They peruse my projects here, I peruse their projects there. And at our own convenience. And [for some of them] the inbox is already bursting at the seams.
Not mine though. 
[b]The Dead Author
So Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump walk into a bar. That’s the joke. America is an oligarchy.[/b]
Let’s take a stab at who picks up the tab.
Be sad if it makes you happy.
That’s the spirit!
The paradox of self-improvement: you can’t change yourself but you also can’t be yourself.
And that goes double for me. At least.
So a nihilist walks into a bar. Who cares?
And that goes double for me. At least.
Let’s stop worrying about Hillary’s health. As Heidegger reminds us, we begin to die as soon as we are born.
Even Trump?
Theodor Adorno was born on this day in 1903, German philosopher whose work shows that pessimism isn’t what it used to be.
True, but some of are working hard to make things as grim as possible.
[b]Elizabeth Kolbert
By burning through coal and oil deposits, humans are putting carbon back into the air that has been sequestered for tens—in most cases hundreds—of millions of years. In the process, we are running geologic history not only in reverse but at warp speed.[/b]
I know, I know: “Fifty years from now…”
Of the many species that have existed on earth–estimates run as high as fifty billion–more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error.
So, by the time you get to any one of us, well, you do the math.
The work is going well, but it looks like it might be the end of the world.
Just our fucking luck, right?
With the capacity to represent the world in signs and symbols comes the capacity to change it, which, as it happens, is also the capacity to destroy it. A tiny set of genetic variations divides us from the Neanderthals, but that has made all the difference.
And somewhere in all that…the philosophers?
We’re seeing right now that a mass extinction can be caused by human beings.
Them of course not us.
In a similar vein, Jared Diamond has observed: “Personally, I can’t fathom why Australia’s giants should have survived innumerable droughts in their tens of millions of years of Australian history, and then have chosen to drop dead almost simultaneously (at least on a time scale of millions of years) precisely and just coincidentally when the first humans arrived.
Hmm. What’s it say about that in the Bible?
[b]Paul Bowles
One of these days the future will be here, and you won’t be ready for it.[/b]
One possible future of course.
Everything’s explained by the constant intervention of Allah. And whatever happens had to happen, and was decreed at the beginning of time, and there’s no way of even imagining how anything could have been different from what it is.
Odd how the faithful don’t give this much thought.
In reality the gatherings were held in order to entertain these few Moslem guests, to whom the unaccountable behavior of Europeans never ceased to be a fascinating spectacle. Most of the Europeans, of course, thought the Moslem gentlemen were invited to add local color.
One suspects they don’t think this way now.
Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.
He thought: That’s fair to say.
“May Allah bless you.” Or had she said: “May Allah burn you?” He was not sure which: the two Arabic words sounded so much alike.”
Would someone Google that please.
And yet always you feel as though you understood perfectly the people and why they do everything as they do. Still you are absolutely severed from them.
In our own way, we do that here.
[b]John Milton
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.[/b]
And, no, not necessarily for any particular reason.
What hath night to do with sleep?
Here of course inflection is everything.
Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.
Go ahead, try to demonstrate that.
Solitude sometimes is best society.
And sometimes it always is.
I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.
I know: Fuck that! And then some?
Abashed the Devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss.
Must be another Devil, right?
[b]Marquis de Sade
Now let us consider theft. From the standpoint of the wealthy, this is, of course, an horrendous crime. But, laying partiality aside, let us ask ourselves as republicans: shall we, upholding the principle that all men are equal, brand as wrong an act whose effect is to accomplish a more equal distribution of wealth? Theft furthers economic equilibrium: one never hears of the rich stealing from the poor, thereby aggravating the economic imbalance; only of the poor stealing from the rich, thereby correcting it. What possibly be wrong with that?[/b]
A pervert and a Communist!!
Right?
Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.
A pervert and a feminist!
Right?
“The ditch once covered over, above it acorns shall be strewn, in order that the spot become green again, and the copse grown back thick over it, the traces of my grave may disappear from the face of the earth as I trust the memory of me shall fade out of the minds of all men save nevertheless for those few who in their goodness have loved me until the last and of whom I carry away a sweet remembrance with me to the grave.”
Last Will and Testament (1806)
Ah, the price of fame: To not be forgotten.
To enlighten mankind and improve its morals is the only lesson which we offer in this story. In reading it, may the world discover how great is the peril which follows the footsteps of those who will stop at nothing to satisfy their desires.
Lesson learned?
Imperious, angry, furious, extreme in all things, with a disturbance in the moral imagination unlike any the world has ever known - there you have me in a nutshell: and one more thing, kill me or take me as I am, for I will not change.
Not now certainly.
It is only by sacrificing everything to sensual pleasure that this being known as Man, cast into the world in spite of himself, may succeed in sowing a few roses on the thorns of life.
You know, if that is actually an option.
So, you tell me: Is it?
[b]so sad today
doing stuff that isn’t sleeping is hard[/b]
Not counting all the stuff that’s easy.
look, i hate myself as much as the next guy
Until she gets to you, right?
in theory i’m totally over you
Or: in theory she’s not
cry on my tits
Anyone here seen them?
relationship goals: leave me alone
Consider it done.
in a threesome with fear of death and fear of life
So, who’s on top?
[b]Haruki Murakami
One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.[/b]
Not the usual rendition, is it?
Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside.
And, no, more often than not, it has nothing to do with yin and yang. Let alone karma.
I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.
You either abandon this option or it abandons you. Eventually as it were.
Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.
Which probably explains the reaction of many to me here. Or, sure, maybe not.
Have you ever had that feeling that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?
Right, like there is someone who hasn’t.
That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
Want to hear mine?
Why not start a blog? You might as well use twitter. Pretty sure every quote and your response to it take no more than 130 characters.
[b]Richard Ford
It is no loss to mankind when one writer decides to call it a day. When a tree falls in the forest, who cares but the monkeys?[/b]
So, does that go double if the writer is a philosopher?
Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.
What do you think: Am I where I belong?
Cynicism makes you feel smart, I know it, even when you aren’t smart.
What do you think: Am I smart?
All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life.
Right, that’s possible isn’t it?
We are past the end of things now, but I don’t want to leave.
Obviously one of the winners.
I didn’t know with certainty what to say about the large world, and didn’t care to risk speculating. And I still don’t. That we all look at it from someplace, and in some hopeful-useful way, is about all I found I could say–my best, most honest effort. And that isn’t enough for literature, though it didn’t bother me much. Nowadays, I’m willing to say yes to as much as I can: yes to my town, my neighborhood, my neighbor, yes to his car, her lawn and hedge and rain gutters. Let things be the best they can be. Give us all a good night’s sleep until it’s over.
You will either ascend or descend to this point of view. If it even occurs to you at all.
Just out of curiosity: Why the fuck do you care?
Because you are in my proximity. It’s only natural. It’s unnatural to be indifferent.
You are not well organized. Makes no sense to post on ILP when noone cares. You are just creating an awkward situation. You are that dude talking to himself all of the time.
Thanks. I’ll take it under advisement.
[takes it under advisement]
Sorry, but I have to note [again] that this particular thread has garnered 225,889 views to date. Now, admittedly, that may or may not rebut your point that “no one cares” about it. But I’m willing to take the chance that some do care. Otherwise what’s the point of clicking on it?
Besides, when you are waiting for godot this sort of quandary becomes considerably less important to you. Unless of course I’m doing it wrong.
I know: Why don’t you contribute quotes of your own. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t necessarily have to be a “mundane ironist”. Not at all.
[b]tiny nietzsche
How to confuse a nihilist: agree with them[/b]
Go ahead, it might work.
I imagine there is a version of me that’s got this.
Poor bastard.
AP: failed artist becomes disillusioned art critic; “everything is bullshit,” says man trying to pay his rent.
There is that part, true.
It’s dark enough to remember why I’m here.
But not dark enough to explain it.
I’ve sworn off narcotics again. Unless you got some.
What’s a friend to do? No, seriously.
I don’t want to get evolved.
Instead, he aims to get a little less devolved.
[b]Frank Miller
The world doesn’t make sense until you force it to.[/b]
That or hire others to do it for you.
It’s time to prove to you’re friends that you’re worth a damn.
Sometimes that means dying.
Sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.
That’s what the medals are for.
A gun is a liar’s weapon.
Let’s figure out why.
Hell’s waking up every goddamn day and not even knowing why you’re here.
And [apparently] not just in an absurd and meaningless world.
Worth dying for. Worth killing for. Worth going to hell for. Amen.
One’s thing for sure: I haven’t come across that yet.
When you got a condition, it’s bad to forget your medicine.
You know, if there is any medicine at all.
[b]Orson Scott Card
Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won.[/b]
Besides, even when they lose, they win. Here in particular.
All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.
At least that’s heading in the right direction.
At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD
He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.
There’s always that door, isn’t there? With or without the glowing emeralds.
And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?
How about it, Mr. Objectivist?
One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.
Much less the answers.
Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That’s when parents know the least and care the most, so they’re more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they’re right.
Me? Obviously: the first of five.
[b]Jonathan Safran Foer
Why do beautiful songs make you sad?
Because they aren’t true.
Never?
Nothing is beautiful and true.[/b]
Unless of course everything is.
I think and think and think. I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
Is that even possible?
There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.
Good luck with that.
If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller’s felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
I’m trying to imagine it “for all practical purposes”. But nothing comes.
One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.
Through thick and thin as it were.
She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.
So tell her that you do and move on.
[b]Jerzy Kosiński
I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.[/b]
That is a bit longer, isn’t it?
There’s a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.
A place beyond words. Sound familiar?
It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.
Hmm. I’ll have to think about that.
Life is a state of mind.
Including the body of course.
When people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely.
Whatever that means of course.
One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green, and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it joined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens ran amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the freshly-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to move its wings. Its eyes had been pecked out, and fresh blood streamed over its painted feathers. It made yet another attempt to flutter up from the sticky earth, but its strength was gone.
Not necessarily a true story though. Right?
[b]Ken Kesey
Rules? PISS ON YOUR FUCKING RULES![/b]
And not just yours, Nurse Ratchet.
We’d just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing – half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.
Not many of those, are there? And not any at all these days.
High high in the hills, high in a pine tree bed
She’s tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant,
Three geese in a flock
one flew east
one flew west
one flew over the cuckoo’s nest
Got that, Chief?
This world . . . belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf is the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?
He shrugs and thinks, “Well, it might be this way.”
No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?
You can’t but wonder what you might say if he addressed it to you.
Good writin’ ain’t necessarily good readin’.
In other words, up in the fucking clouds.
[b]David Wong
I had seen that look before, on the faces of tourists visiting the Texas Book Depository in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald took the shots at JFK. I took that tour and met some conspiracy buffs, all of us standing at the gunman’s window and looking down to the spot where the motorcade passed. It’s right there below the window, an easy shot at a slow-moving car. No mystery, just a kid and a rifle and a tragedy. They came looking for dark and terrible revelations and instead found out something even more dark and terrible: that their lives were trite and boring.[/b]
So, was Donald Trump REALLY born in America?
I keep the gun in a hollowed out copy of the Koran. And there the big book was, tossed on the bed, open and gunless. Nothing else disturbed. I mean, they actually checked my Koran to see if there was a gun inside. I knew I was dealing with a sick son of a bitch.
Five will get you ten it was someone here.
I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to. Society has got me so fucking trained. I rubbed my eyes and groaned and felt utterly alone in the world.
Nowadays though there’s a camera up there just waiting to nab you.
… life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it’s out. Forever.
Apologies to Bill Shakespeare, right?
I call it Dante’s Syndrome, John said. I had never heard him call it any such thing.
Meaning I think Dave and I gained the ability to peer into Hell. Only it turns out Hell is right here, it’s all through us and around us and in us like the microbes that swarm through your lungs and guts and veins. Hey, look! An owl!
We all looked. It was an owl, all right.
Let’s just file this one under, “easily distracted”.
That’s the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives A Fuck.
Unless of course God does. If not exactly yours.