Thread for mundane ironists

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462

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. … They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)

You tell me. That second part in particular.

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.

I dare someone to bring this down out of the clouds.

Self-evidence, of which Russell has said so much, can only be discarded in logic by language itself preventing every logical mistake. That logic is a priori consists in the fact that we cannot think illogically.

Just out of curiosity, how close does this come to common sense?

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.

Its limitations say.

The man who said that one cannot step into the same river twice said something wrong; one can step into the same river twice.

Word games, or, this time, is he actually on to something.

Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.

See, I told you.

463

than?

464

What about the Rubicon?

jk

465

God

“From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.”
Ann Voskamp

You first. With or without the fig leaves.

“So the gods must mean something else,” said Jix.
“God, not gods!” insisted Johnnie.
Nick threw up his hands. “God, gods, or whatever,” said Nick. “Right now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Jesus, or Kukulcan, or a dancing bear at the end of the tunnel. What matters is that we have a clue, and we have to figure it out.”
“Why?” Johnnie asked again. “Why does God – excuse me, I mean ‘the Light of Universal Whatever’- why does it just give us a freakin’ impossible clue? Why can’t it just tell us what we’re supposed to do?”
“Because,” said Mikey. “the Dancing Bear wants us to suffer.” Neal Shusterman

That’s my point, of course. Give us a Scripture that even a child can grasp as the One True Path.

“If that were God’s plan, it’s a bad bargain; I don’t want to have to deal with a God like that…My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he’s gotten used to the things that I’m not capable of and I’ve come to terms with things he’s not capable of…and we care very much about each other.” Harold Kushner

Hey, like I always say: “whatever works”. At least until it doesn’t. In the interim, all that matters for most is what they believe not what they can actually demonstrate.

“If you wait, your heavenly Father will pick you up, carry you out into the night, and make your life sparkle. He wants to dazzle you with the wonder of his love.” Paul E. Miller

So, which of us has waited the longest?

“Dylan Jerome," the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him.” Jodi Picoult

Where’s Stephen L. Miles when you need him? Let’s talk about it.

“Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder. Another is Deity. The choice to be a fool is yours.” Vera Nazarian

Uh, click?

466

Joe Abercrombie from The Blade Itself

What a place. Glokta stifled a smile. It reminds me of myself, in a way. We both were magnificent once, and we both have our best days far behind us.

Not only that, but I suspect, as well, they are not likely to ever return.

Why do big men tend to have such little brains? Perhaps they get by on brawn too often, and their minds dry up like plums in the sun.

Next up: big women.

Damn, he was bored. It was a fact, he was only now beginning to realise, that the conversation of the drunk is only interesting to the drunk. A few glasses on wine can be the difference between finding a man a hilarious companion or an insufferable moron.

Cheers.

The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.

Next up: the bazooka itself.

These are dangerous times alright, and yet danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand.

Let’s get back to this on Wednesday. Right, Don?

When he’d made it thirty strides or so Logen turned around and looked back. The pot was sitting forlorn by the lake, already filling up with rainwater. They’d been through a lot together, him and that pot. “Fare you well, old friend.” The pot did not reply.

Next up: Wilson.

467

Death

“Dead. Never been that before. Not even once.” Jasper Fforde

Can you say that? Or, perhaps, more to the point, can you defend that?.

“I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. David Foster Wallace

Yeah, we certainly get that now.

"For me [death] denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.” David Foster Wallace

Let’s just say he took this down out of the clouds.

“To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)? Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought…?” Roland Barthes

Of course, a postmodern question deserves a postmodern answer. Though practically every one of them just leads to…you tell me.

“What happens if you get scared half to death twice?” Steven Wright

And not just philosophically.

“I was not, I was, I am not, I care not.” Epicurus

Now, especially, I suspect.

468

Philosophy

“Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.” Dejan Stojanovic

Imagine my own then.

“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Or, here, Hell is other posters?

“Sex is a powerful intent to create: the creation of pleasure, creation of love, and ultimately the creation of life. It connects and syncs two beings emotionally, physically, and mentally and is one of the strongest expressions of love that exists in this World.” Forrest Curran

Note to Supannika: Touche.

“How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Take a bow?

“Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.” Bernard Beckett

Click, I’m guessing.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well…” Rene Magritte

Mine for yours?

469

Ottessa Moshfegh from My Year of Rest and Relaxation

I can’t point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation. Initially, I just wanted some downers to drown out my thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything. I thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me.

Some will go into hibernation here as well. Unfortunately, they come back.

I felt myself float up and away, higher and higher into the ether until my body was just an anecdote, a symbol, a portrait hanging in another world.

We need a pill for that, don’t we?

I rebelled in silent ways, with my thoughts.

Wow, I’ll bet that shook things up!

I thought that if I did normal things—held down a job, for example—I could starve off the part of me that hated everything. If I had been a man, I may have turned to a life of crime.

Is that more a compliment or an insult to women?

I wasn’t an insomniac, but I was miserable.

You either get this or you don’t.

I feel very, very alone.
We’re all alone, Reva, I told her. It was true: I was, she was. This was the maximum comfort I could offer.

Part of me gets it and part of me does not. Unless, of course, it’s the other way around.

470

Aldous Huxley from Brave New World

They’re old; they’re about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now
But God doesn’t change
Men do though

Hint, hint.

That is the secret of happiness and virtue – liking what you’ve got to do.

Happiness, maybe.

Well, I’d rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.

Me? Still too close to call.

Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.

You know the ones.

The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg—eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.

The last time we measured.

But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art.

You tell me.

471

Not necessarily for the better.

Or worse.

473

Meaning

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war’s appeal." Chris Hedges

Pick one:

“If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.” Albert Camus

Let’s run that by iambiguous.

“A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales
Acts like a sick god, but like a god.
Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists,
He knows things exist, that he exists,
He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself,
And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist.
He knows being is the point.
All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point. Alberto Caeiro

See, I told you.

“The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.
The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.” Vera Nazarian

Wanna bet it’s not the other way around?

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point. . . . The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.” Richard Dawkins

The blasted fool, let’s call him.

“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, ‘Is there a meaning to music?’ My answer would be, ‘Yes.’ And ‘Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?’ My answer to that would be, ‘No’.” Aaron Copland

Uh, maybe?

474

John Fowles from The Magus

Death starves us of life. So we learn to fabricate our own immortalities.

Got a few of them here, of course.

It was not the mask I was afraid of…but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself

And then, occasionally, an evil woman. Got a few of them here, in fact.

Your first reaction is the characteristic one of your contrasuggestible century: to disbelieve, to disprove. I see this very clearly underneath your politeness.

Next up: Nicholas the Stooge?

Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken link, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a l like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper.

Allison? She’s now smack dab in the middle of the spin cycle, herself!

A look I shall never forget, because it was almost one of hatred, and hatred in her face was like spite in the Virgen Mary’s; it reversed the entire order of nature.

Not unlike my own assessments here, right?

But he was absolutely alone. No one ever wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met.

Actually, I may well have written the book here.

475

Yuval Noah Harari

Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

Right, blame it on the fucking plants.

Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change.

Let’s run this by the Communists here.

According to the science of biology, people were not ‘created’. They have evolved. And they certainly did not evolve to be ‘equal’. The idea of equality is inextricably intertwined with the idea of creation. The Americans got the idea of equality from Christianity, which argues that every person has a divinely created soul, and that all souls are equal before God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are ‘equal’? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. ‘Created equal’ should therefore be translated into ‘evolved differently’.

Yeah, well that probably explains some of us.

Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.

Uh, tell that to the Stooges?

Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey.

I can live with that.

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history has progressed, they have come to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits, and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs.

Any experts here?

476

Ludwig Wittgenstein

In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise.

Although, here, it is quite ambiguous.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

More to the point [perhaps] refuses to understand?

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Theoretically?

I am now in another hole, though I have to say, it is no better than the old one. Living with human beings is hard!

Enough said?

At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.

Down out of the clouds in particular.

Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc. etc., they learn to fetch books sit in armchairs, etc. etc.

Ah, the “for all practical purposes” part.

477

Then the part where armchair philosophers yada yada yada.

478

Joe Abercrombie from The Blade Itself

That got him thinking about his life. It seemed a bitter, pointless sort of life now. No one was any better off because of it. Full of violence and pain, with not much but disappointment and hardship in between.

Next up: that got me thinking about your life.

If a man seeks to change the world, he should first understand it.

Fuck that, right?

‘No one cares about the past any more,’ he whispered. ‘They don’t see that you can’t have a future without a past.’

And whose past might that be?

One body might just be a coincidence. Two make a conspiracy.

Next up: six million bodies.

You have to learn to love the small things in life…you have to love the small things, when you’ve nothing else.

Posting here, for sure.

Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already, they scramble eagerly for the position of likable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and hence be everyone’s friend.

Wow, not unlike me here, right?!

479

Death

“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.” Clarice Lispector

I tried that once myself.
And now look at me.

“Our life is made by the death of others.” Leonardo da Vinci

Bummer. If only all the way to the grave ourselves.

“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.” Neil Gaiman

Not much that doesn’t explain about most us.

“What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.” Eckhart Tolle

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.” Samuel Beckett

You can always count on him to cheer you up.

“Make death proud to take us.” William Shakespeare

How’s that working out for you?

480

Ottessa Moshfegh from My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine.

Who could have predicted that?!

Mind over matter, people say. But what is matter, anyway? When you look at it under a microscope, it’s just tiny bits of stuff. Atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles. Look deeper and deeper and eventually you’ll find nothing. We’re mostly empty space. We’re mostly nothing. Tra-la-la. And we’re all the same nothingness. You and me, just filling the space with nothingness. We could walk through walls if we put our minds to it, people say. What they don’t mention is that walking through a wall would most likely kill you. Don’t forget that.

Click, of course.

This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.

In other words, dream on.

Her loyalty was absurd. This was what kept us going.

If only all the way to the grave.

I trusted that everything was going to work out fine as long as I could sleep all day.

Not to mention all night, of course.

We probably shouldn’t be friends, I told her, stretching out on the sofa. I’ve been thinking about it, and I see no reason to continue.

Another one bites the dust.

481

Meaning

“Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.” Alfred Russel Wallace

Mine in particular.

What does this beauty or this music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?’ In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.” Helen Keller

Whatever that means when, say, you can see and hear?

“Dignity has no price, when someone starts making small concessions, in the end, life loses all meaning.” José Saramago

Like the alternatives aren’t even worse.

“Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme." Terry Pratchett

Let’s run this by Benjamin Button.

“The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.” Laura Miller

And here, he suspected, the more abstract the better.

“For the human experience, life in the natural world seems to require the application of meaning, in order to evoke purpose.” T.F. Hodge

Millions and millions of them so far.