Page 134 of 292
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2023 6:25 am
by iambiguous
Suicide...
“You never can tell, though, with suicide notes, can you? In the planetary aggregate of all life, there are many more suicide notes than there are suicides. They're like poems in that respect, suicide notes: nearly everyone tries their hand at them some time, with or without the talent. We all write them in our heads. Usually the note is the thing. You complete it, and then resume your time travel. It is the note and not the life that is cancelled out. Or the other way round. Or death. You never can tell, though, can you, with suicide notes.” Martin Amis
I didn't write one myself.
Twice.
“Seven little crazy kids chopping up sticks;
One burnt her daddy up and then there were six.
Six little crazy kids playing with a hive;
One tattooed himself to death and then there were five.
Five little crazy kids on a cellar door;
One went all schizo and then there were four.
Four little crazy kids going out to sea;
One wouldn't say a word and then there were three.
Three little crazy kids walking to the zoo;
One jerked himself too much and then there were two.
Two little crazy kids sitting in the sun;
One a took a bunch of pills and then there was one.
One little crazy kid left all alone;
He went and slit his wrists, and then there were none.”
Michael Thomas Ford
Rhymes. That's what we need more of here.
“Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.” Alison Bechdel
Not for me it hasn't.
“He killed himself for wanting to live.” Markus Zusak
Wholly determined to though.
“In spite of my suffering, at the thought that I was sure to end up by killing myself, I cried aloud and burst into tears.” Osamu Dazai
A few times myself.
“Is today a good day to die?
Is today the day?
And if not today–when?” Jennifer Niven
And then for the reast of us, this part: https://youtu.be/ilGahIwQEQ0?si=0tm67MHMPllB0UOB
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2023 7:56 pm
by iambiguous
Umberto Eco from Foucault's Pendulum
I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.
So, okay, convince me.
I will tell you the deeper significance of this, which otherwise might seem a banal hydraulic joke. Caus knew that if one fills a vessel with water and seals it at the top, the water, even if one then opens a hole in the bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole in the top, also, the water spurts out below.
Isn't that obvious? I said. Air enters at the top and presses the water down.
A typical scientific explanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or vice versa. The question is not why the water comes out in the second place, but why it refuses to come out in the first case.
And why does it refuse? Garamond asked eagerly.
Because, if it came out, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and nature abhors a vacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which modern science has forgotten.
Excuse me, Belbo said to Agliè, but your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before.
You must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesn't. Nature doesn't; nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.
Next up: holes in our arguments here.
Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter.
And around and around they go.
The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.
For example?
What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.
Could it really just be that simple?
From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola.
"Etymology:
A colloquialism which dates back to the early 1940s in the United States, sometimes ended with 'that's why your shoes don't shine'. Shinola was a popular brand of shoe polish."
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sat Nov 11, 2023 11:25 pm
by iambiguous
Zora Neale Hurston from Their Eyes Were Watching God
No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.
How's that working out for you?
She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.
Right, like that's even possible.
...she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...
Personas.
And don't leave home without them.
It was the meanest moment of eternity.
No, really, what might that be?
It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.
Of course, it can never be both. And then some.
Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.
Don't you just hate that?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2023 6:49 pm
by iambiguous
Leo Tolstoy from The Death of Ivan Ilych
Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?
Well, they still matter here, don't they?
The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.
How about you?
The very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't.
Besides, it was God's will.
Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be still worse.
Here for example.
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
Yo, God!
Ivan Iylich saw that he was dying, and was in continual despair. At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to the idea, he simply did not grasp it --- he was utterly unable to grasp it.
That makes at least two of us.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2023 10:21 pm
by iambiguous
God...
“Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, 'God, I love you' and looked to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.' To the children and the innocent it's all the same.” Jack Kerouac
Pick one:
1] on the road to Heaven
2] on the road to Hell
“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” Salman Rushdie
Fatwas, for example.
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” Carl Sagan
No, seriously?
“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.” Sam Harris
Said the free will determinist.
“If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Haruki Murakami
If only all the way to the grave.
Then what?
“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.” Soren Kierkegaard
Miracles let's call them.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2023 6:40 pm
by iambiguous
Existentialism...
“A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison." Simone de Beauvoir
In other words, way, way, way up in the philosophical clouds.
“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Objectivism, let's call it.
“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.... Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Right, as though this makes the distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world go away.
“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
So, what do you use it for?
“The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite." Friedrich Nietzsche
Ah, the Imannuel Cant Syndrome.
“The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.” Albert Camus
And now, one suspects, he's not.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2023 10:44 pm
by iambiguous
Sue Monk Kidd from The Secret Life of Bees
Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life.
And which life might that be?
Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.
And which truth might that be?
If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.
You know, like we do here.
It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.
Let's change that.
Nobody around here had ever seen a lady beekeeper till her. She liked to tell everybody that women made the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting. It comes from years of loving children and husbands.
You know, if that's actually true.
I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.
And, of course, how that is applicable here.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2023 6:01 pm
by iambiguous
Despair...
“My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.” Stephenie Meyer
Not writing philosophy, of course.
“When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.” Oscar Wilde
Who doesn't?
“I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.” David Foster Wallace
And now he's with God.
One of them.
“It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.” John Fowles
And then she dies.
Reminds me of another Miranda: https://youtu.be/YVKgaqtSQF0?si=LomS1irPRCwUdXNI
“I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?” Werner Heisenberg
Of course, not unlike God, nature too works in mysterious ways.
“Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.” Jhonen Vasquez
Unless, of course, for some, things could not possibly be better?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2023 11:05 pm
by iambiguous
Umberto Eco from Foucault's Pendulum
The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn't exist.
Any of them not exist here?
The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.
The whole point for some.
The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.
And then one day they -- those at the top -- didn't.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty....It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos.
Let's straighten all that out.
He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.
That ever happen to you?
There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.
So, who screwed her?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2023 10:25 pm
by iambiguous
Suicide...
“No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.” Sigmund Freud
And thus "psychobabble" was born.
“I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.” Antonin Artaud
So, a true story?
“On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.” Jeffrey Eugenides
Okay, but were they really virgins?
“If killing yourself is not an option anymore, you have to sink into the darkness instead, and make something out of it.” Emma Forrest
Fortunately, it'll always be an option for me.
“To be or not to be. That's not really a question.” Jean Luc Godard
To be or not to be? Now it is.
"Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live” Charles Caleb Colton
You tell me. One way or the other?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2023 10:26 pm
by iambiguous
Margaret Atwood from Oryx and Crake
If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.
On the other hand, he asked himself, is this still a free country?
Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.
I'll bet you didn't know that.
They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.
And look where we are now.
All it takes, said Crake, is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.
Let's not take chances here. Two generations of pinheads.
We understand more than we know.
You know, or less.
'Immortality,' said Crake, is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal.
That's true. You know, as far as it goes.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2023 6:55 pm
by iambiguous
Michael Cunningham from The Hours
That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.
Not counting all of the teeming exceptions, of course.
...and when somebody comes up to me with big hair and gobs of makeup on and says, 'Can I help you,' it's all I can do not to scream, 'Bitch, you can't even help yourself.'
I might not go that far myself.
There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is.
And now here it is.
She thinks how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.
Next up: the virtual space we occupy here.
Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together.
Yo, Sharon! Yo, Mary Margaret!
There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined.
And then, eventually, a minute here or there...
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2023 10:01 pm
by iambiguous
Charles Darwin from The Origin of Species
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Gravity and us. Go ahead, connect the teleological dots.
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Next up: the welfare state?
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Next up: transgenders select?
Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.
Well, at least it's one or the other.
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
Yet, right?
I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.
Let's just say that others find that ridiculous.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:38 am
by Philosphicalous
Bill Murry as Jack Corcoran : You know, they say an elephant never forgets. But what they don't tell you is that - you never forget an elephant.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:31 pm
by iambiguous
Nihilism...
“Scientists would much rather contemplate indeterminism than free will because then they can continue to avoid any notion of mind existing in its own right. The entire way scientists think is predicated on ensuring that meaning, purpose, mind, teleology, and free will never enter their thoughts or theories. It’s literally verboten to allow these to enter science. Science is an ideology. It’s utterly dogmatic. It has an absolutely rigid and wrong worldview that it refuses to alter. It’s as bad as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Karmism. The way Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Sam Harris and Brian Cox contemplate the world is from the primary assumption that mind, teleology and free will are false. So, it’s no surprise whatsoever to find these people arguing against mind, teleology and free will. They have to in order to cling to their quasi-religious faith in scientific materialism.” Mike Hockney
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
"It is one thing to reject morality in the name of a vulgar immoralism, another to do so, like Nietzsche so as to pass beyond good and evil. To be 'nihilistic' is to deny things at their greatest degree of intensity, not in their lowest versions. Now, existence and self-evidence have always been the lowest forms. If there is nihilism, then, it is not a nihilism of value, but a nihilism of form. It is to speak the world in its radicality, in its dual, reversible form, and this has never meant banking on catastrophe, any more than on violence. No finality, either positive or negative, is ever the last word in the story. And the Apocalypse itself is a facile solution.”Jean Baudrillard
Unless, of course, he's wrong.
“It’s time for the human race to escape the nihilism of scientism. It's time for meaning, purpose, life, mind and qualia to be restored to their rightful, primary, defining place. Amazingly, it’s mathematics that allows the universe to be a living organism once again rather than a dead machine.” Mike Hockney
1 + 1 = God?
“And no one cares. You kick and scream and cry out into the darkness, and no answer comes. You rage against the unfathomable injustice and two blocks away some guy watches a baseball game and scratches his balls.” David Wong
Let's change that. Here I mean.
“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
And then there's my own "modern thought".
"Suddenly, one day, out of nowhere, an enormous abyss opened up beneath our feet and I was staring into a face I didn't recognize.” Woody Allen
Pick one:
1] September
2] Interiors
3] Another Woman