Thread for mundane ironists

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Werner Herzog

Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.

Next up: your post.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

You first.

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience…

…and how that is applicable here.

A fairly young, intelligent-looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no.

That was me by the way.

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do–out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation–look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.

And now?

It is only through writing that I become myself.

I gave that a shot myself. And then I blew myself up.

343

Death

“Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.” Ernest Hemingway

Next up: the death of a philosophy forum.

“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.” David Levithan

Or, sure, our ability to loathe them. Virtually, as it were.

But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies.” Jacqueline Woodson

Also, theoretically, up in the clouds here, we never die.

“Believe me, when you die, it’s everybody else’s but your problem” Cecelia Ahern

How comforting!

"I went on spouting bullshit encouragements as Gus’s parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.” John Green

Not unlike everything else, right?

“When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.” Neil Gaiman

Remember when we could run this by Immanuel Can?

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Maybe if they can’t resurrect their forum, someone can extend a warm welcome to this one? Do any of y’all communicate with whoever runs the forum over there?

345

Philosophy

“Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.” Martin Heidegger

Not counting fascism, of course.

“The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man’s head because she turns his heart.” Peter Kreeft

At least that’s settled.

“The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?” R. Scott Bakker

Unless, of course, being a slave is the whole point.

“Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?” Kōbō Abe

Uh, what’s the difference?

“Pactum serva." Horace

In other words, to leap or not to leap, that is the question.

“What can a soldier do when mercy is treason…?” Laini Taylor

Uh, grow a pair?

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Richard Wright from Native Son

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

That might make me a walking skeleton then.

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed…It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

Or you can just…shut it down?

They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.

Trust me: not just theoretically.

I didn’t know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em…

Nope, never have come to that point myself.
Yet, let’s say.

The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.

See, we told you.

Literature is a struggle over the nature of reality.

Fiction, let’s call it.

347

Gautama Buddha

Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom of one man seems nonsense to another.

Fortunately, however, the only thing that is at stake here is your very soul.

Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.

The Benjamin Button Syndrome let’s call it.

True love is born from understanding.

Or, for the objectivists here, born from misunderstanding.
Unless, of course, I’m wrong.

Nothing is forever except change.

That and from time to time instant karma.

As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.

If only virtually?

The tongue like a sharp knife…kills without drawing blood.

Ah, of course…that elusive spirit.

348

Logic

“In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony God’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my own intelligence.” Karl Marx.

Imagine, then, if he were still around today.

“Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. To look at it in such a way that we understand what need it fulfills, and in what kind of world.” Marcus Aurelius

He means less conducive, of course.

"…they are making this complicated just to make me more confused.” Dmitry Dyatlov

Or: “they are making this less complicated just to make me more confused.”

“I didn’t like feeling things. Emotions were ever-shifting and devoid of logic, and they gave me no way to sink my blade into them.” Carissa Broadbent

For better or for worse, that hasn’t changed, of course…

“The necessary incompleteness of even our formal systems of thought demonstrates that there is no non-shifting foundation on which any system rests. Our knowing minds are not embedded in truth. Rather the entire notion of truth is embedded in our minds.” Rebecca Goldstein

Next up: rather informal systems of thought.
Say, for all practical purposes.

[b]“Some theists fall in these categories
Using:

  1. Circular Reasoning: Assuming the conclusion in the premise, essentially restating the same idea without providing new information.
  2. Argument from Ignorance*=: Asserting something as true simply because it hasn’t been proven false, or vice versa.
  3. Appeal to Authority: Using the opinion or testimony of an authority figure as evidence in an argument.
  4. False Dichotomy: Presenting an argument as though there are only two options when there could be more.
  5. Argument from Personal Incredulity: Rejecting a claim because one finds it difficult to understand or believe.

Those are most fallacies which believers use” Deyth Banger[/b]

Let’s run this by William Lane Craig.

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Meaning

“What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.” Haruki Murakami

And, sure, occasionally, a really, really big reality.

“Better than a thousand sayings
Made up of useless words
Is one word of meaning
Which calms you to hear it.” Anonymous

How about this: I won’t say it if you don’t make me.

“When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.” Rollo May

Existence, he called it.

“Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.” David Markson

Or, here:

“Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic ‘feeling’ about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes ‘pick up’ accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.” Colin Wilson

Ask me to explain this better – a hell of a lot better – than he does.

“Accept the universe
As the gods gave it to you.
If the gods wanted to give you something else
They’d have done it." Alberto Caeiro

So, did they?

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Yeah like you’d even let anyone make you.

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Science

“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person." Bill Bryson

Or four if you count God. The right God.

“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” Richard Dawkins

Fortunately, some insist, it’s entirely “beyond our control”.

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” Albert Einstein

Praise the Lord?

“There are as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.” Neil deGrasse Tyson

Praise the Lord?

“I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.” Carl Sagan

Note to the bots: they’re coming for you.
Again.

Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime.

Next up: IC’s ridiculous Atheists?

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changes channel

353

God

“God is fucking stealing souls again!” Stephen Adly Guirgis

Check on yours and get back to us.
Or, better still, perhaps, help me to find mine?

“It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause.” David Hume

No more absurd than not believing it?

‎"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.” William Lane Craig

Exactly!

“Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.” Emil Cioran

At least on this planet?

“Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God’s image. Either/or: either man was created in God’s image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.
The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus “ate and drank, but did not defecate.”
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man’s crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man.” Milan Kundera

Next up: semen?

“God’s ways are higher than our ways not because he is less compassionate than we are but because he is more compassionate than we can ever imagine.” Rachel Held Evans

Take for example those “acts of God”. The most mysterious compassion of all perhaps?

354

I have discovered that things are usually in the last place you left them. And you’re usually going to find them in the last place you check, if you’re going to find them at all. If I have to find it for you, and I find it exactly where I told you to look, I’m keeping it. But currently I am eating GK Mongolian BBQ and it is a metaphysical experience you’ll have to wait for.

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You ever go full tilt on stilts?

That’s how Rumplestiltskin got his name.

I think somebody put something in my GK Mongolian BBQ.

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ikr? He’s definitely pigeonholed God into a certain frame hasn’t he? God is everything that’s awesome. More awesome than GK Mongolian BBQ. And I called that a metaphysical experience. So God is everything that’s awesome and he wants you to have pure enjoyment. You definitely got problems if you got problems with that.

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Maybe Jesus should’ve said it’s also not what comes out of a man that defiles him?

I am no man. Therefore I am impossible to defile in that way. If being defiled in that way were possible.

But I do wonder if pure enjoyment would be possible without semen, because without semen, there would not be children.

Not to mention rainbows.

:rofl:

It’s def the GK Mongolian BBQ.

358

That’s like Hume again. Hume will only acknowledge this weird warped version of pure enjoyment (worship as applause, God as narcissist). YOU, or… the wibbly wobbly stance you imply… only acknowledge the “acts of God” normally dubbed natural disasters (ironically also considered unworthy of worship, and not at all indicative of compassion). But in saying that Hume was also a believer in his own way, in a weird twist you agree that perhaps what we perceive as disasters at the time actually turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. It’s all about the frame.

It’s all about opportunities for growth. It’s all about circumstances for, or conditions for the possibility of, unconditional, pure enjoyment.

Because without a “what” there can be no “no matter what”.

Friends, Romans, countrymen … Give/bring me your shit. Right?

Well, eventually, for sure.

359

Werner Herzog

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

And not just to the kitchen or the bathroom.

Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next station, either, a hundred kilometers away, and did he not also admit to me, whispering with his hand shielding his mouth, that the train would not stop again at all?

You’re dead in other words.

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do–out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation–look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.

He wondered: “Me too?”

Americans believe that they are normal, that they make sense, and that the rest of the world is exotic. They do not seem to understand that they are the most exotic people in the world right now.

Yeah, right.

Amos Vogel was a mentor, a guiding light for me. In his presence, you always rose. But his importance to me is of minor significance. What is significant is that with him an entire epoch ends. The Last Lion has left us. I am still not capable – or rather unwilling – to understand the fact that Amos passed away, because a man like him cannot be dead. His traces are everywhere.

Reminds me of this guy:

“Oscar Tio was a friend of mine
92 years old he sent me a valentine
Oscar Tio passed away a few years ago flat on his back
he never cried…he never sighed
and with his last departing breath
he said he had a mighty fine time”

You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Hint, hint.

360

Death

The death of dogma is the birth of morality. Immanuel Kant

Oh, indeed, categorically and imperatively.

Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will. J.D. Salinger

Of course: https://youtu.be/snTaSJk0n_Y?si=0YBc7Delw4XgjVk0

One day you’ll call me Death.
For now, Wrath will do.” Kerri Maniscalco.

Next up: in the interim?

“People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.” Banksy

And not just those in the Pentagon. Though, sure, no one else comes even close.

Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let’s say you’re southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you’re sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you–do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale?” Chuck Palahniuk.

Up popped this – https://youtu.be/XhtoRlVUPo0?si=G7NxFmsxLPS4N9wS – in my head.

I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it–it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.” James Baldwin

The good news: nobody does.

361

Philosophy

“…when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world. ” Steiner G.

So, does that tell us more about language or the world?

“Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.” Martin Heidegger

Coming from him, right?

“Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?” Kōbō Abe

Yes.

“Between love and the automatic garbage chute, young people everywhere have made their choice and prefer the garbage chute." Ivan Chtcheglov

A Western thing?

“Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.” Ann Brashares

Could that really be all it is?

“…when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.” Robert Anton Wilson

And, no, not just among the lluminati.