a thread for mundane ironists

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10841

[b]Oliver Sacks from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, ‘fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,’ whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned – the man who knew it, or the man who did not?[/b]

Obviously: it depends on just how grim the reality is that having your faculties intact reveals.

Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, the total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, too easily.

Just for the record:
“aphasia : involving or exhibiting loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words”

Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.

I’m actually looking forward to it myself. If you know what I mean.

…animals get diseases, but only man falls radically into sickness.

Next: animals die…

Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.

That’ll do it no doubt.

What is more important for us, at an elemental level, than the control, the owning and operation, of our own physical selves? And yet it is so automatic, so familiar, we never give it a thought.

Trust me: I do.

10842

[b]The Onion

Can Of Soda In Freezer Realizing Owner Never Coming Back For It[/b]

A Dr Pepper no less.

Each Member Of Family On Edge As Vacation Has Gone By Without One Blowout Fight

At a White Lotus no less.

Area Man Always Thought He’d Squander His Life Differently

Me? I was right on the money.

Report: 1 In 5 Air Ducts Contains Person Looking, Listening In On You

Remember when it was only 1 in 10?

Asshole Moves To Part Of City Where All The Assholes Live

Or: asshole posts at philosophy venue where all assholes post: knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

Man Who Got Word-A-Day Calendar Keeps Trying To Shoehorn ‘January’ Into Conversation

Well, this is certainly the best month for that.

10843

[b]Max Stirner from The Ego and Its Own

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for “one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right.”[/b]

Of course, it’s not for nothing this keeps getting updated.

If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more.

Not counting the real world, of course.

Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.

At least until the workers of the world unite.

In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn’t it rumble in the distant thunder, and don’t you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?

Cue Ayn Rand, he demanded.

Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.

Well, their things, anyway.

He who has might has—right; if you have not the former, neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain?

Of course, you actually have to have the might here.

10844

[b]The Onion

Nation’s Men In Bathroom Stalls Announce Plan To Breathe Really Loudly [/b]

Let’s explain all the reasons why.

Gay Man Unaware He Is Focus Of Thousands Of Prayers

Not only that, but to hundreds of Gods.

Woman Suspects Hidden Camera In Public Restroom After Noticing Boom Mic Operator In Corner

That’ll do it.

Vacationing Woman Asks Friend To Assume Identity For Next Couple Weeks

What could go wrong?

Entirety Of Objectionable Human Behavior Explained To Toddler As Person Acting Silly

Any toddlers here actually believe it?

Brutal Reality Check Turns Three

You know, if you make it that long.

10845

[b]Siddhartha Mukherjee

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice that the world keeps shifting so quickly under her feet that she has to keep running just to keep her position. This is our predicament with cancer: we are forced to keep running merely to keep still.[/b]

As God intended no doubt.

It was Disney World fused with Cancerland.

As God intended no doubt.
Right, kids?

"How small a thought it takes to fill someone’s whole life,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote.

Imagine him here.

In God we trust, he brusquely told a journalist. All others must have data.

Okay, but brusquely enough?

If we, as a species, are the ultimate product of Darwinian selection, then so, too, is this incredible disease that lurks inside us.

Next up: you tell me.

It is one thing to try to understand how genes influence human identity or sexuality or temperament. It is quite another thing to imagine altering identity or sexuality or behavior by altering genes.

Says who, in other words.

10846

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

You know your local bookstore is a winner when Beyond Good and Evil is a bestseller and the staff pick is Spinoza’s Ethics.[/b]

Like that could actually happen.

“The problem with determinate negation is that you never see it coming until it’s too late.” Hegel

Next up: indeterminate affirmation.

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.” Gertrude Stein

Wow! Not unlike being a pinhead!!

Write your memoirs in French,
Your love letters in Italian,
Your shopping lists in English,
And your deal with the Devil in German.

For the Devil, he means Russian, of course.

Who gave philosophy such a bad name?
Aristotle: Plato
Spinoza: Plato
Hume: Plato
Schopenhauer: Plato
Nietzsche: It was me!

Though not necessarily in that order, of course.

I asked my class what Walter Benjamin meant when he said that capitalism is a religion. A student answered with one word: Christmas.

A+ right?

10847

[b]Gore Vidal from Julian

How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.[/b]

Next up: how marvelous Kindles are?

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

Unless, of course, you’re one of the winners.

Never offend an enemy in a small way.

Right. Stick to the big ways.

Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

If only all the up to the grave.

On the throne of the world, any delusion can become fact.

Or, here, up in the clouds.

How hungrily we read about ourselves!

And that was in 1964!

10848

[b]The Onion

Fetterman Struggling To Adapt To Size Of Capitol Building[/b]

Whereas Oz would have fit right in.
Well, once they elected a Speaker.

Neurologists Confirm Nightmares Persist After Death

Next up: wet dreams.

Man Googling ‘Tender Lump On Neck’ About To Begin Exciting New Phase In Life

You know, if exciting is the right word.

France To Offer Free Condoms To Adults Up To Age 25

True story. Well. as true stories go, anyway.

Kevin McCarthy Assures Skeptical Republicans He Shares Their Vision Of Innocents Drowning In Oceans Of Blood

Nope, still not enough, is it?

Union-Busting Manager Graciously Accepts Pay Cut Because Boss Knows Best

Irony let’s call it. Right, Jeff?

10849

[b]Eric Hoffer

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.[/b]

Here I tend toward the pinheads myself.

The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.

Let’s try that here, he suggested.

Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.

And one month a year he comes here.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

How’s that for ironic?

Our passionate preoccupation with the sun, the stars and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

At least on this side of the grave.

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

Or blessedly few?

10850

…so just like the Creeper in Jeepers Creepers, who comes alive to feast… but once every 23 years for 23 days.

…he came, he went, he had his fill -the life of a Satyr.

10851

[b]The Onion

Iconic Artist Of ‘Huge Titty Lois Griffin’ Sadly Remains Unrecognized In His Lifetime [/b]

Not huge enough, I guess.

Panicked Tree Freezes In Headlights As Car Barrels Toward It

Finally, the tree’s point of view.

Area Dad Looking To Get Average Phone Call With Adult Son Down To 47.5 Seconds

Cue Harry: youtu.be/KUwjNBjqR-c

Defeated Man Too Tired To Fight New $14.99 Fee On Phone Bill

We will all reach that point eventually.

‘Sesame Street’ Introduces First Enigmatic Muppet Who Has Yet To Reveal True Intentions

Let’s deconstruct that.

World’s Oldest Jeans, Found In 1857 Shipwreck, Sell For $114,000

No, really! google.com/search?source=hp … gle+Search

10852

It’s a manly muppet.

10853

[b]Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley from Frankenstein

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery![/b]

Next up: the tipping point.

When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?

Uh, no one?

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

I’ll be your monster if you’ll be mine.

I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

That’ll do it. Well, sometimes.

The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.

You either get this or you don’t.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

You either regret this or you don’t.

10854

[b]Tom Stoppard from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.[/b]

Except for the last one of course.

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

How about your bridges? Same thing?

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said…no. But somehow we missed it.

Note to Carleas: when did that happen here?

We’re actors — we’re the opposite of people!

Next up: the shit scripts.

Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You’d have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I’m not dead.

I’ll need to see the box of course.

Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it.

Bottom line [one of them]: no one asked to be born.

10855

[b]The Onion

Incredibly Productive House Of Representatives Assembles For 8th Vote In Just 3 Days[/b]

Of course, that’s ancient history now, right?

Woman Can Always Tell Period Coming By Way Doors Slam Shut, Lights Flicker

Next up: the tells that she is pregnant.

College Senior Holding Out Hope That Internship Will Lead To Class-Action Lawsuit

Let’s root for her.

Gym Patron Just Resting For A Second Until Will To Live Returns

And, with any luck, it won’t.

Roger Goodell Announces Thinking Too Hard About Football Has Given Him CTE

Being a pinhead though, how hard can that be?

Plume Of Smoke Above Vatican Signals Last Evidence Of Abuse Has Been Burned

I guess they just plum forgot that God sees all.

10856

[b]Emil M. Cioran from The Trouble with Being Born

My vision of the future is so exact that if I had children, I should strangle them here and now.[/b]

And he meant it.

Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that he alone pursues the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining.

I know that I do.
[wink, wink]

I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.

Among other things, go figure.

Man accepts death but not the hour of his death. To die any time, except when one has to die!

Among other things, go figure.

A conscious fruit fly would have to confront exactly the same difficulties, the same kind of insoluble problems as man.

I guess we’ll never know though.

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me…

So, how am I doing with that here?

10857

[b]The Onion

On Top Of Everything Else, Kevin McCarthy Wetting Bed Again [/b]

Noted. Let’s move on.

Still Too Early To Tell If Pulling Chain Turned Overhead Fan Off

Ask me about mine.

Icy Road Conditions Lead To Multi-Deer Pileup On Highway

No fatalities fortunately.

Wistful Woman Wonders If This Could Be The One She’ll Sleep With For Few Weeks Before Losing Interest

Modern love, as Peter Gabriel once informed us.

Passenger Ruins Perfectly Good Windshield By Flying Through It

How embarrassing is that?

Supportive Parents Encourage Child’s Interests In Anything Within 15-Minute Drive

In Kansas no less.

10858

[b]Albert Camus from The Stranger

He wasn’t even sure he was alive because he was living like a dead man.[/b]

Trust me: it’s only as matter of time.

I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.

Ah, dasein!

Whereas, once again, the machine destroyed everything: you were killed discreetly, with a little shame and with great precision.

Ah, capitalism!

Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.

Though considerably less obvious for some of us.

In the long run one gets used to anything.

Actually, I wouldn’t go that far myself.

He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of a sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out it was the former that had condemned me.

So much for God…

10859

[b]The Onion

Study: Average Person’s Life Plan Can Only Withstand 25 Seconds Of Direct Questioning [/b]

Though some have actually reached the minute mark. Or so they told me.

Report: God Directly Communicating With You Through This Headline

Fill us in then.

Lettuce Sentenced To Slow, Painful Death In Vegetable Crisper Drawer

Vegetable crisper drawer? Is that a real thing?

Botched Autopsy Brings Murder Victim Back To Life

Or is “botched” the wrong word?

Explosive Prince Harry Memoir Reveals William Used Too Much Tongue When They Kissed

True story? Wouldn’t surprise me at all.

McCarthy Elected Speaker After Far-Right GOP Minority Joins Rest Of Far-Right GOP Majority

It’s all in Hunter Biden’s laptop.

10860

[b]Milan Kundera from The Unbearable Lightness of Being

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.[/b]

In the is/ought world, let’s say.

Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.

Ah, the “human-all-too-human condition” again.

Love is a battle, said Marie-Claude, still smiling. And I plan to go on fighting. To the end.
Love is a battle? said Franz. Well, I don’t feel at all like fighting. And he left.

Meaning this: that sometimes women are from Mars and men are from Venus.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.

Let’s run that by her here.
And him there.

To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.

Wow! Not unlike being born a man.

Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.

Let’s call it, “Language on that whole other ‘for all practical purposes’ rooted in dasein level.”