a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Steven Pinker

There is a joke about a little girl who is filling in a hole in her garden when a neighbor looks over the fence. He politely asks, "Hi! What are you up to?" "My goldfish died," replies the girl tearfully, "and I've just buried him." The neighbor asks, "Isn't that an awfully big hole for a goldfish?" The little girl tamps down the soil and replies, "That's because he's inside your stupid cat.”

Trust me: one way or another that's applicable to the pinheads here.

The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs.

Ironism!!

The conscious mind—the self or soul—is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.

Not to worry: I won't rub it in.

In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award for accomplishing with pinpoint precision and unerring reliability, the feat of sitting exactly where it is sitting. Nothing would prevent us from agreeing with the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn that rocks are smarter than cats because rocks have the sense to go away when you kick them.

Nonsense...right?

When it comes to correct English, there's no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum.

Or the Menos.

Contrary to popular belief, the gene-centered theory of evolution does not imply that the point of all human striving is to spread our genes.

Let alone Satyr's.

[iambiguous]

God

WARNING: The following decades will contain scenes of graphic violence everyone should find disturbing.
Viewer depression is advised.

Fortunately, I've always been depressed myself.

You have a right to your opinion, as well as your preferred method of burial.

Good to know?

I'm developing a new strain of anti-vaxxer that is even more immune to reality.

Modelled after Urwrong no doubt.

If you don't like harp music, go to hell.

Down there? Accordions and bagpipes, he suspected.

No one up here gets a vaccine exemption.

Covid in Heaven! You heard it here!!

Just got the results of My latest existence test. Still negative.

Still not convinced though, are you?

[iambiguous]

Yuval Noah Harari

Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives, and to reinvent themselves repeatedly. Many if not most humans may be unable to do so.

So, in that regard, any abject failures here?

Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.

Well, that, crony capitalism and the military industrial complex.

You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, but it is the best archetype we can actually observe rather than just imagine.

So, how fucked are we then?

Over the past 10,000 years, Homo sapiens has grown so accustomed to being the only human species that it’s hard for us to conceive of any other possibility. Our lack of brothers and sisters makes it easier to imagine that we are the epitome of creation, and that a chasm separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. When Charles Darwin indicated that Homo sapiens was just another kind of animal, people were outraged. Even today many refuse to believe it. Had the Neanderthals survived, would we still imagine ourselves to be a creature apart? Perhaps this is exactly why our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate.

Next up: the next 10,000 years.

The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact.

Next up: the stuff I argue.

If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life.

Either that or devouring Pastitsio: https://www.google.com/search?source=un ... =625&dpr=1

[iambiguous]

God

You keep praying to Me and I keep not answering. It's funny, really.

Desperation let's call it.

I promise that in 2022 I will try to tweet with more hope.
Especially since it's going to be an awful, awful year.

Practice for 2024.

If you do your own research you'll find that most people who do their own research are morons.

Got a few slew of them here in fact.

Facts are what beliefs want to be when they grow up.

Trust me, Mr. Pinhead: not yours.

Every word in the Bible is literally true.
It's when you group them into sentences that problems arise.

I knew it!

Only [s]364[/i] 346 shopping days till Christmas!

And only 316 days until the next Black Friday.
you can actually Google this shit!

[iambiguous]

Emile M. Cioran

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

The fractured fragments eventually.

It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say “we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter --- for me to consider him my enemy.

"Foe" the sonofabitch.

History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable.

Let's call this The Pinhead Syndrome.
Okay, Kids?

Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.

My point too of course.
And all that's left is to bitterly envy him.

There is only one thing worse than boredom, and that is the fear of boredom.

Nope, never.
Of course, who am I kidding.

Society: an inferno of saviors!

Including a boatload here.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

it's the most existential dread time of the year

Pick a month.

baby, it's dead inside

Trust me though, baby: In me more than you.

actually you catch more bees with poison

Define "catch"?

everyone has two genders inside them

How else to explain nipples.

some mirrors are cruel

Some mirrors are crueler still.

please do not feed the abyss

Of course some cannot not feed it.

[iambiguous]

Michael Stipe

The punk-rock ethos was "Do it yourself. Anyone can do this. We're not sent from the heavens."

Next up: the punk-philosophy ethos.

When I hear music as a fan, I see fields. I see landscapes. I close my eyes and see an entire universe that that music and the voice, or the narrative, create. A music video-and any other kind of visual reference-is created by someone else.

It's all in the ear. Trust us on that.

When we signed with Warner Bros., they knew what they were getting. They knew they weren't going to get some easily manipulated prepackaged pop group. That was not going to happen. What they wanted, I think, was the integrity that we had to offer. What they wanted was the kind of street cred or cache that R.E.M. could bring to them and the chance that we would give them a hit or two. What happened was we gave them a bunch of hits. And we became huge.

You know, the good capitalism.

I stopped taking drugs [in 1983]. There were a lot of things that led up to it. One thing was that a lover died. An ex of mine died in a car wreck and I was really trashed when I found out about it and I couldn't cry. I woke up the next morning and I said, "That's it," so I quit then. It was horrible.

Of course for others that might start them up on drugs.

Never eat broccoli when there are cameras around.

You tell me.

I really wanted to be on Six Feet Under as a corpse. That would be hysterical.

You tell me.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

but what if the lemmings are right?

And they don't even know it.

my god, it's full of shit

Next up: your God.

we can be sad, just for one day
happy birthday david bowie

He is still dead, right?

I hurt myself shrugging

Yo, Atlas!

is sadness a wave or a particle?

Yes.

2021 is dead

Not counting eternal return of course.

[iambiguous]

Stephane Mallarme

A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.

Though what are the odds of that?

All thoughts emit a throw of dice

Craps as it were.

You don't make a poem with ideas, but with words.

Meaning nothing really has to make sense.

I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.

And now it doesn't even have to rhyme.

The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.

Only these days it can be practically anything.

It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself.

If you want to call it that.

[iambiguous]

so sad today

life reminds me why i find life difficult

Well, they don't call it life for nothing.

i’m officially done growing as a person, thank you

Of course now she is practically famous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Broder

i have trouble making decisions because i don’t want to do anything

Then do something else.

it’s not my job to like me

I'd sure like it to be mine then.

i wouldn't be friends with me

Me, I wouldn't be friends with anyone other.

setting goals is the first step to disappointment

And, as likely as not, the last.

[iambiguous]

Georg Simmel

He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn't know.

With a little help from me, of course.

The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones.

I know, let's call this human nature.

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

This and my own two-cents.

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.

What today we call, "don't ask, don't tell".

Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual.

On the other hand, note the year he died.

By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline, that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.

As general description intellectual contraptions go, this at least is in the vicinity of reality.

[iambiguous]

sad socrates

"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." Jean-Paul Sartre

That's probably what made socrates sad.

You only live once, but get to be depressed every day.

You know, trying to be constructive about it.

If you destroy it, they will leave.

And here of course it's now only a matter of time.

I look myself up on Wikipedia just to remember who I am

Of course Wiki is now just another liberal plot.

A lack of usernames is the biggest crisis of the 21st century.

I missed that one. Fill me in.

A Brief History of the Past, Present and Future:
Troll1: I have an argument
Troll2: I have a counter argument
Troll3: I have a counter counter argument
Troll4: I am a secret robot

That and [here] dasein.

[iambiguous]

Iain McGilchrist

There are, it seems to me, four main pathways to the truth: science, reason, intuition and imagination.

On the other hand, in regard to intuition and imagination, what particular truth might that be?

The statement that ‘there is no such thing as truth’ is itself a truth statement, and implies that it is truer than its opposite, the statement that ‘truth exists’. If we had no concept of truth, we could not state anything at all, and it would even be pointless to act. There would be no purpose, for example, in seeking the advice of doctors, since there would be no point in having their opinion, and no basis for their view that one treatment was better than another. None of us actually lives as though there were no truth. Our problem is more with the notion of a single, unchanging truth.

That and [sigh] distinguishing between truth in the either/or world and in the is/ought world.

...the brain is often described as if it were composed of bits – ‘modules’ – of one kind or another, which have then to be strung together, it is in fact a single, integrated, highly dynamic system. Events anywhere in the brain are connected to, and potentially have consequences for, other regions, which may respond to, propagate, enhance or develop that initial event, or alternatively redress it in some way, inhibit it, or strive to re-establish equilibrium.

What event? Connected to what other event? My own trivial quandary.

...we might have to revise the superior assumption that we understand the world better than our ancestors, and adopt a more realistic view that we just see it differently – and may indeed be seeing less than they did.

For example?

These are not different ways of thinking about the world: they are different ways of being in the world. And their difference is not symmetrical, but fundamentally asymmetrical.

A "world of words" in particular.

Literal language, by contrast, is the means whereby the mind loosens its contact with reality and becomes a self-consistent system of tokens.

Truly, he suspected, they just can't not note things like this.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"The corporate owned media companies who created the empty consumer mindset now call their detractors nihilists." Media Philosophy

Yep, they would do that.

“The individual is the product of power.” Michel Foucault

Starting for example with Mom and Pop.

"So, if we lie to the government it's a felony, but if they lie to us it's politics." Bill Murray

And then there's Donald Trump!

"The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month." Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yeah, back then. Every fucking day now though.

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." Friedrich Nietzsche

You know, even after God is pronounced dead.

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." Friedrich Nietzsche

You know, even after God is pronounced dead.

[iambiguous]

Joe Abercrombie

Empathy? What’s that? Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.

He means chronic pain of course.

Mercy and weakness are the same thing in war, and there's no prize for nice behavior.

Of course to the military industrial complex folks, all that shit is totallly irrelevant.

You are Shenkt? I expected more.
Pray to whatever God you believe in that you never see more.
I do not pray.
Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. I advise you to start.

So, which one are you here?

A man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he find entirely beyond sufferance.

Yeah, okay, sure, that's probably more genes than memes.

The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror.

And the last time you looked in yours?

A choice between killing and dying is no choice at all. You have to be realistic about these things.

Amorally as it were.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"All things are subject to interpretation...whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." Friedrich Nietzsche

At times, in fact, even in the either/or world.

"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad." Fyodor Dostoevsky

About 90% of all jobs, I'm guessing. So, where exactly is the stark raving mad working class? Not in unions that's for sure.

"At every moment, step by step, one must confront what one is thinking and saying with what one is doing, what one is." Michel Foucault

Right, like that will ever happen.

"Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society." Michel Foucault

Intellectual bullshit, perhaps? You know, given that institutional, structured power is...everywhere?

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face." Michel Foucault

Face maybe, but ego?

"There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible --- the new normal." Michel Foucault

Pop culture for exanple.

[iambiguous]

Thomas Ligotti

This whole city is most certainly a pitiful corpse, while the neighborhood outside the walls of this bar has the distinction of being the withering heart of the deceased. And I am a devoted student of its anatomy—a pathologist, after a fashion, with an eye for necroses that others overlook.

Songs of a dead dreamer indeed.

All of the myths of mankind are nothing but show business, the other man said to me during our initial meeting. Everything that we supposedly live by and supposedly die by — whether it's religious scriptures or makeshift slogans — all of it is show business. The rise and fall of empires — show business. Science, philosophy, all of the disciplines under the sun, and even the sun itself, as well as all those other clumps of matter wobbling about in the blackness up there — he said to me, pointing out the window beside the coffee-shop booth in which we sat, show business, show business, show business.
And what about dreams?' I asked, thinking I might have hit upon an exception to his dogmatic view, or at least one that he would accept as such.
You mean the dreams of the sort we are having at this moment or the ones we have when we're fortunate enough to sleep?

My kind of intellectual.

The darkness of the grotesque is an immortal enigma: in all legends of the dead, in all the tales of creatures of the night, in all the mythologies of mad gods and lucid demons, there remains a kind of mocking nonsense to the end, a thick and resonant voice which calls out from the heart of these stories and declares: 'Still I am here'.

My kind of intellectual.

Everything tears away at everything else … forever.

Not only that but, no doubt, violates its consent.

The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing.

Yo, Mr. Capitalist! Rebuttal please.

We, as licensed protectors of the species and members in good standing of the master-class of the race, by the power invested in us by those who wish to survive and reproduce, vow to enforce the fiction that life is worth having and worth living come hell or irreparable brain damage.

Next to him, Emil Cioran is a goddamn Pollyanna.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

“Are the prisons overpopulated, or is the population over-imprisoned ?” Michel Foucault

Yes?

“Where there is power, there is resistance.” Michel Foucault


He noted grimly.

"There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides." John Stuart Mill

Or, perhaps, better still, if they are not actually forced to.
On the other hand, there are still the points I make.

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." George Orwell

My obvious, not yours, motherfucker!

"Not only is the self-entwined in society; it owes society its existence in the most literal sense." Theodor W. Adorno

Methinks this can be taken too far.

"The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain." Karl Marx

Hell, how brutal is that truth.

[iambiguous]

Fernando Pessoa

If life has given us no more than a prison cell, let's at least decorate it as best we can.

Or...
If life has given us no more than a hole, let's at least decorate it as best we can.

To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.

Next up: to have opinions you insist that everyone else must have.

One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.

No, really, Mr. Pinhead, scout's honor.

But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?

Only for billiions and billions of us.

I look at myself but I'm missing. I know myself: it’s not me.

His own "hole" as it were.

Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary.

Of course for you it might be something else.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations." Adam Smith

The part Marx missed perhaps?

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." Adam Smith

You know what's coming: genes more or less than memes?

"All money is a matter of belief." Adam Smith

That and actually having it.

"The task of art today is to bring chaos into order." Theodor W. Adorno

And, for me, the task of philosophy?

"The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass." Theodor W. Adorno

Or, he suspected, quite the opposite.
You know, context wise.

"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly." Theodor W. Adorno

Not counting mine.
Or yours?

[iambiguous]

Steven Pinker

Our visual systems can play tricks on us, and that is enough to prove they are gadgets, not pipelines to the truth.

Next up: our pheromones.

Psychologists have long known that people tend to see their own lives through rose-colored glasses: they think they’re less likely than the average person to become the victim of a divorce, layoff, accident, illness, or crime. But change the question from the people’s lives to their society, and they transform from Pollyanna to Eeyore.

Any of either one of them here?

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky commented on Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, when unborn children were ripped from their mothers’ wombs and prisoners were nailed by their ears to a fence overnight before being hanged: “People speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals. No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it.

To wit: https://youtu.be/7HS8exsrBMM

Knights do protect ladies, but only to keep them from being abducted by other knights.

Figures, right?

The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence. Death becomes a mere rite of passage, like puberty or a midlife crisis.

The doctrine, maybe, but I still wouldn't mind having one.

The stuff of life turned out to be not a quivering, glowing, wondrous gel but a contraption of tiny jigs, springs, hinges, rods, sheets, magnets, zippers, and trapdoors, assembled by a data tape whose information is copied, downloaded and scanned.

Great, another contraption!

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!" Fyodor Dostoevsky

Right, merely dare to and it will happen!

“He who thinks great thoughts, often makes great errors” Martin Heidegger

Sieg Heil?

“Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?” Martin Heidegger

Anyone here know?

"Everyone is the other and no one is himself." Martin Heidegger

Pick one:
1[ Dasein
2] dasein

"Being the rational animal, man must be capable of thinking if he really wants to. Still, it may be that man wants to think, but cannot.” Martin Heidegger

Naturally, they had pinheads back then too.

“Understanding of being is itself a determination of being Dasein.” Martin Heidegger

Philosophically, as it were.

[iambiguous]

Yuval Noah Harari

Not only rationality, but individuality too is a myth. Humans rarely think for themselves. Rather, we think in groups. Just as it takes a tribe to raise a child, it also takes a tribe to invent a tool, solve a conflict, or cure a disease. No individual knows everything it takes to build a cathedral, an atom bomb, or an aircraft. What gave Homo sapiens an edge over all other animals and turned us into the masters of the planet was not our individual rationality but our unparalleled ability to think together in large groups.

Socialism!
Well, and capitalism of course.

We are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous.

Capitalism!
Well, and socialism of course.

To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it.

Fortunately, that didn't work for me.

Immediately after birth the calf is separated from its mother and locked inside a tiny cage not much bigger than the calf’s own body. There the calf spends its entire life – about four months on average. It never leaves its cage, nor is it allowed to play with other calves or even walk – all so that its muscles will not grow strong. Soft muscles mean a soft and juicy steak. The first time the calf has a chance to walk, stretch its muscles and touch other calves is on its way to the slaughterhouse. In evolutionary terms, cattle represent one of the most successful animal species ever to exist. At the same time, they are some of the most miserable animals on the planet.

Meat is murder: https://youtu.be/eviyEJRZX30

Does happiness really depend on self-delusion?

Yo, Maia!
Just kidding.

Thousands of years before our liberal age, ancient Buddhism went further by denying not just all cosmic dramas, but even the inner drama of human creation. The universe has no meaning, and human feelings too are not part of a great cosmic tale. They are ephemeral vibrations, appearing and disappearing for no particular purpose. That’s the truth. Get over it.

Ah, enlightenment!

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"Years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute." Edgar Allan Poe.

Next thing you know, you're just another episode on Dateline.

"The believer is happy. The doubter is wise." Edgar Allan Poe

Wise and, for some, only wishing they were happy.

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." Edgar Allan Poe

Wow, and all this time I thought that was Shakespeare.

"It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream." Edgar Allan Poe

Or, sure, a fucking nightmare.

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe

Anyone here know?
Demonstrably for example.

"Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence." Edgar Allan Poe

Let alone philosophy.

[iambiguous]

Emile M. Cioran

I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, one year to the next.

Not to worry: I would never expect you to understand it.

I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

Not to worry: I would never expect you to understand it.

As the years pass, the number of those we can communicate with diminishes. When there is no longer anyone to talk to, at last we will be as we were before stooping to a name.

Or, here, the names others call us.

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

From, perhaps, a "bullet to the brain"?

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

If you understand this, knock three times.

We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage.

True, but: how many times is that actually an option?