Thread for mundane ironists

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422

Philosophy

“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Start here: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/

“One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.” Friedrich Nietzsche

All of us here, for example.
In what particular order though?

“Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.” John Rawls

Read it and weep, Mr. Pinhead!

“A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel’s work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.” Jose Marti

Any scoundrels here? If you know what I mean. And, if so, explain it to me.

“Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.” Konrad Lorenz

So, choose wisely.

“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” Bertrand Russell

For example: birth —> school —> work —> death.
Though, alas, for others it’s birth—> work—> death.

423

Bret Easton Ellis from The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

What does that mean know me, know me, nobody ever knows anybody else, ever! You will never know me.

Let alone yourself.

No one ever likes the right person.

How’s that working out for you?

I only had sex with her because I’m in love with you.

Go ahead, use that yourself.

And it struck me then, that I liked Sean because he looked, well, slutty. A boy who had been around. A boy who couldn’t remember if he was Catholic or not.

Bohemian rhapsody, as it were.

“The Smiths are singing and someone says ‘Turn that gay angst music off.’"

Let’s run this by Tom and Summer: https://youtu.be/1hyEnE1SwQA?si=R_xrQjnq5hVF9S0k

I wasn’t acting on passion. I was simply acting.

Anyone simply acting here?

424

Aldous Huxley from Brave New World

It is natural to believe in God when you’re alone—quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

Next up: it’s natural to die.

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.

That’s going too far, of course. On the other hand, don’t get me started.

Pain was a fascinating horror.

Define fascinating?

A man can smile and smile and be a villain.

Wow, I actually didn’t know that.

And that, put in the Director sententiously, that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.

No, really, that’s probably how it works.

I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.

Then those who claim the right to make others unhappy.

425

Meaning

“Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding.” Werner Karl Heisenberg

Not once we have the definition though, right?

“August: You know, somethings don’t matter that much…like the color of a house…But lifting a person’s heart–now that matters. The whole problem with people–"
Lily: They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t…
August:…They know what matters, but they don’t choose it…The hardest thing on earth is to choose what matters.” Sue Monk Kidd

No, really, what does still matter?

“The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.” Niels Bohr

Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.
Of course, there are lots and lots and lots of other ways too.

“There’s a drive in a lost soul—in one that is searching for acceptance, companionship, belonging, whatever you want to call it. The slightest coincidence ignites a spark that one hopes will lead to something meaningful.” Doug Cooper

Actually, this is a real thing.

“Where words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.” Confucius

Let’s just hope that never happens here.

“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

How can it not be crucial to determine if the things we think, feel, say and do, we think, feel, say and do them with at least some measure of autonomy?

426

wrong thread

427

John Fowles from The Magus

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true — they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, “You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love.” They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

In other words…blah, blah, blah…they were nihilists.

The world began in hazard and will end in it.

Start preparing now?

The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed–thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes–because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself–and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.

So, who won?

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

Define all?

We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did.

Not much in the way of mystery and delicate emotion here though, he noted.

If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.

Or, perhaps, autonomic definitions?

428

Yuval Noah Harari

The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we’ll really get paradise in return? We’ve seen it on television.

Praise the Lord!
Now, pass the ammunition.

…happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.

Next up: happiness here? Clouds, clouds and more clouds!!

The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.

Pick one
1] our achievments
2] their achievments

People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.

Thus the proliferation still today of these folks:

In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

Next up: salt.

Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: ‘Happiness begins within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.

Though not necessarily in that order, of course.

429

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.

Next up: philosophy as we ought to use the word instead.

If I wanted to eat an apple, and someone punched me in the stomach, taking away my appetite, then it was this punch that I originally wanted.

Then going all the way back to the Big Bang.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Nope, doesn’t comfort me at all. How about you?

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

Hmm, not unlike philosophical solutions.

More wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in philosophy.

That is until In Cold Blood.

As there is only a logical necessity, so there is only a logical
impossibility.

What do you say, a particular context?

430

Science

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” Adam Smith

As often as not, let’s wager.
In the marketplace, for example.

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes – I mean the universe – but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” Galileo

Rough translation for some: Praise the Lord!

“It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.” Albert Einstein

Some here still ain’t cracked!

“I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.” Neil deGrasse Tyson

Want me to explain that again for you?

“Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.” St. Augustine

No getting around that, right?

“Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.” Nikola Tesla

The fool!
After all, you’ve already solved it, right?

431

God

“A man of God would never burn or harm a temple of any kind - regardless of religion. A true man of God would see every temple or divine mansion built to glorify the Creator - as an extension of the temple closest to his home, regardless of its shape, size, or color. A man who truly recognizes and knows God can see God in all things.” Suzy Kassem

So, sure, go ahead and roll the dice.

“The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a heaven and a hell when all I see now is hell.” Aaron B. Powell

Believe it or not, I was once this optimistic myself.

“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails”. James Joyce

Just out of curiosity, where did Andy Warhol and his ilk fit in here?

“A miracle is a single mom who works two jobs to care for her kids and still helps them with their homework at night. A miracle is a child donating all the money in their piggy bank to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. That’s where you’ll find the hand and face of God.” Cathie Linz

Of course, to paraphrase Meghan Cleary, “who brought Katrina?”

“God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” Francis Bacon

Let’s take this up into the clouds and [finally] settle it.

“There better not be a God because I’ll be in big trouble.” Patricia Marx

Next up: there is a God but it’s not yours.

432

Iris Murdoch from The Sea, The Sea

… male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around.

Let’s run this by, well, you know. 8)

Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one’s aid. For most people common sense is moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You’ve made it into a story, and stories are false.

Trust me: some more than others.

Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.

New thread. No, really, let’s try to pin down what this might mean for, say, all practical purposes?

But it was just luck really if the girls survived. You’re like a man firing a machine gun into a supermarket who happens not to become a murderer.

Next up: henry “bazooka joe” quirk ups the ante.

We are all potentially demons to each other, but some close relationships are saved from this fate.

Wow, anyone here want to start one with me?
Win/win we’ll call it.

Indeed, now I come to think of it, nearly everything in the world is relevant to my situation.

All the way up to the grave, I suspect.

433

Death

**“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack all dressed in black, black, black **
**She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back **
She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry
Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die, die…” Laurie Faria Stolarz

You, you, you, too?

“…and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don’t mean much to anyone except to the one who can’t take any of them along. ” Mark Z. Danielewski

The “house of leaves” he calls it.

“Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.” Kahlil Gibran

Yeah, sort of.

“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.” E. M. Forster

Let’s run that by these guys: https://youtu.be/QO5dcW0P75M?si=Mimk2KSy0RwXXB3K

“A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough. [Alexander’s tombstone epitaph]”
Alexander the Great

On the other hand, “[t]he tomb of Alexander the Great is attested in several historical accounts, but its current exact location remains an enduring mystery.” wiki

“Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die.” Haruki Murakami

Then [for some]: “tired of living, but scared of dying”.

434

Philosophy

“Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. A human being may well ask an animal: ‘Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?’ The animal would like to answer, and say, ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say’ - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Let’s ask the animals here.

“Call no man happy until he is dead.” Solon

Next up: “Call no woman happy until he is dead.”

“What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.” Peter Singer

Anyone here recall what that was?

“Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.” La Rochefoucauld

The sun for sure. But death? After all, each day, hundreds plunge right into it. They – click – choose to in other words.

“You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he’s really just hoping he makes it all the way across?” Jodi Picoult

Over and over and over and over again, for example.

“When God takes out the trash, don’t go digging back through it. Trust Him.” Amaka Imani Nkosazana

How’s that working out for you?

435

Bret Easton Ellis from The Rules of Attraction

If you can’t make a girl come why even bother? That always seemed to me to be like writing questions in a letter.

Can you?

‘Do you wear a diaphragm everywhere you go?’ I want to scream, but stop myself because the idea really excites me.

Something like this, right JJ? https://youtu.be/u88xFHiHiBk?si=TMgu2GXDasQitPFz

…he looked at me with such vehemence that I felt like a blip, a fart, in the course of his life.

And the equivalent of that here, of course.

Did you know I was born in a Holiday Inn.

Is that even legal?

I didn’t know. All I know was that the sex was terrific. And that the hippie was cute. She loved sweet pickles. She liked the name Willie. She even liked Apocalypse Now. She was not a vegetarian. These were all on the plus side. But, once I introduced her to my friends, at the time, and they were all stuck-up asshole Lit majors and they made fun of her and she understood what was going on and her eyes, usually blue, too blue, vacant, were sad. And I protected her. I took her away from them. (‘Spell Pynchon,’ they asked her, cracking up.) And she introduced me to her friends. And we ended up sitting on some Japanese pillows in her room and we all smoked some pot and this little hippie girl with a wreath on her head, looked at me as I held her and said, "The world blows my mind’. And you know what? I fucked her anyway.

Postmodern love they called it.

God, the name Susan is so ugly. It reminds me of the word sinus.

Not my Susan, of course.

436

Aldous Huxley from Brave New World

It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.

To the Pentagon, for example.

When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.

Of course, we’ll have to make it about something, right?

“Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

Of course, here, it’s always the other way around.

This concern with the basic condition of freedom — the absence of physical constraint — is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free — to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.

The Deep State let’s call it. Unless, of course, that’s already taken.

What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?

You’ll think of something, won’t you?

Can you say something about nothing?

You’ll think of something, won’t you?

437

John Fowles from The Magus

I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.

Right, godot?

It came to me…that I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.

Spin, spin, spin. Then spin, spin, spin some more.

Men see objects, women see the relationship between objects.

Commit that to memory, and then move on.

Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.

Of course, most of us will take our chances.

“There are three types of intelligent persons: the first so intelligent that being called very intelligent must seem natural and obvious; the second sufficiently intelligent to see that he is being flattered, not described; the third so little intelligent that he will believe anything. I knew I belonged to the second kind.”

Or, uh, four it you count women?

Think. In a minute from now you could be saying, I risked death. I threw for life, and I won life. It is a very wonderful feeling. To have survived.”

Mine however has more or less worn off.

438

Yuval Noah Harari

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information…In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.

Pick three:
1] pop culture
2] mindless consumption
3] big brother, survivor, the amazing race

Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.

Pick three
1] henry quirk
2] henry quirk
3] henry quirk

How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others.

Yo, Satyr!

Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist.

Yo, Satyr!

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.

Historically, culturally and experientially, for example.

In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.

The fool!
Though, sure, point taken.

439

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The mechanism which we don’t understand is not anything in our soul, but rather that of the life of this expression.

Talk about a made-up word…

To believe in God is to see that life has meaning.

You know, if it’s the right God.

Only let’s cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.

Any transcendental twaddlers here?

Russell’s books should be bound in two colours, those dealing with mathematical logic in red — and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue — and no one should be allowed to read them.

See, I told you.

It is now how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it the world exists at all…

See, I told you.

But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.

New thread!

440

Science

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.” Bram Stoker

Okay, sure, but vampires?

“One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it.” Neil deGrasse Tyson

Let’s hope that never happens here.

“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God,’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.” Carl Sagan

See, I told you.
I did, didn’t I?

find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life.” John Burroughs

My guess: you can take this too far.

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, there’s a couple lying naked in bed reading Encyclopedia Brittannica to each other, and arguing about whether the Andromeda Galaxy is more ‘numinous’ than the Resurrection. Do they know how to have a good time, or don’t they?” Carl Sagan

Of course, they post here as well.

"God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.” Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Uh, prove it?