Thread for mundane ironists

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302

Logic

“For desired conclusions, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?”, but for unpalatable conclusions we ask, "Must I believe this?” Thomas Gilovich

Or: “For desired conclusions, we insist, ‘you must believe this too’, but for unpalatable conclusions we insist, ‘The fools!’"

“Logic in all its infinite potential, is the most dangerous of vices. For one can always find some form of logic to justify his action, and rest comfortably in the assurance, that what he did abides by reason. That is why, for us brittle beings, Intention is the only true weapon of peace.” Ilyas Kassam

On the road to Hell?

“It is easy to understand that in the dreary middle ages the Aristotelian logic would be very acceptable to the controversial spirit of the schoolmen, which, in the absence of all real knowledge, spent its energy upon mere formulas and words…" Arthur Schopenhauer

Cue Will Durant’s dreary epistemologists?

“Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.” Sam Harris

In a free-will determinist world? :wink:

“In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.” Tahir Shah.

America? Forget about it.

“Life always involves some logic in its manifestations, and logic, as a rule, excludes the versatility of life from its considerations.” Raheel Farooq

The parts that revolve around dasein let’s say.

303

Milan Kundera from Immortality

The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self.

He got that right.

But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today’s world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.

So, do we have that covered or not?

We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.

Is that something to actually worry about?

When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons; he does not yet sense that his life contains just a single theme; he will come to realise it only when his life begins to enact its first variations.

See, I told you.

If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy.

So, how am I doing?

And it isn’t enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way can we regard ourselves not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.

Me? Passionately fractured and fragmented?

304

Herman Melville from Bartleby the Scrivener

I would prefer not to.

Next up: Is that an actual option?

Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.

Or, here, not aloof at all.

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

I’d actually prefer that myself.

But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.

Go ahead, ask me why I stay then.

‘Will you, or will you not, quit me?’ I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him.
‘I would prefer not to quit you’, he replied, gently emphasizing the not.

On the other hand, why did he prefer that? Are not preferences no less rooted existentially in dasein?

Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby, in a singular mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to".

As opposed to, say, “fuck you, I ain’t doing it!”

305

Meaning

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that’s left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.” Margaret Atwood

Of course, as with the rest of us, he said a lot of things.
But point more or less taken.

“To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.’ Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.” Viktor E. Frankl

Tell that to the Nazis?

“Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.” Nikolai Berdyaev

Really, imagine actually being able to convince yourself of something this ridicukous!
Uh, right?

“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.” Bernard Knox

Next up: It’s Act II here. Own up!

“To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire–
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.” Edgar Lee Masters

Next up: the meaning of one’s death.

“Why should I even bother? What’s the point, really?"
He thought for a moment. “Who says there has to be a point?” he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it’s just something you have to do.” Sarah Dessen

Like, say, breathing in and out.

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If our thoughts were determined by reality, they could not diverge from it. That’s why sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between insanity and creativity.

The difference is creativity builds (eternal Nature) together (with eternal Nature) and insanity … breaks down (while still/eternally pointing/looping back).

It is the condition for the possibility of joy. True strength.

God’s thoughts never diverge from reality, and to him it is all built, but he subsumes that “building towards” — because love/joy is not love/joy without demonstration.

The truth we should be, the way we should do, and the life we should live & die for — all three must have import, or all three amount to nada.

And since nada does not exist, all three must have import.

self=other

Mirror? I am def not there yet… but… we will be (1 Corinthians 13:12). Because the maximally great lives.

307

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic.

He means a fractured and fragmented fool, right?

You sometimes see in a wind a piece of paper blowing about anyhow. Suppose the piece of paper could make the decision: ‘Now I want to go this way.’ I say: ‘Queer, this paper always decides where it is to go, and all the time it is the wind that blows it. I know it is the wind that blows it.’ That same force which moves it also in a different way moves its decisions.

Next up: windy exchanges here.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
The result of philosophy is not a number of “philosophical propositions”, but to make propositions clear.
Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

Ah, the early Wittgenstein.

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

Cue Veritas Aequitas! :wink:

In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value…and if there were, it would be of no value.

See, I told you.

A tautology’s truth is certain, a proposition’s possible, a contradiction’s impossible.

Ours or theirs?

308

Science

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” Will Durant

Not counting the “epistemologists”, perhaps?

“I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me ‘Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid’ - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of God, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no God is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.” Douglas Adams

Fifty-fifty?

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” Stephen Hawking

Seventy-thirty?

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.” Claude Levi-Strauss

Though every once in a while…both?

“If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.” Albert Einstein

He wondered what Einstein came back as. Hell, he might even be one of us!!

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Carl Sagan

And now, Carl?

309

Roberto Bolaño

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

Same with posting here?

Life left us all where we were meant to be or where it was convenient to leave us and then forgot us, which is as it should be.

Click, let’s call it.

When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we’re nothing.

That’s not even half of what I found.

…I realized my happiness was artificial. I felt happy because I saw the others were happy and because I knew I should feel happy, but I wasn’t really happy.

Personas we call them.

And I thought: History is like a horror story.

And then [eventually] we blow ourselves up.

Which is to say, boys, that I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.

No, really, spill the beans. How does that work “for all practical purposes”?

310

God

“God seemed to have become a brand, a packaging, and people purchase this trusted brand with such faith and devotion that they no longer care who the vendor is.” Justin Villanueva

Saved is saved?

“Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle”. Werner Herzog

A memoir let’s call it.

“The destiny of your soul is not predicated upon acceptance of a specific dogma that happens to be ‘correct.’ A loving God does not dole out eternal condemnation because one has selected the wrong doctrine or misinterpreted scripture. On the contrary, your endeavor to understand God and the nature of the universe is a testament to your devotion.” Mark Ireland

A loophole?!

“Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

Or that God is cruel?

“It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.” William Ralph Inge

Next up: What God?

“…it’s okay to be addicted to beauty," Mom says, all dreamy. "Emerson said 'beauty is God’s handwriting.” Jandy Nelson

All dreamy indeed.

311

Werner Herzog

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark?

Steer clear of Solaris then.

Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.

Next up: Academia is the death of philosophy. Well, not counting Walt Fuchs, Jo Ann Robinson and Rene deBrabander.

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

Loud and clear.

Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity.

So, it’s okay to eat them.

Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read…if you don’t read, you will never be a filmmaker.

Sure, posts here might count.

Facts do not convey truth. That’s a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.

Send in the clouds? 8)

312

Philosophy

“We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.” Terry Pratchett.

Or, for others, flipping coins.

“Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.” William James

Besides, as often as not, they’re only clouds.

“But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.” Immanuel Kant

You know, up in the clouds. Dueling definitions let’s call it.

“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” Plato

At least until the cave dwellers of the world unite.
If it’s not already too late for that, of course.

“Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?” Hermann Hesse

Uh, nope?

"The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.” Hermann Hesse

Next up: objectivists of the world unite!
And then it’s all finally settled once and for all: they choose your own One True Path.

313

Free Will

“Darwin has shown that we are animals; but—as humanists never tire of preaching­—how we live is ‘up to us’. Unlike any other animal, we are told, we are free to live as we choose. Yet the idea of free will does not come from science. Its origins are in religion—not just any religion, but the Christian faith against which humanists rail so obsessively.” John Gray

And, of course, only an omniscient God can “somehow” guarantee that we have free will. Thus…

“But even the gods cannot see infinitely far ahead. Our free wills cloud Their vision, even though Their eyes are more piercing than ours. The gods do not plan, so much as take advantage.” Lois McMaster Bujold

So – click – which one is it?

"Plenty of smart people denied the existence of free will, but perhaps the stakes were not as high for them.” Emily Habeck

Perhaps. That just about sums up everything here.

“Free will from the perspective of Islam is not an absolute open concept without boundaries. A Muslim has to abide to the shari’ah, and hence has to be conscious of both his/her individual and collective responsibilities.” Noraini M. Noor

Let’s run that by the pinheads here. :wink:

“Just as a subatomic particle like an electron cannot be said to be definitely in one place at one time, the decisions we make are influenced but not completely defined by actions that led up to each decision," explained Mira. "In short, there is free will and a friendly soul’s job is to make the right decision instinctively. Like a samurai who acts faster than thinking because of many years of monotonous training the soul needs to be carved with every decision so as to automatically make the right decision without fear or questioning.” Peter Clifford Nichols

Wow! Talk about a ton of hard evidence!!

“Your future is a cosmic dance between destiny and fate. Destiny is determined by your current vibrational reality and free will. Fate depends on divine intercession and the co-created collective.” Anthon St. Maarten

Unless of course fate and destiny are exactly the same thing. But – wink, wink – some are just compelled to deny it.

314

Nathaniel Hawthorne from The Scarlet Letter

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Let’s run that by Martin Vail.

“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

The part about responsibilities I’m guessing.

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

Like how laughing and crying can become indistinguishable.

She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.

So she swiped it from others.

She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.

Been there, done that.
Enough said?

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

Here? Me, right?

315

Logic

“Logic may be conceived as ruling out what is absolutely impossible, and thus determining the field of what in the absence of empirical knowledge is abstractly possible.” Morris F. Cohen.

You know, if only theoretically.

“The success of democracy depends, in the end, on the reliability of the judgments we citizens make, and hence upon our capacity and determination to weigh arguments and evidence rationally.” Irving Copi

Tell me that doesn’t explain…everything?

“It’s not reasonable to love people who are only going to die.” Kristin Cashore

And they you, of course.

“… for although people can be made worse off by all other gifts, correct reasoning alone can only be for the good.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Let’s run this by John from Cincinnati.

“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.” Isaac Asimov.

The future let’s call it. Though not necessarily the near future.

“We humans seem to be extremely good at generating ideas, theories, and explanations that have the ring of plausibility. We may be relatively deficient, however, in evaluating and testing our ideas once they are formed” Thomas Gilovich.

Solution? Never ever come down out of the clouds.

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Does that mean something superior to us made the finished product(s) we are, or that it is impossible for the maximally great, irreducibly complex being to be something we merely “constructed”?

Are you telling Jesus he couldn’t become human (stay up in the clouds)? That he was eternally sustained from beyond all time and/or is its Archimedean point?

Or who are you saying should stay up in the clouds?

317

André Gide from The Immoralist

Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.

Find mine and then have a go at it.

‘You have to let other people be right’ was his answer to their insults. ‘It consoles them for not being anything else’.

Let’s run that by the Stooges here.
And, no, not just mine.

Yet I’m sure there’s something more to be read in a man. People dare not – they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry – I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don’t find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia – it’s the worst kind of cowardice. You can’t create something without being alone. But who’s trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that’s the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that’s just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

Uh, maybe?

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

What do you remember?

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

Whatever that means.

I can’t expect others to share my virtues. It’s good enough for me if they share my vices.

Ah, the best of all possible worlds.

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Seek yours or else lose every stop in nothing.

curtsies

moon walks with averted gaze

319

Meaning

“Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person’s life its true meaning.” Paulo Coelho

Right, it’s true meaning. Which may well be that there is no true meaning.

“Sex means nothing–just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.” Philip Larkin

Of course: he must be doing it wrong. Unless, perhaps, he’s right?

“When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” Margery Williams Bianco.

Now that takes me back some.

“I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?” David Byrne

Musically, he means. On the other hand, whatever that means?

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.” Richard P. Feynman

Well, other than theoretically, of course,

“The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.” Umberto Eco

Ah, another “world of words”?

320

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.

Let’s start here: dasein.

In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.

Pick two:
1] Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
2] Philosophical Investigations

In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.

You first.

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them.

On the other hand [as we all know by now] not much does.

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.

After all, it says so in the Bible.

Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics.

A priori nonsense? Let’s name names.

321

Science

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Niels Bohr

I’m right from my side and you’re right from your side?
Uh, then what?

“How inappropriate to call this planet ‘Earth,’ when it is clearly ‘Ocean.’" Arthur C. Clarke

Right, like that will ever catch on.

“Science is interesting, and if you don’t agree you can fuck off." Richard Dawkins

Or go to Hell?

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.” H.P. Lovecraft

Or, sure, one of the hundreds and hundreds of old ones.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein

Her eyes too. You know the one.

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” Carl Sagan

Anyone else here really miss this guy?