a thread for mundane ironists

[Pedro I Rengel]

Lol paraquoting.

That's kinda good.

[iambiguous]

Lol paraquoting.

That's kinda good.

Thanks. I originally typed "paraphrasing" and that just "popped" into my head instead.

Go figure, right?

Use it yourself. Then one day after I'm long gone it will be used by everyone. It will be attributed to me and it will be as though I never died at all.

On the other hand, what will they be attributing to you?

Aside from women who play chess.

[iambiguous]

Edward O. Wilson

Thousands of times greater in space and time is the third of our worlds, the biosphere, the totality of all life, plastered like a membrane over all of earth. The biosphere has its own epic cycles. Humanity, one of the countless species forming the biosphere, can perturb it, but we cannot leave it or destroy it without perishing ourselves. The cycles of the other species can be destroyed, and the biosphere corrupted. But for each careless step we take, our species will ultimately pay an unwelcome price—always.

On the other hand, cue the next ice age. When it's all nature again.

...except for behaving like apes much of the time and suffering genetically limited life spans, we are godlike.

Okay, except for that.

...religious faith is better interpreted as an unseen trap unavoidable during the biological history of our species. And if this is correct, surely there exist ways to find spiritual fulfillment without surrender and enslavement. Humankind deserves better.

Okay, but there it is: oblivion.
Does mankind deserve that? And is religion [still] not the only cure?

Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good?

My advice: flip a coin and find out.

But history shows that logic launched from introspection alone lacks thrust, can travel only so far, and usually heads in the wrong direction.

See, I told you. Now explain to me why I did.

If science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston and navigating with geocentric maps.

Apparently in criticism of Richard Dawkins. Would someone here like to note why?

[Pedro I Rengel]

On the other hand, what will they be attributing to you?

They will be attributing "paraquoting," of course.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Aside from women who play chess.

Do you happen to play the game by any chance?

[iambiguous]

On the other hand, what will they be attributing to you?

They will be attributing "paraquoting," of course.

Ah, parastealing.

[iambiguous]

Aside from women who play chess.

Do you happen to play the game by any chance?

That's the one that's not checkers, right?

[Pedro I Rengel]

Aside from women who play chess.

Do you happen to play the game by any chance?

That's the one that's not checkers, right?

Correct.

[iambiguous]

Jean Cocteau

Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.

Imagine the Kids then!

A little too much is just enough for me.

Though twice as much as some of us get.

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

Or, here, assholes [aka Kids].

One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.

Let's try to make perfect sense of this.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

Possibly a true story. But who cares.

The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.

Next up: Give me a reason to.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” Bertrand Russell

But what about this: “I would never live for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”

“Little by little, the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him.” Jennifer Donnelly

Yo, Trump! Timber!!

“It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own" H. G. Wells

Speaking of which, any chicken hawks among us here?

"The Greek tragedies and comedies are like a roadmap to all the ways in which trying to live this rich, full life can go wrong." Martha C. Nussbaum

Next up: The Trump tragedies and comedies.

"To the great pharaohs it mattered a great deal to bury their treasures in the pyramids, which they thought they would bring to the other worlds. But obviously it doesn't matter to them now. They went, the goods stayed.” Frederick Lenz

You can't help but wonder how many of them understood how ludicrous it all was.
You know, if it is all ludicrous.

"Life is a long drawn out lie, with a sniffling sigh at the end of it.” Eugene O'Neill

If only for each and everyone of us.

[iambiguous]

Margot Livesey

As far as I'm concerned it's the other way round. We repeat what we remember. Only forgetfulness sets us free.

Remember that.

...so often my own emotions were hidden not only from other people but from myself. Or perhaps it was the other way round: i was hiding from them.

Let's just say they're tricky.

People couldn't live without food and air or shelter and money. Romantic love was an extra, nice if it came along, but definitely superfluous to the main requirements of existence.

What's that make philosophy then?

If you didn’t talk, I began to realize, people assumed you couldn’t hear.

Or, here, post.
But that's different, isn't it?

If someone tells you a lie, they're not telling you the truth, but they are telling you something. It just takes longer to figure out what.

If you ever find out at all.

Do you know, he said, that there are people who can’t go near high places not because they’re afraid of heights but because they feel such a lure to jump?

You really, really get this or you don't.

[Pedro I Rengel]

d4

[iambiguous]

Siri Hustvedt

Every painting is always two paintings: The one you see, and the one you remember.

Unlike, for example, every post here.

That is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed.

I know that I don 't. I just don't know why.

Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.

Same with remembering the future.

Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.

Or on a park bench. With people all around.

Whenever I sign books, I get this line over and over again from men: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does. Would you sign the book to her?" What are those men doing there? And where are their wives?

Any men here read fiction? For example, posts from Pedro?

Human beings are repetitive animals. All meaning is generated through repetition.

And that means mine, you numskulls.
And, if you weren't numskulls, you might even understand it.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"We fought so long against small things that we became small ourselves." Eugene O'Neill

For instance?

“The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Let's explain why.

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.” Isaac Asimov

Or pestilence.

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Not to mention impossible.

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” T.S. Eliot

So says the poet.

"It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster." Voltaire

Yo, Mr. Objectivist!

[iambiguous]

Don DeLillo

Out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we kept inventing hope.

Of course that was before 2020.

Facts are lonely things.

Unlike, for example, fictions. And not just here. Though especially here.

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

Take that, Mr. Objectivist.

Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

Well, sometimes when they happen here.

These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.

Starting with, to note just one example, the day you are born.

Something lurked inside the truth.

A big fat lie as likely as not.

[Pedro I Rengel]

1. d4 d5

Your turn.

Unless you're chicken.

[iambiguous]

Jasper Johns

I think through living one's life, one both changes and remains the same. One can see it either way, one can see oneself as being now what one was and one can see oneself as being absolutely different from what one was. It's a trick of thought.

And even then filtered through dasein. Well, if that even occurs to you.

My work is largely concerned
with relations between
seeing and knowing,
seeing and saying,
seeing and believing.

Okay, but seeing and knowing and saying and believing what?
The part often left out. As though here one size fits all.

When something is new to us, we treat it as an experience. We feel that our senses are awake and clear. We are alive.

Next up: when something gets old.

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

You might assume something else.

I have meant what I have done. Or I have often meant what I have done. Or I have sometimes meant what I have done. Or I have tried to mean what I was doing.

For example, before then moving on to something else.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

That and good or bad.

[iambiguous]

Joy Williams

Pearl suspected God didn't love human beings much. She suspected that what He loved most was Nothingness.

I know if I was God, I would.

Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.

Here of course it's now more or less Pedro and Smears yak yak yakking away.

The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness — those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.

Here of course it's now more or less Pedro and Smears yak yak yakking away.

Anthropomorphism originally meant the attribution of human characteristics to God. It is curious that the word is now used almost exclusively to ascribe human characteristics--such as fidelity or altruism or pride, or emotions such as love, embarrassment, or sadness--to the nonhuman animal. One is guilty of anthropomorphism, though it is no longer a sacrilegious word. It is a derogatory, dismissive one that connotes a sort of rampant sentimentality. It’s just another word in the arsenal of the many words used to attack the animal rights movement.

How about if, here, we make it attributing human characteristics to the Kids?

Perhaps the human race had yet to be born. Perhaps it was all a deception by the government. It hadn't happened yet. This life was nothing but the womb.

We should be so lucky.

He had dreamed, he had dreamed...it left him.

Going on decades now.

[Pedro I Rengel]

*puck puck puck*

[iambiguous]

*puck puck puck*

Existentially and/or out of the blue I have decided to no longer feed the yak yak yak crowd at ILP.

I tried humiliating you and your ilk [like shit smears] out of here but that failed spectacularly. You're more widespread and obnoxious than ever.

Again, I put all my eggs in ILP, and it appears to have been a fateful decision.

Going
Going
Gone...

[Pedro I Rengel]

You need a girlfriend man.

Why don't you try being less of a hateful old man and play me at chess?

You're gonna kill me with your "poor me"s.

[iambiguous]

You need a girlfriend man.

Why don't you try being less of a hateful old man and play me at chess?

You're gonna kill me with your "poor me"s.

Oh, and I really would appreciate it if you and smears would at least make an effort to keep the yakking out of the philosophy board.

My own thread here in particular: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... &start=450

Now, I realize that I was in yak mode myself here. But, again, that was largely in an effort to embarrass the "social media" types here at ILP into skedaddling to the poop thread.

I can only request this of course. I have absolutely no capacity to stop you from doing whatever you wish in the actual philosophy forum.

Let's try to at least make this forum one in which folks like Zeroeth Nature, phoneutria, von rivers and myself can express our own more substantive posts.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Lol being a dick won't get you anywhere. You don't sound more intelligent, you sound threatened by different viewpoints.

Why don't you answer about the gene meme paradigm you posited? You act like you yourself have nothing to prove regarding philosophical substance. But you cannot even withstand the same scrutiny you apply to others.

Me and others like to joke around. But the post is serious. If you take it seriously, I'll stop indulging Mr R in that thread

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=196136

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Carl Jung

Right, making the unconscious conscious. Like flicking on a light switch.

“It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.” D.W. Winnicott

Or an even greater joy not to be found.

“Two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide.” Henri Barbusse

Unless of course, as with the Allies against Axis, you're army is the winner.

“Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.” Otto von Bismarck

Though often even then who the fuck really knows.

"God gave us mouths that close and ears that don't... that should tell us something.” Eugene O'Neill

What does it tell you, Kid?

“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.” Theodor W. Adorno

Blah, blah, blah, he thought.

[Pedro I Rengel]

*puck puck*