Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Cynicism...

“I remember her pretending to like watching award winning ceremonies more than she actually did because it surprised me, but then I let her know that such-and-such ceremony was on and we would have to sit through it. Le's go to bed, she said. We don't really know who any of these people are.
Winners, I said. Every stinking ugly vacuous ****-faced last one of them.
And off we went to bed.” Max Porter

No, really, some of us get this.

“...a very modern and American type of ambivalence, a sort of interior war between your deep need to believe and your deep belief that the need to believe is bullshit, that there’s nothing left anywhere but sales and salesmen.” David Foster Wallace

What, not counting us?

“After all his years as a politician he realised all that was left was the lie. The truth disguised as a lie or the lie dressed up as the truth.” Henning Mankell

So, don't forget to vote!

“Surely there can be no more superficial people than the Japanese. They were not able to transcend the demon of economic development and as a result, we have the corruption of the world, the loss of ideals, and the worship of material things.” Hayao Miyazaki

We taught them that.

“I may as well confess myself the author
Of several books against the world in general.” Robert Frost

And look at that world today.

“You’re a cynical kid, said Trebastion.
You make harps out of dead people, said Oliver.
Yes, but I haven’t allowed it to taint my basic optimism." T. Kingfisher

Again: whatever works.

[iambiguous]

Louis-Ferdinand Céline from Journey to the End of the Night

The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death.

Praise the Lord?

The Aztecs, so the story goes, routinely disemboweled eight thousand faithful a week in their temples of the sun, a sacrifice to the god of the clouds to make him send them rain. Such things are hard to believe until you get mixed up in a war. Once you’re in a war, you see how it is: the Aztecs’ contempt for other people’s bodies was the same as my humble viscera must have inspired in our above-mentioned General Celadon des Entrayes, who, thanks to a series of promotions, had become a kind of chickenshit god, an abominably exigent little sun.

If you get his drift. Or, if not, ask me to explain it.

Everything's permissible internally.

On the other hand, whatever that means?

I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare.

Or you can just take my word for it.

The poetry of heroism holds an irresistible appeal for people who aren’t involved in a war, especially when they’re making piles of money out of one.

And then the dumb fucks convinced it's about something else instead.

There won’t be any love to spare in this world as long as there’s five francs.

Hmm, you tell me?

[iambiguous]

George Orwell from Animal Farm

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Come to think of it, aren't we animals?

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

If not literally.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Tell that to the butcher. Among others.

The only good human being is a dead one.

Still, some more than others obviously.

Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.

When there are any arguments at all.

This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.

Hmm, what do you make of that?

[iambiguous]

Ernest Becker from The Denial of Death

Modern man became psychological because he became isolated from protective collective ideologies. He had to justify himself from within himself.

Good luck with that.

The "healthy" person, the true individual, the self-realized soul, the "real" man, is the one who has transcended himself.

Good luck with that.

Necessity with the illusion of meaning would be the highest achievement for man; but when it becomes trivial there is no sense to one’s life.

Tell me about it.

Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures.

Of course, what else is there [here for example] but to carry on.

This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression - and with all this yet to die.

Though, sure, you might choose another word.

...luck is when the guy next to you gets hit with the arrow.

It's still luck. For you good, for him bad. Unless, of course, luck has nothing to do with it at all

[henry quirk]

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[iambiguous]

Barbara Kingsolver from The Poisonwood Bible

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

Right, like that will ever stop the fiercely fanatic objectivists among us.

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

Right, like that will ever stop the fiercely fanatic objectivists among us.

Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.

Really, really wrong.

God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.

You know, if there is a God. Though, even if not, point taken.

I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.

Me too once. Now? Forget about it.

There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.

Or, for some, you have no one to tell about it.

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“Atheism, true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.” Seraphim Rose

Maybe, up to a point. But that doesn't make a God, the God, your God any more substantive.

"Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth." Fernando Pessoa

Of course: the unbearable lightness of being!

“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.” Albert Camus

Ah, of course: the "serious philosophers" peddling their worlds of words.

"I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

Next up: our Conservatives.

“Though nihilism has been relentlessly criticized for overemphasizing the dark side of human experience, it might be equally true that this overemphasis represents a needed counterbalance to shallow optimism and arrogant confidence in human power. Nihilism reminds us that we are not gods, and that despite all of the accomplishments and wonders of civilization, humans cannot alter the fact that they possess only a finite amount of mastery and control over their own destinies.” John Marmysz

Hear? Hear?

"Like the Nazis, the cadres of jihad have a death wish that sets the seal on their nihilism." Christopher Hitchens

Again: nihilistic means, sure, but objectivist ends.

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Stupidity...

“There are only 2 paths to happiness in life. Utter Stupidity or Exceptional Wealth.” Ziad K. Abdelnour

Wow! Doesn't that sum it all up!!

“All the inane, meaningless noises people make that pass for intelligent conversation. They might as well be pigs grunting in the pen.” Norma Fox Mazer

Wow! Doesn't that sum it all up!!

“Are you aware that humanity is just a blip? Not even a blip. Just a fraction of a fraction of what the universe has been and will become? Talk about perspective. I figure I can't feel so entirely stupid about saying what I said because, first of all, it's true. And second of all, there will be no remnant of me or my stupidity. No fossil or geographical shift that can document, really, even the most important historical human beings, let alone my paltry admissions.” Meg Mullins

I couldn't have said it better myself. And believe me, I've tried.

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

Any thrill seekers here to rebut that?
No, really.

“What he found impossible was to shut off his brain, to detach himself from the intriguing problems with which he was involved, or to leave alone the major problems of war and peace, race and poverty, man's inhumanity to man and the persistence of stupidity.” zelda popkin

Cue the distractions of course: falling in love, fucking, eating, drinking, listening to music, watching a film, reading a book, sports, the arts. Or, sure, manage to believe in God somehow.

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

Imagine me saying that, right?

[iambiguous]

Margot Lee Shetterly from Hidden Figures

Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations.

Next up: vegetariantaxidermy?

I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured.

And being a black woman, that can take on a whole other meaning in America.
On the other hand...

Their dark skin, their gender, their economic status--none of those were acceptable excuses for not giving the fullest rein to their imaginations and ambitions.

And what do most of us know about that?

Through its inability to solve its racial problems, the United States handed the Soviet Union one of the most effective propaganda weapons in their arsenal.

On the other hand, being less than 1% of the Russian population: https://www.fairplanet.org/story/racism ... orussians/

There was virtually no aspect of twentieth-century defense technology that had not been touched by the hands and minds of female mathematicians.

Well, given it's the military industrial complex and American imperialism we're talking about here, for better or for worse?

But before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka established that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female.

Let's run that by these -- https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora -- Nazis?

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Fyodor Dostoevsky from Crime and Punishment

Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn..."

Until you don't.

Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!

On the other hand, tell that to these folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

Nope, never. So far.

People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so, in fact.

Here? So far.

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?

God knows?

What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?

How tiny?

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Frank Herbert from Dune

The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

Actually, of course, the body may not obey at all.

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

Only, for all practical purposes, they are often entirely intertangled.

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

Here on Earth however it's still the money.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Next up: dread.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Women now too, of course.

The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.

Think Yevgeny Prigozhin

[iambiguous]

Viet Thanh Nguyen from The Sympathizer

Nothing is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.

It's free here, right?

We don’t succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what we have to do. We fail because others understand this better than we do.

Next up: failing here.

While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.

You know, if you're a celebrity. And, even for all the rest of us, it's highly problematic.

As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted participate in history could escape.

Then William Barrett paraphrasing Hegel...then me paraphrasing him.

Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.

And, no, not just the white working class.

It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends.

Well, not here, of course.

[Gary Childress]

We don’t succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what we have to do. We fail because others understand this better than we do.

Next up: failing here.

That is not true. We succeed or fail because we succeed or fail. If those who understand the way the world works will not share it with those who don't then those who don't will have to learn it for themselves if they want to know the world also. Good luck in your journey. It is not a futile one.

[iambiguous]

Cynicism...

"My purpose was simply to diminish that mass of contradictions and abuses which eventually turn legal procedure into a wilderness where decent people hardly dare venture, and where bandits abound." Marguerite Yourcenar

Next up: capitalism and the law.
Start Here: https://www.mgmplus.com/series/the-ruling-class

"When too much cynicism threatens to engulf us, it is buoying to remember how pervasive goodness is.” Carl Sagan

I still admire him though.

“Interstellar transport for surplus people presents an musing perspective. Since the ships would take generations to reach most stars, the only people who could be transported would be those willing to exercise strict birth control. Population explosions on space ships would be disastrous. Thus we would have to export our responsible people, leaving the irresponsible at home on Earth to breed.” Paul R. Ehrlich.

The man is actually still around. He's 91 years old.

“It is the way of the world that good people try to do the right thing for the wrong people's wrong reasons.” Ed McDonald

Pick one:
1] ignorance
2] stupidity

“Science is a peerless force for good, but a little knowledge of science is dangerous, it makes you cynical towards anything that is not logical.” Abhijit Naskar

Value judgments, for example.
Next up: science is a peerless force for bad.

“We’re cynical because we know the world. If we were optimists, we’d also be idiots.” Abigail C. Edwards

Had to bring this one back.

[iambiguous]

George Orwell from Animal Farm

The Seven Commandments:
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.

Join the crowd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

The distinguishing mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.

So much more to the point, that opposable thumb.

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Just always be packing then.

...they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

Animal, all too animal...

Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers.

That still works obviously.

These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.

Yo, comrades!