a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Meg Wolitzer

In the apartment, the answering machine blinked fiercely, two gnats drag-raced around the apparently sweet, rotting hole of the kitchen drain, and life was difficult once again, and familiar, and a disappointment.[/b]

In my apartment, it’s fruit flies.

Jules listened to this soliloquy in grim silence; she hardly knew what to say. Ash was describing an enclosed world that Jules too had been given a chance to enter, but hadn’t wanted to. She still didn’t want to, but the descriptions of the closeness and intensity of that world only increased her loneliness. Go on, was all she said.

So he did.

Being here reminded him of how hard the city had been, it’s unyielding surfaces, the relentless need for more and more money just to keep yourself vaguely afloat. The city was not a place for the contemplative or the slow.

Thank God then for the suburbs?

Corporate America had tried to get women to behave as badly as men, Faith Frank said, but women did not have to capitulate.

Though clearly most of them did. If not then some.

Twitter, said Manny, waving his hand. You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

But that’s before you get to the maggots.

All people, male or female, were helpless in the specifics of their own bodies.

Or they certainly were eventually.

[b]José Saramago

If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?[/b]

About what, some might ask.

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

Of course [for many] better that than to reveal them.

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

This thing with no name rhymes with dasein.

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

Go ahead, start with mine.

Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

Or, sure, to hell with you altogether.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones eyes.

And how devastating that can be.

[b]tiny nietzsche

when you can’t see the forest for the suicides[/b]

That and where you can’t see them.

drugs say no to me

And much to my chagrin.

if I had to fight any month, I’d fight august

That and the other eleven.

please don’t pee in the gene pool

Let alone take a dump in it.

I can’t believe the postmodernism I wore in high school still fits me

In other words, better than ever.

forming a nonreligious task force to remind people that they can fuck off

Anyone ever try that here?

[b]May Sarton

Most people have to talk so they won’t hear.[/b]

Or write so they won’t read.

The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive.

Actually, don’t play down the fucking reasons.

Don’t deprive me of my age. I have earned it.

Feel free though to deprive me of mine.

We have to break the mirror to be ourselves…

Right, like there’s not another one soon to follow.

For a long time, for years, I have carried in my mind the excruciating image of plants, bulbs, in a cellar, trying to grow without light, putting out white shoots that will inevitably wither.

Somehow we just know it’s not only about plants.

Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.

True, but how absurd is that.

[b]Dorothy Parker

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.[/b]

Me? I never even came close.

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do;
and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!

Needless to say, some can get away with this while others cannot.

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

Or, sure, wear nothing at all.

There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Make a note of that, Kids.

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

Again and again and agin, for example.

I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.

Either that or isn’t false.

[b]Angela Davis

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.[/b]

Or at least until it doesn’t make much sense to.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensity social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

On the other hand, cue the world today.

One of the reasons that so many people of color and poor people are in prison is that the deindustrialization of the economy has led to the creation of new economies and the expansion of some old ones – I have already mentioned the drug trade and the market for sexual services. At the same time, though, there are any number of communities that more than welcome prisons as a source of employment. Communities even compete with one another to be the site where new prisons will be constructed because prisons create a significant number of relatively good jobs for their residents.

Let’s call it, say, the prison industrial complex. And that’s before we get to all the fucking jails.

Everyone is familiar with the slogan “The personal is political” – not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology.

There’s a cure for that of course: 1] pop culture 2] mass consumption and 3] the worship of celebrity. And, nowadays, not just 15 minutes at a time.

But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite, that democracy from below can challenge oligarchy, that imprisoned migrants can be freed, that fascism can be overcome, and that equality is emancipatory.

Of course it does compete with other messages.

I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect.

Gramsci. That’s a name to take me back…

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress.” Karl Popper[/b]

With the possible exception of out in the real world.

“While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.” Karl Popper

Right, like that will ever catch on.

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.” Karl Popper

With the possible exception of “one of us”.

“Silence is so accurate.” Mark Rothko

Like, say, a blank canvas.

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Of course it can never be a combination of both.

“Passions are likened best to floods and streams. The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.” Walter Raleigh

A double entendre if there ever one was.

[b]Erica Jong

A person’s not free if their freedom has to be “given”.[/b]

Let alone “taken”.

…and the trouble is, if you risk nothing, you risk even more…

My guess: Risk comes down to three things: 1] context 2] context and 3] context.

And what about ageing? Do men force the fear of ageing upon us – or are we ourselves terrified because we only know one kind of power – the power of youthful beauty?

It’s even posssible [however remote] that both factors come into play.

In a sane world, love and sex would not divide by gender. We could love like and unlike beings, love them for a variety of reasons. The battered adjectives for homosexuality – queer, lesbian, gay – would disappear and we would only have people making love in different ways, with different body parts.

Or, as others insist, in an insane world.

Blush like you mean it.

You know, if that’s an option.

You want to be a poet and not die.

You know, if that’s an option.

[b]Nein

No, depression is no good. But disgust might have potential.[/b]

For example, mine for your point of view, yours for mine.

Call me a dreamer. But I’d like to think that with each passing day, our indifference grows more profound.

As in, say, human nature? Or are we back to the fucking memes?

You say you want a revolution.
But perhaps I could interest you in a weekend.

Or just settle for a drunken Saturday night.

A gentle reminder about the enemy of the people. It’s usually the people.

Like, for example, the dumb fucking masses in Trumpworld.

Weekends. The perfect time to stop. Take a moment. And give it as little thought as you can ethically allow.

In other words, not unlike the rest of the week.

ALT + RIGHT + DELETE

I tried that. Didn’t work.

[b]John Fowles from The Magus

The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed–thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes—because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself—and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.[/b]

What, no weapons of mass destruction found?

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, “You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love.” They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Of course that was true only for those who pledged to be “one of us”.

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.

One the other hand, the only fulcrum we can all count on here is death.

The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.

You might even call this the end of the story.

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.

Cue the definitionists. You know the ones.

If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.

Works for me. Well, if only subjectively.

[b]Seneca

He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.[/b]

Let’s just say these things aren’t always ours to control.

Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

Let’s exchange lists.

Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Then who is to really say what is not acting?

Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool.

With absolutely no exceptions of course.

The sun also shines on the wicked.

Like it has a choice.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

What a coincidence then. Same with a gun.

[b]Elena Epaneshnik

My ophthalmologist says that my high myopia allows me to see right through you.[/b]

Only because we let you.

I have a bad case of good intentions.

Cue the road to Hell.

…unfollows human nature…

Is that even possible?

Just so you know: Gedankenstrich – is my new favourite German word. I’m so obsessed with its logic and beauty that it makes me want to open my German books and start learning again. Leider habe ich keine Zeit. (Or something.)

I won’t Google it if you don’t.

Life teaches nothing. That’s all one needs to know about life lessons.

Let’s run this by Lionel Dobie.

In the beginning there was nothing. Then we lost it.

Trust me: You’ll find it again.
Just not before I do.

[b]Viet Thanh Nguyen

Nothing is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.[/b]

You’ll attach your strings, I’ll attach mine.

We don’t succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what we have to do. We fail because others understand this better than we do.

Don’t count fortune or luck out though.

If youth was not wasted, how could it be youth?

A trick question, right?

While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.

Trust me: Not always.

As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted participate in history could escape.

Wow, how familiar does that sound?

Remember, you’re not half of anything, you’re twice of everything.

How dumb is that, he thought.

[b]Neil Gaiman

Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen. More Nothing. The Return of Nothing. Son of Nothing. Nothing Rides Again. Nothing and Abbot and Costello meet the Wolfman…[/b]

Really, there’s nothing quite like it.

We all have stories. Or perhaps it’s because, as humans, we are already an assemblage of stories and the gulf that exists between us as people is that when we look at each other we might see faces, skin color, gender, race, or attitudes. But we don’t see - we can’t see the stories. And once we hear each other’s stories, we realize the things we see as dividing us are all too often illusions; falsehoods. That the walls between us are, in truth, no thicker than scenery.

Of course this is just one more story.

Spider venom comes in many forms. It can often take a long while to discover the full effects of the bite. Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and to die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It’s because spiders think this is funny, and they don’t want you ever to forget them.

You never see this though on the National Geographic channel.

And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

Some new technology no doubt.

For the record, I don’t expect you to believe any of this. Not really. I’m a liar by trade, after all; albeit, I like to think, an honest liar.

He’ll need to cite some example of course.

You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work.

So, it better be worth it.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

What could be worse than the memory of last Monday?
Camus: Last Monday.
Bataille: This Monday.
Kierkegaard: The realization that last Monday was a repeat of next Monday.[/b]

The philosophy of Mondays.
How about this one?

Metaphysics: What is it to know?
Epistemology: What can I know?
Phenomenology: What do I know?
Aesthetics: What do I want to know?
Ethics: What should I want to know?
Logic: No.

He means maybe of course.

Philosophy begins
Aristotle: in wonder
Kierkegaard: in a dream
Nietzsche: in a joke
Camus: in the grave

In the grave is certainly where philosophy will end for each one of us.
[if we’re lucky some suggest]

Reasons to Despair
Russell: You can’t reconcile logic and mathematics
Husserl: Your theory of intuition isn’t intuitive
Heidegger: You’ve failed to pose the question of the meaning of the Being of beings
Beckett: You’re alive

Which one is least likely not to be true?

Logic: A = A
Ontology: A exists
Ethics: A is good
Epistemology: I know A
Psychology: I want A
Aesthetics: Isn’t it time to replace A with B or C?

Or…
Logic: Z = Z
Ontology: Z exists
Ethics: Z is good
Epistemology: I know Z
Psychology: I want Z
Aesthetics: Isn’t it time to replace Z with Y or X?

Deleuze: Something in the world forces us to think
Husserl: Something in the world forces us to think about something
Beckett: Something in the world forces us to think that the only something is nothing

Next up: Nothing in the world.

[b]Edgar Allan Poe

And then there are times, Mr. Osgood, when one must just let go. His gaze softened. I believe, he said after a moment, that those are the happiest of times.[/b]

Just not always, right?

…there is no beauty without some strangeness.

Not to mention the other way around.

I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme.

Mere self? Isn’t that the center of the universe these days?

The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called “Living” That burned in my brain.

That can’t be good.

I’ve been destroying, destroying, destroying myself in longing for poetic truth…

Whatever the fuck that is.

Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile—an idiot.

Almost a “chimp” perhaps.

[b]C.G. Jung

In psychology it is very important that the doctor should not strive to heal at all costs. One has to be exceedingly careful not to impose one’s own will and conviction on the patient. You have to give him a certain amount of freedom. You can’t wrest people away from their fate, just as in medicine you cannot cure a patient if nature means him to die. Sometimes it is really a question whether you are allowed to rescue a man from the fate he must undergo for the sake of his further development.[/b]

Imagine trying to bring this down to earth.

We must not underestimate the devastating effect of getting lost in the chaos, even if we know that it is the ‘sine qua non’ of any regeneration of the spirit and the personality.

Imagine trying to bring this down to earth.

Man is much more the victim of his psychic constitution than its inventor.

Uh, no shit?

From the beginning, I had a sense of destiny, as though my life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave me an inner security, and, though I could never prove to myself, it proved itself to me. I did not have the certainty, it had me.

Of course we know how far this can be taken.

Civilized life today demands concentrated, directed conscious functioning, and this entails the risk of a considerable dissociation from the unconscious. The further we are able to remove ourselves from the unconscious through directed functioning, the more readily a powerful counterposition can build up in the unconscious, and when this breaks out it may have disagreeable consequences.

Wow, talk about psychobabble!
Point taken though.

Hidden in our problems is a bit of still undeveloped personality, a precious fragment of the psyche. Without this, we face resignation, bitterness and everything else that is hostile to life.

Well hidden in mine.

[b]Existential Comics

First base: talking about Sartre.
Second base: talking about Heidegger.
Third base: talking about Hegel.
Home run: admitting you’ve only read the Wikipedia pages.[/b]

You wouldn’t think so, would you?

[b]There are actually only four genres of music:

  1. Songs about love.
  2. Songs about depression.
  3. Songs about shipwrecks.
  4. “Immigrant Song”, by Led Zeppelin, which is its own genre.[/b]

I can think of a few more.

[b]There are three main categories of existence:

  1. Things that exist, like dogs.
  2. Things that only exist in the mind, like Clifford the Big Red Dog.
  3. Things that don’t exist at all, like good billionaires.[/b]

I can think of a few more.

When you are 15 you think no one gets you.
When you are 20 you realize you don’t even get yourself.
When you are 30 you realize there just isn’t that much to get.

When you are 60? Let’s not go there…

How to overcome your existential despair:
Kierkegaard: embrace faith in God.
Nietzsche: embrace your own will.
Camus: embrace sleeping with as many actresses as possible.

Camus, clearly.

You can’t really trust someone who isn’t serious about anything, but someone who is serious about everything is far worse.

Not to mention the other way around.

[b]D.H. Lawrence

One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.[/b]

An achieved stillnes. What could possibly be more obvious. Or obscure.

It is very much easier to shatter prison-bars than to open undiscovered doors to life.

What we really need here though are some examples.

Why don’t we stay in love that way all our lives? Why do we turn into corpses with consciousness?

Anyone here not turned into one yet?

They were mere permutations of known quantities. There was no roundness or fullness in this world he now inhabited, everything was a dead shape mental arrangement, without life or being.

You either live with it or, well, you know.

How terrible it was that it should be spring, and everything cold-hearted, cold-hearted.

Maybe next year…

What we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections, especially those related to money, and re-establish the living organic connections, with the cosmos, the sun and earth, with mankind and nation and family. Start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen.

Of course for most of us we’ll have money in order for this to even be an option.

[b]Edward St. Aubyn

Words are our slaves: they may be used to fetch a pair of slippers, or to build the great pyramid of Giza: they depend on syntax to make the order of the world manifest, to raise stones into arches and arches into aqueducts.[/b]

Words? They’re a good start. Or, sure, a bad start.

Presumably those who enjoyed inflicting cruelty could hardly believe their luck and set about popularizing the superstition that their victims could only achieve peace of mind by forgiving them.

Another example that, truly, there was not much that could not be rationalized.

The leafless trees, with their black branches stretched hysterically in every direction, looked to him like illustrations of a central nervous system racked by disease: studies of human suffering anatomized against the winter sky.

May yours be reflected in the mighty oak.

If they made a film of my inner life, it would be more than the public could take. Mothers would scream, "Bring back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so we can have some decent family entertainment!”

Let’s just say that mine is in the general vicinity.

If we can’t control our conscious responses, what chance do we have against the influences we haven’t recognized?

Uh, next to none?

Patrick’s own nanny was dead. A friend of his mother’s said she had gone to heaven, but Patrick had been there and knew perfectly well that they had put her in a wooden box and dropped her in a hole. Heaven was the other direction and so the woman was lying, unless it was like sending a parcel.

In space though there really is no up and down. So, no, she wasn’t lying. At least not necessarily.