Do you have any suggestion where I can start (with)?
[b]Jean Rhys
Everything in their whole bloody world is a cliché. Everything is born out of a cliché, rests on a cliché, survives by a cliché. And they believe in the clichés - there’s no hope.[/b]
And now they’re about to elect another one.
May you tear each other to bits, you damned hyenas, and the quicker the better. Let it be destroyed. Let it happen. Let it end, this cold insanity.
Not much in this world that isn’t appliable to.
Only seven or eight, and yet she knew so exactly how to be cruel and who it was safe to be cruel to.
He thought: Great, another Kid in the making.
But in the daytime it was all right. And when you’d had a drink you knew it was the best way to live in the world because anything might happen. I don’t know how people live when they know exactly what’s going to happen to them each day.
Right, like any of us really do. But, sure, point taken.
As soon as you have reached this heaven of indifference, you are pulled out of it. From your heaven you have to go back to hell. When you are dead to the world, the world often rescues you, if only to make a figure of fun out of you.
Okay world try and rescue me now.
She was a shadow, kept alive by a flame of hatred for somebody who had long ago forgotten all about her.
Think about that.
No, really.
So, does the shoe fit?
Try this:
1] you read something
2] it resonates
3] you post it here
Nothing to it.
[b]Existential Comics
Puzzles faced by philosophy:
300 BC: how motion is possible?
800: can God be omniscient?
1600: what do we know?
2016: how can I get funding?[/b]
He figured: At least we’re headed in the right [or the least wrong] direction.
We need a mix of socialism and capitalism. Socialists will be in charge of the means of production; and the capitalists…gulag maintenance.
You tell me: Does that about sum it up?
You study science you learn the answers.
You study philosophy you learn the questions.
And, in particular, for some, the questions without answers.
I gazed into the abyss, and to be honest, I couldn’t really tell if it was gazing back or not. It’s hard to say which direction the abyss is looking.
Still, we know which direction it’s taking us.
Kant would take his walks so regularly that one time he missed one and everyone assume he had died. Turned out he just discovered YouTube.
Hypothetically as it were.
Philosopher I would most want to have a beer with: Plato
Philosopher I would most want to drop acid with: Foucault.
Hell, we all have our own favorites here.
Thanks, Iambiguos.
No. But is it really true? Think of technique / technics /technology / engineering (maybe that not all four words are the proper words, but I mean the practical side of science, especially medicine, engineering industry, … and os on).
An ironist however recognizes the futility of actually resolving a question like this.
Obviously, there are scientists who, in pursuing a particular task, give hardly a second thought to the practical implications of whatever conclusion they might come to. They are simply driven to discover that which either is or is not true regarding a phenomenon they have an interest in.
Still, others scientists, in being employed by a particular corporation or the Defense Department or NASA etc., are all about the practical applications of their research/experiments. Either to make a buck or to sustain what they construe to be in the interest of America’s “national security”.
Which just takes me back to dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
And yet, again, as an ironist, I would never try to argue that others are obligated to think the same.
Value judgments are in my view [in more or less significant ways] existential fabrications/contraptions.
[b]Michel de Montaigne
I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more as I grow older.[/b]
Wouldn’t you know it: the older I get the more elusive it becomes.
The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.
[i]Just to be clear:
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules governing the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics.[/i]
I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
You still don’t believe it, do you?
Every man has within himself the entire human condition.
Well, until we get to this part: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=179454&start=4575
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
Me? Well, most of them did.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.
Almost as though he was born and raised here.
Yes. Scientists need money for their researches. Therefore they become more and more dependent, thus non-scientists
I can agree with that.
[b]Emily Brontë
May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then.[/b]
One more frame of mind that I cannot even imagine.
How cruel, your veins are full of ice-water and mine are boiling.
Better to shiver, right?
I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.
Here [of course] things can only get better or worse.
The entire world is a collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her.
Me, I never once came close to finding her.
Hereafter she is only my sister in name; not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me.
So, deservedly or not?
A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
Indeed, and then take it all the way with him to the grave.
[b]Jeanette Winterson,
I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.[/b]
On the other hand, which one is it?
He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil.
Psychosis: out of touch with reality.
Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it.
Let’s file this one under, “be careful what you wish for”.
But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.
Let’s invent a dimmer switch for reality itself.
You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible.
Either that or devastating.
As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.
And now, over the years, all but shredded.
The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.
One or another shade of pitch black.
[b]E.M. Forster
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.[/b]
Either that or it fails to miserably.
Live in fragments no longer.
One fragment at a time as it were.
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
Right. And I’ll believe that when you do.
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
Tell that to dasein.
If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run.
Until one day the truth itself is the act.
Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, Stuck in the muddle with you.
[b]Ernest Hemingway
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.[/b]
Indeed, a rather profitable one. For example, for some.
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Let’s put it this way: President Donald Trump.
You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.
Let’s just say I am running out of Springs.
Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
Once it does end though what does that really matter?
But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Well, the man did drink a lot.
Never confuse movement with action.
Let alone words with worlds.
[b]tiny nietzsche
mulder: have you ever noticed she has a pantsuit for every policy?
scully: you’re going to get us fired
mulder: the truth is out there[/b]
Well, only if we elect it.
in negative space, no one can hear you fill the void
Anyone here confirm that?
trump: so how long is this thing?
aide: four years
trump: are you fucking kidding me?
Not really all that implausable is it?
her: where do you see yourself in five years?
me: in the future
Which soon thereafter becomes the past.
money makes the world go fuck itself
Trump: “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
When does the illuminati kick in?
Ours in other words, not theirs.
[b]André Gide
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.[/b]
Nope, never even came close. On the other hand, I never aimed to.
Please do not understand me too quickly.
Like anyone can really understand you at all. Or not the parts that matter most.
Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.
No it’s not. And yes I would.
‘You have to let other people be right’ was his answer to their insults. ‘It consoles them for not being anything else.’
That might work, sure, but there are other ways.
Only fools don’t contradict themselves.
He means objectivists. Even if he doesn’t mean that at all.
Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.
True, but sometimes for a good reason.
[b]Kate Chopin
A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her—the light which, showing the way, forbids it.[/b]
Let’s file this one under, “going nowhere fast”.
Goodbye – Because I love you.
Just out of curiosity, what the hell does that actually mean?
She was moved by a kind of commiseration… a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s delirium.
Trust me: sooner or later you’ll settle for that. Or even aim for it.
She’s got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.
No one is going to grab her pussy.
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.
The perfect combination. Well, when you reach this point.
…one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul…
But only once each morning.
[b]Philosophy Tweets
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” T.S. Eliot[/b]
After all, why else would so many objectify it?
“I’m lookin’ for one new value but nothing comes my way.” Iggy Pop
On or off the stage.
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” Jim Jarmusch
Okay, but how many will steal from me?
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T.S. Eliot
True, but what if going too far brings the whole fucking thing crashing down on you?
“Life has no plot, why must films or fiction?” Jim Jarmusch
On the other hand, how many folks think that?
“Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises.” Gunter Grass
Art then becoming an…escape from reality?
[b]Haruki Murakami
In other words, let’s face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won’t seem to be worth all that. It’s up to each individual to decide whether or not it is.[/b]
No, as a matter of fact, it is not. And, barring a miracle, I suspect it never will be. But, sure, I’ll let you know if that changes.
But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it’s right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that’s how I became the person I am now.
Hell, even I haven’t haven’t sunk down that low yet.
Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.
Sounds like a mere technicality to me.
Why? she screamed. Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don’t know the answer to something as simple as that?
Obviously: “Do you love me?”
In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.
He thought: No fucking way will that ever happen to me!
I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.
I know: that sounds like me. Only considerably more dignified.
[b]Alan Moore
Is it meaningless to apologize?
Never.[/b]
What about all the times it is meaningless not to?
Truth is a well-known pathological liar. It invariably turns out to be Fiction wearing a fancy frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest. You can tell this, because it comes right out and says, “I’m a Liar,” right there on the dust jacket.
Right, like we can really point to the part where the Truth ends and the Fiction begins.
I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn’t. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn’t the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.
The abysss some call it.
I live my life free of compromise, and step into the shadows without complaint or regret.
Really, has anyone ever lived that way?
It’s all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for… it’s all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can’t you see the funny side? Why aren’t you laughing?
At, for example, the President Elect.
Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there…a clock without a craftsman.
Perhaps? Yep, that about sums it up.
[b]so sad today
does depression mean i am too smart to be engaged by meaningless bullshit or too stupid[/b]
Obviously: Yes and/or no.
what i lack in self-esteem i make up for in self-obsession
Jesus, that can’t be good.
i wouldn’t call it anxiety so much as someone is talking and i’m aware of my own death
Okay, let’s call it dread then.
trying to break up with myself
Let’s file this one under, “back to square one.”
one problem with depression is that when good things happen you still have depression
Thanks, and I had just forgotten that.
can I count on you to let me down?
Not only that, you can count on me to go down on you too.