Thread for mundane ironists

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822

Paganism

“It is probable, as Anthony Faulkes suggests, that the pagan religion was never systematically understood by those who practiced it. Different areas of Scandinavia worshipped different gods at different times in the pre-Christian era; the localized nature of cults and rituals produced neither dogma nor sacred texts, as far as we know. Rather pre-Christian religion was ‘a disorganized body of conflicting traditions that was probably never reduced in heathen times to a consistent orthodoxy such as Snorri attempts to present’.” Carolyne Larrington

Start here: Paganism - Wikipedia

“We few or many who again dare to live in a dismoralized world, we pagans in faith: we are probably also the first to grasp what a pagan faith is:—to have to imagine higher creatures than man, but beyond good and evil; to have to consider all being higher as also being immoral.” Friedrich Nietzsche

In other words, cue the “intrinsic self”. It “just knows” [spiritually] things about right and wrong.

“Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his God to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose.” Geerhardus Vos

Wow! What if that is actually true!

“Jaweh is clearly not a Nature-God. He does not die and come to life each year as a true Corn-king should. He may give wine and fertility, but must not be worshipped with Bacchanalian or aphrodisiac rites.” C.S. Lewis

I guess that settles that then.

“Les dieux sont ceux qui ne doutent jamais.” Fernando Pessoa

Objectivists, in other words.

“Marlowe’s Faustus stubbornly reverts to his atheistic beliefs and continues his elementary pagan re-education ~ the inferno to him is a ‘place’ invented by men.” E.A. Bucchianeri

Let’s sic the bots on them.

823

Brigitte Bardot

“Only idiots refuse to change their minds.”

Tell me about it!

“I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals”

Of course, men actually are animals. Women too.

“J’ai été prisonnière de moi-même toute ma vie.”

That takes me back. Just not all the way back to the womb.

“I have a slight despising for humanity in general.”

Me? Take a wild guess.

“Returning to an almost complete anonymity is my dream. I feel like my own prisoner. Most famous people no longer really belong to themselves. And if today I have agreed to talk about myself so intimately, if I have agreed to publish one last book with my name on it, it is because I need to; I need to sweep away any ambiguity concerning my life and my intentions, for the sake of honesty and transparency.”

On the other hand, where is the line drawn between wanting something and needing something?

“Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.”

You tell me.

824

Faith

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” J.R.R. Tolkien

Farewell to what though?

“I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.” Edgar Allan Poe

Let’s run this by the fools here.

“Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.” Roy T. Bennett

Let’s just say that sooner or later we will all reach a breaking point.

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.” Elbert Hubbard

You first.

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” Corrie ten Boom

You tell me.

“Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right.” Max Lucado

Go ahead, bring this down out of the spiritual clouds

825

Suicide

“Any way I slice reality it comes out poorly, and I feel an urge to not exist, something I have never felt before; and now here it comes with conviction, almost panic. I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.” Suzanne Finnamore

And how comforting is that?

“Some people can’t keep fighting. Some people want to escape. Some people are not ready—are not able—to find a way to deal with what’s in front of them. Sometimes there’s no one to help them. Sometimes they don’t know how to ask for help. Sometimes it feels like there’s no choice but to end it. No other way out. And sometimes it’s impossible to see past that.” Sarah Fine

Some people here? Let’s talk about it.

“Nobody has ever killed themselves over a broken arm. But every day, thousands of people kill themselves because of a broken heart. Why? Because emotional pain hurts much worse than physical pain.” Oliver Markus Malloy

No shit?

“You did not fear death. You stepped in its path, but without really desiring it: how can one desire something one doesn’t know? You didn’t deny life but affirmed your taste for the unknown, betting that if something existed on the other side, it would be better than here.” Edouard Levé

Theoretically as it were.

“No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.” Sigmund Freud

That can’t be good.

“I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.” Antonin Artaud

On the other hand, suppose you could?

826

Stupidity

“The spread of ideologies should be seen as something akin to cognitive epidemics.” David Livingstone Smith

Anyone spreading one here?

“Authentically stupid people are very rare on this planet. It is usually just intelligent people acting stupid that we encounter these days.” Sukant Ratnakar

Any authentically stupid people you know?

“If you are stupid, try to remain humble.” Sukant Ratnakar

On the other hand, is that even possible?

“If an hour has passed and the tree’s still standing, it’s probably not the saw that’s the problem.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

And, of course, the equivalent of that here.

“She told her father she wasn’t stupid, but she was. She was so goddamn stupid, she didn’t even have sense enough to feel ashamed.” Allie Ray

See, I told you.

“Caleb was being wilfully obtuse.
Caleb hated when people were willfully obtuse. There were enough tragically stupid people in the world without having anyone indulge in recreational stupidity.” Cat Sebastian

Let’s run this by Andy Dufresne.

827

Artificial Intelligence

“Defining artificial intelligence as ‘artificial’ diminishes its value in the eyes of humans, because the word ‘artificial’ carries a negative connotation! It should be given a new name: Infinite Intelligence!” Mehmet Murat ildan

And, for all practical purposes, what might that mean?

“Ask an artificial intelligence a philosophical question, and it will answer you in a few seconds, at a galactic speed, with extraordinary sentences and a page full of profound meaning. Humans think slowly, and therefore progress slowly. This is the message from artificial intelligence to us teachers: Be fast, think fast, because the universe is no joke. You must develop quickly and take a strong position against the dangers of the universe!” Mehmet Murat ildan

And, for all practical purposes, what might that mean?

“The machines have not just taken our jobs. They have freed us from the lie that we are our jobs.” Emad Mostaque

You tell me.

“Everything evolves. Humanity’s relationship with AI will evolve both AI and humans, and both will move to a higher level of intelligence!” Mehmet Murat ildan

Autonomically, perhaps?

“Big Brother may not need a totalitarian regime to empower him if we simply open the door and invite him in. Indeed, it might already be too late for he is already here.” John C. Lennox

Hard to trump that, right?

“In this era, where almost everyone is glued to the latest technology, it is hard to find a person who would genuinely want to connect on the soul level.” Michael Bassey Johnson

How’s that working or not working out for you?

828

Free Will

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.” Karl Marx

On the other hand, some do what they think they please.

“Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).” Albert Einstein

Yep, that’s still around.

“Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.” Herman Melville

And then Berkeley’s rendition, of course.

“A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.” Aldous Huxley

Can this be explained other than in going around and around and around in circles?

“The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place.
Or, at least not yet again.
As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility.” Vera Nazarian

The “trouble with being born”, it’s been suggested..

“This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.” Neal Stephenson

So, which is the irresistible force and which is the immovable object?

829

Hypocrisy

“Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.” Noam Chomsky

Capitalism, let’s call it.

“Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from the colorless and shriveled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. It silences in a second all the feeble sophistry of conventional life, and ascetical passion.” Charles Robert Maturin

Next up: har har harr. :wink:

“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.” Adlai E. Stevenson

Nope, nothing like that yet. Unless, of course, I missed it.

“Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.” Michel de Montaigne

Go figure?

“Maybe that was the root of my dislike for her: she had what I wanted, which earned her my jealousy, and since I was ashamed of myself for wanting it, my scorn, as well.” Nenia Campbell

A lot like how it works here, right?

“Human hypocrisy: When one judges humanity as a whole, people have the habit of disagreeing, saying that everyone is different - unique. Yet people turn around and say that at the end of the day, everyone is the same. Ladies and gentlemen, the joyful paradoxical nature of humanity. If you really want to dismiss the paradox, show me that you’re an imaginary number, rather than a real number.” Lionel Suggs

New thread?

830

Chaos

“Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.” Jonathan Carroll

Next up: real hate.

“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.” Douglas R. Hofstadter

Going all the way back to… God knows?

“Solitude is where I place my chaos to rest and awaken my inner peace.” Nikki Rowe

Ask me to explain this.

“The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.” B.F. Skinner

He wondered if that explained anything at all.

“War." Gorgon spits the word. "That is what they call it to give the illusion of honor and law. It is chaos. Madness and blood and the hunger to win. It has always been thus and shall always be so.” Libba Bray

Well, that and the military industrial complex.

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.” Jeanette Winterson

You first.

831

Intellectuals

I take umbrage at the lionization of lightweight, empty-suited, empty-headed motherfuckers like Ibram X. Kendi. Who couldn’t carry my book bag. He hasn’t read a fucking thing. If you ask him what Nietzsche said, he would have no idea. He’s an unserious, superficial, empty-suited, lightweight - he’s not our equal, not even close.” Glenn C. Loury

Pick 2:

1] race to the top

2] race to the bottom

“Man who does not manage to satisfy himself through Action in and for the World in which he lives flees from this World and takes refuge in his abstract intelligence…” Alexandre Kojève

Sounds familiar, doesn it?

“Intellectuals are the trickiest nuts to crack. They are so eager to impress you with their own understanding of their condition that they tend to carry on their own commentary as they are talking.” Graeme Macrae Burnet

Cue the clouds.

“The conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most. The big public do not care about the matter one way or the other. They are not in favour of persecuting the heretic, and they will not exert themselves to defend him. They are at once too sane and too stupid to acquire the totalitarian outlook. The direct, conscious attack on intellectual decency comes from the intellectuals themselves.” George Orwell

Gosh, who would have thunk it?

“The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.” Noam Chomsky

Of course, he’s only paraphrasing Jeffrey Epstein.

“And since no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other’s incorrigible aberrations.” Leo Tolstoy

And then only up in the fucking clouds.

832

Ontology

“And one thing we know is real: horror. It is so real, in fact, that we cannot be sure it could not exist without us. Yes, it needs our imaginations and our consciousness, but it does not ask or require our consent to use them. Indeed, horror operates with complete autonomy. Generating ontological havoc, it is mephitic foam upon which our lives merely float. And, all said, we must face up to it: horror is more real than we are.” Thomas Ligotti

Real enough for you?

“Bodies are real entities. Surfaces and lines are but fictitious entities. A surface without depth, a line without thickness, was never seen by any man; no; nor can any conception be seriously formed of its existence.” Jeremy Bentham

How about your own body? Real enough for you?

“In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah’s flood to the Holocaust.” Christopher Hitchens

Not much that doesn’t cover. You know, if it covers anything at all.

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism.” Donna J. Haraway

Then this part:

"She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;

"She realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;

“Insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.” Richard Rorty

“In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire–in the primordial desire for life-as-relation. That the sex drive serves the vital desire for relation–that on the level of the primordial process, the desire for life-in-itself clothes itself in the sex drive–belongs to the particularity of being human.” Christos Yannaras

Next up [of course]: Money.

“In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire–in the primordial desire for life-as-relation. That the sex drive serves the vital desire for relation–that on the level of the primordial process, the desire for life-in-itself clothes itself in the sex drive–belongs to the particularity of being human.” Christos Yannaras

Fuck that?

833

Dogma

“I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Were I to enter that arena, I should only add a unit to the number of Bedlamites." Thomas Jefferson

Any Bedlamites here?

“Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.” Richard Buckminster Fuller

Except up in the clouds, of course.

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

Spot the irony?

“There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.” Bart D. Ehrman

Next up: inbred philosophical certainty.

“In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.” G.K. Chesterton

Ask me to defend this.

“Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, ‘Is this true?’ 'Just because this has always been the way, is it the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality? To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.” Saul Alinsky

Of course, nowadays, that’s a bannable offense.

834

Faith

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” Mahatma Gandhi

To wit: blah, blah, blah.

“Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can’t always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.” Lauren Kate

Go ahead, pick one: List of religions and spiritual traditions - Wikipedia

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Keep them doped with religion, as it were.

“I talk to God but the sky is empty.” Sylvia Plath

Still, in other words.

“No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages:
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.”
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, and 49 years old when he wrote “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote “The Hunger Games”
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote “The Cat in the Hat”.
40) Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President” Pablo

Gasp! Not a “serious philosopher” among them!!

“Sometimes God allows what He hates to accomplish what He loves.” Joni Eareckson Tada

How’s that working out for you?

835

Faith

“Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can’t always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.” Lauren Kate

So, how little is enough for you?

None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have faith.” Paulo Coelho

Next up: those that don’t.

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Let’s run this by the lunatics here.

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?” C.S. Lewis

God knows?

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Carl Sagan

Or, at the very least, blind faith.

“Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow. Isn’t that the way it works?” Diane Duane

Pick one:

1] up in the philosophical clouds

2] down here.

836

Stupidity

“Attempting to justify a lie is something akin to poking a really big hornet’s nest with a really short stick. The distance between you and disaster isn’t any longer than the stick or the wisdom that you exercised in choosing it.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

Or something like that.

“You’ve probably picked up on this by now, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when people use science that they don’t understand to try to justify their stupidity and hate.” Forrest Valkai

Or here: “You’ve probably picked up on this by now, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when people use philosophy that they don’t understand to try to justify their stupidity and hate.”

“Fighting stupidity tends to reinforce it.” Jean-François Marmion

Objectively?

“It never ceased to amaze me how much stupid shit people believed in—acupuncture and astrology and crystal healing and homeopathy and naturopathy and ley lines and dowsing and lizard people and black magic and voodoo and ghosts and spirits and angels and demons and mediums and chakras and feng shui and colon cleansing and gods and so on. How come they didn’t realize that all of these things were either misunderstandings or scams that were disproven a long time ago? Although all of us believed in stupid things, such as happiness or hope, some of us really crossed the threshold into pure fucking insanity. And by some, I mean most.” Keijo Kangur

Care to refute this, anyone?

“She pats my hair and says, "White people do stupid shit sometimes.” Angie Thomas

Care to refute this, anyone?

“Some fools have children. Some have children who have children. And some have children who have children who have children.” Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Of course, we were all once children ourselves.

837

Artificial Intelligence

“A machine will never have the creativity, the feelings, or the soul of a human being.” Hazem Abdelmowla

Tell that to Mother Nature.

“AI is not magic. It’s built by humans, trained on data from humans, and limited by human choices." Stephen D. Carver

Whatever that means? For example, for all practical purposes

“If I had to explain AI over coffee, I’d say this: imagine a super-intern who has read every encyclopedia, watched every YouTube video, and memorized every Wikipedia page." Stephen D. Carver

Over and over and over and over again.

“As this technology grows almost daily, the prospect of AI becoming sentient, will be a moment in time we will come to regret.” A.R. Merrydew

Blah, blah, blah?

“If a writer can seek help from a family member, friend, professional editor, translator, or ghost‑writer to refine, reshape, or even rewrite their work without losing authorship, then denying that same right when using AI is an unacceptable double standard!” Mouloud Benzadi

Click, of course.

“Those intent on profit and prestige, with little or no regard as to the consequences of this ‘monster’, and all it will deliver.” A.R. Merrydew

Capitalism in other words.

1 Like
838

Free Will

“The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place…As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility.” Vera Nazarian

Unless, of course, temptation itself is but one more “inherent manifestation of the only possible reality”.

“ Stubbornness’" is knowing exactly what you want courageously living by free will; never to be judged or ridiculed.” Michelle D. Rosado

Unless, of course, stubbornness itself is but one more “inherent manifestation of the only possible reality”.

“There is no sin unless through a man’s own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own will." St. Augustine of Hippo

See how it all unfolds? Like clockwork.

“How can we be ‘free’ as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.” Sam Harris

God knows?

“In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price. You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple.” Ellis Peters

Right. What could be simpler.

“Perhaps, there is no such person who can be called truly free, but only those who can be deemed so by comparison.” Ashim Shanker

We’ll need a context, of course.

839

Béla Tarr

I’ve long understood there is zero difference between me and a bug, or a bug and a river, or a river and a voice shouting above it. There’s no sense or meaning in anything. It’s nothing but a network of dependency under enormous fluctuating pressures.

See, I told you.

Who gives a fuck? I’m not prophetic. I was just an ugly, poor filmmaker. I still am. I don’t have power. I don’t have anything… just a fucking camera.

Or, for many philosophers here, just a fucking cloud.

I went to Japan. That was my first trip to the far East and an old professor took me to the museum. There was a picture with white and two black dots, and the old Japanese professor told me: ‘I’m sure, because you came from Western culture, I’m sure that for you, the story is the two black dots.’ Then I said ‘Yeah.’ He said: ‘No, for us, it’s the white.’ And then I was really thinking a lot. What is the story? And when you really think about it, why do we, in films, ignore, for example, the time?

Lost in translation?

What I want is for you to go to a cinema, sit in the darkness, watch it and when you leave: how are you? Are you better? Do you feel stronger? Did you get something? Or are you just the same as you were when entering the cinema?

Let’s run this by Jeff Slater.

Twenty-five years is enough time to show you whether something is good or not. So many films disappear. They are like a tissue: used and then thrown out.

Let’s run this by the folks in Hollywood.

As a filmmaker, you have to believe in the people, in their power, because if you do not believe in the people then why do you make the film… for what? If you don’t have hope, you do not do a fucking movie. You don’t do a movie for the money, because the money just comes and goes. It’s not about the money. It’s because you are such a big fucking maniac who believes in people; who believes that people will watch and people will be touched… this is our job.

Next up: our job here. Or, rather, what’s left of it.

840

Hypocrisy

“Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.” Leo Tolstoy

Let’s run this by the children here.

“Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.” Saul Bellow

Let’s pick a moment here and explore this further

“They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” Frederick Douglass

Divine hypocrisy.

“If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as professor Trevelyan points out [in his [History of England] she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.” Virginia Woolf

Pick One:

1] genes

2] memes

3] A hopelessly complex and convoluted jumble of both

"It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.” James Connolly

Well, this and the military industrial complex.

“Look at the tyranny of party-- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty-- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes-- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master.” Mark Twain

Let’s Trump this.

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Chaos

“I finally figured out that not every crisis can be managed. As much as we want to keep ourselves safe, we can’t protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos.” Susan Elizabeth Phillips

So, how’s that working out for you? Or, sure, not working out for you at all.

“Eve: All this riot and uproar, V… is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?
V: No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means “without leaders”, not “without order”. With anarchy comes an age or ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order… this age of ordung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course… This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos.” Alan Moore

Let’s bring this down to Earth. You first.

“It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration. Those emotions are poison to any living goal.” Steve Maraboli

Next up: our clarity or else.

“I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.” Nicole Lyons

Any terrifyingly beautiful battles going on here.

“Stop blaming outside circumstances for your inside chaos.” Steve Maraboli

Right, like, existentially, any relationship between them is simply out of the question.

“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.” Rabih Alameddine

Click, of course.