My Mind is Made Up

(As noted here, I’ve been using Twitter to compile some sentences I have read and liked for one reason or another.  All have been stripped from their context.  Below I compile the second 100 sentences, with an occasional paragraph break for enhanced readability!  The first 100 sentences is available here.)

Goodnight frauds who don’t know they’re frauds and poets who don’t know their poets. This is what we are, and this is what we do. This is how it strikes me. Life’s struggles, each trying to push the other aside, and so win out. I will finally discover the truth. Our civilization thrives on stupidity. And because it amuses. And because pragmatism was a cold god. And paradigms rarely shift through an act of will. Signifier of higher intelligence, acknowledgment of community interests.  The level of self-justification required was staggering… and it seemed language itself was its greatest armor against common sense. Independent thought had been relinquished, with appalling eagerness… and in its place had risen a stolid resolve to question nothing. The shortest of memories. Better than ten thousand tireless contrivances. Enormous powers—powers even to make us believe in something that never happened.

We shall walk those ancient roads. You are so patient with me whilst we wander ever lost. They circumnavigated the globe, after all. It is a natural truth that some walk the road faster than others. Our headlong progress, as if motion was purpose and purpose inherently virtuous. Our lack of compassion, which we called being realistic. Your own flaw. Relevant? Equally pointless. In any case, the law is simple, as all true laws must be. The most basic laws of existence, after all, were always harsh. How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark? You are obsessed with laws. You are a terrible person who shouldn’t be allowed to give advice to anyone about anything. Even the fleas avoid you. You are very fat and stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you should be ashamed of. Hairy old women will steal your children… and chop them up and cook them with vegetables and tubers and a few precious threads of saffron.

I took thee for thy better. Don’t condescend to me, man. Let me explain. Saying nothing is a fine method for dealing with such confusion, to which each of you have agreed… even though it was a silent agreement. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity, so is ever suspicious of others, especially when they say things he does not understand. This is simply what we do. It is what we do. Way-making is an easy-flowing stream, which can run in any direction. A world without demand to challenge the confused haze of holy apathy. He is only mostly worthless. We’re facing a conundrum, my friend. Simply because of their preoccupation with staying alive. We can never match the ideals set before us. Between the swish of the tides, when giants knelt down and became mountains. Where all truths hide. That’s where I first met him, and saw immediately his lack of potential. Clarity ascends, achieving preeminence among all the important things. Things proliferate, and each again returns to its root. None of it has purchased a future claim to glory, none of it has earned you anything.

The individual must all the more forget himself, as the nature of Science implies and requires. A single building can become an entire world, the minds crowding and jostling, then clawing and gouging. Maybe not. Happily, neither waking nor dreaming mentation is part of one cosmic glob of thinking. It takes for granted ideas about cognition as an instrument or medium, assuming that there is a difference between ourselves and cognition.  Nothing is certain, barring the truth that men are wont to get lost in their illusions of grandeur. The underscored truth laid bare, grisly exposure from which was withheld any direct, honest examination. You did indeed manage to sink lower. I am better suited to manipulating objects than words. I am not immune to uncertainty. It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. They wear ignorance like armor and wield spite like swords.

I distrust philosophy. Because I study philosophy, not literature. A scholar swimming across the ocean of history. It seems we may have to fly after all. Fire, the silent scream of light, the very swirl of the stars themselves. But the tread of time is itself a prison. Everything worth fighting for was gained without fighting. Said veracity is already a given. Philosophy is what you do when you don’t yet know what the right questions are to ask. What am I to do about this truth? We are bemused by an intrusive gaggle of persistent intuitions deriving from heaven knows where. Despondent sulk. The sufficientest reason of all. A beautiful rainbow remains a beautiful rainbow even after an explanation in terms of electromagnetic radiation has become available. It doesn’t exist. Who can trust what the eyes witness, after all? What a strange question to ask of a man. I really don’t know, in a way, what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking. Although it is P, my god it’s P, it’s also Q. Now, if mathematical evidence supports such practical observation, then we’re getting somewhere. When so many ‘obvious facts’ compete with each other, common sense is not enough. Maybe defining the love of wisdom as cultivating the soul is a classical motif that could inspire us… in the present situation.

I never include myself in my own generalizations. For Hegel does not believe in the subject as being some detached, substantival entity standing in varying relations to… its objects. The self waging battle against everything else. When the war is won, treat it as you would a funeral. Blowhards have no standing, the self-promoting are not distinguished, show-offs do not shine, the self-important are here and gone. I am ever the exception to the rule. I possess my own cleverness. Now you are being funny. Inviting suspicion on every law of causality generations of scholars had posited as irrefutable truth. The chair of my department appeared in a feather cap and wearing a plaid kilt, his weapon pointed as if he did not know what to do with it. It seems I am to be increasingly viewed as some kind of pivotal player in a game of which I have no comprehension. We bagged Mrs. Whittle’s beastie, aye, as plump a toad as e’er licked a witch’s happy sack. Why, the mere blowing clear of a nose is a potential source of ecstasy, once you grasp its phlegmatic allure. The most steadfast character seems dubious, the most pristine and authentic seems defiled. It seems that the disillusionment had begun.