_
Tho his verse were beautifully worded,
…and his reply to your’s, equally so.
[b]Lisa Gardner
It wasn’t that strangers couldn’t hurt you. It was simply that the people you loved could do it so much better.[/b]
Let’s share lists.
Most people don’t need the help of strangers to screw up their lives; most of them are quite capable of doing it themselves.
Yeah, I can go along with that.
Men may be violent, Officer Dodge, but let’s face it-women are cruel…
Let’s pin down which is worse.
What I learned is that it’s arrogant to be certain of anything. The world is a complex place and only idiots or assholes think they know it all.
Just look at the assholes here.
…it’s one thing to survive. It is much, much harder to truly live…
Anyone truly live here?
Sure, they all have iPods, smartphones, whatever. Generally speaking, it’s in our own best interest to keep some kind of electronic device in their hands. Otherwise they might talk to us.
Not only that, but actually stop by and visit.
[b]Philosophy Tweets
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” Socrates[/b]
Or, sure, the sheer joy of it.
“The original is unfaithful to the translation.” Jorge Luis Borges
Just how stupid is that?
Want me to tell you?
“Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason.” Vilfredo Pareto
Women too he suspected.
"When it is useful to them, men can believe a theory of which they know nothing more than its name.” Vilfredo Pareto
And, no, not just value ontology.
“Truth is something which can’t be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.” Anais Nin
And do we have some whoppers here!!!
“I measure the strength of a spirit by how much truth it can take.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Not much, right, Mr. Objectivist?
[b]Olga Tokarczuk
I stopped in the sloping market square, and gradually I felt flooded by a powerful sense of communion with the people passing by. Each man was my brother and each woman my sister. We were so very much alike. So fragile, impermanent, and easily destroyed. We trustingly went to and fro beneath the sky, which had nothing good in store for us.[/b]
Tell me this doesn’t have that “ring of truth” about it.
Spring is just a short interlude, after which the mighty armies of death advance; they’re already besieging the city walls. We live in a state of siege. If one takes a close look at each fragment of a moment, one might choke with terror. Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.
Tell me this doesn’t have that “ring of truth” about it.
He saw it. Not in front, or behind him, just somewhere out in the darkness. It was huge and powerful. The whiteness of its fur gleamed in the light of the snow.
‘Wolf, in the name of the Polish border I beg you to spare my life,’ he said into the darkness.
The wolf stopped behind him, wondering.
Though not for long.
Anger can prompt one to utter various words, but it can also make one fail to remember them afterward.
Of course here they are posted.
Many times Annushka had tried to barter with anyone she could, with God, with the Virgin, with Saint Parascheva, with the whole iconostasis, even with the closer, vaguer realm of fate.
And look at her now. However that might possibly be.
Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that – in spite of all the risks involved – a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.
People too. Well, not counting death of course.
My apologies, I took more pills than usual last night when I answered you about context. The context is: erotoime is Greek for “refrain of love”. The aphorisms I included there are written from the perspective of the pathological or daemonic individuality, (17,18,19,20, and 26)
[b]Jostein Gaarder
Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being ‘unreasonable’. They were convicted for being gruesome murderers.[/b]
Fair enough?
The German poet Goethe once said that “he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.” I don’t want you to end up in such a sad state. I will do what I can to acquaint you with your historical roots. It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum.
Or, sure, all the way back to the Big Bang.
I said that one of the most infectious things I know is laughter. But sorrow can also be contagious. Fear is different. It isn’t as communicable as laughter or sadness, and a good thing too. Fear is almost entirely a lonely thing.
Two words: mass hysteria.
According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual’s life. It is important to find the truth for me.
Next up: the truth for “me”.
He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience–and the truth-- higher than life.
A fool in other words?
[b]To Summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit’s fine hairs. where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ they yell, ‘we are floating in space!’ but none of the people down there care.
‘What a bunch of troublemakers!’ they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princes Di is expecting again?[/b]
You know, before they heard that she had died.
[b]Werner Twertzog
Still missing Johnny Cash.[/b]
The dead man in black.
There is no moral alternative but the liberation of Britney, as we all know.
This thing apparently: cnet.com/news/free-britney- … g-to-know/
Mass indifference to reality is important for building autocracies, as we all know.
Yo, urwrongx!
[size=50][and all the other idiots here][/size]
It is important, when overthrowing the US government, to shout “We are number one!”
With a bullet as it were.
Is it a witch hunt if the accused says, “I am a witch, I mean to do evil, I laugh at your anti-witch conventions, and I dare you to challenge me”?
I’d say no myself.
Dear America: Superheroes will not save you. You are going to have to put down your bong pipes and grease chips and turn off the idiot box. Maybe consider reading a book.
Or, sure, come here.
[b]Ana Castillo
Hispanic gives us all one ultimate paternal cultural progenitor: Spain. The diverse cultures already on the American shores when the Europeans arrived, as well as those introduced because of the African slave trade, are completely obliterated by the term. Hispanic is nothing more than a concession made by the U. S. legislature when they saw they couldn’t get rid of us. If we won’t go away, why not at least Europeanize us, make us presentable guests at the dinner table, take away our feathers and rattles and civilize us once and for all.[/b]
The feathers and the rattles, sure, he thought.
Poverty has its advantages. When you’re that poor what would you have that anyone would want? Except your peace of mind. Your dignity. Your heart. The important things.
Next up: the disadvantages.
I’m obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I’m not looked at as an American.
To, among others, the racists.
I’ve spent my whole life in Chicago being asked where am I from, so that I have a sense of displacement that also is very psychologically disorienting.
Either that or being told where to go.
For things to have value in man’s world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man’s oldest and most constant commodity is woman.
Back again to this: genes more or less than memes?
In nature, creatures never ended the lives of others except to survive. To women, abortion was self-defense and preservation of the species. Abortion was not a fancy borne out of the female mind. Abortion was instinct beyond ideas. Abortion was fear (the cat that devours its litter when a predator nears).
Nature is just funny that way.
[b]Ernest Cline
My whole life, I felt like I was destined to do something important, but I was only ever good at videogames, which I always figured would be completely useless. But it’s not useless, and neither am I. I think this is what I was always destined to do with my life. I just never knew it.[/b]
A lame ass rationalization let’s call it.
A recluse. A pale-skinned pop culture–obsessed geek. An agoraphobic shut-in, with no real friends, family, or genuine human contact. I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame. But not in the OASIS. In there, I was the great Parzival. World-famous gunter and international celebrity. People asked for my autograph. I had a fan club. Several, actually. I was recognized everywhere I went (but only when I wanted to be). I was paid to endorse products. People admired and looked up to me. I got invited to the most exclusive parties. I went to all the hippest clubs and never had to wait in line. I was a pop-culture icon, a VR rock star. And, in gunter circles, I was a legend. Nay, a god.
No, this is really how it works!
I knew Armada was only a videogame, but I’d never been one of the “best of the best” at anything before, and my accomplishment gave me a real sense of pride.
You know, like being good at pool. Or ping pong.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing ’80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn’t part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.
A postmodern dystopia on steroids.
Right?
From then on, my computer monitored my vital signs and kept track of exactly how many calories I burned during the course of each day. If I didn’t meet my daily exercise requirements, the system prevented me from logging into my OASIS account.
Yo, Carleas! Let’s make that how it works here too.
If it weren’t for Tolkien, all of us nerds would’ve had a lot less fun during the last ninety years.
Someone explain this please.
[b]Werner Twertzog
Gorilla Glue, contrary to rumors, is not an effective contraceptive, for most people.[/b]
Uh, the back story please.
In the future, all stadiums will be filled by cardboard people.
Better still: cardboard players. Watched on cardboard televisions.
In New York, and many other great cities, most of the better apartments are vacant, owned by the distant rich.
In the even more distant future.
Well, at least you now have a better idea who among your friends and family would have gone Nazi.
Here, of course, for some, the Nazis were pussies.
The purpose of your life, as we all know, is to purchase electronic devices, and keep them charged.
Anyone actually disagree?
So you chose your college on the basis of landscaping, locker rooms, and the food court, and now you are listening to online lectures 20 hours per week in your mom’s basement while she screams at you to do your wash?
If only until you graduate.
[b]Gustave Courbet
I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.[/b]
Let alone God Himself. Mounted on a unicorn for example.
Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it.
That’s still worth imparting.
The principle of realism means denial of the ideal.
Next up: the part revolving around “for all practical purposes”.
I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: ‘He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any regime except the regime of liberty.’
Uh, “hear, hear!”?
Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.
Next up: cubes and such.
When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important.
Like me here, he mused.
[b]Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.[/b]
Unless distance is the whole point.
My husband’s family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.
On the other hand, what were the odds of that?
If you have got a living force and you’re not using it, nature kicks you back. The blood boils just like you put it in a pot.
Me? Way back.
But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all… You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing.
Black is beautiful, baby!
I never for one minute questioned what I had to do. I did not think for one minute that I didn’t have what I had. If just didn’t dawn on me. And so if you know what you have, then you know that there’s nobody on earth that can affect you.
Yes, he admitted glumly, there really are people like this.
I never liked the middle ground—the most boring place in the world.
Until, of course, it’s not.
[b]Werner Twertzog
2030: Billionaires decide not to save earth as habitable planet. Move to terraformed secret planet initiated in 1977. Earth remains profit center until 2093.[/b]
Maybe. But chances are we will all be dead and gone by then.
“I am the walrus.” William Howard Taft
You tell me: google.com/search?source=un … 66&bih=625
Why make dystopian fiction when we live in a dystopian reality?
Let’s create a new thread and rant about it.
Christopher Hitchens called Mother Teresa “a thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf," which is notably contrarian.
No, really: who2.com/did-christopher-hi … ian-dwarf/
I am not saying Kinski did not eat babies, but I mainly focused on his capabilities as a performer.
Obviously.
American white nationalists are harmed more by broken schools and generational poverty than by Jewish space lasers.
Tell them that. Here for example.
[b]Kristin Hannah
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.[/b]
The second part, sure. Never been in love though.
Men tell stories. Women get on with it.
You know, when it’s not the other way around.
A daughter without her mother is a woman broken.
Unless of course she hates her guts.
But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.
Unless of course, for some, they hate Nazis.
I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.
Let’s pin down when that became unequivocally true. Starting with the internet of course. Though, for some, with television.
Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.
Let alone in the future.
Still, what if the past is clearly brutal?
[b]Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Anarchy is… a form of government or constitution in which public and private consciousness, formed through the development of science and law, is alone sufficient to maintain order and guarantee all liberties.[/b]
Theoretically I’m guessing.
Liberty, Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order.
Theoretically I’m guessing.
The newspapers are the cemeteries of ideas.
Not unlike most philosophy venues.
The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.
It still boggles my mind that minds like this are still around. Could anything possibly be more preposterous?
Of my private life I have nothing to say: it does not concern others. I have always had little liking for autobiographies and have no interest in anyone’s affairs. History proper and novels hold no attractions for me except insofar as, I can discern there, as within our immortal Revolution, the adventures of the mind.
Another dullard, he suspected.
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.
Okay, Mr. Objectivist, tell us what they really are.
[b]Existential Comics
how is it that like half of philosophers say stuff like “the ideal happy life for any human being is sitting around contemplating philosophy” these people are supposed to be smart??[/b]
Next up: Why the other half are even worse.
Stoicism is important because life is shitty enough without worrying about stuff that doesn’t matter, like someone cutting you off in traffic, or a meteor crashing into the Earth and ending humanity once and for all.
Well, those things might matter to some.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if Biden had been an actual socialist running on a platform of nationalizing major industries like Amazon and Facebook, then the capitalist media apparatus would have united in legitimizing Trump’s conspiracy theories about election fraud.
Anyone here actually doubt this?
Well, not counting the ususal suspects.
Ethics question: is it good that the poor continually languish in poverty, debt, and misery while the rich hoard wealth beyond the wildest dreams of Ozymandias?
Fuck all that, right?
why do superheros always have physical superpowers like “leaping tall building” and “being super strong”? why not mental superpowers like “can mostly understand Hegel” or “has read War and Peace cover to cover”?
No, seriously.
Capitalism is based on free, mutual agreements. The worker agrees to do whatever the capitalist says so they can pay rent and not starve, and the capitalist agrees to generate enormous profit off their work. Freedom.
You know, if you’re dumb enough to believe it. And, apparently, millions and millions of Trumpworld fanatics in the white working class are. Most without even actually knowing it.
[b]George Saunders
When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average. And is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.[/b]
Unless, of course, as a fulminating famatic, he is smack dab in the middle of it.
It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.
Next up: (C)
Now I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters. He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what’s inside the box bears some linear resemblance to “real life” – he can put whatever he wants in there. What’s important is that something undeniable and nontrivial happens to the reader between entry and exit.
But only with the good art, right?
A culture’s ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.
On Access Hollywood for example. Or the evening news.
America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamourous reasonable voice.
We certainly do our part here, don’t we?
Well, the assholes anyway.
[b]This oatmeal represents your soul in its pure state. Your soul on the day you were born. You were perfect. You were happy. You were good.
Now, enter Concept Number Two: crap. Don’t worry, folks. I don’t use actual crap up here. Only imaginary crap. You’ll have to supply the crap, using your mind. Now, if someone came up and crapped in your nice warm oatmeal, what would you say? Would you say: ‘Wow, super, thanks, please continue crapping in my oatmeal’? Am I being silly? I’m being a little silly. But guess what, in real life people come up and crap in your oatmeal all the time–friends, co-workers, loved ones, even you kids, especially your kids!–and that’s exactly what you do. You say, ‘Thanks so much!’ You say, ‘Crap away!’ You say, and here the metaphor breaks down a bit, 'Is there some way I can help you crap in my oatmeal?[/b]
Exaggerated? Or not exaggerated enough?
[b]Jane Harper
Death rarely changes how we feel about someone. Heightens it, more often than not.[/b]
Or less often than not.
To look out and see not another soul between you and the horizon could be a strange and disturbing sight.
Yeah, for some, maybe. For me, it’s the other way around. And then some.
The rumors were fed well…and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.
Let’s feed a few juicy ones here.
First, though, let’s start them.
His own naivety taunted him like a flicker of madness.
A flicker being just the beginning for some.
He avoided small talk at the best of times and this, unquestionably, was a million horrific miles from the best of times.
Tell that to the yak yak yak crowd here though.
We all try to get through the best way we can. But trust me, there’s not a single person here who isn’t lying to themselves about something.
And, for a few, damn near everything.
And then those who don’t even know it.
[b]Existential Comics
The Super Bowl is great. There is nothing like having a beer, sitting back and watching two teams you absolutely hate while you root for a meteor to strike the stadium.[/b]
When is the Super Bowl this year? Soon, right?
under communism, Tom Brady would simply not have been allowed to go to this many superbowls
Or sent to a camp to be reeducated.
Am I prejudiced against men who wear bow ties? Yes.
Am I working to overcome this prejudice? No, I am not.
Next up: men who wear mittens.
If I could make one small change to help bring about worldwide communism, it would be a law that forced every news network to put everyone’s net worth on the screen when they are giving their opinion.
Let’s do that here too. You know, with each post.
The lesson from Socrates is that you aren’t a real philosopher unless pretty everyone wants to kill you.
You know, like pretty much everyone here wants to kill me.
if you think about it, you can’t really be a “free thinker” if you read books, because inevitably the books will influence your ideas. In order to be a true free thinker you absolutely must remain dumb as fuck your entire life.
He must be Kidding, right?