Quote of the day

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Nihilism...

“It was the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by others' knowledge of him. That was freedom.” Ling Ma

Or as close as we come to that virtually here.

“Man is incapable of seeing past the end of his nose. He huddles upon the ground staring at his own feet. It is only when he considers his own mortality that he clings to whatever God or Buddha offers him hope.” Katsuhiro Otomo

Fools let's call them. Now, if only I could be one of them again myself...

“Whereas a belief in an absurd world arises out of the fundamental disharmony of a person searching for meaning in an apparently meaninglessness universe, an existential nihilist displays impassive intellectual stoicism towards their eventual mortality while embracing a passionate artistic commitment to munity against the underlying syndrome of insignificance and confusion encasing life." Kilroy J. Oldster

Ask me about my own [obsolete] commitment to munity.

“Creative nihilism, aggressive pity, total misanthropy.” Willem Frederik Hermans

Not to mention the other way around.

“From a cosmic perspective, I'm simply an accident that has nothing to lose. Why take it all so seriously?” Vizi Andrei

Well, there are those bills we have to pay.

“Our planet is a freak which we shall destroy by our own wicked senseless activities in the next century. Our history will very soon come to an end. Now that God is dead, we are at last presented with the truth, yes, the truth remains, but it is on a short lead. Anyway, we are nothing and it matters not what we do.” Iris Murdoch

In other words, after all the bills are paid.

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Joker...

Arthur Fleck: The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't.

What, even here?!

Arthur Fleck: You don't listen, do you? I don't think you ever really hear me. You just ask the same questions every week. "How's your job?" "Are you having any negative thoughts?" All I have are negative thoughts.

Imagine him here!

Arthur Fleck: For my whole life, I didn't know if I even really existed. But I do, and people are starting to notice.

And they will again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker:_Folie_%C3%A0_Deux.

Arthur Fleck: I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it's a fucking comedy.

Define fucking?

Arthur Fleck: Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?

Next up: 2024.

Arkham Psychiatrist: What's so funny?
Arthur Fleck: I'm just thinking of a joke.
Arkham Psychiatrist: Do you want to tell it to me?
Arthur Fleck: You wouldn't get it.

Next up: the punchline.

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God...

“Quit questioning God and start trusting Him!” Joel Osteen

Just ask these guys: https://yen.com.gh/183456-top-richest-p ... worth.html

“We may be surprised at the people we find in Heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.” Desmond Tutu

Pray for me then.

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly." Martin Luther



“Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.” Cormac McCarthy

God I'll bet.

“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous." Carl Sagan

On the other hand: https://youtu.be/ukzkLpyjHho?si=wrapUrfVlC1mh6Le

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.” C.S. Lewis

In Narnia maybe.

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Existentialism...

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of "world history"- yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Sound familiar?

“There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular --- though profoundly mistaken --- definition of myth as falsehood.” Rollo May

First, of course, we'll have to define definition.

“There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death." Albert Camus

God willing?

“Sometimes I couldn't figure it out, what all the living was for.” Jane Hamilton

Try this: Birth...School...Work...Death

“Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures.” Tiffany Madison

Cue the pinheads? Here I mean.

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

And then mere mortals invented God. Problem solved.

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Absurd...

“Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” T.H. White

Here? Agreeing with you, right?

“When all else fails, there's always delusion.” Conan O'Brien

Praise the Lord?

“The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.” Kurt Vonnegut

Tell me that's not rooted existentially in dasein.

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” Woody Allen

Or, sure, flip a coin and call it in the air.

“If America leads a blessed life, then why did God put all of our oil under people who hate us?” Jon Stewart

Someone run that by Allah.

“The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.” Robert A. Heinlein

Uh, let's not go there?

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Philosophy...

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” May Sarton

Run that by me, right?

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Laurence J. Peter

You got fired?

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespear

Think about that just long enough to make it one or the other.

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Wow, what if that were true here too.

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.” Isaac Asimov

I'll bet that can get tricky.

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert Einstein

I'll bet that can get tricky.
After all, what about the pinheads?

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John Steinbeck from The Grapes of Wrath

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

For starters?

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.

Capitalism let's call it.

Sure, cried the tenant men,but it’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours….That’s what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

Capitalism let's call it.

Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.

Fractured and fragmented to boot for some.

Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create --- this is man.

And the occasional woman, perhaps?

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

Next up: the meek inherit the Earth.

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Despair...

“Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.” Tom Robbins

Their unhappiness in other words.

“By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything.” H.G. Wells

Posting here, for example.

“Despair filled his skull even more tightly than his own brain. All around him cars filled with normal people perfectly unaware of the disease turning Perry's body inside out. Fucking normal people.” Scott Sigler

That ever happen to you?
No?
Give it time.

“Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...” Stanisław Lem

Next up: repetitive posting.

“He waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease.” Carson McCullers

Been there, done that.

“Some people are silently struggling with burdens that would break our backs.” Wayne Gerard Trotman

You first, okay?

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Arundhati Roy from The God of Small Things

There are things that you can't do -- like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

Or johnson?

Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.

Or, for some, the guy behind the counter at McDonalds.

And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.

Not counting nihilism, of course.

It really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. nd how much.

Next up [here]: the Hate Laws.


What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.

You tell me.

With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat shaped holes in the universe.

What else might that explain?

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Tom Smothers

When you don't know what you're talking about, it's hard to know when you're finished.

Here? Submit it anyway.

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.

Here? Foe the bastards!

The ultimate censorship is the flick of the dial.

Go here -- https://ilovephilosophy.com/search.php? ... d=newposts -- in other words.

Every day I think, 'Gosh, I wish I could be like George Carlin, Bill Maher: I want that edge.' But every time I start to get that edgy thing, I get kind of mean.

Me? Cue dasein?

I found out that I couldn't have a nervous breakdown. I tried a couple of times, but it just didn't work out. My mind, my body wouldn't let me.

No, really, it happened to me too.

I had no idea that we were saying anything important until they told us to stop.

Then Nixon replaced them with Hee-Haw.
True story.

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Erin Morgenstern from The Night Circus

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.

Yep, that's still true.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

Fantastic?

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.

Got a few maidens like that here. You know the ones.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.

Fractured and fragmented as it were.

We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.

Okay, but here?!

You're in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that's enough.

This ever happen to you?

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Osamu Dazai from No Longer Human

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.

Next up: the virtual outcast.

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.

Next up: the virtual farcical eccentric.

Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death?

The Dateline Syndrome I call it.

I had lost even the ability to suffer.

As though [on this side of the grave] that were even possible.

My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.

Unless you count what I do here. And I certainly don't.

What uneasiness lies in being loved.

You know, before it becomes hatred.

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Suicide...

“In my room, in the dark, I understood what I never had before, what no one else seemed to. I understood how a boy could go into the woods with a bullet and a gun and not come out. That there was no conspiracy, no evil influences or secret rituals; that sometimes there was only pain and the need to make it stop.” Robin Wasserman

When posting here isn't enough?

“So it's back once more, back up the slope.
Why do they always ruin my rope
with their cuts?
I felt so ready the other day,
Had a real foretaste of eternity
In my guts.

Spoonfeeding me yet another sip
from life's cup.
I don't want it, won't take any more of it.
Let me throw up.

Life is medium rare and good, I see,
And the world full of soup and bread,
But it won't pass into the blood for me,
Just goes to my head.

It makes me ill, though others it feeds;
Do see that I must deny it!
For a thousand years from now at least
I'm keeping a diet.” Rainer Maria Rilke

Also: https://youtu.be/0inij7Z47p0?si=SuUlSMlxKtvO7ImW
https://youtu.be/T5xuzSjl8eU?si=eDDmWh8PupRBOfK3

“Your suicide makes the lives of those who outlive you more intense. Should they be threatened by boredom, or should the absurdity of their lives leap out at them from the curve of some cruel mirror, let them remember you, and the pain of existence will seem preferable to the disquietude of no longer being.” Édouard Levé

Of course, your own agonizing plight might be different.

"...a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch.” Vladimir Nabokov

Or posting here certainly.

“A night of crying has silenced me. This morning it seems the whole world is against me. I've never before felt so barren, so empty. I've never before thought the daylight to be...my enemy. My enemy.” Shaun Hick

And 2024 is a leap year.

“Preventing a suicide is not necessarily a beneficent act if it forces the potential suicide to continue in a life of misery.” Gene Lester, David Lester

The part they leave out.

[Impenitent]

maybe a repeat

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer found dead today in Barcelona
The flying reindeer was hit by a flock of seagulls and a 747
Eye witnesses say that the reindeer in Spain was hit mainly by the plane - Colin Mochrie

-Imp

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Ernest Cline from Ready Player One

I was watching a collection of vintage '80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.

Actually, that's never bothered me.

Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.

Next up: virtual philosophy.

You know you've totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software!

You tell me. No, really.

I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.

Not really though, right?

If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

Sure, whatever works. But, come on...this?

No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.

Unless, of course, you actually deserve it.