A Thread for Posting Brutally Pessimistic Quotes by Anguished Philosophers

Also, not a poet, but at the start of Bolano's 2666 he quotes Baudelaire:

"An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom".

Which is pretty pessimistic whichever way you look at it.

There is an old legend that king Midas for a long time hunted the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching him. When Silenus finally fell into the king’s hands, the king asked what was the best thing of all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent, motionless and inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out into shrill laughter and said these words, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child of accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this—to die soon.”

― dayo, Tuesday, 14 December 2010 04:46 (11 hours ago)

oh wait, that was done two posts ago hahaha

Mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will eventually cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist. Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs, for their end is all the same. The same blind cosmic process that coughed them up in the first place will eventually swallow them all again.

still, it's all about the journey not the destination eh

“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.” - Luis Bunel.

first sign of memory loss - misseplling ppl's surnames

"People tend to forget how much of their lives are spent tired, hungry, thirsty, in pain and being either too hot or too cold or in need of voiding their bladders and bowels. The same is true of how much time people spend bored, stressed, anxious, fearful, frustrated, irritated, sad, and lonely, to name but a few examples. Also unnoticed is how bad the worst parts of a life are. "

http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1902

"What does follow, I think, from the conclusion that life is not good, is that we should not create more of it. When we bring new people into existence we start more lives that are not good – and we necessarily do this without the permission of those who will live those lives. We have no duty to create new people and failing to create people can do no harm to those we fail to create. Not having children might make our own lives less good, but starting lives that are not good, merely for our own gratification, is unduly selfish."

I'm about ready to jump into a pool of gin and tonic with slit wrists.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 2, 2011 8:23 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

“A shocking night for Irish football. This side is built to be negative, it’s not capable of creating chances. There’s an element of bankruptcy in this system.”

E. Dunphy

"There’s an element of bankruptcy in this system”

when did dunphy sell out?

You have to allow for Brady sat next to him, to be fair- has been known to get overly-defensive if any project he's been involved in gets criticised.

"Better on your arse than on your feet, Flat on your back than either, dead than the lot."

Beckett!

could fill a thread with beckett, but that's good

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you." -- Gandhi

"Give me death." -- Patrick Henry

"The world is more dangerous than sincere." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did." -- Maya Angelou

"To err is human." -- Alexander Pope

http://kottke.org/11/09/not-so-inspirational-quotes

"The Sweater"

I will lose you. It is written
into this poem the way
the fisherman's wife knits
his death into the sweater.

-Gregory Orr

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves." - the homie big ludwig w.

i like that one

"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. . . . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known- no wonder, then, that I return the love." yay, Kirkegaard

"How perfectly goddamned delightful it is, to be sure" -- Charles Crumb.

“In 1965, in his studio in Warsaw, Roman Opałka began painting a process of counting – from one to infinity. The process was endless, but measured against its goal – infinity – it is as naught: ‘the problem is that we are, and are about not to be’.”

http://neversleep2.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/roman-opac582ka-triangulation-blog-3.jpeg?w=422&h=600

http://neversleep2.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/the-problem-is-that-we-are-and-are-about-not-to-be/

^ awesome

"I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals" - George Berkeley

"Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy" - Virgil

just because there isn't a thread for 'wry quotes by pessimistic poets'

“your poems about the girls will still be around 50 years from now when the girls are gone,” my editor phones me.

dear editor:
the girls appear to be gone already.

Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't exist - Lacan

im pretty sure the people i love exist. that quote was to prove the eternal irrelevance of Lacan, right?

bang

Wow, that's the sort of smug bullshit that you say to seem smart when in fact it just proves you're a complete imbecile incapable of critical thought. Well done.

Well, I wouldn't have put it like that but I guess, yeah, it is. No point saying well done to him though, he died in 1981.

*slow handclap*

To be fair, I like the first part of the quote. It's the second part which confirms what i feel about the hideousness of Lacanian solipsism. But ok, yeah, I spoke out of prejudice.

But then you did the same when you assumed my post was some kind of anti-intellectual screed when it was just express dislike for one dude.

No, I didn't assume that. I assumed that it was a lazy zing instead of addressing the philosophical ramifications of the quote. Which it was.

No need to address non-existent ramifications of a quote from someone who's clearly started out from false premises. But that's ok, dude was a poet.
Also lazy zing =/= 'the sort of smug bullshit that you say to seem smart'.

That quote's a real firecracker!

How are the premises false? What proof (logical or real-world) do you have of the falsehood of the premises? Why are they 'clearly' false?

I actually don't have a stake in whether Lacan is correct or not, or even if he's worthwhile, I just have a stake in people discussing philosophy properly.

And: lazy zings are always smug, always bullshit. The 'seeming smart' element comes from a pretence at being familiar with the subject yet clearly not enough to actually be able to handle a real conversation about it.

when Lacan says "someone who doesn't exist" he's not being solipsistic, he's saying that the loved object doesn't correspond to the human subject it resembles

sorry if that wasn't totally obvious btw

it was totally obvious to me who has never read Lacan

why are we fighting

To post smug bullshit is human...

has anyone here read any of the bruce fink books on lacan and if so which one should i read first thx

Well that was the first thing I thought about the Lacan quote, but I don't know him well enough to say if that's the case. I took it at face value. And from what little else I know about him and his work that seemed a possibility.
Funnily enough, Im currently halfway through Shakespeare's sonnets where this theme - of the loved one being a creation of the lover and any virtues imputed to them being illusions - figures large.

i guess it wd be fairer to say that to Lacan, desire is solipsistic, but in psychoanalysis that's hardly an exclusively Lacanian idea

Some questions: if love is something you don't have, how can you give it? If you don't have it, who does? Is he denying the existence of love or simply that it can't be owned? If it can't be owned then where does it exist, if he posits that it does exist?

If we attempt to give something to someone who doesn't exist, why are we doing it? I'm guessing a highly solipsistic answer is the result.

And: lazy zings are always smug, always bullshit. The 'seeming smart' element comes from a pretence at being familiar with the subject yet clearly not enough to actually be able to handle a real conversation about it.

Well, this is ilx etc. I don't think I am pretending to be familiar with the subject (in the sense you are meaning 'familiar'), I'm expressing a prejudice. Considering the thread which involves quotes expressive of their authors digust, ennui, and prejudice about the world and humankind, I think that's fair enough.

Ok i get you want people to 'discuss philosophy properly', but I clearly wasn't doing that. Emotional feeling about philosophers is acceptable, i think.

my reading: "love" - maybe specifically romantic or sexual love but perhaps not - is an expression of a desire centred on absence, but this absence doesn't exist outside of the lover and therefore can't be filled by the loved one. the loved one that the lover desires is a projection of the lover's own sense of absence, which can't be said to ever be the "real" person loved because their status as loved one is only a projection of the lover's desire.

he's playing on conventional uses of romantic language and psychoanalytic interpretations of desire - the lover thinks they can give love but since love is really an expression of absence they have nothing to give (except maybe the belief that they're giving)

we attempt to give something to someone who doesn't exist because we mistake them for somebody who certainly does exist, so this isn't solipsism, it's mistaken identity.

Thanks. Your reading is convincing as an explanation of what he means, and it's what I assumed in the first place. I think it's unsophisticated and romantic - in the brutally anguished late 18c/early 19c meaning of the word.
Wertherism, really. I would hope a psychoanalyst of the 20c would have a more subtle and nuanced perception of love and relationships between persons. Maybe he wasn't very good at his job. The angle he considers it is certainly solipsistic I think, it takes no consideration of what the other person involved in an exchange of love is giving, getting, or thinking.

Hey this is all decontextualised I know...it's only one quote. Just shooting the shit.

on a message board? how very dare you

has anyone here read any of the bruce fink books on lacan and if so which one should i read first thx

― markers, Sunday, 8 January 2012 17:05 (5 hours ago)

'The Lacanian Subject' is good, doesn't skimp on the details but still manages to be pretty readable.