Margaret Atwood from Oryx and Crake
Those walls and bars are there for a reason, said Crake. Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases. Them?
Nature and God.
I thought you didn’t believe in God, said Jimmy.
I don’t believe in Nature either, said Crake. Or not with a capital N.
Next up: nihilism with a capital N.
Even sex was no longer what it had once been, though he was still as addicted to it as ever. He felt jerked around by his own dick, as if the rest of him was merely an inconsequential knob that happened to be attached to one end of it. Maybe the thing would be happier if left to roam around on its own.
Sex? Pick two:
1] nature
2] nurture
Your friend is intellectually honourable, Jimmy's mother would say. He doesn't lie to himself.
Being fractured and fragmented, perhaps?
Of course, said Oryx, having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it. . . . but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing.
Money it is then.
It made him feel invisible—not that he wanted to feel anything else.
Now you're talking.
God is a cluster of neurons.
See, I told you.
Quote of the day
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Suicide...
“People think that those who commit suicide are against life—they are not. They are too lusty for life, they have great lust for life; and because life is not fulfilling their lust, in anger, in despair, they destroy themselves.” Osho
Me? I'll let you know, okay?
“Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.
Too stupid.
You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?
I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.
Exactly.
That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus. It was worse than he thought.
No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food.” Nick Hornby
Distractions, let's call them.
“I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day.
Whoever I had become had to die.” Craig Ferguson
Instead, he "stepped down".
“Suicide isn't really about death, though. It's about change. Release.” Leah Raeder
Well, that and death, he suspected.
“You smoke?
Smoke? Do I look like a fucking idiot?” Richard K. Morgan
Any fucking idiots here smoke?
“In the case of suicide, people think that no fight was involved they merely think that the person couldn't take it and felt weak. They forget all the mental struggles the person faced because the were invisible and sometimes unspoken and unexposed to anyone. This attitude of society is wrong.” Deeksha Arora
So, don't forget about mine, okay?
“People think that those who commit suicide are against life—they are not. They are too lusty for life, they have great lust for life; and because life is not fulfilling their lust, in anger, in despair, they destroy themselves.” Osho
Me? I'll let you know, okay?
“Because . . . most of us think that the point is something to do with work, or kids, or family, or whatever. But you don't have any of that. There's nothing between you and despair, and you don't seem a very desperate person.
Too stupid.
You're not stupid. So why don't you ever put your head in the oven?
I don't know. There's always a new Nirvana album to look forward to, or something happening in NYPD Blue to make you want to watch the next episode.
Exactly.
That's the point? NYPD Blue? Jesus. It was worse than he thought.
No, no. The point is you keep going. You want to. So all the things that make you want to are the point. I don't know if you even realize it, but on the quiet you don't think life's too bad. You love things. Telly. Music. Food.” Nick Hornby
Distractions, let's call them.
“I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day.
Whoever I had become had to die.” Craig Ferguson
Instead, he "stepped down".
“Suicide isn't really about death, though. It's about change. Release.” Leah Raeder
Well, that and death, he suspected.
“You smoke?
Smoke? Do I look like a fucking idiot?” Richard K. Morgan
Any fucking idiots here smoke?
“In the case of suicide, people think that no fight was involved they merely think that the person couldn't take it and felt weak. They forget all the mental struggles the person faced because the were invisible and sometimes unspoken and unexposed to anyone. This attitude of society is wrong.” Deeksha Arora
So, don't forget about mine, okay?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Arthur C. Clarke from 2001: A Space Odyssey
But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.
Any woman too probably.
Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.
That'll never happen to us of course.
Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.
He means other animals, of course.
Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness. At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays--especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare--or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them. So he switched to opera--usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more. Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart. And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.
Hmm, why wasn't that in the movie?
He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity—the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.
Our truth, anyway.
A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.
Our success, anyway.
But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.
Any woman too probably.
Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.
That'll never happen to us of course.
Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.
He means other animals, of course.
Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness. At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays--especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare--or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them. So he switched to opera--usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more. Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart. And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.
Hmm, why wasn't that in the movie?
He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity—the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.
Our truth, anyway.
A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.
Our success, anyway.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Nihilism...
“A desire to attain short-term happiness while laboring under the weight a looming death sentence is an obvious paradox. Suicide, as distinguished from medical euthanasia, is an emotional reaction to the absurdity of life." Kilroy J. Oldster
From Dead Toad Scrolls of course.
“Four centuries and more of modern thought have been, from one point of view, an experiment in the possibilities of knowledge open to man, assuming that there is no Revealed Truth. The conclusion--which Hume already saw and from which he fled into the comfort of "common sense" and conventional life, and which the multitudes sense today without possessing any such secure refuge--the conclusion of this experiment is an absolute negation: if there is no Revealed Truth, there is no truth at all; the search for truth outside of Revelation has come to a dead end. The scientist admits this by restricting himself to the narrowest of specialties, content if he sees a certain coherence in a limited aggregate of facts, without troubling himself over the existence of any truth, large or small; the multitudes demonstrate it by looking to the scientist, not for truth, but for the technological applications of a knowledge which has no more than a practical value, and by looking to other, irrational sources for the ultimate values men once expected to find in truth. The despotism of science over practical life is contemporaneous with the advent of a whole series of pseudo-religious "revelations"; the two are correlative symptoms of the same malady: the abandonment of truth.” Seraphim Rose
Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere.
“Perhaps in the end the suffering is all, it's all contained in the suffering. The final atoms of it all are simply pain.” Iris Murdoch
Being optimistic?
“The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.” Alan Moore
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
“But death is the ultimate blissfulness
To be a candy or a corpse
The world holds you on its tongue
And no one can save you” Dorothea Lasky
Well, maybe God?
“Nothing exists...thus the proof for that also cannot exist.” Rajesh
Ain't that clever?
“A desire to attain short-term happiness while laboring under the weight a looming death sentence is an obvious paradox. Suicide, as distinguished from medical euthanasia, is an emotional reaction to the absurdity of life." Kilroy J. Oldster
From Dead Toad Scrolls of course.
“Four centuries and more of modern thought have been, from one point of view, an experiment in the possibilities of knowledge open to man, assuming that there is no Revealed Truth. The conclusion--which Hume already saw and from which he fled into the comfort of "common sense" and conventional life, and which the multitudes sense today without possessing any such secure refuge--the conclusion of this experiment is an absolute negation: if there is no Revealed Truth, there is no truth at all; the search for truth outside of Revelation has come to a dead end. The scientist admits this by restricting himself to the narrowest of specialties, content if he sees a certain coherence in a limited aggregate of facts, without troubling himself over the existence of any truth, large or small; the multitudes demonstrate it by looking to the scientist, not for truth, but for the technological applications of a knowledge which has no more than a practical value, and by looking to other, irrational sources for the ultimate values men once expected to find in truth. The despotism of science over practical life is contemporaneous with the advent of a whole series of pseudo-religious "revelations"; the two are correlative symptoms of the same malady: the abandonment of truth.” Seraphim Rose
Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere.
“Perhaps in the end the suffering is all, it's all contained in the suffering. The final atoms of it all are simply pain.” Iris Murdoch
Being optimistic?
“The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.” Alan Moore
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
“But death is the ultimate blissfulness
To be a candy or a corpse
The world holds you on its tongue
And no one can save you” Dorothea Lasky
Well, maybe God?
“Nothing exists...thus the proof for that also cannot exist.” Rajesh
Ain't that clever?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
God...
“When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.” Stephen Hawking
And now?
“Garcia wondered why people with JESUS stickers on their bumper always drove twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. If God was my co-pilot, he thought, I'd be doing a hundred and twenty.” Carl Hiaasen
Blindfolded?
“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.” Pablo Picasso
That might explain us then.
“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.” Terry Pratchett
Let's start with microwave ovens.
“Without God all things are permitted.” Fyodor Dostoevsky
Not unlike with God then.
“I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.” Madeleine L'Engle
See how it works? Just believe it. That's what makes it true.
“When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.” Stephen Hawking
And now?
“Garcia wondered why people with JESUS stickers on their bumper always drove twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. If God was my co-pilot, he thought, I'd be doing a hundred and twenty.” Carl Hiaasen
Blindfolded?
“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.” Pablo Picasso
That might explain us then.
“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.” Terry Pratchett
Let's start with microwave ovens.
“Without God all things are permitted.” Fyodor Dostoevsky
Not unlike with God then.
“I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.” Madeleine L'Engle
See how it works? Just believe it. That's what makes it true.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Existentialism...
“It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.” Rollo May
Next up: the great philosophical discoveries.
Or, perhaps, the myth of them?
“Wouldn’t the joys of life lose all colour, if life was eternal?” Constantina Maud
Let's just say I'll take that chance.
“All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?” Bertrand Russell
Why does there even need to be one?
Oh yeah, I forgot.
“A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty...dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.” Tom Stoppard
Or commit him?
“Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.” Jules Renard
How's that going for you?
“Having just enough life to enjoy being dead.” Jim Holt
If you get his drift.
“It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.” Rollo May
Next up: the great philosophical discoveries.
Or, perhaps, the myth of them?
“Wouldn’t the joys of life lose all colour, if life was eternal?” Constantina Maud
Let's just say I'll take that chance.
“All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?” Bertrand Russell
Why does there even need to be one?
Oh yeah, I forgot.
“A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty...dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.” Tom Stoppard
Or commit him?
“Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.” Jules Renard
How's that going for you?
“Having just enough life to enjoy being dead.” Jim Holt
If you get his drift.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Absurd...
“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?” Terry Pratchett
2,288 miles per hour...just in case they come after you.
“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.” Franz Kafka
Counterintuitive let's call it.
“Just because you're beautiful and perfect, it's made you conceited.” William Goldman
Kind of absurd, anyway.
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous -- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.” Thomas Mann
Me? Take a wild guess.
“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” Garrison Keillor
If anything does?
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” George Orwell
And we have just about destroyed them all here.
“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?” Terry Pratchett
2,288 miles per hour...just in case they come after you.
“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.” Franz Kafka
Counterintuitive let's call it.
“Just because you're beautiful and perfect, it's made you conceited.” William Goldman
Kind of absurd, anyway.
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous -- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.” Thomas Mann
Me? Take a wild guess.
“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” Garrison Keillor
If anything does?
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” George Orwell
And we have just about destroyed them all here.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
William Faulkner from The Sound and the Fury
...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
No, seriously.
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.
Next up: the little wheels here.
It's not when you realise that nothing can help you - religion, pride, anything - it's when you realise that you don't need any aid.
Unless, of course, over and over and over again, you do.
I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.
If they let you, anyway.
…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.
That's how it starts out, say.
I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.
Next up: the value of not having any.
...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
No, seriously.
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.
Next up: the little wheels here.
It's not when you realise that nothing can help you - religion, pride, anything - it's when you realise that you don't need any aid.
Unless, of course, over and over and over again, you do.
I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.
If they let you, anyway.
…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.
That's how it starts out, say.
I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.
Next up: the value of not having any.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Carson McCullers from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
Not only that, but there's a sucker born every minute.
Right, Mike?
How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?
God knows?
The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.
Really? Try being fractured and fragmented alone.
I want...I want...I want was all that she could think about --- but just what this real want was she did not know.
Well, as we all know, that could be anything.
I´m a stranger in a strange land.
Social media let's call it.
When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?
Uh, repeat himself until they do?
Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.
Not only that, but there's a sucker born every minute.
Right, Mike?
How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?
God knows?
The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.
Really? Try being fractured and fragmented alone.
I want...I want...I want was all that she could think about --- but just what this real want was she did not know.
Well, as we all know, that could be anything.
I´m a stranger in a strange land.
Social media let's call it.
When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?
Uh, repeat himself until they do?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Despair...
“It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart. Despair says little, and is patient.” Neil Gaiman
My despair more or less than yours.
“Why does it have to be like this?' I asked bitterly. 'Why does life have to be so short, with all the good things passing quickly. Is it worth living at all?” Joseph Delaney
God knows?
“In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this.” Branwell Bronte
Can you say that?
“Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.” John Clare
Though [of course] not stranger than I am.
“It was a little thing, but on top of the other little things, it broke something in me.” John Howard Griffin
Being black like him, as it were
“Yes, the world is full of unspeakable cruelty. But the answer wasn't to never feel hope, or bliss, or love-but to savor every fleeting, precious second of those feelings when they came.” Katherine Center
Uh, blah, blah, blah?
“It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart. Despair says little, and is patient.” Neil Gaiman
My despair more or less than yours.
“Why does it have to be like this?' I asked bitterly. 'Why does life have to be so short, with all the good things passing quickly. Is it worth living at all?” Joseph Delaney
God knows?
“In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this.” Branwell Bronte
Can you say that?
“Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.” John Clare
Though [of course] not stranger than I am.
“It was a little thing, but on top of the other little things, it broke something in me.” John Howard Griffin
Being black like him, as it were
“Yes, the world is full of unspeakable cruelty. But the answer wasn't to never feel hope, or bliss, or love-but to savor every fleeting, precious second of those feelings when they came.” Katherine Center
Uh, blah, blah, blah?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Osamu Dazai from No Longer Human
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.
Everything passes.
That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
Everything passes.
And eventually forever.
Just ask George Harrison.
I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.
Don't look at us, right?
Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.
Next up: "All he ever wanted was everything."
For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.
Or, here, between the lines?
People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.
Any social outcasts here? Want me to yank you down? Unless of course you can yank me up?
He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.
What we call pinheads here.
Starting with me, right?
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.
Everything passes.
That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
Everything passes.
And eventually forever.
Just ask George Harrison.
I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.
Don't look at us, right?
Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.
Next up: "All he ever wanted was everything."
For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.
Or, here, between the lines?
People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.
Any social outcasts here? Want me to yank you down? Unless of course you can yank me up?
He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.
What we call pinheads here.
Starting with me, right?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Suicide...
“I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.” Jay Asher
In other words, how many more would follow?
“I am so stupid, so easily fooled. It's really almost funny. If I could lift a finger I would gladly kill myself.” Will Christopher Baer
Good riddance?
“We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.” Vladimir Nabokov
I forgive them.
“She was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on.” Paulo Coelho
And I neither cared nor didn't care when she was gone.
"Suicide is an attack on society--an attack on its omnipotence, on its denial of death, and on its own despair.” Robert E. Neale
Like society gives a shit.
“A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide.” Bret Easton Ellis
And that's just on this planet.
“I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.” Jay Asher
In other words, how many more would follow?
“I am so stupid, so easily fooled. It's really almost funny. If I could lift a finger I would gladly kill myself.” Will Christopher Baer
Good riddance?
“We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.” Vladimir Nabokov
I forgive them.
“She was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on.” Paulo Coelho
And I neither cared nor didn't care when she was gone.
"Suicide is an attack on society--an attack on its omnipotence, on its denial of death, and on its own despair.” Robert E. Neale
Like society gives a shit.
“A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide.” Bret Easton Ellis
And that's just on this planet.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Arthur C. Clarke from 2001: A Space Odyssey
Turing had pointed out that, if one could carry out a prolonged conversation with a machine—whether by typewriter or microphones was immaterial—without being able to distinguish between its replies and those that a man might give, then the machine was thinking, by any sensible definition of the word. Hal could pass the Turing test with ease.
So, am I a machine or not?
How about God?
There were other thinkers, Bowman also found, who held even more exotic views. They did not believe that really advanced beings would possess organic bodies at all. Sooner or later, as their scientific knowledge progressed, they would get rid of the fragile, disease-and-accident-prone homes that Nature had given them, and which doomed them to inevitable death. They would replace their natural bodies as they wore out—or perhaps even before that—by constructions of metal and plastic, and would thus achieve immortality.
Nope, nothing like that yet. So, sure, by all means, stick with God.
But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called “spirit.” And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.
Sheer speculation let's call it.
Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites. It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.
Next up: the internet.
Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; therefore it was not important.
Little did they know...?
He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.
His pal Hal is toast.
Turing had pointed out that, if one could carry out a prolonged conversation with a machine—whether by typewriter or microphones was immaterial—without being able to distinguish between its replies and those that a man might give, then the machine was thinking, by any sensible definition of the word. Hal could pass the Turing test with ease.
So, am I a machine or not?
How about God?
There were other thinkers, Bowman also found, who held even more exotic views. They did not believe that really advanced beings would possess organic bodies at all. Sooner or later, as their scientific knowledge progressed, they would get rid of the fragile, disease-and-accident-prone homes that Nature had given them, and which doomed them to inevitable death. They would replace their natural bodies as they wore out—or perhaps even before that—by constructions of metal and plastic, and would thus achieve immortality.
Nope, nothing like that yet. So, sure, by all means, stick with God.
But was even this the end? A few mystically inclined biologists went still further. They speculated, taking their cues from the beliefs of many religions, that mind would eventually free itself from matter. The robot body, like the flesh-and-blood one, would be no more than a stepping-stone to something which, long ago, men had called “spirit.” And if there was anything beyond that, its name could only be God.
Sheer speculation let's call it.
Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites. It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.
Next up: the internet.
Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; therefore it was not important.
Little did they know...?
He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.
His pal Hal is toast.
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Ernest Cline from Ready Player One
People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.
Let's make sense of that.
Going outside is highly overrated.
Next up: going online.
One person can keep a secret, but not two.
Next up: three or more.
I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.
Virtually as it were.
Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.
That and oblivion.
Being human totally sucks most of the time. Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable.
That and what we do?
People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.
Let's make sense of that.
Going outside is highly overrated.
Next up: going online.
One person can keep a secret, but not two.
Next up: three or more.
I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.
Virtually as it were.
Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.
That and oblivion.
Being human totally sucks most of the time. Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable.
That and what we do?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Nihilism...
“Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.” Iris Murdoch
Me probably.
“Because poetry reminds you
That there is no dignity
In living
You just muddle through and for what” Dorothea Lasky
Not unlike philosophy?
“I have two modes, nihilism and wholesomeness, and they are allowed to both be present.” Dan Howell
Yes, even at the same time.
“I mean, when a chap keeps on saying that life isn't worth living you take it that he's just stating the obvious. When he backs it up with action you begin to wonder if there wasn't more to him than you thought.” P.D. James
Any chaps here?
"In a hundred years no one you know will be alive. What will it matter if we fight or just spend our days sleeping in the sun?"
Zhenjin blinked at him, unable to understand his father's strange mood.
If it doesn't matter, then why are we going to fight your brother?
Perhaps I haven't said it well. I mean it doesn't matter if we change the world. The world moves on and new lives come and go. Genghis himself said he would be forgotten and, believe me, he left a long shadow. It does matter how we live, Zhenjin! It matters that we use what we are given, for just our brief time in the sun." He smiled to see his son struggling with the idea. "It's all you can say, when the end comes: 'I didn't waste my time.' I think that matters. I think it may be all that matters.” Conn Iggulden
A paradox let's call it.
“What are the implacable values of Homer? Honor, status, personal courage—the values of an aristocratic military class? But this is not what the Iliad is about. It would be more correct to say, as Simone Weil does, that the Iliad—as pure an example of the tragic vision as one can find—is about the emptiness and arbitrariness of the world, the ultimate meaninglessness of all moral values, and the terrifying rule of death and inhuman force. If the fate of Oedipus was represented and experienced as tragic, it is not because he, or his audience, believed in “implacable values,” but precisely because a crisis had overtaken those values. It is not the implacability of “values” which is demonstrated by tragedy, but the implacability of the world. The story of Oedipus is tragic insofar as it exhibits the brute opaqueness of the world, the collision of subjective intention with objective fate. After all, in the deepest sense, Oedipus is innocent; he is wronged by the gods, as he himself says in Oedipus at Colonus. Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism.” Susan Sontag
Fit yourself into this and get back to us.
“Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.” Iris Murdoch
Me probably.
“Because poetry reminds you
That there is no dignity
In living
You just muddle through and for what” Dorothea Lasky
Not unlike philosophy?
“I have two modes, nihilism and wholesomeness, and they are allowed to both be present.” Dan Howell
Yes, even at the same time.
“I mean, when a chap keeps on saying that life isn't worth living you take it that he's just stating the obvious. When he backs it up with action you begin to wonder if there wasn't more to him than you thought.” P.D. James
Any chaps here?
"In a hundred years no one you know will be alive. What will it matter if we fight or just spend our days sleeping in the sun?"
Zhenjin blinked at him, unable to understand his father's strange mood.
If it doesn't matter, then why are we going to fight your brother?
Perhaps I haven't said it well. I mean it doesn't matter if we change the world. The world moves on and new lives come and go. Genghis himself said he would be forgotten and, believe me, he left a long shadow. It does matter how we live, Zhenjin! It matters that we use what we are given, for just our brief time in the sun." He smiled to see his son struggling with the idea. "It's all you can say, when the end comes: 'I didn't waste my time.' I think that matters. I think it may be all that matters.” Conn Iggulden
A paradox let's call it.
“What are the implacable values of Homer? Honor, status, personal courage—the values of an aristocratic military class? But this is not what the Iliad is about. It would be more correct to say, as Simone Weil does, that the Iliad—as pure an example of the tragic vision as one can find—is about the emptiness and arbitrariness of the world, the ultimate meaninglessness of all moral values, and the terrifying rule of death and inhuman force. If the fate of Oedipus was represented and experienced as tragic, it is not because he, or his audience, believed in “implacable values,” but precisely because a crisis had overtaken those values. It is not the implacability of “values” which is demonstrated by tragedy, but the implacability of the world. The story of Oedipus is tragic insofar as it exhibits the brute opaqueness of the world, the collision of subjective intention with objective fate. After all, in the deepest sense, Oedipus is innocent; he is wronged by the gods, as he himself says in Oedipus at Colonus. Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism.” Susan Sontag
Fit yourself into this and get back to us.