a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Neil Gaiman

It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth – not to mention sweet potato pudding and spice cabbage – and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte’s famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth.[/b]

Hell, we can’t all be Shakespeare.

Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

Ain’t that almost close to being nearly the truth?

If there’s one thing that a study of history has taught us, it is that things can always get worse.

If not will always get worse.

I think hell’s something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go. They’re doing the same things they always did. They’re doing it to themselves. That’s hell.

Of course they don’t know that. Just look at the one’s doing it here.

Small children believe themselves to be gods, or some of them do, and they can only be satisfied when the rest of the world goes along with their way of seeing things.

Five will get you ten they grow up to be objectivists.

It’s easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud.

Either that or post it here.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

…the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification.[/b]

You know, if this Deity actually does exist.

I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief.

Probably including Michael Cohen.
Right, Don?

The principle of vis inertiae…seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress…

Hell, that’s proven here on almost any given day.
Well, whatever it means anyway.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.

We’ll need some examples of course.

…in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind - that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content - and that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on the great question of social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.

Anyone here ever been?

So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity.

And not just just world one suspects.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

One eternity at a time, please.[/b]

On the other hand, try to imagine more than one.

An optimist: Everything is going to be OK!
A pessimist: Nothing is going to be OK.
A true pessimist: Think positive!

Clearly, I’m missing something here.

Ready.
Set.
Relax.
Don’t do it.

Let alone do it again and again and again.

There’s no music more passionate than silence.

Of course sometimes you can hardly hear it.

You know who definitely has a special place in hell? People who say ‘I hear you.’
As in:
You’re not listening to me!
I hear you.

I hear that.

You may believe in God, witchcraft or astrology, but you’re way more superstitious if you believe in common sense.

Or, here, what passes for philosophy.

[b]Federico García Lorca

I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I’m still alive…[/b]

Let’s just say this can only go on for so long.

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone

Or, for others, five in the morning.

There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers’ battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain’s tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.

What to make of this, he wondered. True? False? Good? Bad?

The important thing in life is to let the years carry us along.

Indeed, what could be clearly more opaque than that?

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.

Millions of them now.

Death laid its eggs in the wound…

Let that sink in.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” Alfred North Whitehead[/b]

The rest [unfortunately] is history.

“The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Over and over and over again.

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” Victor Hugo

Close enough?

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?” Rene Descartes

Me, I must have been born that way.

“We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.” Rene Descartes

Cue the fucking objectivists.

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all.” Thomas J. Watson

Okay, but what if you triple it?

[b]C.G. Jung

Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilization. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organization disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present. In my opinion, faith does not exclude thought (which is man’s strongest weapon), but unfortunately many believers seem to be so afraid of science (and incidentally of psychology) that they turn a blind eye to the numinous psychic powers that forever control man’s fate. We have stripped all things of their mystery and numinosity; nothing is holy any longer.[/b]

Indeed, though few take this as far as I do.
Right?

I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience.

Yet another observation [qua insight] all the way up in the clouds.

Communion gives us warmth.
Singleness gives us light.
At immeasurable distance stands one single star at the zenith.
This star is the God and goal of humanity.
In this world one is Abraxas,
creater and destroyer of one’s world.

Abraxas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas
Hesse: “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”
Anyone here care [dare] to bring this down to earth?

The ordinary lunatic is generally a harmless, isolated case; since everyone sees that something is wrong with him, he is quickly taken care of. But the unconscious infections of groups of so-called normal people are more subtle and far more dangerous.

And, no, not just the lunatics in Trumpworld.

Remember that you can know yourself, and with that you know enough. But you cannot know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself, or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself. That is his limit.

Imagine him then in a discussion here with me.

When a person tries to obey the unconscious, he will often, as we have seen, be unable to do just as he pleases.

What the fuck does that even mean?
Seriously. Has anyone here ever obeyed the unconscious?
Describe it please.

[b]D.H. Lawrence

Having lived among the owning classes, he knew the utter futility of expecting any solution of the wage-squabble. There was no solution, short of death. The only thing was not to care, not to care about the wages.
Yet, if you were poor and wretched, you had to care. Anyhow, it was becoming the only thing they did care about. The care about money was like a great cancer, eating away the individuals of all classes. He refused to care about money.
And what then? What did life offer apart from the care of money? Nothing.[/b]

Sure, “nothing” may be going a bit too far.

It is the masses: they are the unchangeable. An individual may emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesn’t alter the mass. The masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science…Only today education is one of the bad substitutes for a circus. What is wrong today is that we’ve made a profound hash of the circuses part of the programme, and poisoned our masses with a little education.

Just smart enough not to be dumb enough to not actually understand this.

And they fear nothing, and they respect nothing, the young don’t.

Youth isn’t wasted on them for nothing.

Ah God, what has man done to man? What have the leaders of men been doing to their fellow men? They have reduced them to less than humanness; and now there can be no fellowship any more! It is just a nightmare.

But only until Don Trump drains the swamp. Or, sure, only until Bob Mueller does.

Whatever life may be, and whatever horror men have made of it, the world is a lovely place, something to marvel over. The world is an amazing place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any woman who doesn’t have a little bit of whore in her is pretty much a dried up stick.

By the way, what’s the male equivalent?

[b]God

I’m not pro-life. In fact if you know My track record I’m far more pro-death.[/b]

Indeed, none of us have not died yet.

There is intelligent life on other planets and they’re laughing at you.

Well, tell them from us that we’re laughing at them.

The best thing humanity can do to save the planet, objectively speaking and beyond a shadow of a doubt, is die.

Wow, how loving, just and merciful is that?!

I’m deeply sorry for the racist, sexist and homophobic things I wrote when I was younger.

Maybe, but He’s still going to Hell.

I’d like to see some dirt on Trump. Six feet of it.

Yeah, like that’s not within His power.

It could be worse. And soon it will.

Of course that’s always been true.

[b]Edward St. Aubyn

Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly?[/b]

Let’s file this one under, “probably”.

The Park’s nice, his father conceded, but the rest of the country is just people in huge cars wondering what to eat next.

Of course that’s a global phenomenon now. Depending on the park.

A little Indian guy being sneered at by monsters of English privilege would normally have unleashed the full weight of Anne’s loyalty to underdogs, but this time it was wiped out by Vijay’s enormous desire to be a monster of English privilege himself.

Perhaps he’ll do better next time.

Balance was so elusive: either it was like this, too fast, or there was the heavy thing like wading through a swamp to get to the end of a sentence.

So, how balanced is this?

Thank goodness there were people who were happy with nothing, thought Julia, so that people like her (and everyone else she had ever met) could have more.

Clearly a rationalization.

There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it…

Of course power does corrupt.

[b]Tom Stoppard

There is nothing more to be said about sexual congress.
Is it the same as love?
Oh no, it is much nicer than that. [/b]

Indeed, even in solitary confinement.

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those left behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.

True, so where do we fit into it?

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

Ouch?

No one gets up after death–there is no applause–there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that’s death.

Right, like he can actually know this.

The world outside of me has no meaning independent of my thinking it. (pauses to look) I look out of the window. A garden. Trees. Grass. A young woman in a chair reading a book. I think: chair. So she is sitting. I think: book. So she is reading. Now the young woman touches her hair where it’s come undone. But how can we be sure there is a world of phenomena, a woman reading in a garden? Perhaps the only thing that’s real is my sensory experience, which has the form of a woman reading-- in a universe which is in fact empty! But Immanuel Kant says no! Because what I perceive as reality includes concepts which I cannot experience through the senses. Time and space. Cause and effect. Relations between things. Without me there is something wrong with this picture. The trees, the grass, the woman are merely…oh, she’s coming! she’s coming in here! I say, don’t leave! where are you going?!

To make a long story short, they fuck But it doesn’t work out.

If they are all so obsessed with change they should begin by changing for dinner.

Just clever enough not to be inane.

[b]Anthony Bourdain

The journey is part of the experience — an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.[/b]

You all know where I take the A train, don’t you? And how serious I am about it. Repeatedly as it were.

PETA doesn’t want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don’t want any animals to die-ever-and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don’t want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them probably less delicious.

Conflicting goods for idiots?

Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.

Simple maybe but not just burgers and fries.

Don’t touch my dick, don’t touch my knife.

Though not just in that order.

There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind.

Unless of course you count suicide.

But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.

Maybe we should amend the Constitution. Or add one more Commandment.

[b]Existential Comics

We are all Thai boys, trapped in a cave called phenomenological experience. The difference is, no rescue diver can bridge the gap between the world as it appears and the world as it is in-itself.[/b]

What’s your own Thai boys analogy?

Sentences you have to be very stupid to believe:
“First of all, this is not a pyramid scheme.”
“Don’t worry baby, I’m going to divorce my wife soon.”
“The United States is a force for good in the world.”

I’m sticking with this one: “No collusion.”

Yes, Sartre, existence precedes essence. But what you don’t realize is that Rock ‘n’ Roll precedes even existence.

He means New Wave.

Philosophy is:
Plato: love of wisdom.
Hegel: progression of concepts.
Wittgenstein: clarification of thought.
Socrates: basically just being as annoying as possible to everyone you meet.

I’m with Socrates of course.

[b]Things that are terrifying:

1. The untamed power of the sea.
2. The fact that we alone bear responsibility for our choices.
3. The thought that the universe is ultimately meaningless.
4. Snakes and stuff.[/b]

No getting around stuff, is there?

[b]Drugs ranked by how addictive they are:
5. Caffeine
4. Alcohol
3. Nicotine
2. Heroin

1. Self righteousness[/b]

I know what [some of you] are thinking: What about love?

[b]Meg Wolitzer

Irony was new to her and tasted oddly good, like a previously unavailable summer fruit.[/b]

Remember when irony was new to you? Of course no one ever forgets that, right?

It wasn’t easy to understand how the love between two other people could diminish you.

Or, sure, it isn’t easy to not understand this.

Soon, she and the rest of them would be ironic much of the time, unable to answer an innocent question without giving their words a snide little adjustment. Fairly soon after that, the snideness would soften, the irony would be mixed in with seriousness, and the years would shorten and fly.

True, but it’s all just part of being an adult.

Love transcended breath, eczema, fear of sex, and an imbalance in physical appearance. If love was real, then these bodily, human details could seem insignificant.

Back again to this: So they tell me.

…the Iraq war was the Ishtar of wars.

Of course Don Trump hasn’t had his yet.

In March 1997, Jules and Dennis went to dinner at Ash and Ethan’s house along with Duncan and Shyla, the portfolio manager and the literary advocate. The prick and the cunt, Jules had once called them. Jules and Dennis had never understood why Ash and Ethan liked this couple so much, but they’d all been thrown together so many times over the years, for casual evenings and more formal celebrations, that it was too late to ask. Duncan and Shyla must have felt equally puzzled at Ash and Ethan’s fidelity to their old friends the social worker and the depressive. No one said a word against anyone; everyone went to the dinners to which they were invited. Both couples knew they satisfied a different part of Ash and Ethan, but when they all came together in one place, the group made no sense.

Just another postmodern moment.

[b]tiny nietzsche

cocaine isn’t vegan[/b]

Really, what if it isn’t?

A cramps t-shirt, a misfits t-shirt, and a joy division t-shirt walk into a bar. The bartender kicks out the last two for being underage.

Let’s debate this.

I filled my pockets with polaroids and walked into the ocean

I’m still collecting rocks myself.

for sale: democracy, never worn.

By you know who.

is it today?

It’s one of them

a ballgag for your thoughts

You can write them down.

[b]Ambrose Bierce

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.[/b]

Though surely not with mine.

Christian - One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

He either does or does not know this.

Alliance - In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Collusion anyone?

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

If only to shap and mold it into the present.

Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters.

Unless of course you’re lucky enough to be aborted.

Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.

You tell me: youtu.be/u2AYTLU-Zy8

[b]May Sarton

For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest conversation.[/b]

Time to drop out I always say.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

If for example you are a geologist.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Anyone here ever try that?

I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom

Pure poetry.
But that’s all.

There are some griefs so loud
They could bring down the sky,
And there are griefs so still
None knows how deep they lie,
Endured, never expended.
There are old griefs so proud
They never speak a word;
They never can be mended.
And these nourish the will
And keep it iron-hard.

With grief [obviously] one size never, ever fits all.

Nobody stays special when they’re old, Anna. That’s what we have to learn.

And, for some of us, that’s the least of it.

[b]Dorothy Parker

If I didn’t care for fun and such,
I’d probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.[/b]

Of course that won’t work for everyone.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

How dumb clever is that?

This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.

And, for some, with a cherry on top.

I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

Along the lines of Julie Brown perhaps: youtu.be/vEU_5lVjRFQ

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.

Not only that but it’s the way she says ‘yes’.

If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
If cool my heart and high my head
I think ‘How lucky are the dead’.

If only we could be poets, right?

[b]so sad today

i’m tired of being strong and i’m not even strong[/b]

Sounds like a personal problem.

i’ll see your fake positivity and raise you a genuine cynicism

I’m with her of course.

a group of people is called an annoying

Who doesn’t know that?

I realized i was awful and then i realized it again

Personally, I never keep track of that.

i loved it when i didn’t know you

And by you she means all of us.

what should my next mistake be

How about posting this?

[b]Angela Davis

Radical simply means “grasping things at the root”.[/b]

And then [sometimes] pulling them out.

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?

For some, probably.

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.

Next up: actual options.

If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.

24/7 sounds about right.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible.

More like a faint glimmer these days.

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.

And, from time to time, with a vengence.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“What sort of an age is this where a man becomes one’s enemy only when his back is turned?” Thomas Pynchon[/b]

My own guess: A me, myself and I world.

“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” Simone de Beauvoir

Unless of course you’re a Nazi.

“Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.” Simone de Beauvoir

Of course that can actually be a good thing.

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.”Soren Kierkegaard

They do indeed. Right, Kids?

“The death of dogma is the birth of morality.” Immanuel Kant

On the other hand, what’s more dogmatic than to profess ones moral obligation to act in accordance with one or another Kingdom of Ends?

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ” Immanuel Kant

Deontologically as it were.