Thread for mundane ironists

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1062

Rationalism

“The fact is: our faith is more rational than the most elaborate paradigm of the atheistic foundationalist, more romantic than the wildest dreams of the unbelieving postmodernist. Our faith is a dogma that makes you dance.” Reggie M. Kidd

Bullshit on steroids, let’s call it. Or, okay, what I’ll call it.

“For Plato and Socrates, the philosopher is one who lives according to virtue and reason, cultivating the pleasures of the soul and intellect and not the pleasures and passions of the baser desires of the body. The key to this path is grasping first that there are absolutes—absolute truth, goodness, beauty, and other aspects of life. These are universal forms that are recollected from our past lives and ultimately harken back to the One, or the monad, from which all things mysteriously emanated. We, as humans, ‘see’ truly through the soul, and seeing with this higher, awakened eyesight allows us to peer into the higher realm of existence where truth is eternal, not subject to the chaotic flux and temporal finitude and change of this life.” Jay Dyer

Philosophy on steroids, let’s call it.

“Truth is not shaped by the number of followers; it is formed by the weight of evidence and the strength of logical reasoning.” Alok Barman

Just ask any number of these guys: List of philosophies - Wikipedia

“Kierkegaard said, ‘Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.’ If you don’t solve the problem of life, you won’t know what life to lead, and your experiences will be no more informative than those of animals. Why are so many people feeling lost? Why is there a mental health pandemic? Why can’t people find meaning and fulfilment in their lives? It’s because they spend all their time experiencing life and none at all solving the problem of life. They are blind little Kierkegaardians – clueless people making desperate leaps of faith. Kierkegaard hated Hegel. Hegelianism was exactly what Kierkegaard lacked!” David Sinclair

So, is that good news or bad news?

“It is in these very items of knowledge which go beyond the world of senses, where experience can neither guide nor correct us, that reason carries out its investigations, which owing to their importance we consider to be far more excellent, and in their final aim far more sublime, than anything our understanding can learn in the field of appearances. Nay, we would rather dare anything, even at the risk of error, than surrender such investigations, either on ground of their precariousness or from any feeling of disdain or indifference. These unavoidable problems of pure reason itself are God, freedom, and immortality.” Immanuel Kant

A philosopher, let’s call him.

Consciousness is based in language and that means that people with superior language skills are more conscious than those who struggle with language. Consciousness is also about concepts. The more conceptual you are, the better able you are to understand reality since reality is not made from empirical ‘matter’ but from rational, analytic concepts. Hegel imagined reality’s defining concepts to be philosophical. In fact, they are mathematical concepts, the quintessence of rationalism. You expand and heighten your consciousness by attaining a far superior understanding of concepts. This requires thinking, not feeling, not sensing, and not mystical intuiting.” Rob Armstrong

Bring on all those great big cumulus clouds, right?

1063

Faith

“There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don’t lose courage. You’ve already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don’t lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.” Elie Wiesel

Let’s run this by the Nazis among us.

“When oppressed and lost people see your supernatural life shining so bright, they are attracted! They are attracted to the Jesus in you.” Kathryn Krick

Let’s run this by John Turturro.

“A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.” Alan Wilson Watts

Or, sure, sneers.

“Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place.” Mandy Hale

That’s how we ended up here, right? :wink:

“Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.” Elizabeth Gilbert

Pitch black as often as not.

“Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” St. Augustine of Hippo

I know, I know: don’t get me started.

1064

Elmore Leonard

“Wonderful things can happen”, Vincent said, “when you plant seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes.”

Fifteen years so far. Here, I mean.

“There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living, whose reason for being might be geographical but whose growth is based on industry, jobs. Detroit has its natural attractions: lakes all over the place, an abundance of trees and four distinct seasons for those who like variety in their weather, everything but hurricanes and earth-quakes. But it’s never been the kind of city people visit and fall in love with because of its charm or think, gee, wouldn’t this be a nice place to live.”

Let’s run this by Michael Moore.

"A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now.”

Let’s run this by the bots.

“I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.”

A man, let’s call him.

“And she thought if you don’t have the desire to fight or wait for something there’s no reason for being on earth.”

What about what we do here?!

“But when you begin with bullshit the conclusion you reach is still bullshit.”

Or, for others, horseshit.

1065

Well, I suppose it’s good to have his attitude summed up so clearly and succinctly.

1066

Suicide

“If you’re selfish enough to kill yourself write your suicide note on the back of your will” Stanley Victor Paskavich

Cute enough for you?

“The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides ” Kay Redfield Jamison

Uh, no shit?

“We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it—that makes no sense. What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.” Jeffrey Eugenides

Don’t look at me.

“Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.” Mokokoma Mokhonoana

That may actually be true. And then some.

“She was completely alone in the world. There was no one at all for her. No one in the world who cared whether she lived or died. Sometimes the horror of that thought threatened to overwhelm her and plunge her down into a bottomless darkness from which there would be no return. If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?” Cassandra Clare

And, no, not just philosophically.

“There’s no reason to live, but there’s no reason to die, either. The only way we can still show our contempt for life is to accept it. Life is not worth the bother of leaving it. Out of charity, one might spare a few individuals the trouble of living, but what about oneself? Despair, indifference, betrayal, fidelity, solitude, the family, freedom, weight, money, poverty, love, absence of love, syphilis, health, sleep, insomnia, desire, impotence, platitudes, art, honesty, dishonor, mediocrity, intelligence – nothing there to make a fuss about. We know only too well what those things are made of, no point in watching for them.” Jacques Rigaut

What to make of this, right?

1067

Ex Machina

Caleb: Did you program her to flirt with me?
Nathan: If I did, would that be cheating?
Caleb: Wouldn’t it?
Nathan: Caleb, what’s your type?
Caleb: Of girl?
Nathan: No, salad dressing. Yeah, of girl; what’s your type of girl? You know what, don’t even answer that. Let’s say it’s black chicks. Okay, that’s your thing. For the sake of argument, that’s your thing, okay? Why is that your thing? Because you did a detailed analysis of all racial types and you cross-referenced that analysis with a points-based system? No! You’re just attracted to black chicks. A consequence of accumulated external stimuli that you probably didn’t even register as they registered with you.

See, didn’t I tell you? Now, let’s run this by Benjamin Button.

Nathan: One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.

Should we synchronize our watches?

Ava: Isn’t it strange, to create something that hates you?

On the other hand, what does she know?

Caleb: Did you program her to like me, or not?
Nathan: I programmed her to be heterosexual, just like you were programmed to be heterosexual.
Caleb: Nobody programmed me to be straight.
Nathan: You decided to be straight? Please! Of course you were programmed, by nature or nurture or both and to be honest, Caleb, you’re starting to annoy me now because this is your insecurity talking, this is not your intellect.

Start here: a man amidst mankind: back again to dasein

Caleb]: Did you design Ava’s face based on my pornography profile?
Nathan: Oh. Shit, dude.
Caleb: Did you?
Nathan(https: Hey, if a search engine’s good for anything, right?

He’s obviously in over his head.
Like, I suspect, most of us.

Nathan: [points to painting*] You know this guy, right?
Caleb: Jackson Pollock.
Nathan: Jackson Pollock. That’s right. The drip painter. Okay. He let his mind go blank, and his hand go where it wanted. Not deliberate, not random. Some place in between. They called it automatic art.

Next up: automatic philosophy.

1068

Infinity

“…it’s very much like trying to reach infinity. You know that it’s there, you just don’t know where—but just because you can never reach it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.” Norton Juster

Worth it for some, perhaps, but certainly not for others.

“The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror.” Gustave Flaubert

I’ll explain this if you’ll let me.

“By squirming out of our dungeon of indifference and wriggling from our self-centered vault of unawareness, love can conjure up an aura of mental opulence and an inkling of infinity.” Erik Pevernagie

You know, like on the Love Boat.

“The stars up there at night are closer than you think.” Doug Dillon

Next up: the stars twinkling on and off in Hollywood.

“Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know every bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.” Rainer Maria Rilke

Next up: your posts here.

“The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity.” Grant Morrison

Or, at the very least, a portal to John Malkovich.

1069

…and beyond!

1070

Stupidity

“When you’re on the worst kind of job, audacity’s the only thing that’ll get you through it: being willing to do something so stupid, there’s no way anyone could see it coming.” Paul Krueger

Keep it coming, okay?

“If they tell me they want war instead of peace I don’t see they’re naive, I see they’re stupid; stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don’t even know, who never did anybody any harm.” Ben Ferencz

Right, like the military industrial complex and the war economy are moot here.

“The House of Representatives truly represents America, and because of that, about a third of its members are complete fucking morons.” Thor Benson

Optimistic enough for you?

“It stung as only being stupid can.” David DiBenedetto

If it ever stings at all.

“If it were considered smart, it would be done already.” Richie Norton

Let’s make a list.

“One thing I learned from this pandemic is never overestimate the intelligence of the American public.” Don Rittner

Is that even possible, however?

1071

I guess there’s just no cure.

1072

Capitalism

“… Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism…” Terry Eagleton

Let’s Trump this.

“Any capitalist who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?” Charles Dickens

Of course, over here it’s dollars.

“I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.” Eugene V. Debs

Still do. As for the future…forget about it.

"People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.” Jason Read

Don’t tell them, of course.

“Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every ten days. Prison growth and the resulting “prison-industrial complex”—the business interests that capitalize on prison construction—made imprisonment so profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators to keep expanding the use of incarceration to respond to just about any problem. Incarceration became the answer to everything—health care problems like drug addiction, poverty that had led someone to write a bad check, child behavioral disorders, managing the mentally disabled poor, even immigration issues generated responses from legislators that involved sending people to prison. Never before had so much lobbying money been spent to expand America’s prison population, block sentencing reforms, create new crime categories, and sustain the fear and anger that fuel mass incarceration than during the last twenty-five years in the United States.” Bryan Stevenson

Let’s run this by, well, you know.

“If a person has no conscience, it’s called being a sociopath. If a corporation has no conscience, it’s called capitalism.” Quentin R. Bufogle

Yeah, what about that?!

1073

There is no such thing as capitalism, there is a thing called banking.

1074

Determinism

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

Not counting you, right?

“Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.” Clarence Darrow

Fucking emotions again!

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

Start here: List of dances - Wikipedia

“Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the ‘soul’ or the ‘spirit’ ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.” Nikola Tesla

Someone run this by the ghost of David Bowie.

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

Amen?

“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

Talk about a “world of words”!

1075

The Sopranos

“I’m 46 years old. Who am I? Where am I going?” Tony Soprano

Like he doesn’t know!

“Rich man and poor man got the same wedding-anniversary. Every year they meet on Madison Avenue when they’re shopping for their wives. So the poor man says ot the rich man, ‘what did you buy your wife this year?’ Rich man says ‘I got her a huge diamond ring and a brand-new Mercedez’. Poor man says ‘why’d you get her both for?’. Rich man says ‘so if she don’t like the diamond ring, she can bring it back in the Mercedez and still be happy’. Rich man says ot poor man, ‘what did you get your wife this year? He says ‘I got her a pair of slippers and a dildo’. Rich man says ‘what’d you get her a pair of slippers and a dildo for?’. Poor man says, ‘if she don’t like the slippers she can go fuck herself!’.” Tony Soprano

Thug humor, let’s call it.

You’re five fucking time-zones behind your own ass.” Silvio Dante

Let’s count them, Adriana.

“We worry so much sometimes it feels like that’s all we do. But in the end it gets washed away. All of it, just washed away.” Carmela Soprano

Someone run thus by Furio Giunta.

Paulie Gualtieri: “You’re not gonna believe this. He killed 16 Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.”
Christopher Moltisanti: “His house looked like shit.”

Like he would know.

“That’s the mystery, isn’t it? The mystery of God, or whatever you wanna call it. And why we’re given the questionable gift of knowing we’re going to die?” Jennifer Melfi

Yeah, what about that, Tony?

1076

The Wire

Omar Little: Hey, look, I ain’t never put my gun on no citizen.
Maury Levy: You are amoral, are you not? You are feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade. You are stealing from those who themselves are stealing the lifeblood from our city. You are a parasite who leeches off the culture of drugs.
Omar Little: Just like you, man.
Maury Levy: Excuse me? What?
Omar Little: I got the shotgun; you got the briefcase. It’s all in the game though, right?

Where to even begin, right?

Brother Mouzone: Pellets in plastic. Rat shot. What you need be concerned about is what’s seated in the chamber now: a copper-jacketed, hollow-point, 120-grain hot street load of my own creation. So you need to think for a just a moment and ask yourself: “What do I have to do before this man raise up his gun again?”

One particularly scary-ass gangster.
From New York, for one thing.

Terrence Fitz: State your name.
Sergei Malatov: …
Jimmy McNulty: No name, huh? Well, for now, we’ll just call you Boris.
Sergei Malatov: Boris. Why always Boris?

Let’s run this by Natasha. If she’s here, of course.

Avon Barksdale: String, this ain’t about your motherfucking business class either. It ain’t that part of it. It’s that other thing. The street. It’s the street, always.

We know how this plays out.

Bodie Broadus: No matter how many times you get burnt, man, you just keep on doin’ the same.

On the corners, for example.

Ervin Burrell: It’s Baltimore, gentlemen. The gods will not save you.

Let alone Tommy Carsetti.

1077

Quantum Physics

“So Einstein was wrong when he said, ‘God does not play dice.’ Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.” Stephen Hawking

You know, before He crapped out.

“Small shifts in your thinking, and small changes in your energy, can lead to massive alterations of your end result.” Kevin Michel

Well, so far, anyway.

“The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.” Werner Heisenberg

Perhaps this explains Donald Trump then.

“In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world…all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else.” John Gribbin

What does or does not this explain?

“The more we delve into quantum mechanics the stranger the world becomes; appreciating this strangeness of the world, whilst still operating in that which you now consider reality, will be the foundation for shifting the current trajectory of your life from ordinary to extraordinary. It is the Tao of mixing this cosmic weirdness with the practical and physical, which will allow you to move, moment by moment, through parallel worlds to achieve your dreams.” Kevin Michel

So, how strange do you think it is?

“At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs - as long as no one is watching, anything goes.” Lawrence M. Krauss

First, we’ll need to define watching, right?

1078

Ontology

“Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein―a kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself." Martin Heidegger

Well, at least until they stumble upon…fascism?

“What is the motive for this ‘fugitive’ way of saying “I”? It is motivated by Dasein’s falling; for as falling, it flees in the face of itself into the “‘they.’” Martin Heidegger

Objectivists, some call them.

“Some animals can see only in black and white, so everything is a shade of grey, others can see in various colors. If you cease to look at something and it continues to exist, what color does it have? The color one species sees it in, or the color another species sees it in? Clearly it can’t be grey and have another color at the same time. The same applies to other sense perceptions, a vibration in the air sounds different to different species, the same odour can smell different to different species. Remove the observer, what sound or smell continues to exist. The way one observer hears the sound or the way the other observer hears it? Does an odour continue to exist the way one observer smells it or the way another smells it? Something cannot be of different colors, smells or sounds at the same time. Clearly the sense perceptions a particular observer has disappeared when the observer ceases to be making an observation.” Rochelle Forrester,

Shades of gray work for me. And in and out of bed.

“Everything was changing. Nothing remained the same. Space had expanded, yet merely rearranged. Time was stretching far too fast and waiting now to snap. If found there is no answer, can the quest be taken back?” Todd Crawshaw

Sure, until that changes too.

“The belief that ‘existence’ and ‘reality’ are synonymous with the human sensory world is just a case of human centrism that fails to recognize that the human view of the world is just one view of the universe and there are many other views just as valid as ours. It is an irrational bias or prejudice that cannot be justified as our sensory apparatus arose through a process of biological evolution, the same as those of all other species.” Rochelle Forrester

Let’s run memes by other species.

“When Jesus says to Simon, ‘Follow me,’ the response is a single act of faith and obedience; there is no gap between a mental action of believing and a bodily action of following. The human person is not a mind attached to a body but a single psychosomatic being.” Lesslie Newbigin

However fractured and fragmented that might be.

1079

Solitude

“Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.” Kahlil Gibran

Of course, your solitude may be nothing like this at all.

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” Gabriel García Márquez

And after one hundred years of solitude in particular.

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” Jodi Picoult

Well, sure, that too.

“I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ - that wouldn’t be enough - but like a dead man.” Franz Kafka

Or, for some, like a dead bug.

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” Wayne W. Dyer

And virtually too if you’re lucky.

“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” Wayne W. Dyer

Ask me to explain this.

1080

We feeling lonely, are we?

1081

Faith

“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.” Aaron Lauritsen

Have faith in that, okay?

“Faith in faith’ he answered himself. ‘It isn’t necessary to have something to believe in. It’s only necessary to believe that somewhere there’s something worthy of belief.’” Alfred Bester

Let’s take this “down to Earth”.

“If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.” Robert A. Heinlein

Sounds like something I might have insisted on.

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” E.B. White

I wouldn’t go that far myself, if not further.

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.” Pearl S. Buck

The fool! Right?

“Fear is the glue that keeps you stuck. Faith is the solvent that sets you free.” Shannon L. Alder

What on Earth does that mean, you might be wondering.