a thread for mundane ironists

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2681

[b]Bill Bryson

When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. “Oh, that’s not necessary,” he replied . "It’s so seldom I have one.”[/b]

On the other hand, every once in a while he does have a really good one. Let’s hope that none of those were lost to history.

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result – eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly – in you.

This one always bears coming back around to. Even if you are one of the assholes.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Well, that’s sort of what happens when you venture out beyond definitions and deductions.

To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them.

I guess that’s why there are so many of them. Never had one for a pet though.

The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.

He means THERE James not HERE.

We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they’re watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they’re not seeing you and me. They’re watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs–people who don’t know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that’s quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin “Dear Sire,” and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us.

It makes you chuckle then to think that in 20 odd years we might be sending folks to Mars. One way only. Unless of course we find that worm hole.

2682

[b]God

“Convicted Child Sex Offender Wins $3 Million Florida Lottery”. But I totally exist, I swear.[/b]

Let’s go back to the Holucaust. Do you still exist?

If Dick Cheney hates the Torture Report so much, why did I just catch him masturbating to it?

Well, If you are truly a just God you’ll put it on youtube.

With great power comes great non-accountability.

At last He finally admits it.

I’m glad smartphones were invented because I was planning on phasing out the human capacity for introspection anyway.

I knew there was a reason I didn’t buy one.

Just saw “Exodus: Gods and Kings”, and it has all the coherence you’d expect from a movie about Jews starring a guy named Christian.

Right, like the Bibical version is more believable.

Never forget that you are profoundly unimportant.

Okay, so what does this tell us about You then? My Creator.

2683

[b]Ethicist For Hire

Book sequels: Beckett’s Waiting for Godot 2: Still Waiting.[/b]

I know that I am.

Book sequels: Bram Stoker’s Dracula 2: Vampires Don’t Sparkle.

They don’t drink True Blood either.

Book sequels: Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time 2: Dasein for Dummies

A tad less abstract.

Kant said to always treat others as Facebook friends, and never as mere Twitter memes…

Really, you can’t help but wonder how he would weigh in on “the modern world”. And not just the part about “social media”.

Descartes proved, “iPhone, therefore I am.”

iDon’t myself.

Moses saw a burning bush. And you’ll never believe what happened next…

Anyway, if you need to know, it’s in the book.

2684

[b]Isaac Asimov

Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them.[/b]

Including, for example, common sense. Besides, only a fool will ask for actual evidence.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.

Fortunately for kids these days, that distinction doesn’t often come up. Ignorance is now the default.

The final end of eternity, and the beginning of infinity.

Hmm. What if it really is?

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.

Gee, I wonder what he really means?

… you just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

Try this: Ask them to define irony. And then to defend it.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Here of course it all revolves around how we handle the trolls.

2685

[b]Nein

Misanthropes. The last who care enough to disparage the very best. In all of us.[/b]

I know I do.

At least there’s good news about the future, friends: It’s getting shorter every day.

Yeah, and I used to not think that was true too.

Just running down to the Healthcare Marketplace. To buy beer. And cigarettes.

That doesn’t even counts as ironic anymore.

Buy. Regret. Repeat.

Sigh…
He means here: neinquarterly.spreadshirt.com/

Stalin, Lacan, and Santa Claus walk into a bar. Žižek walks out.

Hmm. Any particular reason? Any particular bar? Any particular reality?

1. Invent God.
2. Instill fear of God.
3. Monetize God.
4. Thank God.

Yep, that’s the rendition we are now most familiar with.

Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud walk into a bar. Bartender: Aren’t you the Three Wise Men? Nietzsche: Yes, I am.

So, what do you think? Did he come closest?

2686

[b]Ethicist For Hire

America has never not been at war…[/b]

Not if you count the war on drugs. Or the war on crime. Besides, just how far back does the military industrial complex go?

My students’ reactions to Sartre: “Wasn’t sure what existentialism was before reading this. But after reading him, I definitely don’t know.”

If for no other reason than this: they don’t want to.

Being-in-and-for-and-with-and-by-and-through-and-of-and-under-and-over-and-beside-and-inside-and-outside-and-against-itself…

Well, that’s a start.

Drove by an American flag just now and was surprised that, in light of the torture report it wasn’t at half mast…

And even if it was, some will just make the pole higher.

Hegel walks into a Hegel lecture:
Hegel: “You know nothing of my work!”
Professor: “Sorry, I–”
Hegel: “No, that was a compliment!”

Okay, so let’s decide: Was it?

Sadism: “I love you.” Masochism: “Do you love me?”

He thought: One size fits all?

2687

[b]Theodor W. Adorno

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. [/b]

Never heard it called that before. So, what are the odds that it’s right.

There is no right life in the wrong one.

And not for lack of searching, she thought.

Freud made the discovery–quite genuinely, simply through working on his own material–that the more deeply one explores the phenomena of human individuation, the more unreservedly one grasps the individual as a self-contained and dynamic entity, the closer one draws to that in the individual which is really no longer individual.

Wow, it’s almost as though he is paraphrasing me paraphrase him. Only no actual mention of dasein.

Horror is beyond the reach of psychology.

Let alone the reach of philosophy, science and religion. It’s just best to leave it up to folks like Stephen King.

He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest.

But don’t let that stop you, of course.

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

At any rate, for those who still think of progress at all.

2688

[b]P.D. James

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don’t know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.[/b]

This certainly would seem to be true objectively. And notice how there is nary a mention regarding whether any of this might be deemed either moral or immoral.

All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.

Quite a coincidence, eh? Either that or the natural order of things.

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

These things do get murky.

I wonder if childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one always seeking to recapture the unobtainable. Like those people who were always happiest at school or university. Always going back. No reunion ever missed. It always seemed to me rather pathetic.

Pathetic. Yep, this pretty much describes it. Still, I can live with that.

The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven’t a chance of getting.

He thought: Define “reason”.

It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all to soon, the very words “justice,” “compassion,” “society,” “struggle,” “evil,” would be unheard echoes on an empty air.”

In a world where “children of men” now reigned no doubt.

2689

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world.[/b]

That’s why I never capitalize it.

1984: Form is content.
1994: Content is form.
2004: There is no form.
2014: There is no content.

So, what’s after Twitter?

Student: Can we talk about my paper?
Me: Uh, you just handed it in an hour ago.
Student: Were you doing something else?

I once came this close to that happening to me!

The German word for the insatiable appetite of American liberals for “I can’t believe they said that!” clips of Fox News segments.

Jesus, talk about torture!

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

Relax, it’s completely normal.

[b]The Seven Steps of Tweeting

  1. Tweet.
  2. Await accolades.
  3. Doubt forms.
  4. Doubt grows.
  5. Come on people, WTF?
  6. Delete tweet.
  7. Tweet.[/b]

Or [here] the Seven Steps of Posting

  1. Post.
  2. Await accolades.
  3. Doubt forms.
  4. Doubt grows.
  5. Come on people, WTF?
  6. Delete post.
  7. Post

Though clearly not enough posts are actually being deleted.

2690

[b]Richard P. Feynman

A poet once said, ‘The whole universe is in a glass of wine.’ We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts – physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on – remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all![/b]

Ah, the drunk as a skunk part.

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

On the other hand, as some here might point out: what the fuck does that have to do with Pi?! But: please, please, please: DON’T ASK THEM!!

Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.

Of course, no one ever got pregnant [or infected with an STD] masturbating. If, of course, that has any relevance at all.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

Right. But try telling that to all the objectivist assholes here!

All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t,’–which is just another way of saying that you can’t.”

Well, I could agree with that but I won’t.

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

Or, as mr reasonable might put it: shhhhh…

2691

[b]The Dead Author

Daddy, is Santa black or white?
White of course, he doesn’t want to be shot for home invasion.[/b]

Well, at least we’ve now established that he does exist.

A revolutionary will change the world before changing himself.

On the other hand, being an objectivist [and they always are] does he have to?

Look: if it had to follow its own rules, it wouldn’t be the government.

Besides, here, money doesn’t talk, it screams.

When was the last time you called something “depressing” because it actually made you depressed?

Ah, literally!

If you want to make people’s lives miserable, then all you need is love.

Don’t you hate that?

Being a social construct is about as much team work as I can handle.

That’s still twice as much as I can.

2692

[b]Thomas Bernhard

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.[/b]

Or: Instead of going to work, people commit suicide. Different folks, different strokes. No getting around that.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Unless of course everything isn’t.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

Fortunately, that makes about as much sense as you need it to.

…everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death.

That or life.

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

See if you can yank out the part that might actually be true. Of you if not me.

People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other.

Hmm. Sounds more like something you would say about a cat.

2693

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

When your imagination doesn’t want to be seen with you in public.[/b]

That’s what the leash is for.

As a cynic, I might go so far as to take a selfie with a dictionary of archaic words.

Or I might be cynical enough to believe it.

Your childhood ends when you start hoping that every question is a rhetorical question.

On the other hand, either way, my answers always are.

The best way to get help and support is to pretend that you don’t have any problems.

So, is that the same or different from pretending you have all the solutions?

When your childhood doesn’t end, but rather outgrows you.

Actually, mine has never been inclined to do either. Why? Just lucky I guess.

When it’s starting to look a lot like your turn to become a misanthrope, but someone pulls you out of the queue.

Uh, kick him in the balls?

2694

[b]Existential Comics

What is existential angst? It’s when you are depressed, but you still want to sound interesting.[/b]

So, how am I doing so far?

There can be nothing more egotistical than judging other people’s intelligence based on how well their opinions conform to yours.

I’m sorry, but that’s just how it’s done. Here anyway.

Every young person thinks they understand the world. As you grow older you eventually realized that you don’t even understand yourself.

Not counting the Kids of course. And, sure, the objectivists.

The absurd is spending fifteen minutes shaving off characters for a tweet that you know you are just going to delete anyway.

Unless, perhaps, it’s just a run of the mill neurosis.

Bitterness is the realization that nothing you do matters. Happiness is the acceptance that nothing you do matters.

Just another rendition of this: Because we die, life means nothing; because we die, life means everything. And there is still no reconciling that, right?

Never make eye contact with the abyss on the subway.

You being a black man, the abyss being a white cop. To cite just one example.

2695

[b]Banksy

Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.[/b]

Not to worry. He’s just practicing being ironic.

One Original Thought is worth 1000 Meaningless Quotes.

Okay, let’s hear one.

Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.

Assholes we called them. Though, if they came packing, not out loud.

At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.

Of course [here] we do have lots of folks to remind you.

Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.

Means something? Okay, what does it mean? And who does it mean that to? And food [eventually] does become shit. Nothing subjective about it, right?

If at first you don’t succeed, call an airstrike.

Or call the airstrike first. Then another and another as needed. You know, when you’re the good guys.

2696

[b]Immanuel Kant

The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding.[/b]

The airless space of abstraction. Pure understanding indeed.

In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion.

Or, of course: In all judgements by which we describe anything as moral, we allow no one to be of another opinion.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Now, if only we could all agree on what that is.

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

Next up: God.

Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)

He thought: A veritable plague of capital letter words!

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

And into the gap the serious philosophers gallop.

2697

[b]Jim Malachi

just think with all those profits we can afford to buy all this crap[/b]

Actually, all those profits don’t go to just anyone. So, if you’re one of the lucky ones, you can’t afford to buy it. Or, sure, sometimes, pay the rent and feed your family.

imagine it vividly…the way you want it to be, then leave it the fuck alone

Stuck in your head in other words.

stargazing is not an option for those whose heads are up their ass

Why would they want it to be?

unable to confront the lies…we instead passively resort to belief in fairytales

So, with that in mind, don’t forget to vote!

so where do we go, if not here

Or there where you are.

…so who’s lying and who’s telling the truth…jeezus, what a crap shoot

Come on, flip the coin and move on.

what we think of as reality all boils down to our perception, our shared conceptual language about what it is we believe we are experiencing

Hmm. So much for the laws of nature.

2698

[b]Alan Watts

The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.[/b]

And then my own “dasein dilemma” seems clearly to be subsumed in this. On the other hand, so might my failure to actually understand it.

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

He thought: Take that you fucking word mongers!

For every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation.

I’m the exception of course. Well, sort of.

You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.

The solution? Of course: Invent a world of words that gobbles up the system! After all, what’s one more objectivist in the world?

What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

And half the battle is in recognizing that it is a game. If, at times, a brutally serious one.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

The irony being the most important parts are beyond language. But no less a part of the language games.

2699

[b]Sad Socrates

How to Become a Philosopher:

  1. Look at object
  2. Imagine there is no object.[/b]

Seriously? You tell me.

Metaphysics is that warm feeling that no one is real.

Go ahead, ask them.

Beliefs are only great when somebody else dies for them.

Fortunately, for the ruling class, we have the volunteer Army.

I never meant to be me.

Or, as I would put it: “I” never meant to be “me”.

I can rationalize the irrational.

In a word? God.

The real debates are happening on the streets of youtube.

Jesus, what if that is true?

2700

[b]Bianco Luno

All I ever wanted to do when I was kid was to become a security guard and watch over things when others were home or asleep.[/b]

Alas, he settles for being a philosopher.

Natural selection: By way of excuse, she said she was picky. She must have had a low opinion of herself thinking I wasn’t.

See, once again, morality has nothing to do with it.

In a previous life, the world rejected him. In this one, he has not forgotten.

They thought: Run for the hills!

In re Galton: whatever wisdom emerges gratuitously from the masses is rendered null by their collective stupidity.

Must be this one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton’s_problem
Anyway, I sure wouldn’t want to be one of the masses.

…when neither could have harbored any thought but the pure joy of each other’s company. Before puberty inserted one thought too many.

And that always comes down to three things:
1] sex
2] sex
3] sex

yo soy como el chile verde…picante pero sabroso…

And [to the best of my knowledge] he’s not even from Texas.