socket with his toothbrush and be left with a permanent twitch that’ll ruin his chances of landing an airplane safely if the pilot has a heart attack and doom hundreds to a fiery death.

This describe anyone here? Besides, on occasion, me?

Most people are only too delighted to wreck each other’s heads. And for the tiny minority who do their pathetic best not to, this world is going to go right ahead and make sure they do it anyway.

Remember when it wasn’t like that? Me neither.

[b]Criss Jami

If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences.[/b]

Not much in the way of consequences here though.

I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.

You know, in theory.

At first, they’ll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they’ll dislike you.

Huffing and puffing I call it here.

When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie.

Not many that excludes

There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you’re wrong and you can’t face it; the other is when you’re right and nobody else can face it.

Well, that explains one of us.

Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.

What’s it called here, Kids?

[b]Werner Twertzog

Bridges fall not because they are badly built but because the builders have been taught a false system of ethics.[/b]

Yeah, that too.

Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.

You know, after Trump is reelected.

Perhaps I shall retweet you. But you will not be the same person afterwards.

Wow, has it come to that already?

You love me; you love me not. America, I need something more stable.

No can do. It’s now a red state/blue state world. We only live in it.

So then I said to George “The Animal” Steele, “What stopped your promotion to full professor?” And he said, “politics.”

So, is it important to understand this?

Unlike our bodies, which are declining even as we dream of future happiness.

Don’t worry, you’ll understand it eventually.

[b]Edward Snowden

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics. [/b]

Right, whatever that means.

You will never be completely free from risk if you’re free. The only time you can be free from risk is when you’re in prison.

I’m sorry, but how idiotic is that?!

We do not live in a revolutionary time. People are not prepared to contest power.

At least some of us still remember the Sixties…and the illusion of at least believing that we were.

In the end, the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

Fuck you, Barry! Well, this part anyway.

You have to remember the way the internet works, when you communicate with the server, it’s very likely not in your country. It’s somewhere else in the world.

Though, so far, only on this planet.

The US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

Right, like anything has really changed.

[b]Norman Mailer

There’s that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.[/b]

He meant demigod of course.

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.

Can we thank nature for that?

Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.

So, what do you think, has it gotten even worse?

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

Does this go deep enough…or does it barely scratch the surface?

I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind.

I know: you think that’s a description of me here. And I’m not saying that it’s not.
Unless of course I’m wrong.

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.

Let’s call this the “corporate media industrial complex”.