Thread for mundane ironists

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642

Stupidity

“Stupidity is doomed,
therefore, to cringe
at every syllable
of wisdom.” Heraclitus

Like for some it’s not the other way around.

“No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles.” Criss Jami

How kind?

“Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.”
Stephen Vizinczey

Not strange at all, he snorted.

"You smoke?”
“Smoke? Do I look like a fucking idiot?” Richard K. Morgan

Go ahead, use that yourself.

“You can’t fight hatred with hatred and expect anyone to listen to you. You can only try to lessen it with humor, wit, truth and common sense. If that doesn’t work run like hell, while they throw rocks at you.” Shannon L. Alder

And the virtual equivalent here. If there is one.

“Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.” Alexander Berkman

Of course, we can Trump that easily enough.

643

Identity

"What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come…” Samuel Beckett

Death, oblivion, the abyss.
Unless, of course, I’m wrong.

“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.” Joan Didion

And then, for some, who they are now.

“I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.” Madonna

Let’s run that by, among others, the reservoir dogs.

"We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.” Albert Einstein

See, I told you.

"I realize then that it’s not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.” Gayle Forman

Actually, it’s more who they think they are eventually.

“That ain’t me, that ain’t my face. It wasn’t even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn’t even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.” Ken Kesey

Personas we call them. Some being more cuckoo than others.

644

Nature

“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” John Muir

How’s that going for you? I had to ask.

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” Walt Whitman

Me too. Well, if only virtually.

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.” Rainer Maria Rilke

In other words, whatever that means.

"I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.” Andy Warhol

Probably the last thing I’d ever expect from him. Is there another one?

"Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Michael Pollan

Some, of course, would simply starve.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.” Hubert Reeves

Well, sort of, let’s say.

645

Abyss

“Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that’s why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that’s why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living.” Alysha Speer

Trust me: everyone will draw the “hurt” line in different places. But eventually we reach that breaking point. We just can’t take it anymore.

“When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.” Friedrich Nietzsche

If only until you fall over into it.
I’m guessing.

“I’ve often thought that there isn’t any “I” at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.” Aleister Crowley

See, “I” told you.

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.” Vladimir Nabokov

Alas, even Lolitas get old and die.

“Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Your own fall might be different. Whatever that means.

“Deal with all this, live with myself, you mean? I honestly don’t know. I stand often enough at the abyss of my soul, asking that same question, looking down into the dark crevices where the black monsters dwell on the bottom. They gaze up at me, and I look them in the eyes. “This also you are,” they say, and I almost fall into the void.”
“And then?”
Anaxantis shrugged.
“And then? I turn around and go do what needs to be done. What else is there?” Andrew Ashling

The philosophy of shrugging?