a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[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?

[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.

[b]Olivia Dresher

When I realize that no one has ever really loved me, why doesn’t that set me free.[/b]

It’s amazing [to me] how some really mean things like this!

I don’t know what complete aloneness feels like because I live in the city and I have neighbors. So there’s no real alone.

Hmm. There must be different ways to think about that.

Impossible to understand why existence exists.

Let alone why we do. And then don’t.

Everyone sees the world differently. And so everyone lives in different worlds.

Believe it or not, I thought of that first. Well, not counting all those who thought of it before me.

The dust of his essence.

Sure, but what’s that next to the dust of his existence?

The cruelty underneath the kindness. The kindness underneath the cruelty.

Oh well, it either all evens out in the end or it doesn’t.

[b]Philosophy

Ouch! The only thing worse than a painful tattoo, is a painfully mis-spelled tattoo!: bit.ly/1xqShMC[/b]

Sew manny dumasses!

“Disputes multiply as if everything is uncertain, and are managed as if everything is certain.” David Hume

Hmm. How certain should we be of that?

Sometimes, it is more problematic not to know if something is right or wrong than to have done something you know is wrong.

As you might imagine, that’s not really a problem for me.

“Ornate language has so long been taken for deep learning that it is not easy to show that such words often conceal ignorance”. John Locke

Still, it’s getting easier everyday. Here, for example.

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

So, by all means, “Don’t forget to vote!”

The 21 highest superhero salaries of all time: bit.ly/1t64NMk

Ah, the philosophy of pop culture. Deep man.

[b]Bill Watterson

I say, if your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.[/b]

Nope. They sure don’t look green to me. Of course, I still have a few hours left to go.

The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that’s even worse.

So, do you?

Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz. I love loopholes.

A writing assignment no doubt.

I liked things better when I didn’t understand them.

Second only to misunderstanding them completely.

County library? Reference desk, please. Hello? Yes, I need a word definition. Well, that’s the problem. I don’t know how to spell it and I’m not allowed to say it.

How hard can it be to spell fuck?

Miss Wormwood: Calvin, your test was an absolute disgrace! It’s obvious you haven’t read any of the material. Our first president was not Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and you ought to be ashamed to have turned in such preposterous answers!
Calvin: I just don’t test well.

Well, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee was in the Cabinet.

[b]Jean-Luc Godard

To be or not to be. That’s not really a question.[/b]

Hey, let’s not get technical.

It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.

Unless, perhaps, you’re stealing them.

To be immortal and then die.

In other words, be the first.

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

Uh-oh: new wave.

Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.

Hmm. Let’s hope it all comes out in the wash.

The world isn’t a sad place, it’s just big.

Right, like it can’t be both.

[b]Nein

The philosophers told the professors. Professors told the students. Students told the professors to check back with the philosophers.[/b]

And we’ve been doing that now for thousands of years.

Yes, the world is cold, cruel, and unfair. But I’d like to think there’ll always be enough disappointment for everyone.

Maybe, but there’s still the part about having or not having money.

Cogito, cogito. Where did our sum ergo?

My guess: Into the black hole that is Rational Metaphysics.

Yes, friends, everything was better. Back then. When everything else was worse.

You have your rendition, I have mine.

In the news: No peace on earth. In other news: No goodwill toward men. In business: A savior is born.

They’ll crown one on Wall Street when the Dow reaches 20,000. Mainwhile back on Mainstreet…

Question authority. Fight the power. Check your spelling.

Hmm. Don’t we have a technology for that? The spelling part.

[b]Chuck Palahniuk

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.[/b]

Obviously. That’s why some insist on keeping score.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character…Would you slow down? Or speed up?

Ask me again later. Really, it’s just too close to call now.

You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.

And yet we know the ones that, in fact, are. Especially here.

If you love something set it free, but don’t be surprised if it comes back with herpes.

If you’re lucky. In this day and age, there are a lot worse things to come back with.

Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship?

Yeah, I’d say so, Marla.

Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.

Wow, and it’s not even Christmas yet!

[b]George Orwell

This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.[/b]

Wage slaves in the vernacular of today.

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.

Decisions, decisions…

If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.

Akin, perhaps, to the small truths and the big lies?

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Fame and fortune?

It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

This generally sounds true considerably more than it actually is.

So long as the Proles continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

And, thus, the more things change the more they stay exactly the same!

[b]God

There are no verses in the Quran about Me wanting anyone to hold hostages in a chocolate shop in Sydney, you terrorist fucks.[/b]

Wow, I wonder how He felt about the Nazi fucks then.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Bible is 100% accurate. Especially when thrown at close range.

A warning to all infidels!

Life is an endless series of Bush administrations.

And going all the way back to the Big Bang one suspects.

Always be yourself, unless your self is a jerk.

Sounds reasonable. Doesn’t it mister?

If you don’t go see “The Interview”, the terrorists win.

Hmm. It seems they already have.

If there’s one thing I hate it’s everything.

Okay, but He should see it from our perspective.

[b]Philosophy

“The power of man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doings.” Blaise Pascal[/b]

But, really, what’s the difference if virtue is just a point of view?

“Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a man.” Plato

Well, he sure ought to know that by now. If, now, he knows anything at all, of course.

Why > What

Ah, but is why > why not?

“Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.” Augustine

Reading the Bible, for example.

Most people don’t know how much they don’t know.

But what is that next to how little they care?

“What a lot of things there are a man can do without.” Socrates

Philosophy leaps to mind. Well, serious philosophy anyway.

[b]Susanna Kaysen

This was what was wonderful, standing alone in the big, soft night rewriting the past to make myself miss what had never been. Now that it was over, I could turn the past into anything I wanted.[/b]

Sure, just make it up as you go along.
[Like most everything else, she thought.]

I got better and Daisy didn’t and I can’t explain why. Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates. I wasn’t convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I’m not sure that’s true.

Imagine going to the dictionary to look these words up. Just to be sure you are thinking clearly.

Their love story unfolded and then folded up again in Cambridge, as I watched and took mental notes and learned nothing, naturally, because the heart is unteachable.

Back again to the dictionary?

An observer can’t tell if a person is silent and still because their inner life has stalled or because their inner life is transfixingly busy.

And that’s not even counting all the times you’re faking it.

What does the sign say?
'If you lived here, you’d be home now.’
She clenched her hands with excitement. See, every day people will drive past and read that sign and think, ‘Yeah, if I lived here I’d be home now,’ and I will be home. Motherfuckers.

Me, I wouldn’t go quite that far. Except for the times I’d go further still.

In a strange way we were free. We’d reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose.

There must be at least a hundred different ways to say that now.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

The first rule of Philosophy Tattoo Club is: No fair-weather Marxists![/b]

Right. As though that has any meaning in today’s world ayway.

Kant: Get only that tattoo that should be universally embraced by every creature of reason.

How about “GOD IS DEAD”?

1) Wake up with a hangover and an Ayn Rand tattoo.
2) Have breakfast.
3) Cut off your arm.
4) Go to work.

Sure, if you can do it with one arm.

One always dies too soon or too late.

Makes you wonder then: how many folks have died at exactly the right time?

Half of us haven’t read enough to have an informed opinion. The other half have read too much to have an informed opinion.

Makes you wonder then: How many folks have read exactly the right amount?

[b]Composition

1. Try to think.
2. Realize that to think you must first write.
3. Try to write.
4. Realize you can’t write. Or think.
5. Tweet.[/b]

Or, sure, post.

[b]Bill Bryson

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

All the more reason to just define it into existence. I mean, talk about “simple”.

It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. …It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as the players-more if they are moderately restless.

He said [in jest], “It really is a sport, isn’t it?”

I was heading to Nebraska. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to say too often if you can possibly help it.

We all have our own rendition of that. Mine: I was heading to Texas. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to say too often if you can possibly help it.

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

The pentagon no doubt is already working on that. Area 51 is my guess.

Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be.

Right. Like our own disassembled cells could do the same thing.

Life just wants to be; but it doesn’t want to be much.

On the other hand, most life doesn’t really get much choice.

[b]Existential Comics

Remember: just because someone is a nerd doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid as hell.[/b]

Yeah, it works that way too.

Edgy nihilism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Also the first. Well, whatever the hell that even means.

I thought of a great joke, but it was way too long for Twitter, so I’ll just skip to the punchline: life is terrible, and then you die.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Or not of course.

Diogenes said that begging for money was the noblest profession, for it teaches generosity to those who give.

Hmm. That’s a clever sneaky way to look at it.

And then God created time, and he was like, “wait how does that even make sense to have stuff happen before time existed?”

He can start with the time before He existed.

I can see why some people want to deny that consciousness even exists - it would make philosophy of mind a lot easier.

And some here are, well, determined to make that happen.

[b]Isaac Asimov

There’s so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.[/b]

Me, I specialize in dasein.

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.

Maybe, but I can’t wrap my mind around it either.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

And then along come philosophers. They solve the problems just like that! If only in their heads.

They don’t want equal time - they want all the time there is.

I know that I do. And I know that I won’t get it.

An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

And, in a world of conflicting goods, it always will.

What would I do if I knew I only had six months to live? Type faster.

Me? Well, it wouldn’t involve typing.

[b]The Dead Author

Kant walks into a bar, Nietzsche walks out.[/b]

I know: Let God sort that one out. As, no doubt, He already has.

Your childhood ended when you realized that life ends before death.

My own sort of did.

Don’t call Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man Nazis, they kept their anti-Semitic writings a secret.

But not from God!

If you understand Kafka, you’re not reading him correctly.

On the other hand, if you are not reading Kafka, you understand him even less.

So Sisyphus, Godot, Bartleby, and Gregor Samsa walk into a bar…

Bartender: “We don’t serve insects here.” So, who doesn’t get served?

Life is the worst experience I’ve ever had.

No, it’s the worst experience I’ve ever had.

[b]Gillian Flynn

Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”[/b]

So, what do you think, Erik? Though, sure, by all means, talk it over first with mr reasonable. =D> :-"

The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.

Like shit, he thought.

Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you’d think all women do is clean and bleed.

Well, follow the money and see.

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

On the other hand, what does it mean to be a “real, actual” dasein? But, sure, point taken in this world.

My mother had always told her kids: if you’re about to do something, and you want to know if it’s a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.

Sounds like something Kant might say. Still, for someone like me, that doesn’t make it any less ambiguous.

For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child’s boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.

This is either crystal clear or hopelessly opague. Or, from my point of view, both.

[b]Theodor W. Adorno

Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.[/b]

You don’t dare deny it.

Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage.

Good luck finding out.

As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.

Nope, that hasn’t changed much.

What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.

He thought: I have no idea what that means but anything is better than this.

Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.

Not true. I do it all the time.

True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.

In that case, let me introduce mine to yours.