a thread for mundane ironists

Social Forums Non-Philosophical Chat
7541

[b]Wanda Sykes

I’m a black, gay woman. I think the only way to make the GOP hate me more is if I sent them a video of me rolling around on a pile of welfare checks. [/b]

Let’s confirm that.

If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, then don’t marry somebody of the same sex.

Right, like that’s the way it will ever work.

As soon as you say ‘I do,’ you’ll discover that marriage is like a car. Both of you might be sitting in the front seat, but only one of you is driving.

I ended up in the trunk myself.

I don’t like the saying keep your friends close and enemies closer. I want my enemy on a different planet.

Not counting Pluto of course.

I don’t understand why people really get upset about something that doesn’t affect them at all.

It’s probably in the Bible.

I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

Pick one:
1] Rush Limbaugh
2] Rush Limbaugh
3] Rush Limbaugh

7542

[b]so sad today

i’m hungry but not sure if i deserve to exist: the musical[/b]

What, another one?

nothing makes me more tired than doing literally anything

Not much that doesn’t cover.

recovering from being alone by being alone

Right, like there’s any other way.

look, i hate myself as much as the next guy

A bad mood let’s call it.

my gift to humanity is not having kids

I once thought that would be mine. You know, whatever that means.

if you need me i’ll be in the bathtub for the rest of my life

In fact, I’m imagining that right now.

7543

[b]Daniel Silva

Do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you.[/b]

But only good things of course.

…there was nothing more dangerous, he thought, than a patient man.

Let’s come up with examples.

The strongman and the “corporate state”—by another name, fascism—are all the rage. Western-style democracy and the global institutions that created an unprecedented period of peace in Europe are suddenly out of vogue.

At least until we elect Bernie Elizabeth.

We dare to fight back, and the terrorists accuse us of being the real terrorists.
It’s their secret weapon, Mikhail. Get used to it.

Next up: The kernal of truth.

…there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.

Or: I post therefore I am.

She believed that “British cuisine” was an oxymoron.

Ouch?

7544

[b]Oswald Spengler

At the beginning a man was wealthy because he was powerful — now he is powerful because he has money.[/b]

And, every once in a while [these days], a woman.

One cannot learn how to be creative by reading Marx. Either one is creative or one is not.

What the hell does reading Marx have to with that, he wondered.

Scientists are wont to assume that myths and God-ideas are creations of primitive man, and that as spiritual culture “advances”, this myth-forming power is shed. In reality it is the exact opposite, … this ability of a soul to fill its world with shapes, traits and symbols - like and consistent amongst themselves - belongs most definitely not to the world-age of the primitives but exclusively to the springtimes of great Cultures. Every myth of the great style stands at the beginning of an awakening spirituality. It is the first formative act of that spirituality. Nowhere else is it to be found. There - it must be.

So, what do you think…maybe?

Suddenly all those individuals who yesterday felt that “we” meant only their families, their professions, or perhaps their communities, become men of the nation. Their emotions and thoughts, their egos, that “something” within them, all are transformed: they have become historical.

And then, as likely as not, for the reactionaries, it all gets divided into races.

In place of a true-type people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman…

Any true-types here perchance?

That there is, besides a necessity of cause and effect — which I may call the logic of space — another necessity, an organic necessity in life, that of Destiny — the logic of time — is a fact of the deepest inward certainty.

When it’s not the deepest inward mystery. But point taken.

7545

[b]Philosopnhy Tweets

“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” Plato[/b]

This may well be the very first “general description”.

“One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word ‘I’.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

And that’s before you get to my “I”.

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

So, what’s your take on that, Mr. Objectivist?

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” Plato

In that precise order, one suspects.

"A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.” Plato

A fool like me, right? And then over and over and over and over again.
On the other hand, I’m onto you too.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” Carl Gustav Jung

Fortunately for us, however, that can mean practically anything.

7546

[b]Bob Dylan

I started writing songs after I heard Hank Williams. [/b]

Next up: I started writing songs after I heard Bob Dylan.

I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.

Anyone here know if that’s actually true?

The Duke John Wayne was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn’t seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

Of course, others formed different opinions: youtu.be/xMUGDWvA9CI

Well, you always know who you are. I just don’t know who I’m gonna become.

Would you like me to explain that to you?

every pleasure’s got an edge of pain
pay your ticket and don’t complain

Or, if you can, sneak the fuck in.

Some formulas are too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

And, most times, science being the least of it.

7547

[b]Blake Crouch

If you go in with fear, fear is what you’ll find.[/b]

Right, like we’re always able to control these things.

If memory is unreliable, if the past and the present can simply change without warning, then fact and truth will cease to exist. How do we live in a world like that?

Tell him, Mr. Objectivist.

When your world falls apart, cling to the familiar.

Unless that makes it worse.

Like standing on a beach as the tide sucks the sand beneath my feet back out to sea, I can feel my native world, and the reality that supports it, pulling away. I wonder: If I don’t fight hard enough against it, will this reality slowly click in and carry me off?

Sure. But only if you’re lucky. Like, for example, I was.

In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies.

Let’s note some.

So we all embark wondering what lies over the horizon, what’s around the next bend. And isn’t that, in the end, what drives us?

Crazy for example.

7548

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” Bodhidharma[/b]

In other words, after the bills are all paid.

“Leisure is the mother of philosophy” Thomas Hobbes

No, really, think about that.

"There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli.

Always important to bring this back around.

"I have heard that one can conquer the empire on horseback, but one cannot govern it on horseback.” Kublai Khan

You know, back then.

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?” Voltaire

Our own for example

"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” Hypatia of Alexandria

Clearly with exceptions!!!
[size=50]Right, Kids?[/size]

7549

[b]Fiona Apple

If I respect myself and believe in what I’m doing, no one can touch me. [/b]

I’ll need to know what she’s doing of course.

Home is where my habits have a habitat.

My recliner in particular, he noted.

I don’t care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.

Or, here: I don’t care how people remember my posts. I do them for my own reasons.

You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what’s around you. You go crazy that way.

Not counting me of course.

I stand by everything I’ve ever said, apologies included.

Can you say that?

Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.

Sounds a lot like me, he thought.

7550

[b]Neal Stephenson

Other people - store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America - other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we’re in competition with those guys, and people notice these things. What a fucking rat race that is.[/b]

Okay, but at least it’s our rat race.

They made data a controlled substance.

And we know who they are, right?

Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document.

What’s that make Don Trump then?

You have responsibilities, now, Bob. You must lose this naive understanding of violence! You are embarrassin’ me in front of the lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies.

Good advice for the Democrats too, isn’t it?

There are only two industries. This has always been true…There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment…After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything.

Or, as I call them, distractions.

What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don’t like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.

For, among other reasons, all practical purposes.

7551

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” Nietzsche[/b]

Unless, of course, you go full blown insane.

“Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of inextinguishable regrets.” Joseph Conrad

You know, being optimistic.

“No sane person should believe that something is subjective merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy.” Hilary Putnam

We’ll need a context of course.

“Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement.” Hilary Putnam

Though [more to the point] not for lack of trying.

“Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. The success of power is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.” Michel Foucault

Sounds like the “deep state” to me.

“I don’t want to know exactly what I am. The main interest in is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.” Michel Foucault

Don’t actually expect to pin this down though.

7552

[b]Miles Davis

It takes a long time to sound like yourself. [/b]

So don’t fuck it up.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

That’s probably not as easy, or, sure, as hard as it sounds.

Music is the framework around the silence.

When it’s not the other way around.

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

For example, in a wholly determined universe.

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

Or the wrong four and call them right.

If you’re not nervous then you’re not paying attention.

On the other hand, how nervous?

7553

[b]Isabelle Huppert

Sometimes over the years, you know, things come to surface. [/b]

And, as we all know by now, for better or worse.

We all pretend to be very strong, and then in a fraction, you can just break down…

Or you can actually be very strong, and then in a fraction, it casn all just brak down.

Am I an intellectual? I don’t think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

Any intellectuals here?

For me, making films is like being on vacation, it’s a nice walk. But theatre is like mountaineering. You never know whether you’re going to fall off or make it to the top.

My guess: for obvious reasons.

When I hear myself, I don’t know how I sound.

He wondered: Had he ever heard himself?

Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it’s exactly the same with acting.

Like that actually means something. But point taken.

7554

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.” Michel Foucault[/b]

Here for example.

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” Joseph Conrad

And surely there are no exceptions.

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream–alone.” Joseph Conrad

Or, perhaps, highly improbable.

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.” Miguel de Cervantes

If not in the real world.

"The disease of men is that they neglect their own fields and go to weed the fields of others.” Mencius

And they ours.

"Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” William James

And how dreadful that can be!

7555

[b]Annie Lennox

You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul. [/b]

On the other hand, what else is there?

You have to face things, have faith in what you do and go for it. Think, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

Actually, you might not want to go there.

We’re not interested to know the real heroes. We’re really more interested in the villains, actually, and they seem to thrive, and it continues to be business as usual.

Call this the “mass shooting” syndrome.

You have to be quite grounded, and I don’t know what that is.

So, what would you tell her?

One realizes after a long time that, actually, we are contradictory, all of us.

Or, for some of us, by the time we’re in our teens.

Money is a good thing and it’s obviously useful, but to work only for money or fame would never interest me.

Not that it hurts to already have them. But, sure, she’s almost certainly being sincere.

7556

[b]Andrew Sullivan

In academia, left-liberalism is so entrenched its advocates’ debating skills have gone rusty. When you’ve been talking to yourself for decades and imposing speech codes on everyone else, your ability to argue coherently - let alone entertainingly - inevitably wanes.[/b]

Probably true, right?

Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

Possibly true, right?

A mind is a wonderful thing to change.

Repeatedly if need be.

Homophobia: the fear that another man will treat you like you treat women.

So, does that shoe fit you?

What I love about the Internet and what I try to do on the issues is insist upon the ability to have bad taste if one wants.

Unless of course you’re trolling.

Don’t fool yourself that you’re blogging when you’re really just putting stuff up online.

Stuff? What the fuck is that?

7557

[b]Nina Simone

It is difficult to retain your standards with the pressure of trying to make money, which always has its rules…It’s hard to walk the tightrope of doing what you think is your best and making money at it. [/b]

Not really a big problem for philosophers of course.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that either.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that’s not what I play. I play black classical music.

In other words, jazz. Sans the dirt.

As far as piano players are concerned, Oscar Peterson is my very favorite. I also like McCoy Tyner. I think that the big jazz stars, both now and in the past…how shall I say it? These guys are as great as Bach, Beethoven; all of them. People don’t know it yet. If jazz survives and is put on a pedestal as an art form, the same as classical music has been through the years, a hundred years from now the kids will know who they were, with that kind of respect.

Let’s just say that, as of now, it doesn’t look good.

Greed has driven the world crazy.

Greed. Here, however, I always come back to this:
“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

Let’s note this, and move one.

7558

[b]Nein

Summer. When the days are long. Life is short. And any contradictions are easily explained by science.[/b]

Next up: Fall.

Wochenende. It’s longer in German.

Just not literally.

Save the world. Delete a tweet.

Actually, he means Twitter [the whole fucking thing] of course.

Monday. The cruelest month.

Not unlike all the other days.

How to find happiness: Think of where you last saw it.

Anyone ever seen it here?

Sorry, sir. This is your best life.

Not only that but his only life.

7559

[b]Roger Penrose

Understanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation. [/b]

Anyone here care to demur?

It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as “observing itself” all the time!

And then going all the way back to, say, an understanding of existence itself.

No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence–a duty and a duty alone–and no hint of magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through.

That sounds about right, he noted.

My own way of thinking is to ponder long and I hope deeply on problems and for a long time which I keep away for years and years and I never really let them go.

Unlike, say, almost all of us here.

It seems to me that we must make a distinction between what is “objective” and what is “measurable” in discussing the question of physical reality, according to quantum mechanics. The state-vector of a system is, indeed, not measurable , in the sense that one cannot ascertain, by experiments performed on the system, precisely (up to proportionality) what the state is; but the state-vector does seem to be (again up to proportionality) a completely objective property of the system, being completely characterized by the results it must give to experiments that one might perform.

Great, the state-vector again.

Well, I don’t know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I’m no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.

Can you imagine that stopping you, Kid?

7560

[b]Werner Twertzog

Everything is terrible. And isn’t that wonderful?[/b]

No, really, it is.

Sorry, young people, the earth is owned by the dead, and they have plans for it.

I know that I will.

Of course, the aliens did it, if by “aliens,” you mean the Trilateral commission, the Illuminati, and those guys who camp at Bohemian Grove.

Next up: the Bilderberg crowd.

Eat, drink, and be merry, I am told, for you are a long time dead.

And some speculate it’s forever.

Anthony Quinn once pointed a stiletto at my throat. I denounced him, obscenely, in Bairisch. He lowered the knife, and ordered two Mezcal.

Can you say that?

I do not trust those who choose religious professionalism before they have experienced great loss.

And, sure, those who choose philosophical professionalism.
Maybe even especially them.