Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.


Anyone here totallly either one?

A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.

No, actually, it wasn't, well, you know who.

Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.

No, actually, that might have been, well, you know who.

Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.

Next up: Great Philosophy.

It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.

What does God want?
https://youtu.be/yMMyfep9N_k

I said, smiling very wide and droogie: ‘Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou.’ And then we started."

Indeed: https://youtu.be/L9FYlo6Ao6g
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Italo Calvino from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in a place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.


Philosophiclly as it were.

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

You tell me about yours, I'll tell you about mine.

You have with you the book you were reading in the cafe, which you are eager to continue, so that you can then hand it on to her, to communicate again with her through the channel dug by others' words, which, as they are uttered by an alien voice, by the voice of that silent nobody made of ink and typographical spacing, can become yours and hers, a language, a code between the two of you, a means to exchange signals and recognize each other.

I'll share The Magus with you if you'll share The Magus with me.

I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read, a third reader says, but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware?

Of course: you either get this or you don't.

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do, Arkadian Porpirych says. What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.

Indeed, just follow the Best Seller list at the New York Times. Literature in a thriving democracy!!!

…we can not love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

Give or take an hour.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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George Saunders from Lincoln in the Bardo

His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help, or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.


I've never been this optimistic myself.

Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them.

If only for all of eternity.

Strange, isn't it? To have dedicated one's life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one's life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one's labors ultimately forgotten?

Anyone else here not find this strange at all?

When a child is lost there is no end to the self-torment a parent may inflict. When we love, and the object of our love is small, weak, and vulnerable, and has looked to us and us alone for protection; and when such protection, for whatever reason, has failed, what consolation (what justification, what defense) may there possibly be?

Of course that's where God comes in, isn't it?

All over now. He is either in joy or nothingness.
(So why grieve?
The worst of it, for him, is over.)
Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing.


You've either been there, are there now or will be.
And, for some of us, over and over and over again.


He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.

You know the routine: Birth. School. Work. Death: https://youtu.be/tTrG53eYcqc
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

promethean75 wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 1:37 am in the god debate part 2 @ 1:26:39 in Craig's horrible closing statement after sam puts a whoopin on em he tries the anslem spin and then the old 'god provides a foundation for morality' bit. 

ever really thought about what that means, what that entails? what does 'foundation' mean? if that means 'a reason for', there would be 'reasons' why human beings behaved morally without there being a god, so that means nothing. perhaps he means 'a reason for wanting to be moral'? in that case, one still doesn't HAVE to be moral. one could be a crazy person and want to go to hell. so being merely a deterent isn't enough either.

Do u philosophers ever think about what u say?

the truth is I don't even know if Craig knows what he means. he's just repeating all the old half-baked stock arguments.
Craig is a lot like IC. They've sold their souls to the Biblical God, and everything that goes with it. They've given up their ability of making moral discernments in favor of pledging allegiance to a God that doesn't appear to have very good moral sensibilities from what I can tell. But I'm the crazy one. So I must be broken and the one with the problem. Too bad for me. I don't get to be a Christian I guess.
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Mieko Kawakami

Even if something happens to us, even if we die and never have to deal with them again, the same thing will happen to someone, somewhere. The same thing. The weak always go through this, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because the strong never go away. That’s why you want to pretend to be like them, isn’t it? You want to join them.


You know, if that is actually an option.

He used to tell me, People are strange, Jun. They know nothing lasts forever, but still find time to laugh and cry and get upset, laboring over things and breaking things apart. I know it seems like none of it makes sense. But son, these things make life worth living. So don’t let anything get you down.

Well, maybe some things.

Writing makes me happy. But it goes beyond that. Writing is my life’s work. I am absolutely positive that this is what I’m here to do. Even if it turns out that I don’t have the ability, and no one out there wants to read a single word of it, there’s nothing I can do about this feeling. I can’t make it go away.

Of course, lots and lots and lots of us want to read the words she writes.

What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn’t a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It’s a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilating. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you’re sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morning never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don’t even know they’re dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch.

Well, not counting your own actual existential death. Though, sure, for some, even that.

Memory's funny, isn't it? We remember some things out of nowhere, but so much of what happens, we never think about again.

A brain thing let's call it. You know, whatever that means.

There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory.

Sound familiar, Mr. Objectivist?
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 9:33 pm There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory.

Sound familiar, Mr. Objectivist?
Who is "Mr. Objectivist"?
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Don DeLillo from White Noise

My life is either/or. Either I chew regular gum or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum or I smoke. Either I smoke or I gain weight. Either I gain weight or I run up the stadium step.
Sounds like a boring life.
I hope it lasts forever, she said.


Anything beats nothing at all?

Because we're suffering from brain fade. We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information. The flow is constant, Alfonse said. Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention.

Let's pin down the one most likely.

Self-pity oozed through my soul. I tried to relax and enjoy it.

There you go!

You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out.

Or, as some call them, gadgets.

Don’t worry about me, he said. The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things.

Trust me: the list goes on and on at "a certain age".

The world is full of abandoned meanings.

Let's add more.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Gary Childress wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 10:25 pm
iambiguous wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 9:33 pm There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory.

Sound familiar, Mr. Objectivist?
Who is "Mr. Objectivist"?
Note to Mr. Objectivist:

I dare you to explain yourself!
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:23 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 10:25 pm
iambiguous wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 9:33 pm There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory.

Sound familiar, Mr. Objectivist?
Who is "Mr. Objectivist"?
Note to Mr. Objectivist:

I dare you to explain yourself!
A simple, "you are" would have sufficed if I'm correct in assuming that "Mr. Objectivist" refers to me.

And again assuming that is what you are saying (I don't read minds or code). What do you want me to explain? Would you please elaborate a little?
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Gary Childress wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:46 pm
iambiguous wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:23 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 10:25 pm

Who is "Mr. Objectivist"?
Note to Mr. Objectivist:

I dare you to explain yourself!
A simple, "you are" would have sufficed if I'm correct in assuming that "Mr. Objectivist" refers to me.

And again assuming that is what you are saying (I don't read minds or code). What do you want me to explain? Would you please elaborate a little?
No, it has nothing to do with you personally. Nor in regard to anyone else here in particular.

Mieko Kawakami in her novel Breasts and Eggs wrote, "There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory."

And this jibes [for me] with my own assessment of dasein.

And an objectivist to me is someone who makes the assumption that he or she is in sync with the "real me" or their "core self" or "soul", in sync further with "the right thing to do". And, as such, they are often disdainful of those who don't think exactly as they do about things like moral and political value judgments and determinism. With them it's "my way or the highway". And they are dangerous in my view whenever they are able to obtain actual power in any community. I merely add that moral nihilists can be equally dangerous...think the "show me the money" capitalists that own and operate the global economy [the Bilderbergers] and the sociopaths.
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by promethean75 »

"Indeed, translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin Tucker. He adds that "Tucker preferred the strategy of exploiting his writings, but proceeding with due caution: 'Nietzsche says splendid things, – often, indeed, Anarchist things, – but he is no Anarchist. It is of the Anarchists, then, to intellectually exploit this would-be exploiter. He may be utilized profitably, but not prophetably"

i dunno about that last bit. a more intimate reading of N will show that his reverence for the artist trumps his respect for the politician, the military genius, the 'masters of the erf". and you often find him considering his overmen as those exceptions that emerge from the unruly, wanton and anarchic forces of nature and fate... their desire for conquest as the expression of their ego and natural ability to acquire power more than some concerted effort to be virtuous and practice good politics.

and all his stuff about breeding nobility and aristocracies ruling the erf is just a large scale model of Stirner's Union of Egoists. anyway N realizes there is nothing left to do on erf but turn politics into radical art and make room for very daring experimentation with it. that's all. he always thought he wuz above politics at the end of the book/day and his most fundamental writing wuz always on the existential individual, not any 'nation' or 'state'... and all the turbo-charged ranting in the Nachlass about the importance of the masters of the erf is secondary to that. 

N will always be a midnight rider before all else.
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 4:57 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:46 pm
iambiguous wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:23 pm

Note to Mr. Objectivist:

I dare you to explain yourself!
A simple, "you are" would have sufficed if I'm correct in assuming that "Mr. Objectivist" refers to me.

And again assuming that is what you are saying (I don't read minds or code). What do you want me to explain? Would you please elaborate a little?
No, it has nothing to do with you personally. Nor in regard to anyone else here in particular.

Mieko Kawakami in her novel Breasts and Eggs wrote, "There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory."

And this jibes [for me] with my own assessment of dasein.

And an objectivist to me is someone who makes the assumption that he or she is in sync with the "real me" or their "core self" or "soul", in sync further with "the right thing to do". And, as such, they are often disdainful of those who don't think exactly as they do about things like moral and political value judgments and determinism. With them it's "my way or the highway". And they are dangerous in my view whenever they are able to obtain actual power in any community. I merely add that moral nihilists can be equally dangerous...think the "show me the money" capitalists that own and operate the global economy [the Bilderbergers] and the sociopaths.
Well, I don't know if I'm an "objectivist" or not. What does it mean to be an "objectivist"? Surely it's not merely the notion that a sense of right and wrong can be shared or agreed upon through the use of the tools available to us in which to arrive at an agreement. If that's not the case, then what is to say that X is just as "OK" (or whatever) as Y, (if X is to commit murder of a stranger and Y is to shake the hand of a stranger for example). I mean, if people can't reach some sort of at least general agreement on moral matters, then we're all going to end up in little tribal enclaves suspicious of one another and unable to get anything of complexity or great importance done. And presumably, we would be "thrown" (to borrow from Heidegger) into whichever enclave we just happen to land in. Something like that is not going to get us any further than we are now. And where we are now is at a place where we have the capability to wipe out life on Earth. As I see it, we have at least a couple of options.

1. Continue on as we are and try to find common ground between all the little states and kingdoms on Earth so that we're not beating each other up.
2. Allow fracture to continue until we lose the knowledge and know how to successfully build atomic weapons (or weaponized AI for that matter). That might be worth going through if it is not the case that we will just end up inventing them again and end up where we are now. Or perhaps we're not ready for that kind of technology intellectually, spiritually or consciously (or whatever) and therefore fracture would be a good thing for us until we do get to a sense where we can all work together without destroying each other. I don't know.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: Quote of the day

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Cormac McCarthy from The Road

He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.


Would -- could -- you take comfort in that?

As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

Tell me it gets bleaker than that.

There is no later. This is later.

Enigmatically, as it were.

The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already?

And, no, not just in a dystopia.

What is it?
Nothing. I had a bad dream.
What did you dream about?
Nothing.
Are you okay?
No.
He put his arms around him and held him. It's okay, he said.
I was crying. But you didn't wake up.
I'm sorry. I was just so tired.
I meant in the dream.


Dreams. See what I mean?

Not all dying words are true...

He wondered if his would be.
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Fri Mar 03, 2023 6:44 pm
Not all dying words are true...

He wondered if his would be.
[Note to iambiguous: I almost passed over this in silence, however, I wish you peace and comfort on the rest of your journey, if nothing else is to be had.]
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Re: Quote of the day

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Joseph Heller from Catch--22

Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.


Philosophy in a nutshell?

There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?

Next up: https://shortwhitecoats.com/2011/top-10 ... conditions

You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.

Indeed. The pinheads here for example.

There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.

Provided of course that is actually an option.

Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.

That ever happen to you?

Sure, that's what I mean, Doc Daneeka said. A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
Yossarian knew what he meant.
That's not what I meant, Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.


Of course: language games.
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