a thread for mundane ironists

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2721

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

Abstract paintings are not what they used to be. [/b]

And that’s before we get to the frames! Or the complete lack thereof.

When your inexorable deadline seems to be the only thing that still keeps you alive.

Can you imagine if we had one here?!

140 characters. 4-5 lines. And your almost complete inability to read between them.

That’s why Mark invented facebook.

It’s starting to look a lot like a glass half full of fake optimism.

Yep, that’s about as far as I’ll go too.

Whenever I want to quit Twitter, I realise that I need at least one thing in life to be deeply ashamed of. And then I stay.

Whew! At least there is an excuse.

It’s that awkward moment when you smile and dance like no one’s watching.

Either this or that “fuck them!” moment.

2722

[b]Olivia Dresher

Every day I get further & further away from what was.[/b]

And closer and closer to what will never be again.

I want to be alone in the light and not alone in the dark.

Me? The darker the better.

Being alive means bearing the unbearable.

Death, ironically, being the most unbearable part of all. For some, I mean.

To be so close and so far away at the same time. That’s what it means to be human.

But then the inevitable question: to what?

I would rather be skeptical than fooled.

But then the inevitable question: about what?

Something profound happens, it seems to penetrate, but the other person doesn’t notice, and you wonder, oh how you wonder.

Let’s just say that dasein is written all over this one.

2723

[b]Thomas Bernhard

After all, there is nothing but failure.[/b]

Still, some being more successful at it than others.

Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.

Or: Men were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.
In fact, probably a hell of a lot more.

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.

She thought: Does he have that wrong!

Lawyers make nothing but confusion…A lawyer is an instrument of the devil. In general, he’s a fiendish idiot, banking on the stupidity of people much more stupid than himself, and by God he’s always right.

Maybe, but ask yourself this: why does the law itself provoke it? Necessarily, you might say.

…we ask: Why suicide? We search for reasons, causes, and so on… We follow the course of the life he has now so suddenly terminated as far back as we can. For days we are preoccupied with the question: Why suicide? We recollect details. And yet we must say that everything in the suicide’s life- for now we know that all his life he was a suicide, led a suicide’s existence- is part of the cause, the reason, for his suicide.

Meanwhile there are those folks who seem more preoccupied with “Why not?”

Everything is what it is, that’s all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.

Sure, you can always go through life like this: youtu.be/xZbKHDPPrrc

2724

[b]Banksy

I’ve never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn’t seem very appealing to me.[/b]

Any insomniacs here? Explain it to him.

Nothing is black and white, and there is no purity and there is no such thing as justice.

File this one under, “and that settles that.”

On Painting Rats, and the Glorification of Them. They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted and persecuted. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant, and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.

Actually, what brings entire civilzations to their knees is more likely to be the fleas on the rats. And who paints them? Not that [otherwise] the analogy isn’t crystal clear.

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

Well, sure, if you let them. But it’s never your fault, is it?

People seem to think if they dress like a revolutionary they don`t actually have to behave like one.

Indeed, their must be thousands of of folks walking around with Che Guevera on their tee-shirts right now.

Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot.

And not just a flesh wound.

2725

[b]Existential Comics

The important things when reading a fact:

  1. Why do they want to show you this fact?
  2. Why do you want it to be true/not true?
  3. Is it true?[/b]

So, is this a fact?

The worst part about life is that you have to die eventually. The second worst part is that you have to be alive all that time until you do.

Or the best part. Come on, you know that’s true for some.

Sports are the perfect nihilistic enterprise. There is no reason to prefer one team over the other, aside from the fact that you do.

Or: Philosophy is the perfect nihilistic enterprise. There is no reason to prefer one school over the other, aside from the fact that you do

Nostalgia is reflecting on the happiness of the past. Bitterness is reflecting on the sadness yet to come.

Unless, of course, it’s the other way around for you.

Don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. Quality work. There are just too many tweets, that’s all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.

You know, like Mozart cutting notes.

I bet Sartre got out of a lot of jury duty by explaining that radical freedom means he will vote however he wants regardless of the law.

Just in case you’re wondering: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#France
No mention of Sartre though.

2726

[b]Ethicist For Hire

These parenting books are ridiculous. The only real parenting book anyone needs is Hume’s Treatise…[/b]

That’s a joke. I think.

Doc, you gotta help, this pain is killing me!
Ok, can you show me on this chart which Circle of Hell you’d put your pain in?

The doc being an evangelical Christian. Or a Satanist.

Your childhood ends when you realize not everyone is as fascinated by Kant’s Transcendental Analytic as you are…

Believe it or not, he means this: phil.pku.edu.cn/resguide/Kant/CPR/6.html

Student: “Philosophers seem to love bashing Kant.”
Me: “Better to be bashed than ignored.”

Actually, not necessarily in this case.

The discipline of philosophy is becoming superficially more diverse while the relations of domination and privilege remain intact.

That ever widening gap between words and worlds.

What do you get for the nihilist who thinks everything is nothing, nothing is everything, and already has the iPhone 6?

Not to mention the iPhones 1 thru 5. That’s a tough one.

2727

[b]Hermann Hesse

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.[/b]

Right. Let’s see if we can pin that down.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Actually, it really does not have to be this convoluted. Someone shits on you, you hate them.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

That’s the least of it though. Where things become particularly perplexing [not to mention contentious] is in deciding what to put in their place.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Hmm. Maybe he shouldn’t have written all those books then.
On the other hand:

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

See if you can spot the key word here. Hint: It’s concept.

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

Nope, never said that yet.

2728

[b]Sad Socrates

The gods are existentialists, too.[/b]

Loosely speaking, as it were.

There is so little to say, in so many ways.

But, please, don’t get them started.

Me: what’s the universe trying to tell me?
Universe: fuck off.

For example:
cracked.com/article_19117_7- … rning.html
zidbits.com/2010/12/top-ten-ways … ll-us-all/

I think about the scale of the universe and wonder if it is even worth thinking.

On the other hand, do we have much choice?

Two years ago, on this very day, the world ended.

Jesus, who could forget that?!

At what age do you tell kids Dasein isn’t real?

Hmm. Never?

2729

[b]Immanuel Kant

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world … is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.[/b]

He thought: Blah blah blah.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

Or, perhaps, genius is the ability to communicate them intelligibly.

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

What could be Clearer than that?

Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even morality, etc. do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space left over reserved for pure and speculative reason, the emptiness of which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere pastime undertaken in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which, in accordance with its nature, requires something that can satisfy it and does not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our inclinations.

I guess some just don’t dig that part.

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.

And, in the kingdom of means, it’s even more convoluted.

Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done.

You tell me: Does it get more deontological than that?

2730

[b]The Dead Author

I want to sit in the vanguard of armchair revolutionaries.[/b]

Well, maybe they can fit one more.

Pretty sure that the true meaning of self-reflection is narcissism.

Oh, and if you have any problem with that, go fuck yourself.

You can take the christ out of christmas, but you can’t take the christ out of god is dead.

Don’t you just hate nitpickers?

I sometimes wonder if hipsters are twenty years ahead or twenty years behind.

Okay, sure, both, why not?

The opposite of despair isn’t hope, it’s not wasting time.

He means mine, not yours.

A friend is someone who’s too valuable to fall in love with.

I somtimes wish that I had one. Just not nearly as much as I’m glad that I don’t. Would you like me to explain that?

2731

[b]Olivia Dresher

If you hold it all inside, it will turn into a bomb.[/b]

So pick the moment to detonate it carefully.

What I’ve learned at every turn: That to get along with others I have to not be who I am.

In other words [as with me…and probably you] no one understands her.

“I hope you’re not using me,” she said.
“I hope so too,” he said.

And they may never know for sure.

Experience is a forest of charred trees.

And there you are holding the gas can

In the interview, contrasting philosophy & literature, she said “Philosophy is to clarify” but I thought she said “Philosophy is to terrify”

I know that mine is. But, alas, no one seems to be.

Those who want to be left alone. And so you leave them alone. And that becomes a kind of communion.

Now the trick is to keep it that way.

2732

[b]Alan Watts

The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.[/b]

Some can live with this more than others. Not counting those who simply refuse to.

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.

Ah, so anyone can play it. Or they can beat on it with sticks and call it a drum.

Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else’s depth or failure.

Well, you know what many some a few say: survival of the fittest. In and out of the gym.

We therefore work, not for the work’s sake, but for money—and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle andupper classes (or should we say “income groups”) are as prosperous as princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.

Capitalism: one size fits all.

One’s life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid.

Now all we have to do is to translate that into ordinary language philosophy. You know, in order to see if it’s true.

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

That’s the muddled rendition of the truism.

2733

[b]Bianco Luno

When I die of suicide or procrastination—whichever comes first, I hope to be remembered uncomfortably.[/b]

Or, far for likely, obscurely.

God would tweet his commandments now. One would do: “Thou shalt give a damn.”

About what? In other words, not much would change.

a magazine for people on death row

With no automatic renewal clause of course.

A brew of the two most morally toxic elements on earth: power and secrecy. Only an odor will tip us off that the country is run by the CIA.

And I’m only thirty miles from Washington DC. You can just imagine the stench.

The dots have been around a long time. Some have even connected a few.

Alas, only to find they were the wrong ones…

“Better stand than walk, sit than stand, still better lie, better still die, best: never to have been born.” ~Indian environmental proverb.

He wondered: Is that from the perspective of the environment or my own?

There are no morals to be had, no lessons to learn. Any wisdom you take away I fear you brought with you.

And then it’s around and around and around in circles.

Misability, n. vaguely culpable inability, somewhat willful. “He couldn’t be happy like the others. He was misabled in that way.”

No, it’s really in the dictionary. Well, this one: urbandictionary.com/define.p … Misability

So, sure, I’m clearly misabled.

2734

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

There is plenty of hope, infinite hope, just not for us.[/b]

Trust me: for me it’s considerably less than for you. Or [as some no doubt will point out] the other way around.

Sometimes we glimpse a rift between the economic framework of late capitalism and its political facades. One such flaw is called Christmas.

And then seven days later, on New Years, it starts up all over again.

Sartre: Lenin’s philosophy is “unthinkable.”
Merleau-Ponty: Lenin’s philosophy is “expedient.”
W. Stevens: “Lenin wasn’t a man for swans.”

Of course, Stevens was just a poet.

Althusser: No one is born too late for philosophy.
Derrida: It’s always too early and too late for philosophy.
Twitter: “Philosophy”?

Then you direct them here: philosophy.com/skin-care/C10 … b:na:16457

On Facebook you share fake feelings as if they were real. On Twitter you share real feelings as if they were fake.

While here, it seems, both are clearly optional.

Every philosopher starts somewhere.

Be honest: Has any philosopher ever started where I do? On the other hand, this may well be where I end up. “Oh shit”, in other words.

2735

[b]Bill Watterson

Mom: CALVIN WHAT ARE YOU DOING HAMMERING NAILS INTO THE COFFEE TABLE?!?
Calvin: Is this some sort of trick question, or what?[/b]

You gotta love this kid.

Reading goes faster if you don’t sweat comprehension.

Well, it’s true, right?

Calvin: The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you are informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize nothing is as clear as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I cannot afford to take that risk.
Hobbes: You’re ignorant, but at least you act on it.

Acting on it or not, it’s a damn good point. And [of course] that’s before we get to the dilemma embedded in dasein and conflicting goods.

Specifically, I’d like to debate whether cannibalism ought to be grounds for leniency in murders, since it’s less wasteful.

Not only that but we can’t leave out the fact that some bastards deserve to be eaten.

Our hero regains consciousness at the feet of a sarcastic alien.

You know, the one from Men In Black.

I keep forgetting that rules are only for little nice people.

For example, in this world.

2736

[b]Jean-Luc Godard

First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we’re entering the Age of the Ass.[/b]

My guess: We’re still in it. Only here of course it’s the Age of the Objectivist Ass. :wink:

Every edit is a lie.

Right. As though the first take isn’t.

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

This works well for some, sure, but not at all for others. Just think back on the discussions that you have had. And not only the ones here.

Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form.

You know, subjective points of view.

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.

Here though the devil is definitely in the details.

My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.

Action!

2737

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

It’s going to take more than your tired bourgeois festivals of folly to distract the young Teddy Adorno from Hegel. [/b]

And I should give a fuck about that…why?

Saussure: What is language?
Heidegger: When is language?
Lacan: Where is language?

Iambiguous: Why is language [so often] bedside the point?

Freud: Love is impossible.
Lacan: The impossible is love.
Derrida: Love the impossible!

Semantics no doubt.

Saussure: The signifier is arbitrary.
Jakobson: The signifier is systematic.
Lacan: The signifier is stupid.

Signify this: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance:

A Philosopher’s Journey
Age 16 Nietzsche rules!
Age: 20 Marx rules!
Age 24 Frege rules!
Age 28 First Original Idea: rules ≠ pays
Age: 30 I’m in finance.

Age 43: neinquarterly.spreadshirt.com/

The Ages of Philosophy
18: I’ve read Sartre!
20: And Hegel!
22: And Quine!
24: Why did I read Sartre?
26: And Hegel?
28: And Quine?

Eventually, you just make up your own. And then others read it in places like this. And then others stop reading it in places like this. And then you die.

2738

[b]Chuck Palahniuk

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.[/b]

First, however, be really, really sure before you break everything.

When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?

Let’s trade renditions.

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better.

Another fucking dreamer. But, sure, go ahead, try it.

Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against.

Or, better still, get others to fight against it for you.

We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.

And I aim for nothing less than identity itself. So, have I destroyed yours?

Most times, it’s just a lot easier not to let the world know what’s wrong.

And all the easier when you know that you can’t.

2739

[b]George Orwell

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.[/b]

Bingo.

‘You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,’ he told her.

‘Whereas you are only a slave.’ she retorted.

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink

Yes, isn’t it wonderful the things you can make words do!

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Migs, perhaps? Or pans?

The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.

On the other hand, do we always know this at the time?

The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.

He thought: I’m glad I’m not one of those.

2740

[b]Patty Jansen

What if there is no point in this sentence?[/b]

Well, I can always make one up.

Will praxis for food.

And [this time] not just theoretically.

Just another week that looks more beautiful than it isn’t.

Or less beautiful than it is.

Your nihilism is starting to look a lot like very little.

But [still] not like nothing at all. Come on, you can do better.

It’s starting to look a lot like more of the same.

Oh well, maybe next year…

A historian is someone who wasn’t there either.

Yes, but she wasn’t there less than I wasn’t there.