Thread for mundane ironists

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682

Absurdity

“The existentialists did say that life was all about pulling the victory of meaning from the jaws of senseless absurdity” Matthew Mather

It’s not as easy as it sounds though.

“Once they have been to bed together, they will have to find something else to conceal the enormous absurdity of their existence.” Jean-Paul Sartre

It’s not as easy as it sounds though.

“Everything gets more and more absurd.” Deborah Landau

And they’re not all Stooges.

“Epicuro,” Spain interrupted with a firmness that made us all turn, “you don’t want humanity to fail your Great Test because the lot of us, who should be out there shepherding, were stuck here, riveted, listening to you arguing theodicy with Voltaire.” Ada Palmer

The Great Test today. Or, rather, what’s left of it.

“Engraving depravity and craving decorum is a grave absurdity; even the dead will spin in their graves.” Vincent Okay Nwachukwu

Can you blame them?

“There are only two consistent visions of ultimate reality: one stating that the source of all being is an act of omnipotent will, and one stating that the source of all being is a jolt of mindless absurdity. The main difference between the two is that the former is preposterously unfathomable, while the latter is unfathomably preposterous.” Jakub Bożyda Wiśniewski

Who wins then?

683

Stupidity

“But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take or what’s the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy?” Anton Chekhov

And into all of this lands Donald Trump.

“These thrill seeker people doing extreme sports…they have a hideous accident, go through agonizing recovery, and then go back to that activity that nearly killed them…that’s not facing your fear, that’s embracing your stupidity.” Kelli Jae Baeli

Uh, not so fast?

“Whenever I’m in the middle of conformity, surrounded by oneness of mind with people oozing concurrence on every side, I get scared. And when I find myself agreeing with everybody, too, I get terrified.” P.J. O’Rourke

Especially up in the clouds.

“On Stupidity - There is no such thing as a foolproof plan. If there are fools about, no plan is proof against them.” Marsha Hinds

Anyone here actually doubt that?

“I hate it when people say ‘follow your heart.’ That is not a morally sufficient reason for stalking.” Karl Kristian Flores

Next up: following your genitals.

“A cop is a human creature born stupid and raised in stupidity.” Norman Mailer

What’s that make the criminal then?

684

Sex

“A man fishes for two reasons: he’s either sport fishing or fishing to eat, which means he’s either going to try to catch the biggest fish he can, take a picture of it, admire it with his buddies and toss it back to sea, or he’s going to take that fish on home, scale it, fillet it, toss it in some cornmeal, fry it up, and put it on his plate. This, I think, is a great analogy for how men seek out women.” Steve Harvey

So, what do you think?

“I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock. If I’m late start without me.” Tallulah Bankhead

Fair enough.

“Someday every woman will have orgasms like every family has color TV and we can all get on with the business of life.” Erica Jong

Nope, we’re not quite there yet.

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.” Henry Miller

Of course, he’s only paraphrasing Max Cady.

“I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.” Karen Marie Moning

Who doesn’t?

“Music is much like fucking, but some composers can’t climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent.” Charles Bukowski

He should know?

685

Judgment Day

“Old woman, you don’t thump the Bible at me- you beat it like a drum."
“That’s because along with being hardheaded, you are apparently hard of hearing.”
Charlotte pushed off her rocker so hard it slammed against the wall. Nothing irritated her more than having religion shoved down her throat. And no one carried a bigger shovel than Lettie.
“Baptists are like fleas!” Charlotte flared. “Impossible to get rid of and irritating as hell!”
“On Judgement Day,” Lettie said smugly, "I have no doubt the burn will take your mind off the itch.” Paula Wall

To say the least, eh?

“Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgement by that name; in reality it is a constant court in perpetual session.” Franz Kafka

Every day approximately 150,000 people die on average around the globe. That’s about 6,250 souls a day. Or 105 souls each and every miniute. And that’s just on this planet. You tell me how He manages to pull that off!

“Yes, it is my sole aim to brainwash you people. To make your minds, hearts and spirits pure and acceptable to Christ for Judgement Day.” Gillian Dance

Has she gotten around to you yet?

“Football teams that lost their matches can have many other chances to play in successive seasons; but a soul that is lost through death may not have the chance to justify its potential again!” Israelmore Ayivor

Who really knows though, right?

“In God’s infinite wisdom if He sends you to Heaven or Hell should you love Him any less?” Stanley Victor Paskavic

So, what do you think?

“Many pastors criticize me for taking the gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me and say, “Jonathan, you took me way too seriously”?” Jonathan Hayashi

Anyone here know for sure?

686

Suicide

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax. This won’t hurt.” Hunter S. Thompson

And he meant it.

“The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.” Sylvia Plath

My own thoughts were considerably more heated.

“By four o’clock, I’ve discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.” Warren Ellis

It’s not as easy as you think though.

“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.” Franz Kafka

See, I told you.

“You might be looking for reasons but there are no reasons.” Nina LaCour

Just excuses.

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.” Erica Jong

Me first?

687

Umberto Eco from Foucault’s Pendulum

Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter.

See, I told you.

What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can’t hurt and you might get better.

Right, like God is fooled.

The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn’t exist.

Hmm, have I ever met one?, he wondered.

The Templars’ mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That’s why so many people venerate them.

Here? Let’s name names.

Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.

Not much that doesn’t leave out. If only “here and now”.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one’s free to take it and run with it. At the end, they’ll see who’s done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn’t bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what’s happening, it’s too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty…It all goes to Peter’s head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos.

Next up: Epstein’s island.

688

Absurdity

“Faith involves an acceptance of absurdity.” Zadie Smith

Or rejection as the case may be. Not that it’s ever likely to be.

“There are only two consistent visions of ultimate reality: one stating that the source of all being is an act of omnipotent will, and one stating that the source of all being is a jolt of mindless absurdity. The main difference between the two is that the former is preposterously unfathomable, while the latter is unfathomably preposterous.” Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Next up: ultimate bullshit.

“I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.” David Lynch

Hollywood, let’s call it.

“You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you.” Donald Barthelme

And, he suspected, not just philosophically.

“What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity of the world and his own existence, or, to put it more soberly, the absurd dimensions of the world and his own existence?” Václav Havel

Me? Exclude me all you wish.

“Terror washed through him, and then was replaced by a sense of cosmic absurdity.” Stephen King

Maybe, but only if you are really, really lucky.

689

Stupidity

“…it’s just another one of those things I don’t understand: everyone impresses upon you how unique you are, encouraging you to cultivate your individuality while at the same time trying to squish you and everyone else into the same ridiculous mould.” E.A. Bucchianeri

Cue the artists, of course. And a smattering of philosophers?

“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.” Arthur Conan Doyle

Can you live with that?

"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.” Friedrich von Schiller

Ja.

“The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.” Voltaire

Some become actual schools of philosophy.

“Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it’s actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn.” Orson Scott Card

Good luck with that.

“How can you fight stupidity effectively? The answer is simple: it’s not easy.” Carl William Brown

Not counting all the times I’ve fought it here, he chortled.

690

Sex

“I’m fresh out of fucks to give.” Tucker Max

In that case, welcome aboard.

“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it. ” Richard P. Feynman

Let alone how we do it.

“Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream that one day amid the snowy hilltops of western North Carolina, their son would lose his virginity to a cheerleader in the woman’s bathroom of a Waffle House just off the interstate. My parents have sacrificed so much for this dream! And that is why we must journey on, despite all trials and tribulations! Not for me and least of all for the poor cheerleader in question, but for my parents and indeed for all immigrants who came to his great nation in what they themselves could never have: CHEERLEADER SEX.” John Green

I came close. Twice.

“It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. ” Aleister Crowley

You know what’s coming: The Irrational in Politics: Brinton, Maurice: 9780961328962: Amazon.com: Books

“The eyes are one of the most powerful tools a woman can have. With one look, she can relay the most intimate message. After the connection is made, words cease to exist." Jennifer Salaiz

Someone run this by, well, you know.

“I think a man’s ‘wordplay’ can be so fucking sexy!!! I love a good mind fuck!!” Junnita Jackson

Uh, start here: Your favorite Biggy quote

691

Heaven

“Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.” Hunter S. Thompson

Well, back then maybe.

"Heaven and Hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.” Jorge Luis Borges

Now that you mention it…

“You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange Heaven for Earth. I don’t want to understand you.” Anton Chekhov

How about now, Anton?

“What makes Earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven.” Chuck Palahniuk

You know, among many, many, many other things.

“Do people look the same when they go to heaven, mommy?"
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Then how do people recognize each other?”
"I don’t know, sweetie. They just feel it. You don’t need your eyes to love, right?” R.J. Palacio

Kids!

"animals never worry about Heaven or Hell
neither do I
maybe that’s why we get along” Charles Bukowski

Next up: naked apes.

692

Determinism

"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Unless, of course, he’s wrong.

“Life calls the tune, we dance.” John Galsworthy

The tango, I’m guessing.

“But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers…that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don’t have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what? " Daniel C. Dennett

Then the part where some acknowledge we may or may not have free will, but we act as though we do.

". . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain.” Clarence Darrow

Well – click – not counting all the objectivists here.

“Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” Max Ehrmann

As it must?

“We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence.” Pierre Simon de Laplace

You tell me.

693

Suicide

“If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
If cool my heart and high my head
I think ‘How lucky are the dead’.” Dorothy Parker

Luckier than who?

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt”. Hunter S. Thompson

Can you say that? Or, perhaps, more to the point, one day, will you?

“Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It’s one bloody fray after another.” Shaun David Hutchinson

Darkness visible some call it.

“By four o’clock, I’ve discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.” Warren Ellis

Good for him!

“There are so many things that I want so badly to tell you but I just can’t.” Nina LaCour

Let’s explain that.

“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: ‘This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me’.” Franz Kafka

Fat chance. I mean, to say the least, right?

694

When I am 67, I will probably have the exact same issues I have at 48, and have had my entire life. I am not suicidal. Are you?

695

“You just have small inklings of how unfair our current reality set is” - Ecmandu about Prom75

696

I bet when you learn how to respect your mother and Ecmandu learns how to gain informed consent, both of you will have the scales fall off your eyes about the actual fairness of both of your situations preceding that very special moment.

697

There’s another one. One or those posts that is so perfectly asinine it has to be fake. Like nobody could be that much of an imbecile. Rather somebody thinks “what’s the best thing to say here that is not only totally wrong but will also disgust and infuriate the reader as much as possible.” Like one of E’s posts.

Nobody with a brain and more than a month of reading any of my posts, of following carefully what i say, would ever say such an asinine thing.

Seriously. Everybody else in the room right now is like, “Did she really just say that? Respect his mom, and then presto… It’s suddenly sunshine and rainbows? This guy… who has been fucked six ways from Sunday is told that if he doesn’t say mean stuff to his moms everything is gonna be great.”

You are absolutely and indubitably an imbecile or pure sadistic evil.

Every day i come to this mental institution, my misanthropy increases by one point, and my certainty that there is no god (described by christianity) becomes sdronger and sdronger.

698

Thank you so much for not enunciating that t.

It’s like you read my mind or something.

699

Determinism

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.” Viktor E. Frankl

The death camp philosopher…

“There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.” Ulysses S. Grant

If there are any events at all?

“The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific inquiry.” Max Planck

Like he could have ever assumed otherwise?

“…if being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like” Zeno

Another fucking paradox, he suspected.

“Seriously, what is the source of our thoughts? How do artists create art? How do writers write? What is it that is doing the creating?” Abhaidev

In other words, if it’s not a homunculus or a ghost or a sim world or a demonic dream or solipsism or some fucking Matrix reality".

“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

Uh, absolutely maybe?

700

Suicide

“You might be looking for reasons but there are no reasons.” Nina LaCour

Or too many to count.

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.” Erica Jong

Get back to us on that. While you’re still around.

“What’s the big fucking deal? Lots of amazing people have committed suicide, and they turned out alright.” Emilie Autumn

And that can’t be easy.

“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.” Franz Kafka

Of course, your own trial might be different.

“I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I’m not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like “I’m shit and the world’d be better off without poor me” type that says that but also imagines what everybody’ll say at their funeral. I’ve met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It’s all self-pity bullshit. It’s bullshit. I didn’t have any special grudges. I didn’t fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn’t want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don’t hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn’t want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I’m a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.” David Foster Wallace

He is still dead, right?

“It was ironic, really - you want to die because you can’t be bothered to go on living - but then you’re expected to get all energetic and move furniture and stand on chairs and hoist ropes and do complicated knots and attach things to other things and kick stools from under you and mess around with hot baths and razor blades and extension cords and electrical appliances and weedkiller. Suicide was a complicated, demanding business, often involving visits to hardware shops. And if you’ve managed to drag yourself from the bed and go down the road to the garden center or the drug store, by then the worst is over. At that point you might as well just go to work.” Marian Keyes

Not always, I’m guessing.

701

Lol this forum is so lame. I search for a absolute randomness thread somewhere because I’ve maxed my posting out in other threads and when I find it I have to scroll a thousand pages to get to the bottom where the ‘reply’ button is.

Anway, good news. Did you know you can put a 1/4 inch drill bit through a POleece car gas tank without triggering the alarm (if it has one)?

You can literally destroy a whole lot of cop cars with a drill and a bic lighter, and you’d be in and out in a matter of minutes.