a thread for mundane ironists

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[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.” Voltaire[/b]

This one always bears repeating. Right, Kids?

“In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.” Voltaire

Let’s run this one by the top 1%.

“History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same.” Walter Rauschenbusch

Among other things: Oh, shit…

“In regard to intellect and virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, God has not chosen one people rather than another.” Baruch Spinoza

America responds: Bullshit!!

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.” Philip Roth

Or exchange one noise for another.

“Being against evil doesn’t make you good.” Ernest Hemingway

Well, not counting most folks in the world we actually live in.

[iambiguous]

[b]Jackson Pollock

How do you know when you’re finished making love?[/b]

As opposed to, say, how do you know when you’re finished fucking?

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

He means some of us of course.

When I’m painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It’s only after a get acquainted period that I see what I’ve been about. I’ve no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

You’re never quite sure if someone is just making this stuff up.

The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd…

Oh, come on!

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn’t have as far to fall.

You know, whatever that means.

When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.

You know, whatever that means.

[iambiguous]

[b]David Papineau

I say that there is nothing deficient about our current theoretical grasp of mind-brain identities. The problem is only that they are counter-intuitive. [/b]

And we know where that takes us.

I realize that I won’t have quite enough time to understand everything - but that hasn’t stopped me wanting to understand as much as I can.

And he’ll take that to the grave.

My first degree was in mathematics. That was great, but it didn’t help with many of the things that puzzled me. I became a philosopher because I wanted to understand everything, especially those things that didn’t make sense.

They still don’t.

The ‘phenomenal concept’ issue is rather different, I think. Here the question is whether there are concepts of experiences that are made available to subjects solely in virtue of their having had those experiences themselves. Is there a way of thinking about seeing something red, say, that you get from having had those experiences, and so isn’t available to a blind person?

Clearly: Yes, no, maybe.

After all, in supporting phenomenal concepts I am in a sense siding with introspection against the more behaviourist Wittgensteinians. But even so I don’t think that introspection is powerful enough to resolve the specific issue about how many colours you can see.

Clearly: Yes, no, maybe.

Natural selection has ensured that each species achieves the requisite effect somehow, but it doesn’t care, so to speak, how the trick is done.

Let’s leave that to God, okay?

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.” John Updike[/b]

Let’s fit writing philosophy in there.

“Emancipatory politics always consists in making seem possible precisely that which, from within the situation, is declared to be impossible.” Alain Badiou

So, how emancipated are you then?

“We have the riots we deserve.” Alain Badiou

And from both sides no doubt.

“Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.” Alain Badiou

And from both sides no doubt.

“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.” Adam Smith

Well, not on this planet.

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” Adam Smith

Trust me: parts of it can.

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[b]Jerry Fodor

…if it isn’t literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching, and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying . . . If none of that is literally true, then practically everything I believe about anything is false and it’s the end of the world. [/b]

More or less as it were.

I hate relativism. I hate relativism more than I hate anything else, excepting, maybe, fiberglass powerboats. Surely, surely, no one but a relativist would drive a fiberglass powerboat.

Actually, I’ve never been on any boat at all.

If, in short, there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.

It is. Just not literally.

The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not on the way that it is related to other thoughts.

And the content of an emotion?

There are lots of cases where we know more about how the world works than we do about how we know how it works. That’s no paradox. Understanding the structure of galaxies is one thing, understanding how we understand the structure of galaxies is quite another. There isn’t the slightest reason why the first should wait on the second and, in point of historical fact, it didn’t. This bears a lot of emphasis; it turns up in philosophy practically everywhere you look.

So, that means it’s turned up here.

I rather doubt that life has a meaning. If I thought perhaps it did, and I wanted to find out what its meaning is, I don’t imagine I’d ask someone whose credentials consist of a PhD in philosophy.

Ouch?

[iambiguous]

[b]Greg Iles

If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago.[/b]

Wow, how perceptive is that.

Our actions have consequences that last long after us, entwining the present with the future in ways we cannot begin to understand. I have resolved a simple thing: I will do those things which make me happy today, and which I can also live with ten years from now.

Right, like you can actually know what those things are.

Did the fact that Martin Luther King diddled all those women change what he did for his people? Or Franklin Roosevelt? General Eisenhower? Not one whit. Men are men, and gods are for storybooks.

On the other hand, with women…?

When a parent dies, your center of gravity is altered. Even if you lived apart from them—even if you walled yourself off from all contact—you are irrevocably lessened by their passing. Death, like gravity, respects no barriers.

Unless of course you’re Meursault/

The irrevocable events of our lives happen in seconds, sometimes fractions of seconds.

Like, for some, dying.

You yourself are guilty of a crime when you do not punish crime.

We’ll need a context of course.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.” Jeremy Bentham[/b]

Right, like that’s how they see it.

“The power of the lawyers is in the uncertainty of the law.” Jeremy Bentham

And they’ll take that all the way to the bank.

“The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” Jeremy Bentham

The sad truth too. For some.

“Once freedom lights its beacon in man’s heart, the gods are powerless against him.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Ah, but only if the freedom is authentic.

“The worst part about being lied to is knowing you were not worth the truth.” Jean-Paul Sartre

On the other hand, what if they’re not?

“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude” Arthur Schopenhauer

Solitude surely, lofty not so much so.

[iambiguous]

[b]Taylor Jenkins Reid

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.[/b]

No, as a matter of fact, it’s not.

You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.

You’re task then is to take advantage of this.

Why have I spent so long settling for less when I know damn well the world expects more?

For now, let’s just call it human nature.

I know it will be OK because everything is OK in the end. And if it’s not OK, it’s not the end.

You know, if you’re dumb enough to actually believe it.

Which is what we all want from art, isn’t it? When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Takes a piece of your heart out and shows it to you? It’s like they are introducing you to a part of yourself.

Either that or sellling it for a small fortune.

…you can’t tell a single thing about a person’s true character if you both want the same thing. That’s like a dog and a cat getting along because they both want to kill the mouse.

Or, sure, maybe not.

[iambiguous]

[b]Janis Joplin

I think I think too much. That’s why I drink! [/b]

I hear that.

You are what you settle for.

Either that or what others insist that you settle for.

I’m one of those regular weird people.

Imagine then the irregular weird people.

It’s not what isn’t, it’s what you wish was that makes unhappiness.

As well it should.

Like most girls I’m always really self-conscious about do I look fat, if my legs are short, if I’m weird shaped, but when I go on stage, man, it never occurs to me. I think I look beautiful.

Well, I always thought so.

On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.

Sounds like a line from a song. But point taken.

[iambiguous]

[b]Woody Allen

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem. [/b]

He’s talking to you, Kid.

Human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun.

At least until bit by bit it falls apart. If not all at once.

I am not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

In other words, he’s terrified.

Why ruin a good story with the truth?

Or, here, a good philosophy.

I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is will they be able to break a twenty?

Up or down as it were.

Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.

I hear that.

[iambiguous]

[b]Richard Rorty

Truth is what is better for us to believe.[/b]

So, by all means, pick one.

I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.

Yeah, I guess so…

Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister - corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.

Yeah, I guess so…

Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

What’s that tell us about, well, either one of them?

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

In a thousand years, maybe.

We are equal inhabitants of a paradise of individuals in which everybody has the right to be understood.

Or, sure, we’re not.

[iambiguous]

[b]Rene Magritte

Each thing we see hides something else we want to see. [/b]

It would have to be that way, wouldn’t it?

The purpose of art is mystery.

And is there ever really enough of that?

The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

I know, not your mind.

To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.

That might make me one here then.

Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.

You know, going back to what doesn’t explain existence itself.

Nothing is confused except the mind.

Okay, okay: Not just yours.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Logic has made me hated in the world.” Peter Abelard[/b]

We’ll need actual examples of course.

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.” Arthur Schopenhauer

We not being us of course.

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Okay, but only if that includes how to die.

“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Me? Never. Not once.

“Who does not suspect is easily deceived.” Petrarch

I suspect that’s true more for some than for others. And certainly more for some things than others.

“Man has not a greater enemy than himself.” Petrarch

And let’s not leave out the women.

[iambiguous]

[b]Harlan Coben

The truth may be better than lies…But it doesn’t always set you free.[/b]

If only it was always better.

They say possesions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

Come on, it’s clearly both. Or clearly can be.

Doctors kept stressing that mental disease was the same as physical disease. Telling someone who was clinically depressed, for example, to shake it off and get out of the house was tantamount to telling a man with two broken legs to sprint across the room. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, the stigma continued. Maybe, to be more charitable, it was because you could hide a mental disease.

It does get tricky.

You don’t worry about happiness and fulfilment when you’re starving.

Let alone the part about dasein.

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.

Well, they don’t call it the human condition for nothing. If only our own part in it.

But sometimes, maybe most times, it isn’t that clear. It is dark and you are near the edge of a cliff, but you’re moving slowly, not sure which direction you’re heading in. Your steps are tentative but they are still blind in the night. You don’t realize how close you are to the edge, how the soft earth could give away, how you could just slip a bit and suddenly plunge into the dark.

Let’s see if we make it until tomorrow.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.” Petrarch[/b]

Not counting the part we call reality.

“The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.” Jurgen Habermas

Shhh. Let’s not go there.

“One never really knows who one’s enemy is.” Jurgen Habermas

Let alone the part they play in it.

“Each murder is one too many.” Jurgen Habermas

Well, unless it’s justified of course.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Leo Tolstoy

There’s a reason for that. And, no, not just mine.

“A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others.” Confucius

What’s that make the Kids then?

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[b]Bob Dylan

If you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you. [/b]

Except on 4th Street.

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you’ll sort of be alright.

A philosopher too. Whatever “sort of” means.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

Of course he can say that, can’t he? While most of us…?

You get older. You start having hopes for other people rather than yourself.

I skipped that part.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Not counting things like gravity of course. Or [probably] death.

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don’t back down and don’t give up - then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks.

Right, what you really are.

[iambiguous]

[b]Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows the dice are loaded.[/b]

I know: If only that were actually true.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.

Let’s note all the others.

Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind.

Though only if you let him.

I don’t really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I’d like to come back as my daughter’s dog.

Let’s make a new thread out of this.

At the very center of our culture is a crucified man, a tortured man hanging on a cross of wood. You have an image of violence at the very center of our spiritual investigation.

If only to die for our sins.

The less I was of who I was, the better I felt.

Imagine then how he feels now.

[iambiguous]

[b]Sid Vicious

It’s not really my problem if they think I’m weird. [/b]

But you are only allowed to be weird in a culture like ours.
Right?

I’ll probably die by the time I reach 25. But I’ll have lived the way I wanted to.

So, is there a philosophy in there somewhere?

You’re only half the man that I am, and I have half the brain that you do.

Or, rather, back then he did.

Today everything’s a conflict of interest.

Actually, only almost everything is.

You just pick up a chord, go twang, and you’re got music.

Here of course we twang words.

The band broke up because I couldn’t bear Rotten anymore because he was an embarrassment with his silly hats and his, like, shabby, dirty, nasty looking appearance.

True or not, this will have to do, won’t it?

[iambiguous]

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

It takes a lot of imagination to pretend to be yourself.[/b]

You know, once you pin down who you are.

The Face ID on my phone can only recognise me when I smile. And I’ve tried everything. Every single grimace that I’m capable of.

So, is this a real thing?

If you want to have a lovely dinner with your favourite philosophers, then go to a restaurant and ask for a table for one.

Somewhere in the basement.

Tell me something sexi in French?
Dis-moi quelque chose sexy en français.

You tell me.

The future starts now. But we’re already late.

Or, if you’re lucky, really, really late.

5 beautiful words
Aluminium
Eulogy
Farfalla
Petit pois
Amicoshonstvo

Let’s do better.

[iambiguous]

[b]Ian Curtis

Reality is only a term, based on values and well worn principles, whereas the dream goes on forever.[/b]

Actually, it died when he did. But only if it actually did.

Existence is… well… what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand.

Really, really well out of hand for him now. But only if it actually is.

I struggle between what I know is right in my own mind, and some warped truthfulness as seen through other people’s eyes who have no heart, and can’t see the difference anyway.

Having a heart doesn’t change that, he thought.

Nothing seems real anymore. Even the flames from the fire seem to beckon to me, drawing me into some great past life buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, if only I could find the key…if only…if only. Ever since my illness, my condition, I’ve been trying to find some logical way of passing my time, of justifying a means to an end.

Obviously, he never found it.

We’re changing our ways, taking different roads, and love will tear us apart again.

Or, if not love, sex.

I used to work in a factory and I was really happy because I could daydream all day.

Clearly, there are different jobs in different factories. Having worked in a few myself.