Thread for mundane ironists

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182

The gist:

Ten years ago, after being wrongly accused of a hideous murder of a mother and her twin daughters, Sean Veil became paranoid, filming himself twenty-four hours a day to have an alibi if necessary.

A very strange film to look at. An even stranger one to wrap your head around. You can imagine someone possibly being reduced to this. But you have a much harder time imagining yourself. Or, rather, I did.

It’s a thicket of half-truths and lies. And less than coherent at times. Put your thinking cap away and just tumble down into the fog.

It is less a “psychological thriller” [as it is described] than a psychopathological thriller. A truly dystopian “ambiance” pervades. But probably the kind of world killers like this inhabit. Unless of course they are far more “ordinary” then we would ever care to admit.

It is also a commentary on our tabloid culture. Everything is grist for the entertainment mill. Crime in particular. Individuals become merely characters to be played…parts to be molded and manipulated into whatever “drama” sells the most merchandise.

One thing for sure: No one would ever believe this is based on a true story.

It isn’t, is it?

Look for Tucker.

Freeze Frame

Sean [voiceover]: 24 hours in a day. 1,440 separate minutes in which someone could meet their end at the hands of someone who may or may not look like me. 86,400 seconds in which someone could breathe their last. That’s time to be accounted for. All 31,536,000 seconds of life or death each and every year.

And that’s all before Judgment Day.

Sean [voiceover]: Things to remember: 1] Paranoia is a malfunction of the ability to reason. I can reason. Therefore I am not paranoid. 2] the principle characteristics of the paranoid personality are delusions, hostility, suspicions. I am not deluded. I am not suspicious. I may be hostile but that is only because they really are out to get me.

You know, in a free will world.

Sean [voiceover]: 9 years, 11 months, 28 days and 1553 murders since. 975 of which were unsolved. How many more are they trying to pin on me?

Stay tuned.

Sean [to reporter]: I don’t give interviews. Not without editorial control. Words can be distorted, twisted, reedited. Things can be made to seem more than what they are.

Not here, of course.

Sean [voiceover]: Things to remember. 3] It’s everywhere. All around me. The threat. I feel it. You never lose it. They make sure of that.

Actually, I’ve lost it a few times here.

Sean [voiceover]: If I could, I’d live here. Set up home right on this spot to be surveilled 24 hours a day. My whereabouts always known as fact. Verifiable, indisputable facts. That would be sheer heaven.

He means hell, of course. Or maybe not?

Sean [voiceover]: Things to remember: 4] The first law of forensics. Lockhart’s Theory. Every contact leaves a trace. I leave nothing anywhere that they can trace back to me.

In theory, let’s say.

Emeric: The question is Sean how come your tapes don’t match her tapes?

On the other hand, no one can think of everything.

Detective Mountjoy: You seem kind of relaxed, if you don’t mind me saying. For a man who’s about to spend the next 30 years sucking unwashed dick.
Sean: You seem kinda jealous, if you don’t mind me saying.

Who won?

Katie [straddling him]: How long do you think you can hold out, Sean? Come on, let it go. You know you want to.

Oh, boy!

Sean [voiceover]: Things to remember: 5] Never have sex without a condom. Ever. Once they get a hold of your sperm, you’re fucked.

DNA and all.

Katie: Don’t worry, Sean, this is one part of your life that won’t be going on tape.

We’ll see.

Sean [voiceover]: Things to remember: 6] Never stop filming yourself. Ever. Off camera is off guard.

One more thing to remember: Make sure the web-cam is working!

183

God

“The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment - the infinite, personal God who is really there - then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth.” Francis Schaeffer

And the part about Hell?

“Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.” Marquis De Sade

Or, perhaps, a whole lot of both?

Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning.’
‘I understand the concept. It’s just . . . there seems to be a contradiction.’
‘Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man’s starvation, war, sickness . . .’
‘Exactly!’ Chartrand knew the camerlengo would understand. ‘Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn’t He?’
The camerlengo frowned. ‘Would He?’
Chartrand felt uneasy. Had he overstepped his bounds? Was this one of those religious questions you just didn’t ask? ‘Well . . . if God loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help.’
‘Do you have children, Lieutenant?’
Chartrand flushed. ‘No, signore.’
‘Imagine you had an eight-year-old son . . . would you love him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you let him skateboard?’
Chartrand did a double take. The camerlengo always seemed oddly “in touch” for a clergyman. ‘Yeah, I guess,’ Chartrand said. ‘Sure, I’d let him skateboard, but I’d tell him to be careful.’
‘So as this child’s father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?’
‘I wouldn’t run behind him and mollycoddle him if that’s what you mean.’
‘But what if he fell and skinned his knee?’
‘He would learn to be more careful.’
The camerlengo smiled. ‘So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?’
‘Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn.’
The camerlengo nodded. ‘Exactly’” Dan Brown

I’m sorry, but that may well be nothing short of preposterous. On the other hand, whatever works?

“‘All of a sudden, we’ve lost a lot of control,’ he said. ‘We can’t turn off our internet; we can’t turn off our smartphones; we can’t turn off our computers. You used to ask a smart person a question. Now, who do you ask? It starts with g-o, and it’s not God…’” Steve Wozniak

Who could it be then?

“How can you expect humans to be fair, if life itself is unfair!” Mouloud Benzadi

That’s their problem.

“Define the word exist, and you’ll know whether God exists.” Bill Gaede

Define the word define?

184

Jeffery is right: It’s a strange world. But, come on, how many of us ever find it this strange? More to the point though is that we know it can be. It’s out there. And the more it’s depicted in films like this the more it is likely to spread. A paradox?

We never really know just how close we are to Frank. Maybe he lives next door. Or maybe you’re Frank. One of them. I’ve bumped into some strange folks right here la la land. And, of course, they’ve bumped into me.

And then there is Dorothy. Is she a creature of Frank or did she come into that world predisposed to move it along? And who would have thought that Isabella Rossellini was as spooky as Dennis Hopper. In “real life”. At least back then.

Basically, I think it is all just a metaphor for the mystery of existence itself. Why things happen in one way and not in another. And what lies below the surface of any particular understanding of it. The stuff underground. The stuff “civilization” is just a veneer covering up. Lots of films like that, of course. But this one is especially effective in juxtaposing them.

In one ear and out another.

Blue Velvet

Radio announcer: It’s a sunny, woodsy day in Lumberton, so get those chainsaws out. This is the mighty W.O.O.D., the musical voice of Lumberton. At the sound of the falling tree, it’s 9:30. There’s a whole lotta wood waitin’ out there, so let’s get goin’.

It’s just around the corner from Twin Peaks.

Jeffrey: I found an ear.
Detective Williams (matter of factly): You did? A human ear?
Jeffrey: Yeah. I’ve got it here in this bag. I thought I should bring it to you.
Detective Williams [looking in the bag]: That’s a human ear all right.

That’s why he’s a detective,

Jeffrey: There are opportunities in life for gaining knowledge and experience. Sometimes, in some cases, it’s necessary to take a risk. I got to thinking. I’ll bet a person could learn a lot by getting into that woman’s apartment. You know, sneak in and hide and observe.

What could possibly go wrong?

Sandy: I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.

That’s before they fall in love and live happily ever after.

Dorothy [to Jeffrey]: Hit me! Hit me! Hit me!

That threw him for a loop.

Sandy [after Jeffrey tells her about Dorothy, Don, her son and Frank]: It is a strange world.
Jeffrey [fiercely]: Why are there people like Frank?! Why is there so much trouble in this world?!
Sandy: I don’t know. I had a dream. In fact, it was on the night I met you. In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren’t any robins and the robins represented love. And for the longest time, there was this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed that love would make any difference, and it did. So, I guess it means that there is trouble until the robins come.

Right, robins.

185

Madness

“How can you tell who are the clever men and who are the madmen in this world, where reason and folly, madness and genius are often confused.” Guy de Maupassant

Next up: clever women.

“There is a ghosting software that enters the brain and makes the person view multiple realities/dimensions of the same thing even with truth or without truth. This causes the madness effect of an uncertain gaze and renders this person unbelievable.” Maria Karvouni

Next up: the uncertain post.

“Sometimes going mad is the only path to freedom.” Alistair Cross

I’ll tell you about it when I get there.

“Joseph recalls his mother who was ‘mad and screaming like birds were sewn under her skin’.” Evie Wyld

Raptors.

"The mystic and the madman have some similarity. All madmen may not be mystics, but all mystics are mad. By “mad” I mean they have gone beyond mind. The madman may have fallen below mind, and the mystic may have gone beyond mind, but one thing is similar – both are not in their minds.” Osho

Uh, you tell me?

“At a certain point in my life, I realized that there were only two options: either I was completely losing my mind, or I was finally getting closer to the truth.” Lenka Dvorcakova.

If there’s a difference, of course.

186

Blue Velvet

Dorothy [to Jeffrey]: I looked for you in my closet tonight.

Carerful, Jeffrey…

Sandy: You’re not going back to her apartment, are you?
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Sandy [very concerned]: Jeffrey, why?
Jeffrey: I’m seeing something that was always hidden. I’m involved in a mystery. I’m in the middle of a mystery and it’s all secret.

That and all scripted.
Not that we don’t know better.

Dorothy: You think I’m crazy don’t you?
[pauses]
Dorothy: I want you to stay. Don’t hate me.
Jeffrey: I sure don’t hate you.
Dorothy: I’m not crazy.
[pauses]
Dorothy: I know the difference between right and wrong!
Jeffrey: That’s good.
Dorothy: You’re my special friend.
[walks toward Jeffrey, a knowing smile on her face]
Dorothy: I still have you inside of me!

Remember Sandy?

Frank: Hey you wanna go for a ride?
Jeffrey: No thanks.
Frank: No thanks? What does that mean?
Jeffrey: I don’t wanna go.
Frank: Go where?
Jeffrey: For a ride.
Frank: A ride! Hell that’s a good idea!

Heads he wins, tails you lose.

Raymond: He’s a pussy, Frank!
Frank: Yeah, but he’s our pussy.

If not literally?

Dorothy [to Jeffrey]: I love you! Love me! [To Sandy] He put his disease in me!
Jeffrey: Sandy, please…
Sandy: Jeffrey, what is going on here?
Jeffrey: I’ll tell you…
Dorothy: He put his disease in me.

A couple of times.

Sandy: Where is my dream…?

Cue the robins.

187

I grew up in a dysfunctional family myself. Nothing like this though. This one is more fucked up than the folks in Fish Tank. And it’s not even from England. But what’s England got on working class families from the deep South?

Here of course the rich are even more fucked up than the lower middle class. And it takes an unemployed football coach from South Carolina [who, if nothing else, is colorful] to nudge them in a more satisfying direction.

And then there is The Incident. Some families have one and some don’t. Or some have a series of less traumatic events. One of this magnitude though can put whole future in the crosshairs. There is before and there is after. Period. End of story. And nothing is ever quite the same. But the movie unfortunately barely scratches the surface here.

To wit: The movie vs. the book:

Those who have both seen the movie and read the book say that the novel is much richer in detail, as well as more disturbing, than in the movie. Savannah’s story, as well as the tiger’s role, were larger in the novel. Luke, who is the real ‘Prince of Tides’ in the book, was almost entirely left out of the movie and the bonds between the three children were played down, while Tom’s love affair with Susan was made the central theme. The killing of the three escaped prisoners also was handled differently in the book, such that Tom killed one and the tiger killed the other two. Several viewers have commented that there were so many stories in the 600-page book that at least 4-6 different films could be shot and never repeat the same information. IMDb

The Prince of Tides

Tom [narrating]: There are families who live out their entire lives without a single thing of interest happening to them. I’ve always envied those families.

Me too. Sort of.

Tom [narrating]: From my mother I inherited a love of language and an appreciation of nature. She could turn a walk around the island into a voyage of purest discovery. As a child, I thought she was the most extraordinary woman on earth. I wasn’t the first son to be wrong about his mother.

My guess: and probably not the last. Dad too.

Tom: Now girls, have I ever told you the facts of life?
Jennifer: Oh, not this again.
Tom: Stay away from boys 'cause they are all disgusting, self-indulgent beasts that pee on bushes and pick their noses.

And then that other part.

Tom [narrating]: It was only my sister who could force me to come to this God-awful city. This city that roars down on you. She loved it all. The muggers, the winos…the bag ladies, the wall-to-wall noise. She loved it because it had nothing to do with our childhood. Luke and I hated it for exactly the same reason.

Different folks, different strokes. Even from the same dysfunctional family.

Tom: I’m sick of my sister’s attraction to razor blades - and I’m sick of shrinks who can’t do a fucking thing to help her!

You know, on this side of the grave.

Tom: What the hell is going on here? Why is she strapped down?
Susan: Her team felt she had to be restrained…
Tom: Why? She has enough drugs to anesthetize a whale!
Susan: Her team decides…
Tom: Quit calling them her team! Sounds like she’s trying out for the Giants.
Susan: What should I call them?
Tom: Let’s be creative. Let’s call them assholes.
Susan: Let me tell you something about those assholes. I’m grateful because they saved your sister’s life.
Tom: Well, I don’t like to see her strapped down!
Susan: I don’t care what you like. She’s still a threat to herself. There’s no point to this unless we keep Savannah alive. And I don’t care if it takes drugs or voodoo or reading tarot cards…I want her alive.

Next up: the team here.

188

Prince of Tides

Tom: It’s the Southern Way; when things get too painful, we either avoid them or we laugh.
Susan: When do you cry the Southern Way?
Tom: [laughing] We don’t.

Next up: the Southern Way here.

Susan: So you feel your mother betrayed you?
Tom: I was talking about my wife!
Susan: Oh…

Ask me about mine.

Eddie: How’s Savannah? When can I see her?
Tom: I don’t know, Eddie. It’s like talking to a fern.
Eddie: Well, I’m glad she’s improving.

No joke?

Tom: What if I’d done the same to your son?
Susan: It’s not the same thing!
Tom: I’ll make him a Presbyterian quarterback!
Susan: It’s quite different. My son didn’t try to kill himself.
Tom: Give him time, Lowenstein. Give him time!

A low blow, let’s call it.

Tom [to Susan]: Mother got the island in the divorce settlement. She immediately sold it to the government for a lot of money. They wanted to put up a power plant. Luke went crazy. He made some threats. The government laughed. He blew up a construction site. They quit laughing. He went on waging his own private war. Hurt some people. Savannah and I tried to stop him, but the government stopped him first. Shot him in the head.

Dead as a doornail.

[Luke blows the TV to hell with shotgun]
Luke [to Henry]: TV’s broken you son of a bitch. Now you can watch your kids blow out their candles.

In a flashback.

Tom: How about Luke? Do you ever think about Luke? Does he ever cross your mind?
Lila: Who taught you to be so cruel?
Tom: You did, Mama, you did.

Then, one way or another, it’s Luke all the way down.

Susan: How old was Savannah when this happened?
Tom: Thirteen.
Susan: What were you doing while this was going on?
Tom: I don’t know.
Susan: You don’t know? Maybe you ran for help?
Tom: I don’t know. I don’t know.
Susan: Why do you think you didn’t?
Tom: I don’t know. Just because.
Susan: That’s a child’s answer, Tom.

Unless, like Bartleby, you prefer not to know.

Herbert: That Stradivarius is worth over a million dollars!
Tom: Well, if I drop it, it won’t be worth shit.
Susan: Don’t do it, Tom.
Tom: Apologize to your wife, Herbert.
Herbert: You’re bluffing.
Tom: I may be, but its a powerful bluff, isn’t it, asshole?
[Tom throws the fiddle high in the air over the penthouse balcony]
Herbert [screaming]: I’m sorry, Susan!
[Tom catches fiddle]
Tom: Sincerity becomes you, Herbie. Now apologize to me for your unforgivable breach of etiquette at the dinner table tonight, you possum-bred cocksucker.
Herbert: I’m very sorry, Tom.

Uh, read the book.

189

Nicolas Chamfort

If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.

Next up: if you must loathe your neighbor.

Having lots of ideas doesn’t mean you’re clever, any more than having lots of soldiers means you’re a good general.

Tell me about it. And a few others here too.

In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen, in small things they show themselves as they are.

So, how great or how small is what we do here?

In a country where everyone is trying to be noticed, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.

I hope like hell we never get that way here.

Feeling creates thought, men willingly agree; but they will not so willingly agree that thought creates feeling, though this is scarcely less true.

Yo, Mark!

We must know how to perform the foolishness our characters require.

Personas are us.

190

Stanisław Lem from Solaris

We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is.

Let’s resolve that.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

Well, you do have my own explanation.

On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them.

Here on Earth especially.

I know only one thing: when I sleep, I know no fear, no trouble no bliss. Blessing on him who invented sleep.

And, if I do say myself, dreams.

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?

That ocean in particular.

We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.

Tell that to the capitalists.

191

Did you invent/construct them? Does that rule out real one(s)?

192

Free Will

“If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.” Daniel C. Dennett

That’s kinda my point.

“It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the ‘free will’ owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche, the renowned neuroscientist.

“We are the sum total of the decisions we have made.” E.A. Bucchianeri

Though, for millions, they are the sum total of the decisions that others made for them.

“Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only ‘pseudo problems,’ because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.” Percy Williams Bridgman

Click?

“The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.” Sam Harris

Or perhaps the problem of vindicating anything in a world where we are only able to vindicate what our brains compel us to?

“Many scientists have tried to make determinism and complementarity the basis of conclusions that seem to me weak and dangerous; for instance, they have used Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to bolster up human free will, though his principle, which applies exclusively to the behavior of electrons and is the direct result of microphysical measurement techniques, has nothing to do with human freedom of choice. It is far safer and wiser that the physicist remain on the solid ground of theoretical physics itself and eschew the shifting sands of philosophic extrapolations.” Louis de Broglie

Any electrons here, perchance?

193

Logic

“…but that was the thing about reality. It didn’t need to make sense.” Mira Grant

Only that what you believe makes sense does.

“For nothing is more democratic than logic; it is no respecter of persons and makes no distinction between crooked and straight noses.” Friedrich Nietzsche

How logical is that?

“Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

You first.

“To win an argument, rely on logic. To win in life, question logic. If you’re not willing to take some actions that don’t make sense, having a mediocre life will make perfect sense.” Vizi Andrei

You first.

“The person who wishes to attain human perfection should study logic first, next mathematics, then physics, and, lastly, metaphysics.” Maimonides

The fool!

“‘The sensible man,’ Crow had said to Sherlock Holmes, 'doesn’t look to confirm what he already knows – he looks to deny it. Finding evidence that backs up your theories ain’t useful, but finding evidence that your theories are wrong is priceless. Never try to prove yourself right – always try to prove yourself wrong instead.” Andrew Lane

You know, if you were, are, or ever will be wrong yourself.

194

Epistemology

“It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself.” Carl Jung

Psychology. Isn’t that one of the soft sciences?

“The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system." Albert Einstein

Next up: the empty schemes here.

“But doesn’t it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision?” Ludwig Wittgenstein

If only up in the epistemological clouds.

“Information came into the universe when the first hominids began to justify their actions to one another by making assertions and backing those assertions up with further assertions.” Richard Rorty

Want me to name names? Here, I mean.

“The great achievement of Kant is to have shown, once for all, that the external world is known to us only as sensation; and that the mind is no mere helpless tabula rasa, the inactive victim of sensation, but a positive agent, selecting and reconstructing experience as experience arrives.” Will Durant

Deontologically to boot.

“Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Hopefully that will never happen here.

195

Muriel Barbery from The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“How to measure a life’s worth? The important thing, said Paloma one day, is not the fact of dying, it is what you are doing in the moment of your death.”

Right, that sure helps to put oblivion in perspective.

No one seems to have thought of the fact that life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure. It’s just more comfortable. And even then: I think lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something.

Maybe?

I’m afraid to go into myself and see what’s going on in there.

Yo, Mr. Objectivist!

To tell a group of adolescents who already know how to speak and write that that is the purpose of grammar is like telling someone that they need to read a history of toilets through the ages in order to pee and poop.

New thread?

This morning I understand what it means to die: when we disappear, it is the others who die for us, for here I am, lying on a cold pavement and it is not the dying I care about; it has no more meaning this morning that it did yesterday. But never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is about then it really is the tragedy they say it is.

New thread?

We mustn’t forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude.

Forget about it?

196

Slavoj Žižek

The catch is that, even if life does eventually return to some semblance of normality, it will not be the same normal as the one we experienced before the outbreak. Things we were used to as part of our daily life will no longer be taken for granted, we will have to learn to live a much more fragile life with constant threats. We will have to change our entire stance to life, to our existence as living beings among other forms of life. In other words, if we understand “philosophy” as the name for our basic orientation in life, we will have to experience a true philosophical revolution.

He still doesn’t grasp it was a liberal hoax to enslave the world.

At this point we reach the supreme irony of how ideology functions today: it appears precisely as its own opposite, as a radical critique of ideological utopias. The predominant ideology today is not a positive vision of some utopian future but a cynical resignation, an acceptance of how 'the world really is’, accompanied by a warning that, if we want to change it (too much), only totalitarian horror can ensue.

Ideology, meet lifestyles.

What characterizes a really great thinker is that they misrecognize the basic dimension of their own breakthrough.

You first.

WHEN THE TURKISH COMMUNIST WRITER Panait Istrati visited the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s, the time of the big purges and show trials, a Soviet apologist trying to convince him about the need for violence against the enemies evoked the proverb “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” to which Istrati tersely replied: “All right. I can see the broken eggs. Where’s this omelet of yours?”

Same with dasein, right? It’s all just fractured and fragmented eggs.

According to the standard view, the past is fixed, what happened happened, it cannot be undone, and the future is open, it depends on unpredictable contingencies. What we should propose here is a reversal of this standard view: the past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed, since we live in a determinist universe…This does not mean that we cannot change the future; it just means that, in order to change our future, we should first (not ‘understand’ but) change our past, reinterpret it in a way that opens up toward a different future from the one implied by the predominant vision of the past.

Uh, get back to us on this, okay?

Although Immanuel Kant’s views are racist, he nonetheless contributed to the process which led to contemporary emancipatory struggles - to put it bluntly, there is no Marxism and no socialism without Kant.

Pick one:
1] He goes too far
2] He doesn’t go far enough

197

Ludwig Wittgenstein

How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

And post after post after post after post here.

When we can’t think for ourselves, we can always quote.

Him, for example.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

Like we can actually know this.

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

The part you still don’t get.

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

Including this one?

Language disguises thought.

And most don’t even know it.

198

Time

“You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you.” Rick Yancey

No exceptions, of course.

“The days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.” Alan Bennett

And then it’s gone forever.

“It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is” W.B. Yeats

How many for you?

“Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.” Han Kang

Remember that, okay?

“It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.” Samuel Beckett

If only all the way to the grave?

“How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever.” David Norris

Next up: you’re flat broke.

199

God

“Then I remember that God is really, really old. So maybe God has God arthritis. And maybe that’s why the world sucks. Maybe God’s hands and fingers don’t work as well as they used to.” Sherman Alexie

That would help to explain some things, I suppose.

“You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child. The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answers your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. The true God lies beyond our comprehension. We can’t understand His will; He can’t be explained in a book. He didn’t abandon us and He will not save us. He has nothing to do with our being here. God does not change. He simply is. I don’t pray to God for forgiveness or favors, I only pray to be closer to Him, and when I pray, I fill my heart with love. When I pray this way, I know that God is love. When I feel that love, I remember that we don’t need angels or a heaven, because we are a part of God already.” Nando Parrado

Next up: Judgment Day for Nando. Up? Down?

“I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?” Catherynne M. Valente

Uh, start here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gdeV4Rk9EfL-NyraEGXXwSjDNeMaRoX

“If it’s not one god it’s another. Allah or oil. Jesus or Jewels. Lenin or lust.” Victor Robert Lee

Get it?

“We are human, and we suffer, and unlike the animals on the farm, we are self-aware, and we know that we suffer, and it doesn’t hurt more or less if God caused it or could stop it, at least for me. I am definitely of the school that believes God has bigger stuff to worry about than me.” Jon Katz

New thread, IC?

“God hides the fires of hell within paradise.” Paulo Coelho

How ominous might that be…if it’s true.

200

Science

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” Albert Einstein

Always important to bring this one back.
You just wouldn’t think it might be necessary here, right?

“Never memorize something that you can look up.” Albert Einstein

And these days that’s everything.

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” Douglas Adams

Uh, click?

“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.” Terry Pratchett

Let’s change that.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Niels Bohr

And, no, not just up in the theoretical clouds.

“I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.” Arthur C. Clarke

That would certainly explain lots of things.

201

Death

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” George McGovern

So was Nancy Kulp.

"…the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.” José Saramago

See, I told you.

“Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour–and in the oddest places!–for the lack of it.” James Baldwin

Anyone not loved here perishing?

“The connections we make in the course of a life–maybe that’s what heaven is.” Fred Rogers

Though not necessarily in your neighborhood. And definitely not in mine.

“I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart. ” Mitch Albom

Of course, with your mom, it might have been different.

“Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Says who, in other words.