a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Karl Kraus

There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman’s shoe and has to settle for the whole woman.[/b]

Well, there may be a few less fortunate. But point taken.

I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.

Perhaps then it’s time to plug it.

An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time.

Yo, Kids!

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.

Yo, iambiguous!

Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.

Yep, Reich again.

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

You know, if yours is even open.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

I don’t know which is worse: to be wrongfully accused or mistakenly understood. [/b]

Yes.

The rebellion of art is a daily rebellion against the state of living death routinely called real life.

He didn’t know what that meant back then either.

Life is fragmentary, and the pattern that creativity can offer is not one that is imposed, not something rigid, but rather something which can reveal the intrinsic patterns of that fragmentation. Things are in a perpetual dance, but there is an order. It’s not really random at all.

He wondered, Does this explain nothing more or less than it explains everything?

The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.

There’s always that, sure.

As people get older they have these rigid patterns that they impose on themselves, and it kills them. They become dull, they become dead to new experience, they become afraid, biased, and bigoted. It’s really simply to do with refusing new experience.

Yo, options!

If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what’s crushing you.

Unless it actually makes things worse.

[b]tiny nietzsche

me: do you guys have corpse paint?
7-eleven dude: aisle three[/b]

Wawa too. Aisle 8.

you can lead a horse to disinfectant

You know, if you can find any.

existence is buffering

Nope, not around here.

it’s okay. I didn’t have any plans this year

Or, if you’re from New York, next year.

if I only knew what I was thinking

For example, the way that you do.

the box that holds my collection of boxes

Well, if there’s one big enough.

[b]Nikolai Gogol

Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book. [/b]

Let’s think of something even more pleasant than that.

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.

After all, humor is often at the expense of someone.

You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.

Can this be trumped?

I am who I am and that’s who I am.

What’s that make you then?

However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.

Especially if he has a “condition”.

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.

Though now of course we have other ways.

[b]Nassim Nicholas Taleb

By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words! [/b]

By all means, just try to.

What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure.

Actually, that’s not even close. Unless, of course, I’m wrong. Anyone here know for sure?

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination.

On the other hand, it takes one to know one.

It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.

If only you are “one of us”.

Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don’t confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.

Starting, say, now.

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.

For example, if you believe in sin.

[b]tiny nietzsche

I wish the moon was closer[/b]

Nope: bbc.com/news/science-environment-12311119

bury me in the ocean

Six fathoms under, say.

in these trying times, weed

You know, for starters.

it’s too bad we never met. we could have ruined our lives together

Does online count?

why yes, I would like to join your marxist collective of inner earth humans fighting late stage capitalist robots

Wouldn’t surprise me, he thought.

cop: do you know how fast you were going?
me: I haven’t left this building in months

Could this happen to you?

[b]Iris Murdoch

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. [/b]

Next up: the very greatest philosophy:

Yes, of course, there’s something fishy about describing people’s feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It’s really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like “pass the gravy” is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and… pass the gravy.

Take that, Mr. Objectivist!!

All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn.

Let’s file this one under, “blah, blah, blah”.

All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.

Let’s file this one under, well, you tell me.

The entry of a child into any situation changes the whole situation.

Tell that to, among others, the Nazis.

Art and psychoanalysis give shape and meaning to life and that is why we adore them, but life as it is lived has no shape and meaning.

Essentially, as it were.

[b]Mikhail Lermontov

I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate.[/b]

I taught him that.

He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.

He taught me that.

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.

Uh-oh, he thought.

We almost always forgive those we understand.

If only after they’ve forgiven us.

I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectator.
Of my triumph or my doom.

Sure, maybe even here.

In the first place, his eyes never laughed when he laughed. Have you ever noticed this peculiarity some people have? It is either the sign of an evil nature or of a profound and lasting sorrow.

Next up: in the second place.

[b]tiny nietzsche

sext: are you going to eat that?[/b]

You bet.

I see now that isolating myself with myself was a mistake

Me? Things couldn’t be better.

I used to be a philosopher like you…then I took zeno’s arrow in the knee

That’ll do it.

I don’t know a lot about art, but I occasionally dislike something for personal aesthetic reasons

On the other hand, who doesn’t?

my one man cult is thriving

You wanna join?

what does not kill you makes you wait

godot for example.

[b]Colum McCann

It’s about fear. You know! They’re all throbbing with fear. We all are… Bits of it floating in the air. It’s like dust. You walk about and don’t see it, don’t notice it, but it’s there and it’s all coming down, covering everything. You’re breathing it in. You touch it. You drink it. You eat it. But it’s so fine you don’t notice it. But you’re covered in it. It’s everywhere. What I mean is, we’re afraid. Just stand still for an instant and there it is, this fear, covering our faces and tongues. If we’ve stopped to take account of it, we’d just fall into despair. But we can’t stop. We’ve for to keep going.[/b]

Next up: It’s about anxiety.

Literature can remind us that not all ife is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

Millions of them, for example.

Goodness is more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That’s why they became evil. That’s why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love.

Cue iambiguous.

We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice.

Like me, for example.

She had told Jaslyn once that everyone knows where they are from when they know where it is they want to be buried.

Moi? Toss me in the nearest dumpster.

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.

Baltimore too. Or so I’m told.

[b]John Lydon

I have one major problem with the Internet: It’s full of liars.[/b]

Them and Kids.

Just because people think politically different to you doesn’t mean they’re inhuman.

On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that they’re not either.

Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be.

That’s so true. And no one still knows why.

I’m just permanently agitated by everything and everyone.

Again: Genes or memes?

You’d have to be daft as a brush to say you didn’t like Pink Floyd.

Let alone King Crimson.

I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It’s fundamentally wrong.

Either that or fundamentally ironic.

[b]Simon Critchley

There are two forms of disappointment that interest me: religious and political disappointment. Religious disappointment flows from the realization that religious belief is not an option for us. Political disappointment flows from the fact that there is injustice - that we live in a world that is radically unjust and violent, where might seems to equal right, where the poor are exploited by the rich, etc. [/b]

In other words, the latter without the former…one without the other.

Philosophy teaches us to look at the world again. It brings out at a theoretical level what all plain, common, ordinary people, in a sense, know already.

Tell that to these guys: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195731

The influence of being in New York, made me realize a lot of the ethical and political ideas I want to push or promote are best articulated within an anarchist program.

Anarchy in New York. What could possibly go wrong?
Yo, Snake Plisskin!

I guess what happens to a lot of people as they get older is that they get more conservative, but with me, the opposite is the case.

You know, in his head.

If I had a religious experience, what I know for sure is that I would stop doing philosophy and would start doing religion…

Me? Well, for one thing, depending on what the experience actually was.

The culture of irony is the culture of postmodernism, which I would furiously want to denounce. We have to act ethically and politically. Irony is a defensive position, against reality. It always knows what to think about reality. The idea of commitment and engagement is central to me, which is not ironic.

Fuck you, if we don’t need a context here.

[b]so sad today

annoyed that i had to be born and annoyed that i have to die[/b]

Much like the rest of us.

i’m thrilled to announce that i didn’t do shit today

Me too. Unless you count this.

somehow your fakeness seems different than my fakeness

Less genuine for one thing.

can’t tell if i’m losing it or i’ve lost it

can’t tell if i’m finding it or i’ve found it.

so you think you can go a day without overthinking

Here? Is that even possible?

i keep meaning to be a different person

Check with me tomorrow.

[b]A. S. Byatt

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.[/b]

Not unlike, say, Buddhism.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

In other words, “I” becomes a story that we tell to others. And to ourselves.

An odd phrase, “by heart,” he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.

Here? “By head”.

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

See, I told you.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

Or: I think there are a lot more important things than philosophy in the world. But not to you.

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

You know, before the internet.

[b]so sad today

i don’t need to sleep forever just for 1000 years[/b]

I’ll settle for a few days myself.

i’m starting to think that feelings are just going to keep happening

Cue “the other side”?

i feel overwhelmed and i’m not even doing anything

Like thinking doesn’t count?

the dopamine giveth and the dopamine taketh away

Just ask Leonard Lowe.

are we dead?

Sort of, he thought.

i mean, fuck everything kind of

Fine, but let’s narrow it down.

[b]Karl Kraus

Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden.[/b]

As well they should be!

Who is going to cast out an error to which he has given birth and replace it with an adopted truth?

On the other hand, who among us hasn’t?

I master only the language of others. Mine does with me what it wants.

Well, sort of, I suppose.

The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

Here? Shall I name names?

I knew a man who carried his education in his vest pocket because there was more room there than in his head.

Here? Shall I name names?

Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do!

Like the Lord gives a shit. Given history to date, say.

[b]Penelope Lively

We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.[/b]

How civilized!

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

Though not objectively one suspects.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

The concerns of non-fiction too.

In old age, you realise that while you’re divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will.

Among other things, the bitterest of truths.

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

Nothing it is then.

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

Cue 1] contingency 2] chance and 3] change.
Though not necessarily in that order.

[b]sad socrates

The internet has proved that gods and dogs are equally dumb.[/b]

Dogs? Something I missed, perhaps?

Things aren’t getting worse, they are getting more human.

Well, how much worse can that be? If only on this planet.

I’m too young to laugh.

Besides, he thought, why on earth would anyone want to?

Thank you for misunderstanding.

Yo, Larry! Yo, Moe! Yo, Curly!

Ingesting existential thoughts can kill anything that lives.

That and a whole slew of viruses.

I don’t even believe my name is Socrates.

Besides, he just plays him on Twitter.

[b]Austin Osman Spare

Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. You are still in great company.[/b]

No, not counting you, Kid.

In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false.

See, I told you!

I am God, and all other gods are my imagery. I gave birth to myself. I am millions of forms excreating; eternal; and nothing exists except through me; yet I am not them they serve me.

Bullshit. How can he be God, when I am?

The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am.

Come on, chaos is the last word that one would capitalize.

In our solitariness…great depths are sometimes sounded. Truth hideth in company.

He learned that here.

And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.

Been there, done that.
Only, as you might imagine, it didn’t work.

[b]Nikolai Gogol

I saw that I’d get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.[/b]

What path are we on here?

They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.

Maybe, but I’m chipping away.

How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.

Uh, a lot?

It’s the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

And, I might add, getting less so all the time.

There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.

Let’s call them, say, the masses.

Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.

Let’s finally find the damn thing!