a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Heinrich Heine

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.[/b]

At times, exorbitant.

The more I get to know people, the more I like dogs.

Let’s decide: Genes or memes?

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.

Or, here, the Kids.

The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.

And thank god for that.
Right?

I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.

Right?

I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.

He said in jest?

[b]Isadora Duncan

The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder. Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throats of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we ourselves are living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth? [/b]

Well, no one actually does anymore.

The whole world is absolutely brought up on lies. We are fed nothing but lies. It begins with lies and half our lives we live with lies.

You know, being optimistic.

The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche.

A little help with this one, please.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

A little help with this one, please.

We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity.

Once again: too cynical or not cynical enough?

All my lovers have been geniuses; it’s the one thing that I insist.

Actually, only 3 or 4 of mine were.

[b]Existential Comics

George Washington vs Lenin:

Washington believed in slavery.
Lenin believed in liberation for all.

Washington believed women should serve their husband.
Lenin believe in total equality for women.

Washington believed in indigenous genocide.
Lenin believed in indigenous autonomy.[/b]

Well, parts of it.

A whole lot of people who get all their information about socialism directly from wealthy capitalists who own the media seem to think socialists are the ones who are brainwashed.

Well, part of it.

The most dangerous nihilism isn’t the belief that nothing matters, it is the belief that everything matters. It is the people who take a sports game, a promotion at work, a political campaign, and which fertilizer to use on their lawn all with the same deadly seriousness.

Ah, the American Dream.

…how do they define words? they just use more words! it’s nothing but one big run around.

See, I definitely told you this.

We live in an extreme society.
We have extreme wealth disparity.
We have extreme prison populations.
We have extreme militarized police.
We have extreme racism.
To uphold the status quo is to be an extremist.

You know, conservatively.

The reason reading Hegel has radicalized so many people is that he had this very novel idea: things can get better than they are now.

Philosophically as it were.

[b]Stefan Zweig

Truth to tell, we are all criminals if we remain silent. [/b]

So be it then.

One can run away from anything but oneself.

Next up: “I”

There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.

To say the least.

It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.

Not me, he thought.
Why? Somehow he just lucked out.

Happy people are poor psychologists.

And godawful philosophers.

Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos; and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.

Let’s meet somewhere in the middle then, okay?

[b]Iris Murdoch

… half the world starves. What a planet. And the eating, if you’re lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then munch, munch, munch. If there’s anybody watching, they must be dying of laughter. [/b]

Anybody here watching?

How rarely can happiness be really innocent and not triumphant, not an insult to the deprived.

Is that philosophical enough for you?

How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.

Someone run this by God.

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.

Among other things, for all practical purposes.

Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child’s despair.

Yep, probably.

There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.

I’ll run this by, among others, Olivia Dresher.

[b]Judi Dench

Most things don’t work out as expected, but what happens instead often turns out to be the good stuff. [/b]

Among other things, define “often”.

One of the benefits of being a mature well-educated woman is that you’re not afraid of expletives. And you have no fear to put a fool in his place. That’s the power of language and experience. You can learn a lot from Shakespeare.

On the other hand, I suspect that Shakespeare never came across someone like me. But, sure, point taken.

We get up in the morning. We do our best. Nothing else matters.

What else can matter?

It takes courage to recognize the real as opposed to the convenient.

Let’s note actual examples of this.

Never fall out of love with life.

No, seriously.

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it.

Anyone doubt that?

[b]sad socrates

It’s impossible to understand the phrase “rot in hell” until you’ve lived on earth.[/b]

Just not objectively.

I’m aging faster than I’m dying.

Let’s calculate the odds.

I hope there’s no 2021.

Let’s just be thankful that it’s not here now.

If every life mattered, politicians wouldn’t live so long.

Not ours anyway.

If you destroy it, they will leave.

Though surely not ILP!

Fuck me, kill me, bury me

And in that exact order please.

[b]Robert Musil

The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one’s pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.[/b]

Or something like that.

It’s not the genius who is 100 years ahead of his time but average man who is 100 years behind it.

Any average folks here, perchance?

Ideology is: intellectual ordering of the feelings; an objective connection among them that makes the subjective connection easier.

Any ideologues here, perchance?

Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.

Tell that to these guys: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=190558

A man can’t be angry at his own time without suffering some damage.

Tell me about it.

Each person is a graveyard of his thoughts. They are most beautiful for us in the moment of their birth; later we can often sense a deep pain that they leave us indifferent where earlier they enchanted us.

Dasein? Nope, not yet.

[b]God

Happy 58.8603th birthday, President Obama![/b]

Must be a Christian thing.

Jesus died for your sins but you’ll die for Trump’s.

Must be a Christian thing.

Mike Pence is going to hell. You have My word.

He means Hell of course.

I’m willing to sacrifice people who are willing to sacrifice people for the sake of the economy for the sake of the economy.

So, what does that mean for you?

People who say “God is love” are unfamiliar with My work.

Let’s rebut confirm this.

If you’d rather die than wear a mask, feel free to do so.

God being clever. Or cute.

[b]Robert Fripp

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible. [/b]

Actually, it’s the other eway around.

The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.

Wow, who would have figured that?!

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.

In other words, your guess is as good as mine.

The plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry.

You know, stating the obvious.

Beginner’s luck is great for beginners.

Lots and lots of beginners here, right?
In other words, just our luck.

That certain feeling happened to me in a big way quite often with the first King Crimson. Amazing things would happen—I mean, telepathy, qualities of energy, things that I had never experienced before with music. You can’t tell whether the music is playing the musician or the musician is playing the music.

I actually believe this: youtu.be/gvCmtHDDuu0

[b]Heath Ledger

People generally express more in between their sentences when they’re not speaking. Words are usually there to disguise who someone is or what they’re feeling.[/b]

Of course that doesn’t work here.

I believe that whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you stranger.

Yeah, either that or the other thing.

The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.

Of course look where that got him.

Does it depress you? To know just how alone you really are?

No, but ask me later.

The Joker is a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.

Let’s connect the dots here.

It’s like anything in life, visualizing the old man you’re going to become: As long as you have a clear picture of that - the life you want to lead - eventually you’ll probably get there.

Spot the irony yet?

[b]tiny nietzsche

mute yourself, I did[/b]

Here? Foe yourself.

love in the time of locked accounts

That and covid-19.

pancakes are real

Not sure about the syrup though.

I fell asleep and it is still yesterday

Then I woke up the day before.

if materialists don’t shop, do they exist?

A new thread perhaps?

hold my hair while I gaze into the abyss

You know, if you really love me.

[b]John Cage

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another. [/b]

Wow, what if that is actually true?

Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it’s own accord.

People really do think like this, he thought.

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

Repeat as necessary.

The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

Not much ugly shit that doesn’t include.

My favorite music is the music I haven’t yet heard.

Actually, that’s never been true for me.

Art is whatever you can get away with.

What’s that make philosophy then?

[b]Terry Eagleton

The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the ‘human’ that present bourgeois society can muster. [/b]

Let’s call it the best of all the best of all possible worlds.

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.

Come on, some of them do.

With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language.

Is that tricky enough for you?

Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.

Like, coincidently, good.

Nothing in human life is inherently private.

Okay, then follow me around for a few days.

If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal.

Yo, Mr. Objectivist!!

[b]tiny nietzsche

I’ll probably end up a fatalist[/b]

Either that or destined to be.

call me abysmael

And it’s about time.

now I am become hunger, the destroyer of tacos

He means shrimp salad of course.

happy dada day, you absurdist fuck

Let’s make it today, okay?

the coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I dreamt about you

And in San Francisco no less.

not evolving today

Though still twice as fast as yesterday.

[b]Carl Reiner

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh.[/b]

You at me, me at you.

I am an atheist. I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us.

Is that funny enough for you?

I once wrote that there are 15 things I know about God, and one is that he is allergic to shellfish.

That and atheists.

The other thing about comedy is that - you don’t even know if you’re failing in drama, but you do know when you’re failing in comedy. When you go to a comedy and you don’t hear anybody laughing, you know that you’ve failed.

Next up: the other thing about philosophy.

I was a teletype operator in the army, so that’s where I learned to type.

Wow. Me too. 72B20.

When I found out I could write I was shocked! I didn’t know I could write.

Next up: finding out that you can’t.

[b]Delia Owens

When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump cards because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes. It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.[/b]

What if it really is as simple as that.

Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.

Like night and day.

Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. “Unworthy boys make a lot of noise,” Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone.

I know that I did.
Of course I was just lucky.

Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size.

That and burying them altogether.

Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.

Can you say that? Would you even want to?

Kya was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.

Can you say that? Would you even want to?

[b]so sad today

i was fine till you gave me hope[/b]

No, this is a real thing.

i sleep so i don’t have to eat and i eat so i don’t have to feel

No, this is a real thing.

i don’t like you because you remind me of myself

And, no doubt, vice versa.

no matter what i’m doing, there is a quiet voice in my head whispering “what’s the point?”

Or, sure, a screeching voice.

i’m definitely non-essential

Though not as much as you.

if you’re going to be fake at least be good at it

You tell me.

[b]Karl Kraus

They judge lest they be judged.[/b]

Like that has ever worked.
Here say.

Morality is a burglar’s tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime.

Let’s translate this into English.

A poem is good until one knows by whom it is.

Or, here, a post?

Morality is the tendency to pour out the baby with the bathwater.

I know that mine does.

If you wish to form a clear judgment on your friends, consult your dreams.

You know, if you have friends.

Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain.

Though never to be assholes.
Well, not counting those who clearly are.

[b]Heinrich Heine

Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.[/b]

Kind of, as it were.

Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love.

Gag me with a spoon?

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.

After all, why take chances?

I live, which is the main point.

On the other hand, death will last longer.

The propaganda of communism possesses a language which every people can understand. Its elements are simply hunger, envy, death.

Not unlike the propaganda of capitalism.

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

And that is certainly true here.