a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Eugene Ionesco

It’s only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.[/b]

You know, going back to the existence of existence itself.

There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.

Obviously: if you know what he means.

Many people have delusions of grandeur but you’re deluded by triviality.

In other words, if the trivial shoe fits.

A really conscientious doctor ought to die with his patient. The captain goes down with his ship.

And nowadays her too.

The Arts are man’s most useless … and essential … activity.

Things those like him say.

You’ve always made the mistake of being yourself.

Not counting me of course.

[b] Philosophy Tweets

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell[/b]

Wow, imagine if that was true here!

“All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.” George Orwell

What, even the New York Times?!!

“The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.” Augustine of Hippo

“Conditions” as I call them.

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” Gabriel García Márquez

I know that I did.

“What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.” Alfred North Whitehead

I know, I know: What if that was actually true?!!

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” George McGovern

I shook this man’s hand. Also, Nancy Kulp’s.

[b]Mircea Eliade

Light does not come from light, but from darkness.[/b]

Next up: where darkness comes from.

The great cosmic illusion is a hierophany…One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity.

I know, I know: define sacred. If, for example, you are a senior citizen.

The way towards ‘wisdom’ or towards ‘freedom’ is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics.

Ah, the “real me” again!!

If we pay no attention to it, time does not exist.

First, however, in undertaking this task, let’s synchoronize our watches.

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Of course he’s only paraphrasing Fixed Jacob.

It would be frightening to think that in all the Cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one’s destiny lacks meaning.

If not…terrifying?

[b] Philosophy Tweets

“Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.” Simone de Beauvoir[/b]

Oh, and keeps quiet about it.

“A man is given the choice between loving women and understanding them.” Ninon de L’Enclos

Next up: what a woman is given.

“Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.” Henri Poincare

Cue this thing: =

“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.” Alan Turing

Sure, go ahead, explain that to us.

“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.” Alfred North Whitehead

Let’s call this the Mr. Pinhead Objectivist Syndrome.

“History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.” Kurt Vonnegut

That was before 2020 of course. Now nothing surprises us.

[b] Philosophy Tweets

“Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe[/b]

You might wonder why I bring this one back again.
Pick one:
1] fulminating fanatic objectivists.
2] pinheads
3] Stooges
4] all of the above

“To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra”
Kurt Vonnegut

Though not necessarily in that order.

“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.” J.D. Salinger

Like he’s anybody now.

"These crisis cults, already well established among followers of the Christian Right and Donald Trump, peddle magical thinking and an infantilism that promises — in exchange for all autonomy — prosperity, a return to a mythical past, order and security. " Chris Hedges

Let’s call them Republicans, he suggested.

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” Kurt Vonnegut

Yes.

“Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.” Kurt Vonnegut

Next up: virtually every philosopher.

[b]Peter Watts

Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.[/b]

Now of course we know why.
Don’t we?

People aren’t rational. We’re not thinking machines, we’re - we’re feeling machines that happen to think.

That can’t be good.
Well, if it’s true anyway.

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

Anyone here know what brought that on?

There’s no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn’t matter whether a solution’s optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.

The adequate? Maybe, but it lacks the cache of the fittest.

I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck. To this day, I still don’t know what went wrong.

Hell, it could be any one of many things.

Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of a manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.

My guess: whatever that means.

[b]Richard Avedon

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.[/b]

And who discards more things here than me, he wondered.

All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

Let’s call this a clever way of saying almost nothing at all.

Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.

You tell me: google.com/search?source=un … 66&bih=625

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

Not unlike our posts here. You know, if you’re me.

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense… symbolic of themselves.

Symbolic of themselves? Right.

It’s not hard being great occasionally. It’s difficult to be good consistently.

On the other hand, who gets to make that distinction? Whether in regard to his photographs or our posts.

[b] Philosophy Tweets

“Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.” Salvador Dali[/b]

Up first: your mistakes.
One at a tme please.

“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” Voltaire

Either that or post here.

“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Yes, including the use of semi-colons.

“If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.” Simone de Beauvoir

Any exceptions that you know of?

“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.” Jose Ortega y Gasset

Some more infuriating than others, he suspected.

“Clocks slay time…time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” William Faulkner

Well, not counting the real world of course.

[b]Diogenes

I pissed on the man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?[/b]

Next up: someone pisses on you for calling him a pinhead.

It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.

My guess: dasein.

He has the most who is most content with the least.

Sounds like me. You know, if it’s true.

One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.

I’ll need to hear the thought first of course.

If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.

Let’s discuss why it’s not.

We come into the world alone and we die alone. Why, in life, should we be any less alone?

Some actually prefer it.

hello old friend! glad to see you are well!!!

[b] Philosophy Tweets

“I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.” Thomas Henry Huxley[/b]

Not to be confused with the possibility of everything?

“An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.” Aldous Huxley

If [here] only up in the didactic clouds.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley

Yo, Mr. Pinhead! You’re up!!

“I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.” John Coltrane

Let’s start with this sentence. See where we end up.

“The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.” Heraclitus

With obvious exceptions, of course.

“Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.” Bertrand Russell

Not much that doesn’t include. Or, for some here, exclude.

great quotes friend!

[b]Natalie Clifford Barney

It is time for dead languages to keep quiet.[/b]

Let’s name them.

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

Let’s note the exceptions.

Like all religions, love has more believers than practitioners.

A hell of a lot more.

I’m fond of human beings, but only one at a time.

And spaced as far apart as possible.

My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.

Tell that to them.

The past is such a subtle thing. [But] in the end, nothing else exists, everything is made of the past, even the future.

Unless of course it’s even trickier than that.

[b] Philosophy Tweets

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Bertrand Russell[/b]

Even here?!

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” Aldous Huxley

Yo, Jimbo!

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” Aldous Huxley

Amen!

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Sun Tzu

Think me and the Stooges.

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.” Frank Herbert

Hard to trump that, right?

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” Frank Herbert

Right, like it’s only one step!

[b]John Green

We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.[/b]

What, not even Donald Trump?

If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?

Me?

Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.

I taught him that.

Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf.

Ah, the silver lining.

You’re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it.

Not unlike all the rest of us.

All salvation is temporary, Augustus shot back. I bought them a minute. Maybe that’s the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that’s not nothing.

Come on, it’s practically nothing.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.” Pema Chodron[/b]

On the other hand, not much that hasn’t been believed, right?

“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.” Seneca the Younger

Or any wind.

“If right now our emotional reaction to seeing a certain person or hearing certain news is to fly into a rage or to get despondent or something equally extreme, it’s because we have been cultivating that particular habit for a very long time.” Pema Chodron

We’ll need a context of course.
After all, it’s not like the news is unfolding in Nirvana.

“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” Jim Morrison

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca

As in “keep them doped with it”.

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

Pad Thai and Pastitsio for example.

[b]Marlene Dietrich

Careful grooming may take twenty years off a woman’s age, but you can’t fool a flight of stairs.[/b]

Trust me, he winced, men too.

You can’t live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.

You know the ones. Or you ought to.

To lose your prejudices you must travel.

Or, sure, instead, take them with you.

Being in the depths of sadness is just as important an experience as being exuberantly happy.

In other words, quote, end quote.

In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?

Yeah, what the fuck is going on here?

In Europe, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman - we make love with anyone we find attractive.

Wow, he snorted, let’s try that here!

[b]Nein

You are here. For space and time’s amusement.[/b]

If only all the way to the grave.

Freud. The mother of all fathers.

Let’s make it a Complex.

England and Scotland walk into a pub. And buy each other a point.

The goal in other words.

If it were up to me, friends, all games would end 0-0. And we could go home happy that we all lost together.

Let’s try that here.

My advice: If you’re going to let some idiot on Twitter ruin your weekend, make sure it’s you.

It’s me here, right?

Don’t make me recycle this tweet.

Don’t make me recycle this tweet post.

[b]Percy Bysshe Shelley

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.[/b]

Yo, Mr. Moral Objectivist! Spit on that!!

In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

Yo, Mr. Moral Nihilist! Spit on that!!

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

You know, if that is actually an option.

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear.

So they tell me.
Still, as it were.

…a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought…

Want to know mine?

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.

You know, on this planet.

[b]Werner Twertzog

I whined to my mother that I was hungry, and she handed me an axe and pointed to the mountains.[/b]

Or, if no mountains, the landfill.

Prophesy is one of the privileges of being old and deranged.

In other words, as ridiculous as they are likely to be.

Based on my reading of Q, the historical Jesus played shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

And based on your reading of Q?

They are developing a way to market the screams of child laborers.

Tell me that surprises you.

Yes, your death will surely “own the libs.”

You tell me, Mr Right Wing Fulminating Fanatic.

Nothing matters, apart from the Internet, and anime, I am told, by 20-somethings, male virgins.

Any 20-somethings here? A little help please.