a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

[b]Tana French

I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.[/b]

And not always consciously.

I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect.

On the other hand, noticing when you’re miserable…

Our entire society is based on discontent. People wanting more and more and more. Being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their décor, their clothes, everything – taking it for granted that that’s the whole point of life.

In other words, go out and buy something.

What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this – two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

Duplicitously as it were.

There’s a Spanish proverb, he said, that’s always fascinated me. ‘Take what you want and pay for it, says God.’ I don’t believe in God, Daniel said, but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.

Not counting the part where you can’t have something you want if you had all the money in the world.

My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.

So far, nothing.

[iambiguous]

[b]God

Jesus wants to write an editorial condemning Trump, but he’s afraid he’ll lose the support of evangelicals.[/b]

Let’s make sense of this.

Here’s wishing the President a cold, lonely, miserable, desperate, self-loathing, scandal-ridden, dementia-fueled, sclerotic, septic, syphilitic, leprous Christmas.

Any news on that?

I’ll stay out of politics when politics stays out of Me.

[-o<

Overwhelming evidence suggests a startling number of people are capable of ignoring overwhelming evidence.

My guess: in the billions.

God rest ye merry congressmen,
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Trump’s behavior
On this Impeachment Day.
And save us all from Cheeto’s power
That led the world astray.
Oh findings of blackmail and fraud,
Blackmail and fraud.
Oh findings of blackmail and fraud.

Someone run this by Wendy.

Intelligence looks in a mirror and sees ignorance.
Ignorance looks in a mirror and sees intelligence.

And not just at the carnival.

[iambiguous]

[b]Heraclitus

It is in changing that things find purpose. [/b]

Right, like that actually explains anything.

Change alone is unchanging.

And, with this, the birth of word games.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Tell that to Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Doctors cut, burn, and torture the sick, and then demand of them an undeserved fee for such services.

Alas, some things never change.

Time is a game played beautifully by children.

Do they know that?

Under the comb, the tangle and the straight path are the same.

How about the brush?

[iambiguous]

[b]Julian Assange

If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-back ed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces - forever. [/b]

His deepest apologies to George Orwell. But point taken.

I enjoy crushing bastards. So it is enjoyable work.

I don’t know about crushing, but I do enjoy making fools out of the objectivists.

Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.

Not to mention the Russians and the Chinese.

You can’t do anything sensible until you know what the situation is that you’re in.

In other words, you’re fucked.

I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism.

In other words, he’s fucked.

Here then is the truth about the Truth; the Truth is not bridge, sturdy to every step, a marvel of bound planks and supports from the known into the unknown, but a surging sea of smashed wood, flotsam and drowning sailors.

And that’s just our truth.

[iambiguous]

[b]tiny nietzsche

If you are an imagine dragons fan, I’m sorry that happened to you[/b]

For some of course it is entire genres. And, no, not just country music.

who can you terraform if you can’t terraform yourself?

Anyone here done it?

when you can’t see the mountains for the rocks

Or, going in the other direction, the atoms for the rocks

we should avoid doing this again

Let alone repeatedly.

merry christmas, abyss

And, of course, happy new year.

if you have the opportunity, don’t give anything to a libertarian

Let alone a nihilist?

[iambiguous]

[b]Norman Mailer

The paradox is that no love can prove so intense as the love of two narcissists for each other. [/b]

Either a paradox or a contradiction in terms.

I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

Of course he hadn’t yet reached puberty then.

There are these two kinds of patriotism. There’s blind patriotism, unflagging patriotism. And then there’s the patriotism that says I live in a democracy and it’s very important for the health and the life of this democracy that it get better all the time, not get worse.

There must be three then if you count mine.

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

We’ll need a question of course.

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

If only among New York intellectuals.

Growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth.

Okay, but death is definitely second.

[iambiguous]

[b]Douglas Adams

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.[/b]

True story.
Nest up: inept sloths.

The point is, you see, said Ford, that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.

Yep, tried that too. Still waiting.

Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

I call them distractions myself.

Exactly, said Deep Thought. So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.

We’ll need a context of course.

Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.

We’ll need a context of course.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

Of course most scientists aren’t blind. If you know what I mean.

[iambiguous]

[b]tiny nietzsche

scrooge: you! you there, boy! what day is this?
boy: fuck you, boomer[/b]

Now of course I know what he means.

the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the abyss

And then one day…

the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before the abyss

the enemy of my enemy is a dumbass

Pick one: Phyllo or Karpel Tunnel

all I want for christmas is the void to negate me

Alas, all I want for christmas next year is the void to negate me

my sex tape is just me reading at the library

Buck naked with a hard on, he mused.

drugs mean never having to say you’re vibing

Like I would ever be vibing without them!

[iambiguous]

[b]Bob Dylan

Never make it perfect. [/b]

Of course: not counting you, Mr. Objectivist.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

The pragmatic idealist as it were.

Too much information about nothing.

Better that perhaps than too little infomation about everything.

We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it - everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.

Next up: We don’t see the people that virtue destroys.

There’s only one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.

What a coincidence, same here.

I don’t have the kinds of relationships that are built on any kind of false pretense, not to say that I haven’t. I’ve had just as many as anybody else, but I haven’t had them in a long time.

Hmm, why do you suppose that is?

[iambiguous]

[b]Murray Gell-Mann

Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.[/b]

Unless of course you’re doing it wrong.

Modern education is like being taken to the world’s greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu.

Let’s explain this.

Sustainability is living on nature’s income rather than living on its capital.

Let’s explain this.

Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.

Trust me: not just in Trumpworld.

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

Wow, that might even be applicable here.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.

Anything especially striking and remarkable here?

[iambiguous]

[b]so sad today

just when you think life can’t get any longer[/b]

A new decade will do that.

the enemy of my enemy also probably sucks

Now that’s the spirit!

when i was in the womb it was a simpler time

Simpler still: before you were even conceived.

let’s pretend i’m better looking than i am

So, is she?

i find dead people more relaxing

Naturally as it were.

when i hear people talk i honestly feel like i’m from another planet

Either that or want to go to another planet.

[iambiguous]

[b]Camille Paglia

There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.[/b]

Talk about “ludicrously binary”!

A woman simply is, but a man must become.

Talk about “ludicrously binary”!

Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be ‘fixed’ by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature’s fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept.

Eroticism: the intellectual contraption.

Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.

Definitely maybe, perhaps?

The artist makes art not to save mankind but to save himself. Every benevolent comment by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others.

Things only particularly obtuse intellectuals say?

If someone offends you by speech, you must learn to defend yourself by speech.

Right, like that will settle it.

[iambiguous]

[b]Robert Macfarlane

My sense, I say to Christopher, is that the search for dark matter has produced an elaborate, delicate edifice of presuppositions, and a network of worship sites, also known as laboratories, all dedicated to the search for an invisible universal entity which refuses to reveal itself. It seems to resemble what we call religion rather more than what we call science.[/b]

My guess: that’s debatable?

Something I heard an archaeologist say in Oslo about deep time returns to me: Time isn’t deep, it is always already all around us. The past ghosts us, lies all about us less as layers, more as drift. Here that seems right, I think. We ghost the past, we are its eerie.

Let’s imagine the deepest time of all.

…to understand light you need first to have been buried in the deep-down dark.

You go first.

For deep time is measured in units that humble the human instant: millennia, epochs and aeons, instead of minutes, months and years. Deep time is kept by rock, ice, stalactites, seabed sediments and the drift of tectonic plates. Seen in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains rise and fall. We live on a restless Earth.

And then the deepest time of all: oblivion.

…perceive no opposition between precision and mystery, or between naming and not-knowing.

Of course that will never catch on. Nor should it, he insisted.

From my heel to my toe is a measured space of 29.7 centimetres or 11.7 inches. This is a unit of progress and it is also a unit of thought. ‘I can only meditate when I am walking,’ wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the fourth book of his ‘Confessions’, ‘when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.’ Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal entry describes going out for a wander and finding himself ‘so overwhelmed with ideas’ that he ‘could scarcely walk’. Christopher Morley wrote of Wordsworth as ‘employ[ing] his legs as an instrument of philosophy’ and Wordsworth of his own ‘feeling intellect’. Nietzsche was typically absolute on the subject - ‘Only those thoughts which come from ‘walking’ have a value’ - and Wallace Stevens typically tentative: ‘Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around the lake.’ In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing.

On the other hand, knowing what?

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

"My opinion is a view I hold until I find something that changes it.” Luigi Pirandello[/b]

Could it all really be as simple as that?

"Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.” Luigi Pirandello

I know that mine are.

“We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.” Mencius

I know that I do.

“Opportunities? I make opportunities.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Not unlike the Grim Reaper.

“The problem, of course, with the idea of nature versus nurture was that it posed a choice between determinisms.” James S.A. Corey

Is this true? Let’s flip a coin and find out.

“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.” Jose Ortega y Gasset

Or, sure, lots and lots of both?

[iambiguous]

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

“What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream.[/b]

Nothing new here though.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can’t reason without them.

Though not necessarily in that order.

Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked” but…but what?…Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others—a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.

Little objectivists in particular.

John looks at the motorcycle and he sees steel in various shapes and has negative feelings about these steel shapes and turns off the whole thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now and I see ideas. He thinks I’m working on parts. I’m working on concepts.

Yo, promethean!

The real ugliness lies in the relationship between people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people who use the technology and the things they use.

Or, every once in a while, the real beauty.

Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum.

Well, that’s good news, right?

[iambiguous]

[b]Tana French

Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.[/b]

Any little Chernobyls here?

I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better–Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos–so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.

As, for example, a substitute for living. Though, sure, point taken.

Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they’ve cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.

My guess: for some more than others.

She informed me, matter-of-factly, that she was old enough to know the difference between intriguing and fucked up.

How old were you?

Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.

Anything? I mean, get real.

Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, grown men and women who’ve been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God.

I get the point. Having been around the block myself dozens of times.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

"Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.” Ronald Wright[/b]

My guess: for some more than others.

“The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Make it all between you and God.

“Remember, you have no companions but your shadow.” Ghenghis Khan

Of course that’s all changed now with the internet. Right?

“It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.” Napoleon Bonaparte

And their cause as likely as not.

“I don’t want to be a genius. I have enough problems just trying to be a man.” Albert Camus

Never had that problem myself of course.

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” Kurt Vonnegut

Let’s finally pin this down.

[iambiguous]

[b]Heraclitus

What sense or thought do they have? They follow the popular singers, and they take the crowd as their teacher.[/b]

Of course that’s all changed today, hasn’t it?

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

On the other hand, make of this what you will.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

Let’s make sense of this.

The unexpected connection is more powerful than one that is obvious.

Let’s just say that it can be.

All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things.

I know: what if that was actually true.

Realize that war is common and justice is strife, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.

It would have to be that way, wouldn’t it?

[iambiguous]

[b]Edward Snowden

Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.[/b]

Though clearly not for all of us, right?

Richard Nixon got kicked out of Washington for tapping one hotel suite. Today we’re tapping every American citizen in the country, and no one has been put on trial for it or even investigated. We don’t even have an inquiry into it.

Sure, this might be true.

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalysed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

Sure, this might be true.

Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an e-mail, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace, and the Government has decided that it’s good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of doing a crime.

Sure, this might be true.

If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.

We’ll need to know the beliefs first, of course.

Privacy is a function of liberty.

You know, in the best of all possible worlds. Hypothetically for example.

[iambiguous]

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.” Kurt Vonnegut[/b]

Imagine then his reaction to Trump!

“Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.” Kurt Vonnegut

Virtually every actor too.

“He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.” John Milton

Name one.

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” Jean-Paul Sartre

And that’s before you die.

"Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Not counting the Kids of course. With them it can never be simple enough.

“When you accept yourself, the whole world accepts you.” Lao Tzu