# Thread for mundane ironists
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066
**Category:** Non-Philosophical Chat
**Created:** [April 27, 2024, 9:49pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066 "2024-04-27T21:49:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 52
### Author:  [@Ichthus77](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Ichthus77)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2026, 4:55am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1022 "2026-04-24T04:55:53Z")
In hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the computer said the meaning of life was 42. I find that kind of ironic, considering the math of rainbows.
What I wouldn’t do to get you in a room with Copilot.
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### Author:  [@greenfuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/greenfuse)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2026, 5:37am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1023 "2026-04-24T05:37:14Z")
Chatgpt is not really neuroplastic. For a while there is short term to long term memory transfer, but then it disappears. You can request inside a project, say, that it be nihilistic. And it will hold to some degree for you. But there’s no transfer to its central self. It’s disconnected to individual users and basically becomes amnesiac after a while. You’d need to get into the servers with your mind control.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2026, 6:48am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1024 "2026-04-24T06:48:03Z")
Faith
**“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bear the genesis of a new world, a new forest.” Mike Norton**
_Me?_
_A leap of faith to dasein, let’s say._
**“God will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.” C.S. Lewis**
_You tell me. A challenge, let’s say._
**“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.” C.S. Lewis**
_God’s mysterious ways, I’m thinking. Nothing, it seems, can’t be rationalized – justified – when you go there. Right?_
**“When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.” Anne Lamott**
_Genesis, for example._
**“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy… It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.” David Platt**
_On the other hand, any number of these folks…_
> **[Major religious groups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups)**
>
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_…may beg to differ_
**“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.” Terry Tempest Williams**
_The challenge however is to put them in the right order._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2026, 6:35am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1025 "2026-04-25T06:35:56Z")
Elmore Leonard
**“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”**
_I’ll bet that can get tricky._
**“My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.”**
_I tried that once myself here. Can’t you tell?_
**“Psychopaths… people who know the differences between right and wrong, but don’t give a shit. That’s what most of my characters are like.”**
_He means sociopaths, of course?_
“ **“Wonderful things can happen”, Vincent said, “when you plant seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes.”** ”
_Hey, I wrote the book! Here I mean._
**“It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.”**
_Also, it doesn’t have to be true, you just have to believe it is._
**“I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.”**
_Broads? Start here:_ [https://youtu.be/jXSV2ieVkZk?si=ONV2yc4xR7W\_PV9H](https://youtu.be/jXSV2ieVkZk?si=ONV2yc4xR7W_PV9H)
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2026, 6:52am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1026 "2026-04-25T06:52:15Z")
Stupidity
**“A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.” Carlo M. Cipolla**
_In or out of the clouds, I’m afraid._
**“It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.” H. L. Mencken**
_And the equivalent of that, well, here of course._
**“How is digging a hole part of the process of getting out of one? The fact is, the people who can answer that question are so far down some hole that they couldn’t hear the question even if you shouted it.” Craig D. Lounsbrough**
_And the equivalent of that, well, here of course._
**“Thinking’s worse than February.” John Patrick Shanley**
_New thread?_
**“Stupidity is a manifestation, not the cause.” Meir Ezra**
_Right, like it can never be a convoluted combination of both._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2026, 4:26am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1027 "2026-04-26T04:26:30Z")
Capitalism
**“Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.” Jasper Fforde**
_Well, cash and countless credit cards._
**“We don’t think you fight fire with fire best ; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’re stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.” Fred Hampton**
_He actually believed this._
**“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
Steal a fish from one guy and give it to another–and keep doing that on a daily basis–and you’ll make the first guy pissed off, but you’ll make the second guy lazy and dependent on you. Then you can tell the second guy that the first guy is greedy for wanting to keep the fish he caught. Then the second guy will cheer for you to steal more fish. Then you can prohibit anyone from fishing without getting permission from you. Then you can expand the racket, stealing fish from more people and buying the loyalty of others. Then you can get the recipients of the stolen fish to act as your hired thugs. Then you can … well, you know the rest.” Larken Rose**
_What’s your part in all this?_
**“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.” George Carlin**
_If only so far?_
**“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” Gustave Flaubert**
_Let’s run this by the Ayn Randroids here._
**“The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organised, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people’s blood.” Frantz Fanon**
_Let’s run this by the wretched here._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2026, 4:48am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1028 "2026-04-26T04:48:17Z")
Free Will
**“Belief in hard determinism is the most effective enslavement.” Sebastián Wortys**
_Right, like we have an actual choice in the matter._
**While your wants get you into conflicts, only your wants can get you out of them.” Scott Shumway**
_Right, like we have an actual choice in the matter._
**“Better to try to live free on your own terms than die for someone else’s bloody dreams.” Alexandra Bracken**
_Or, of course, die trying._
**“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was not convincing the world that he didn’t exist; the greatest trick he ever pulled was making us believe we have free will.” Abhaidev**
_I’ll never fall for it. Again, for example._
**“Freedom is a length of rope.
God wants you to hang yourself with it.” Castiel**
_Doesn’t surprise me._
**“As an act recedes into the past and becomes embedded in the network of one’s individuality it seems more and more a product of fate—inevitable. However, an act in the immediate present seems to be more a product of free will.” Sylvia Plath**
_On the other hand, we either are or are not responsible for this._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2026, 6:23am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1029 "2026-04-27T06:23:16Z")
Hypocrisy
**“The Bible says God made man in his image, but I think we make and remake him in whatever image happens to suit our shifting needs.” C.J. Sansom**
_Lost in translation as it were. Or found._
**“Remove yourself from the presence of those who trash you in your absence” Dr. Lucas D. Shallua**
_Wouldn’t be anyone left then._
**“Priest: If truth is your absolute, you will die. If life is your absolute…
Hippolytus: I’ve chosen my path. I’m fucking doomed.” Sarah Kane**
_True story?_
**Pretense is of no avail. Few are deceived by the face that is just painted on: one’s true identity goes straight to the core. Deceits have nothing solid about them. A lie is a tenuous thing, and on inspection, transparent.” Margaret Graver**
_Well, that’s bullshit, of course. Nowadays, anyway._
**“The aspect I notice the most in people is hypocrisy, that is sometimes unconscious and other times very conscious, as when they say ‘I love this place’ when in truth they have learned to love what they have because of what they can’t get.” Dan Desmarques**
_Let’s explore how that might be applicable here._
_If, for example, the shoe fits?_
**A Christian who pretends not to sin or suffer or struggle and who always has the answers and seemingly only walks out their faith with beauty and poise lacks integrity.” Lore Ferguson Wilbert**
_The Immanuel Can Syndrome some call it._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 27, 2026, 7:04am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1030 "2026-04-27T07:04:38Z")
The Sopranos
**“Here’s some standard operating-procedure: stay the fuck away from Tony Soprano. Shut the fuck up, and listen. It’s over. Capische? Over and done. You call, or go anywhere near him or his family, and they’ll be scraping your nipples off these fine leather-seats. And here’s the point to remember: my face is the last one you’ll see. Not Tony’s.” Patsy Parisi**
_Just another day for him, of course._
**“Rage, Anthony, is a big loud flaming distraction, from feelings that are even more frightening.” Jennifer Melfi**
_As she will experience herself, right?_
_“You’ll never leave your wife… She might leave you_, but you’ll never leave her. Despite your mothering, you made one good decision in your life vis-á-vis women. You’re not gonna throw that over. Your own selfishness is too strong to let that happen.” Jennifer Melfi\*\*
_Next up: Cue the goomahs._
**“Let me give you a little advice. In my business, I see girls come and go. So I know. Time, is the great enemy. You got a very short window. It’s not good to get too hung-up on any one thing. On the other hand, something new always comes along. I’ve seen it a million times. It’s called Passages, y’know the book." Silvio Dante**
_Try it yourself: [Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life: Sheehy, Gail: 9780553271065: Amazon.com: Books](https://www.amazon.com/Passages-Predictable-Crises-Adult-Life/dp/0553271067)_
**“Some day soon, you’re gonna have families of your own. And if you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments — like this — that were good.” Tony Soprano**
_I tried that once myself. To no avail, l might add._
**Jennifer Melfi: “The center cannot hold. The falcon cannot hear the falconer.”**
**Tony Soprano: “What the fuck are you talking about?”**
_Yet another rendition of beauty and the beast, he suggested._
**Paulie Gualtieri: “Amazing thing about snakes, is that they reproduce spontaneously.”**
**Tony Soprano: “What do you mean?”**
**Paulie Gualtieri: “They have male and female sex-organs. That’s why somebody you don’t trust, you call a snake. How can you trust a guy who can literally go fuck themselves?”**
**Tony Soprano “Don’t you think the expression would’ve come from the Adam and Eve-story? When the snake tempted Eve to bite the apple?”**
**Paulie Gualtieri: Eh, snakes were fucking themselves long before Adam and Eve showed up, T.”**
_Let’s run this by the snakes here._
---
### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2026, 4:56am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1031 "2026-04-28T04:56:37Z")
The Wire
**Bunk Moreland: A man must have a code.
Omar Little: Oh, no doubt.**
_To paraphrase Shane, “A code is only as good or as bad as the man or women professing it.”_
**Omar Little: Lesson here, ‘Bey: You come at the king, you best not miss.**
_And the king here?_
**Lester Freamon: You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.**
\*They don’t call it crony capitalism for nothing. \*
**Proposition Joe: Don’t believe we met. Proposition Joe. You ever steal from me, I’ll kill your whole family.**
_Unless they kill his family first, of course._
**Jimmy McNulty: If only half you motherfuckers at the district attorney’s office didn’t want to be judges, didn’t want to be partners in some downtown law firm. If half of you had the fucking balls to follow through, you know what would happen? A guy like that would be indicted, tried and convicted. And the rest of ’em would back up enough, so we could push a clean case or two through your courthouse. But no, everybody stays friends. Everybody gets paid. And everybody’s got a fucking future.**
_Someone run this by Rawls._
**Cedric Daniels: If you’d wanted to do me, I’d already be done. But there ain’t nothing you fear more than a bad headline, is there? You’d rather live in shit than let the world see you work a shovel.**
_Next up: the shit shovelers here._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2026, 6:37am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1032 "2026-04-28T06:37:37Z")
Chaos
**“It was easy to gain strength from chaos because it had about it the abyss–always so tantalizing–as the heroin addicts knew. But the journey to the abyss was short-lived. The harder road was to draw strength and not power. To gain footing not in the wild uncertainty of immortality but the abiding knowledge of mortality.” Heather Rose**
_Sure, why not?_
**“Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?” Elisabeth Elliot**
_The part where the belief itself need be all that makes it true.
Right, Mr. Objectivist?_
**“Equilibrium is the state of death, only chaos produces life. The Ancient Greeks have been driven to extinction by too much searching for architectural harmony.” Stéphane Lupasco**
_Don’t make that mistake, okay?_
**"…that great condenser of moral chaos, The City.” Robert Hughes**
_If only historically?_
**“Pope Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. ‘The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews?’" Iain Pears**
_You tell me._
**“Perspective turns pain into proportion and chaos into context.” Shamail Aijaz**
_Start with Nietzsche, but then get around to me._
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:47am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1033 "2026-04-29T06:47:18Z")
Ontology
**“How many Germans ‘live’ who speak their mother tongue effortlessly and yet are unable to understand Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or one of Hölderlin’s hymns!” Martin Heidegger**
_We’ll need an actual context, of course. Or, perhaps, not?_
**“Today, when philosophizing is so barbarous, so much like a St. Vitus’ dance, as perhaps in no other period in the cultural history of the West, and when nevertheless the resurrection of metaphysics is hawked up and down all the streets, what Aristotle says in one of his most important investigations in the Metaphysics has been completely forgotten. Kai de kai to palai te kai nun kai aei zetoumenon kai aei aporoumenon, ti to on, touto esti tis he ousia. ‘That which has been sought for from old and now and in the future and constantly, and that on which inquiry founders over and over again, is the problem What is being?’ If philosophy is the science of being, then the first and last and basic problem of philosophy must be, What does being signify? Whence can something like being in general be understood? How is understanding of being at all possible?” Martin Heidegger**
_Serious philosophy, let’s call it.
On the other hand, send in the clouds?_
**“All the propositions of ontology are Temporal propositions. Their truths unveil structures and possibilities of being in the light of Temporality. All ontological propositions have the character of Temporal truth, veritas temporalis.” Martin Heidegger**
_In other words, for mere mortals, if only from the cradle to the grave._
**“There are only two consistent visions of ultimate reality: one stating that the source of all being is an act of omnipotent will, and one stating that the source of all being is a jolt of mindless absurdity. The main difference between the two is that the former is preposterously unfathomable, while the latter is unfathomably preposterous.” Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski**
_Go figure? If that’s even possible, of course._
**“I call it Experiential Realism – If reality is made of information, as many scientists now come to a consensus, and consciousness is necessary to assign meaning to it, it’s not far-fetched to assume that consciousness is all there is. Universal mind is the sole ontological primitive. Conscious agents are low-dimensional avatars of this greater cosmic mind, each perceiving their own observer-centric virtual reality.” Alex M. Vikoulov**
_So, just out of curiosity, how might this be applicable to, say, the real world?_
**“Euler’s formula – although deceptively simple – is actually staggeringly conceptually difficult to apprehend in its full glory, which is why so many mathematicians and scientists have failed to see its extraordinary scope, range, and ontology, so powerful and extensive as to render it the master equation of existence, from which the whole of mathematics and science can be derived, including general relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces! It’s not called the God Equation for nothing. It is much more mysterious than any theistic God ever proposed.” Thomas Stark**
_You tell me:_ [Euler's formula - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_formula)\*
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 7:21am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1034 "2026-04-29T07:21:05Z")
Solitude
**“Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it’s a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.” Kazuo Ishiguro**
_What, even virtually? Or, perhaps, especially virtually?_
**“Solitude is sometimes the best society.” John Milton**
_In other words, paradise found._
**“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.” Aristotle**
_Next up: a wild god._
**“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” Albert Einstein**
_You either get this or you don’t._
**“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others… and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.” Virginia Woolf**
_That ever actually happen to you?_
**“Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.” Hermann Hesse**
_Spiritually, as it were._
---
### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 5:04am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1035 "2026-04-30T05:04:54Z")
Rationalism
**“‘Demon’” means “‘knowledge’” in Greek. “‘Science’” means “‘knowledge’” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.” Carl Sagan**
_And in a demon haunted world to boot._
**“…let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.” James Burgh**
_Let’s make that our aim here. Someday, for example?_
**“I long for the slightest evidence of it that doesn’t require me to relinquish reason, because a natural mystery and reason to face it make the happiest combination of all.” Edgar Cantero**
_The “psychology of objectivism”, let’s call it…_
**"…man has transformed himself into a thing.” Erich Fromm**
_In order to escape the convoluted entanglements of freedom._
**“The clothes have no emperor.” Stewart Elliott Guthrie**
_Well, sure, that too._
**“Rationalism is at bottom nothing but criticism, and the critic is the reverse of a creator: he dissects and he reassembles; conception and birth are alien to him. Accordingly his work is artificial and lifeless, and when brought into contact with real life, it _kills_ . All these systems and organizations are paper productions; they are methodical and absurd and live only on the paper they are written on. The process began at the time of Rousseau and Kant with philosophical ideologies that lost themselves in generalities; passed in the nineteenth century to scientific constructions with scientific, physical, Darwinian methods - sociology, economics, materialistic history-writing - and lost itself in the twentieth in the literary output of problem novels and party programs.” Oswald Spengler**
_Doesn’t that say it all? If you get my drift, say?_
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 6:25am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1036 "2026-04-30T06:25:33Z")
Faith
**“There is a strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.” Aaron Lauritsen**
_Stranger still, it doesn’t?_
**“I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.” Martin Luther**
_The rest is history. Or what’s left of it._
**“Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out “Don’t you believe in anything?”
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.” Isaac Asimov**
_The gall!_
**“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson**
_Define honest?_
**“Never give up on your friends. Never give up your faith in them. It’s when everything is worse than you could ever imagine it could be, that you’ll need your friends the most.” Graeme Rodaughan**
_Define never?_
**“When everything gets answered, it’s fake.” Sean Penn**
_Yo, Mr. Objectivist, you’re up!_
---
### Author:  [@greenfuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/greenfuse)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 7:06am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1037 "2026-04-30T07:06:46Z")
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> **“‘Demon’” means “‘knowledge’” in Greek. “‘Science’” means “‘knowledge’” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.” Carl Sagan**
>
> _And in a demon haunted world to boot._
One of the ironic things about Carl Sagan’s quote is that it isn’t entirely correct, yet it still manages to highlight, to some extent, a real difference between Greek and Roman culture. The word “demon,” for example, comes more directly from “daemon,” so his etymology is misleading. In a sense, he ends up assigning religion to Greece and knowledge or science to Rome, which is not quite accurate.
However, there is a way in which this framing gestures toward something true. The Romans were largely instrumentalist in their approach to knowledge—they wanted knowledge in order to act, to build, and to control. Much of their theoretical framework was inherited from the Greeks. The Greeks, by contrast, were often more concerned with internal understanding: philosophical inquiry, metaphysical questions, and the nature of reality itself. Today, that kind of inquiry is frequently dismissed as “supernatural,” reflecting a widespread assumption that there is some non-metaphysical stance on reality.
The limitations of an instrumentalist view—what the Greeks might have called _techne_—become visible when we look at Roman expansion. This approach can foster a sense of entitlement: to conquer vast territories, to override or dismiss local forms of knowledge, and to impose one’s own systems. It is therefore not entirely surprising that later imperial ideologies, such as Hitler’s notion of the “Third Reich,” drew symbolic lineage from Rome.
We can still see this instrumental reasoning at work today in technocratic systems that dominate much of the practical world. Because this way of thinking presents itself as neutral—as if it makes no ontological claims—it often operates with relatively little scrutiny. In that sense, “Rome” has, in a way, prevailed. The same mindset now drives the development of increasingly powerful technologies: artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering.
These capacities are advancing without a corresponding development in personal or societal maturity. The result is a rapid expansion of power occurring in a context that is chaotic and impulsive, rather than grounded in deeper reflection about its consequences or deeper reflection at all. By people who don’t know themselves or what they doing or why they are doing it.
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### Author:  [@Ichthus77](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Ichthus77)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2026, 7:31am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1038 "2026-04-30T07:31:45Z")
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> **“‘Demon’” means “‘knowledge’” in Greek. “‘Science’” means “‘knowledge’” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.” Carl Sagan**
>
> _And in a demon haunted world to boot._
It’s interesting the origin of the meaning demonstration in Latin, and that another word for demon in Latin is genius. The principalities and what not. I bet they’re just aliens and that worshiping them is like worshiping airplanes for uncontacted tribes, but also read Jude… and obey just laws (ones that do not violate consent or conscience).
I just saw greenfuse’s reply. How ironic. But note that they both had pantheons they tried to translate into each other, and the Greeks were not exactly … non-expansionist, yada. Oddly, I would leave that to greenfuse to elucidate, as I’m pretty sure he’s merely pretending his bullshit position, and he is clearly much more eloquent. Let us just note how they killed the philosophers who challenged the “tools of manipulation” of those in power—who tried to take the place of those tools. …as is the repeating theme of history.
> [@$trange ¢OINcidence](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/trange-oincidence/85337):
>
> I literally have zero clue what I’m talking about here, so bear with me. Remember when the United States adopted the gold standard & like 30 years later, abandoned it? You know, like, the great depression and all that? Remember [William Jennings Bryan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jennings_Bryan), that Looney Tunes cuckoo banana birds McGee? Remember how the housing bubble blew everything up shortly after 9/11? Remember Trump and all this fiat bullshit (pardon my global public health stimulus—forget real priorities, like income based hou…
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2026, 6:40am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1039 "2026-05-01T06:40:11Z")
Elmore Leonard
**“Write the book the way it should be written, then give it to somebody to put in the commas and shit.”**
_Next up: the dreaded semicolons._
**“I’m very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.”**
_Next up: you like gospel, don’t you?_
**“I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn’t have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.”**
_Unless, perhaps, you found something._
**“Fate was working its ass off when it got us all together.”**
_Uh, naturally?_
**“And she thought if you don’t have the desire to fight or wait for something there’s no reason for being on earth.”**
_Aside from what we do here, of course._
**“A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now.”**
_How many places work for you?_
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2026, 6:57am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1040 "2026-05-01T06:57:16Z")
Suicide
**We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.” Vladimir Nabokov**
_Yes, including virtual filth._
**“I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.” Jay Asher**
_Or here perhaps?_
**“Once I tried to kill myself with a bungee cord. I kept almost dying.” Steven Wright**
_Let’s explain that._
**“She was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn’t go on.” Paulo Coelho**
_Let’s explain that._
**“I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?” Margaret Atwood**
_Same when you’re fractured and fragmented. Alas, as it were._
**Suicide is an attack on society–an attack on its omnipotence, on its denial of death, and on its own despair.” Robert E. Neale**
_You first? Or is that still too close to call?_
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2026, 6:27am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thread-for-mundane-ironists/80066/1041 "2026-05-02T06:27:41Z")
Infinity
**“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” John Green**
_A world of words, let’s call this._
**“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” William Blake**
_Didn’t I tell you?!_
**“The problem with introspection is that it has no end.” Philip K. Dick**
_Tell that to the Grim Reaper._
**“The Universe is very, very big.
It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.
Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever.
Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies.
Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.” Craig Ferguson**
_Take your pick?_
\*\*“There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me” Gustave Flaubert
_Let’s run this by Madame Bovary. You know, if she’s still around._
**“The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity…” A. Edward Newton**
_That’s because you can’t take them with you.
Right?_
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