a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Nein

The good news: hope has been found. The bad news: it doesn’t want to get anywhere near us.[/b]

And what hope might that be, he challenged.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was, at best, not yet the very worst of the very, very, very worst of times.

My advice: Double it. At least.

We regret to inform you. There is no shortage of doctors of philosophy.

Except here, perhaps.

Sorry, society. Your contract has expired.

The one with nature.

Nihilism. Because nothing’s funny.

You’ll never catch me believing that. Here, for example.

1. Don’t panic.
2. Don’t panic.
3. Start learning German online from quarantine.
4. Panic.

Or, now, English.

[b]Asger Jorn

A creative train of thought is set off by: the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible.[/b]

A novel virus.

Beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, grim, contradictory etc … It makes no difference, as long as it is life, vigorously pouring forth.

Not counting the times it makes all the difference in the world.

Everything is in constant flux, from state to state, from good to bad and back again…only in transmutation, perpetual motion, lies truth.

It’s best to keep that one up in the clouds, eh?

The significance of something lies in its presence here and now. I don’t care what it has been or what it will become. It is the experience of things that matters, the confrontation with things.

Generally speaking as it were.

The act of expressing oneself is a physical one. It materializes the thought.

Let’s file this one immediately under, “for better or worse”.

The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here is not infinite in its depth and consequence, but rests on a foundation of spirituality and aesthetics.

Some people actually get paid to think thoughts like this.

[b]John Updike

Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.[/b]

Why not me, he asked.

The throat: how strange, that there is not more erotic emphasis upon it. For here, through this compound pulsing pillar, our life makes its leap into spirit, and in the other direction gulps down what it needs of the material world.

Fucking intellectuals, he thought.

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

Fucking intellectuals, he thought.

People go around mourning the death of God; it’s the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren’t people any more, they’re just ssoul-less sheep.

Sssounds about rrright.

When you look into a mirror it is not yourself you see, but a kind of apish error posed in fearful symmetry kool uoy nehW rorrim a otni ton si ti ˛ees uoy flesruoy dnik a tub rorre hsipa fo lufraef ni desop yrtemmys

Clever enough for you?

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.

Next up: the second time.

[b] Elena Epaneshnik

An optimist: The glass is half full!
A pessimist: Yeah, but have you got it tested?[/b]

Or, in Trumpworld, CAN you get it tested?

Looks like we’re only a few steps away from making toilet paper, face masks and hand sanitizers a new global currency.

Let me guess: Supply and demand?

Love like there’s nothing else to do. Because there isn’t.

Except what we’re doing here of course.

Well, if anything, we no longer have to read Monday Motivation tweets. What’s better - we don’t even have to have Mondays for a while. Or any other weekdays.

Like the weekends are any different.

These days, reading the news or blogs, my first thought is that we simply must invent a vaccine against stupidity.

Their stupidity first of course.

Say something sexy in French?
Ils ont trouvé un remède contre le Covid-19.

How about a cure for stupidity?

[b]Douglas Adams

Gordon Way’s astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.[/b]

I guess we’ll never know though.

Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.

Of course he’s only paraphrasing Mr. Spock.

…something almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea…

Just not at Starbucks.

He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.

Or, sure, fuck that part.

If there’s any real truth, it’s that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.

Yeah, why not? We’ve got one of them running things right here in America.

Imagine he said, never even thinking, ‘We are alone,’ simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there’s any other way to be.

Imagining it yet?

[b]Brent Weeks

A whore’s truth has too many sharp edges.[/b]

Ouch, he concurred.

If you’re trapped in the darkness all alone, how do you know you’re alone and not actually surrounded by an army of friends, also silent, also afraid in the dark, merely waiting for the sound of one voice to rouse them from fear, to fight for freedom?

Trust me, I know.

It’s easier to build a new culture on the graves of the dead than around the homes of the living.

We’ll need some actual examples of course.

Some say, ‘Who you are is what you do.’ They’re wrong, but not all wrong. What you do forms who you are. Then who you are forms what you do. It’s a vicious cycle, or a virtuous one, depending. One act doesn’t undo all of who you are, but a thousand acts make you who you are. So it’s simple, though not easy: stop creating the wrong you.

Any wrong yous here? And I’m off the hook, right?

Everyone thinks they’re special. It’s what makes lying so easy.

Especially when, increasingly, the truth no longer even matters. And not just Republicans.

They made it so that we can’t change it from within. They made it so we must kill to break it.

Among other things, “the system”.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

We were given perhaps a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to do what we’re best at: staying at home, eating, drinking, and procrastinating. Let’s not screw this up. Please.[/b]

I never do myself.

For those who ostentatiously tweet about going to restaurants, not washing their hands, and telling us COVID-19 is a hoax - it’ll be great to lose Internet connection every time they want to tweet about how stupid they are. Idiocy can also become pandemic.

Hell, here in America, it’s the new national pastime.
With baseball gone.

There’s just one thing that we know for sure: Schrödinger’s cat will survive the COVID-19. Dead or alive.

Or dead and alive.

If it weren’t for misunderstandings, we wouldn’t talk to each other at all.

Here we call that posting.

Social distancing within a family: what can possibly go wrong?

Anyone here actually know?

Cassandra said there’d be days like these.

Then weeks. Then months.

[b]Jenny Offill

What Kafka said: I write to close my eyes.[/b]

Next up: I read to close my eyes.

The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck.

Next up: the invention of life.

The Buddhists say that wisdom may be attained by reaching the three marks. The first is an understanding of the absence of self. The second is an understanding of the impermanence of all things. The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience.

Not counting Nirvana perhaps.

There are thousands and thousands of deer here. Soon it will be hunting season. At least most people who hunt up here hunt for food, not sport, she says. I watch them bound away as we turn down her dirt road. Why don’t they farm deer? I wonder. Is it because they are too pretty? She shakes her head. It’s because they panic when penned.

Well, that and being pretty.

An Arabic proverb: One insect is enough to fell a country. A Japanese proverb: Even an insect one-tenth of an inch long has five-tenths of a soul.

The first one sure.

Life equals structure plus activity.

But then you still die.

[b]Max Born

It is true that many scientists are not philosophically minded and have hitherto shown much skill and ingenuity but little wisdom. [/b]

Of course we know better.
Or, rather, some of us do.

Science is so greatly opposed to history and tradition that it cannot be absorbed by our civilization.

The Trumpworlds in particular.

The difficulty involved in the proper and adequate means of describing changes in continuous deformable bodies is the method of differential equations. … They express mathematically the physical concept of contiguous action.

You’re probably wondering where dasein fits in here.

The human race has today the means for annihilating itself–either in a fit of complete lunacy, i.e., in a big war…or by the careless handling of atomic technology, through a slow process of poisoning and of deterioration in its genetic structure.

Of course that’s still too close to call.

But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology.

Yo, Donald!

To present a scientific subject in an attractive and stimulating manner is an artistic task, similar to that of a novelist or even a dramatic writer. The same holds for writing textbooks.

Pick one:
____Popularizing science
____Dumbing science down

[b]Werner Twertzog

This is not an extinction event for the human species. But it is, likely, the end of the existing global order, and, for that reason, to be accepted with stoicism and resolution to build something new. Hope resides, primarily, in the promise of change, as we all know.[/b]

Of course he’s just paraphrasing Joker.

Anarchy will arrive in 20 days, I am told. Cannibalism in 50.

Of course he’s just paraphrasing Joker.

Death, as we all know, is a Democrat hoax.

Anyone here still not know this?

Do not waste your time attacking celebrities. They are self-important and deluded, but they are not the real puppet masters.

Unless of course they become President.

Dear America: how does it feel to be inside a Ken Burns documentary. Again.

We know it’s coming.

I shall tweet until the last light goes out, as we all know.

Or, here, post.

[b]Carl Friedrich Gauss

Mathematics is the queen of sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics. She often condescends to render service to astronomy and other natural sciences, but in all relations she is entitled to the first rank. [/b]

So, does this add up?

Theory attracts practice as the magnet attracts iron.

Not here though. Or, rather, not for those who wallow in “general description intellectual contraptions”.

You have no idea how much poetry there is in the calculation of a table of logarithms!

No, I don’t. Why? Just lucky I guess.

There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.

Then why do they call it “the Fields Medal”?

If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries.

Or, here, me, mine.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

Touche, he thought.

[b]Guy de Maupassan

It is not difficult to pass for being learned. The secret is not to betray your ignorance.[/b]

It’s time: Let’s name names.

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.

My God, he’s got it!

How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is!

Next up: how deadly.

Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it…It’s horrible…I shall see nothing more… nothing of what exists.

Like you, I’m working on it. Or it’s working on me.

After all, life is never so jolly or so miserable as people seem to think.

My guess: jolly is no longer an option at all for many.

Every authentically loved being is a kind of god.

Next up: authentically hated beings.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Remember when our daily lives were not shadowed by the omnipresent fear of death?
Me neither.[/b]

And neither me too.

No, life is not “like a box of chocolates.” You know exactly what you are going to get: death.

Another fucking optimist!

Hieronymous Bosch. Stupid optimist.

Let’s explain this.

Never forget that nothing will be remembered.

At last, some good news.

On the other hand, many of us yearned for the end of this vile and debased civilization.

Trust me: none more so than Joker.
And, sure, occasionally, me.

If you have a film idea that is “begging to be made,” go and rob a bank, sell your blood, steal a camera, overthrow a small nation, but stop asking me for money, losers.

A bit harsh but, okay, point taken.

[b]Primo Levi

A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.[/b]

And then there’s Trumpworld.

This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described. It is that which at this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper, mark it with these volutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one.

Of course your cell might be different.

Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don’t know it and feel safe.

Or, sure, you are not in the mountains.

If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one’s desk, is a source of profound satisfaction.

In other words, maybe.

We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.

Here and now, we may well be living through another rendition of that.

[b]Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why.

The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero.[/b]

See, I told you.

[b]Erwin Schrodinger

Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears. [/b]

Not that science wants to. But point taken.

Plato was the first to envisage the idea of timeless existence and to emphasize it-against reason-as a reality, more [real] than our actual experience.

Three words:
In.
His.
Head.

Why are atoms so small? … Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.

Okay, sure: Wow!

An animal that embarks on forming states without greatly restricting egoism will perish.

Let’s file this one [too] under, “it’s so deep it’s meaningless”.

If you cannot - in the long run - tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.

On the other hand, what are we doing?

The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist’s objective picture of light-waves.

As God intended of course.
One of them.

[b]Werner Twertzog

What makes you think you will be good enough to be kept alive as food, anyway?[/b]

Really, how far are we now from that?

What skills do you bring to a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

My signature threads?

U.S. luxury brand stores boarding up in anticipation of a more equal society.

You know, in a parallel universe.

On the bright side, many of us hated our jobs.

Of course the bills still do need to be paid.

We are all students in Trump University now.

Dear American progressives: Stop saying “This is not who we are.” You are lying, as we all know.

Fucking idealists, right?

[b]Lily King

The hardest thing about writing is getting in every day, breaking through the membrane.The second-hardest thing is getting out. Sometimes I sink down too deep and come up too fast. Afterward I feel wide open and skinless. The whole world feels moist and pliable.[/b]

On the other hand, writing what?

For long stretches of time it felt like we were crawling around each other’s brain.

Sort of what we do here. Either this or anything but that.

She stared at me and nodded into the silence between us, as if I were still talking and making perfect sense.

Silence. Clearly that’s what we need more of here.

Who can explain why a few words in a particular tone can clear acres of sudden unfamiliarity?

That ever actually happen to you?

Because death is not tragic to them, not in the way it is to us, I said.
They mourn. They feel sorrow, great sorrow. But it isn’t tragic?
No, it isn’t. They know their ancestors have a plan for them. There’s no sense that it was wrong. Tragedy is based on this sense that there’s been a terrible mistake, isn’t it?

For some us, having been born.

But he did not believe ordinary citizens created art. True art was anomalous; it was a rare mutation. It didn’t happen simply because one willed it so. He thought it an utter and exasperating waste of an ordinary man’s time.

What’s that make philosophy then?

[b]Asger Jorn

We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions… What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life… in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. [/b]

That can’t be good. For the rest of us I mean.

We are not talking about a new cognition in relation to abstract art, rather a new area of cognition.

Abstract art, abstract explanation.

Anything really new is repulsive, because it is abnormal and unreasonable.

For example, me here.

True realism, materialist realism lies in the search for the expression of forms faithful to their content. But there is no content detached from human interest.

Oh how he Ioathed pretentious gibberish such as this. He probably being me.

Being an artist is being an isolated individual.

On the other hand [so far] not by definition.

This is what aesthetics, development and progress depend upon: that we go out on thin ice.

Is the ice thin enough for you now?

[b]Existential Comics

I know we are all supposed to be on lockdown, but I’m not going to let the virus stop me from doing what I want and living my life. Because luckily for me the only thing I’ve ever wanted is to drink whiskey alone in my house and not be bothered by anyone, so I’m good.[/b]

Truth be told, he thought, I’m not far from that myself.

The fact that the rich are currently like “let them die, or our stocks might go down!” really makes you wonder why philosophers ever even put so much effort into working out intricate and subtle ethical questions, when the ruling class clearly couldn’t give a shit.

See, I told you.

What the liberal establishment can’t seem to grasp is there are real problems with the way the world is organized, and not just “we need to be more civil”. If they continue to refuse to give solutions to the material problems of life, fascists will be more than happy give theirs.

And the conservative establishment?

It’s really incredible how the very same people who willfully ignored the pandemic for months while China implemented the biggest quarantine in history and pleaded for other countries to take it as serious as them are now saying China somehow tricked them into not being prepared.

Right, like the Chinese government is the hero here!

[b]Rent is theft.
Profit is theft.
Interest is theft.

Look, it isn’t complicated. If you are making money that didn’t come from your own labor, then it is coming from someone else’s labor. You are stealing their money.[/b]

And he means that objectively.

Imagine being a police officer and forcibly evicting someone from their apartment during a pandemic and economic collapse and still thinking you “protect and serve” people and not property.

That’s how it works alright.

[b]Edvard Munch

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity. [/b]

You know, if that works for you.

There is a battle that goes on between men and women. Many people call it love.

The fools!

I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

As good an explanation as any, right?

No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

Would that perhaps work here as well?

My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.

Of course he’s just paraphrasing me.

Art comes from joy and pain…But mostly from pain.

Next up: what philosophy comes from.