Philosophy Now Forum

Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

Well, I guess in all honesty I would have to say that I never knew nor did I ever hear of anybody that money didnt change.

Especially a whole suitcase full with it.

He didn't say a lot so I tend to remember what he did say. And I don't remember that he had a lot of patience with havin to say things twice so I learned to listen the first time.

Let's make that the case here. Starting with what I say.

I think sometimes people would rather have a bad answer about things than no answer at all.

Depending on the question say.

I got here the same way the coin did.

Uh-oh.

Somewhere in the world is the most invincible man. Just as somewhere is the most vulnerable.

The same man sometimes. Just different situations.

You wear out, Ed Tom. All the time you spend tryin to get back what’s been took from you there’s more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.

You know, being optimistic.

“I wanted the whole world or nothing.” “Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.” “Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.” “The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it—basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

Kevin Wilson from The Family Fang

What you'll find, I think, is that the things you most want to avoid are the things that make you feel the greatest when you actually do them.

On the other hand, all the exceptions.

Even awful people can be polite for a few minutes, their father told them. Any longer than that and they revert to the bastards they really are.

Yo, Satyr!
You know, for starters.

He tried to think of all the people in his life as chemicals, the uncertainty of mixing them together, the potential for explosions and scarring.

I know, I know: what if that were true here?

The simplest things are the hardest to understand.

Let's pin down the simplest thing of all.

Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock.

You tell me.

His writing had become, like a stash of rare and troubling pornography, something that must be kept hidden, an obsession that other people would be mystified to discover.

Dare me to post it.

Arthur C. Clarke from 2001: A Space Odyssey

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.

Yep, that's still around.

Discovery was no longer a happy ship.

And we all know how that turned out.

It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy.

Though not in 2001 of course.

There was not another human being within half a billion miles.

Paradise!

There was awe, and there was also incredulity—sheer disbelief that the dead Moon, of all worlds, could have sprung this fantastic surprise.

Next stop: Jupiter.

He had already decided that X rays, sonic probes, neutron beams, and all other nondestructive means of investigation would be brought into play before he called up the heavy artillery of the laser. It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.

Yes, that thing.

Philip K. Dick from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?

Mood organs. That's what we need.

The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clapped in horror to its ears, its mouth open in a vast, soundless scream. Twisted ripples of the creature's torment, echoes of its cry, flooded out into the air surrounding it; the man or woman, whichever it was, had become contained by its own howl. It had covered its ears against its own sound. The creature stood on a bridge and no one else was present; the creature screamed in isolation. Cut off by - or despite - its outcry.

Next up: the creature here.

I love you, Rachael said. If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I'd score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.

Sean Young!

Future and past blurred; what he had already experienced and what he would eventually experience blended so that nothing remained but the moment.

My moment here and now, your moment there and then.

I don't judge, not even myself.

And forget about Hell.

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

And then, of course, the virtual silence here.

Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one.

Me? Not so far.

The Onion

Report: Thinking About Way You Look All The Time Burns 5,000 Calories An Hour

Well, it should be true, right?

Scrambling Vatican Quickly Establishes Child Molestation As New Sacrament

It's a wonder it took them this long.

Twins Switched At Birth In Essentially Meaningless Mix-Up

That ever happen to you?

Caddy Helpfully Points Out Direction Of Hole

Eighteen times.

Conservative Boycotting Bud Light Forced To Drink 6 Cans Of Something Else Before Hitting Kids

Coors, I'm guessing.

New Study Finds Solving Every Single Personal Problem Reduces Anxiety

Actually, that doesn't surprise me.

Ursula K. Le Guin from The Left Hand of Darkness

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Or, in fact, most needful anytime.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

Of all things, it would have to be that.

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

"They only adopt sexual attributes once a month, during a period of sexual receptiveness and high fertility, called kemmer. During kemmer they become sexually male or female, with no predisposition towards either, although which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships." Now you know.

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

Next up: mundane love.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Indeed, I'm sleeping right now.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie.

So, sure, by all means, carry on.

Joseph Heller from Catch--22

Politically, he was a humanitarian who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between the two. He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.

Then, politically, the points I raise?

The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him. They hurled lights in his eyes to see if he could see, rammed needles into nerves to hear if he could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pendantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.

Then, of course, our specialty. You know, if anyone is interested.

Yossarian - the very sight of the name made Colonel Cathcart shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word "subversive" itself. It was like "seditious" and "insidious" too, and like "socialist," "suspicious," "fascist" and "Communist." It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, a name that just did not inspire confidence.

"dasein"

Catch-22 says they have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

Pick two:
1] might makes right
2] right makes might

He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference of the equator and always wrote "enhanced" when he meant "increased." He was a p****.

Frag him!

The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn’t a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.

Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan: USA! USA!! USA!!! USA!!!!

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Apr 11, 2023 6:54 pm
The real trick lies in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how splendidly we’ve done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn’t a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.

Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan: USA! USA!! USA!!! USA!!!!

Well, there are Somalia, Bosnia, and Grenada also. Now we have Ukraine. Guns and bombs don't solve problems, either by using them ourselves or giving them to someone else to use.

I'd be happier just to see the whole world tone down the saber rattling, weapon making, and the outright use of those weapons altogether. However, if it's some great glorious thing to wage war in order to create "heroes", then far be it from me to stand in anyone's way! When do sane people get to run things? How long do we have to beat ourselves over the head so some military contractor can get a good deal on something???

Andy Warhol

The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.

Next up: the reality of never getting it.

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

Painting soup cans, for example.

You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.

Painting soup cans, for example.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

A Painting for example. Even after spending millions of dollars for it.

Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

If, for example, you are Andy Warhol.

I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.

Or longer than fifteen minutes?

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from Slaughterhouse-Five

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

So it still goes.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled because there is nothing intelligent to say after a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead...everything is supposed to be very quiet...and it always is, except for the birds.

The vultures in particular.

There are no telegraphs on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message-- describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

Damnit, God, why can't it be like that on Earth!

Billy heard Rosewater say to a psychiatrist, "I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living."

Just out of curiosity, what are the wonderful new lies they've come up with of late?

On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin - who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements.

On Earth, of course, we're still working on that.

Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jesus. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.
Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning. It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser. Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it. So it goes.

Irony let's call it.

Thomas Pynchon from Gravity's Rainbow

Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit.

And, of course, the equivalent today.

Everything is some kind of a plot, man.

Everything else too.

I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.

And then the parts that are...leaked?

It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted…secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology…

That and the bottom line. You know the one.

What more do they want? She asks this seriously, as if there's a real conversion factor between information and lives. Well, strange to say, there is. Written down in the Manual, on file at the War Department. Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as a spectacle, as a diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled "black" by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks, continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. So, Jews are negotiable. Every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, ****, or Hersey bars.

Pick one:
1] way too cynical
2] no way cynical enough

...a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it...

Another peek behind the curtain.

Zadie Smith from White Teeth

Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase "at the end of the day"--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.

To paraphrase Shane, "a phrase is as good or as bad as the person using it."

You are never stronger, thought Samad as he approached the doctor, than when you land on the other side of despair.

I'll let you know when I get there.

If someone asked her just then what memory was, what the purest definition of memory was, she would say this: the street you were on when you first jumped in a pile of dead leaves.

Not even close, right?

Faith is hard to achieve, easy to lose.

Not counting religion, of course.

And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day.

Sure, go ahead, explain it.

But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?

Our sins or theirs?

Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

He said I was bein hard on myself. Said it was a sign of old age. Tryin to set things right. I guess there's some truth to that. But it aint the whole truth. I agreed with him that there wasnt a whole lot of good you could say about old age and he said he knew one thing and I said what is that. And he said it dont last long. I waited for him to smile but he didn't. I said well, that's pretty cold. And he said it was no colder than what the facts called for. So that was all there was about that.

You either are or you ain't. Or you will be.

Anything can be an instrument, Chugurh said. Small things. Things you wouldn't even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People don't pay attention. And then one day there’s an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It’s just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. to separate the act from the the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it’s just a coin. Yes. That’s true. Is it?

It's time. Time to connect the dots between the coin, the Benjamin Button Syndrome and dasein. My treat.

His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel.

Or two million dollars in a suitcase. Call it the Benjamin Button Syndrome on steroids.

Because a lot of the time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm gettin old.

Ah, of course: the good old days!

Do you think God knows what's happenin?
I expect he does.
You think he can stop it?
No. I dont.

Cue Harold Kushner, right?

You might think you could run away and change your name and I don't know what all. Start over. And then one mornin' you wake up and look at the ceilin' and guess who's layin' there?

And guess who is right outside your door with a coin.

Kevin Wilson from The Family Fang

That does not surprise me, Annie said and once again hung up the phone thinking that she had chosen to surround herself with people who were, for lack of a better term, retarded.

Tell me about it. Though, okay, not just here.

Annie, no stranger to disappointment, felt the hope break down inside her body and disperse without any lingering effects.

Yep, my kind of lost hope too.

Wyoming, to Annie, was represented by a blank, bleak space in her imagination. It was a place she could hide. The worst that could happen would be that she would sleep with Daniel and then get eaten by a wolf. She could live with that.

Wyoming: https://youtu.be/x4uD20A7n68

But do you enjoy it? Annie asked. Raven stared at Annie’s reflection in the mirror. I don’t hate it, Raven said. You spend enough time with anything, that’s all you can really ask for.

You know, like being here.

Annie took another sip of the vodka, letting the alcohol seep through her system, turning bad ideas into good ones.

Sure, that part is still around.

I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you cannot just go around shooting people. That's going to be a problem.

Well, except in America, of course. Here it's almost expected of you.