A dozen notes and quotes #11
June 27th 2010 17:09
There's nothing more cynical than refusing to be a cynic.
It's important to have a healthy disgust for humanity -- regardless of what you think of particular humans.
"He doesn't even have the decency to loathe himself."
"When our house burnt down, there were crowds of people filling the street. It was like they were watching soccer or TV. It's human nature to watch train wrecks..."
Suicides can increase business. People come to gawk, and will buy a burger while they're at it.
The contented slave. For most people, most of the time, if they know a thing's impossible, then they'll stop wanting it -- or they'll never want it in the first place.
For other people, it's impossibility that makes a thing attractive.
At one Mardi Gras, two males dressed themselves in gold body paint, and posed as an AFL trophy -- thus expressing football, bastion of heterosexual pride, as "a bunch of big boofy blokes having a cuddle in the mud".
Why the ripeness for subversion? -- Well, protesting too much is a giveaway, certainly; and telling yourself to forget an elephant is a sure way of remembering it. But perhaps one general lesson is the ability (tendency?) of the mind to see in every thing its opposite -- the absurd made sublime, the sublime made absurd.
Is "homophobia" really a phobia? With fears of heights, crowds, or spiders, you can push yourself past the fear, even desensitize yourself to it. -- But with homophobia?
Perhaps it's better to call it a tendency, or belief, and not a fear -- with, commonly, the characteristic, that the homophobe won't know they're homophobic, just as racists seldom believe they're racist.
Like vampires, we don't see our reflections.
I've always been apprehensive of looking into myself -- not so much for what I might find, as for what I might not.
Patrick White avoided psychoanalysis, because he worried it could dry up the wellspring of his creativity.
You're crossing the road. You're half way. When suddenly there's a car bearing down on you.
In that moment, you don't see the car. Or rather, you see the car as death. You're dual-perceiving the physical world and the world of meanings. The "flashed before your eyes" is more like calculation than playback -- the implications of my dying now are x, y, and z... Human deer in headlights aren't simply stunned, but are also busy processing.
All of which is unhelpful, of course -- thinking, and thinking that you're thinking.
Reflection doesn't help here -- reflex helps.
It's what you don't want to hear that's most worth hearing.
When choosing the sound for an alarm clock, it should always be at least a little bit annoying.
Although some attention has been given to the nature of friendship, by Derrida and Cicero and others, comparatively little attention has been paid to friendship's endings -- to what counts as a deal-breaker, to the status of ex-friends, to the places they can hold in one's consciousness (painful reminder? enemy? detested object? or stranger again, mere civilian?).
Blarney Stone. Centuries of people salivating over it. Wikipedia calls it the world's most unhygienic tourist attraction.
A friend of mine, AC, refused to go near it, so her boyfriend pressed his lips to it, and then to hers.
On the tour bus afterwards, the guide asked who was brave enough, and then laughed at the group: "When the local Irish get drunk, they wander up the stairs, and urinate all over that rock."
The longer you write in any one place, or in any one format, the greater the inclination to lie.
***
It's important to have a healthy disgust for humanity -- regardless of what you think of particular humans.
***
"He doesn't even have the decency to loathe himself."
***
"When our house burnt down, there were crowds of people filling the street. It was like they were watching soccer or TV. It's human nature to watch train wrecks..."
Suicides can increase business. People come to gawk, and will buy a burger while they're at it.
***
The contented slave. For most people, most of the time, if they know a thing's impossible, then they'll stop wanting it -- or they'll never want it in the first place.
For other people, it's impossibility that makes a thing attractive.
***
At one Mardi Gras, two males dressed themselves in gold body paint, and posed as an AFL trophy -- thus expressing football, bastion of heterosexual pride, as "a bunch of big boofy blokes having a cuddle in the mud".
Why the ripeness for subversion? -- Well, protesting too much is a giveaway, certainly; and telling yourself to forget an elephant is a sure way of remembering it. But perhaps one general lesson is the ability (tendency?) of the mind to see in every thing its opposite -- the absurd made sublime, the sublime made absurd.
***
Is "homophobia" really a phobia? With fears of heights, crowds, or spiders, you can push yourself past the fear, even desensitize yourself to it. -- But with homophobia?
Perhaps it's better to call it a tendency, or belief, and not a fear -- with, commonly, the characteristic, that the homophobe won't know they're homophobic, just as racists seldom believe they're racist.
Like vampires, we don't see our reflections.
***
I've always been apprehensive of looking into myself -- not so much for what I might find, as for what I might not.
Patrick White avoided psychoanalysis, because he worried it could dry up the wellspring of his creativity.
***
You're crossing the road. You're half way. When suddenly there's a car bearing down on you.
In that moment, you don't see the car. Or rather, you see the car as death. You're dual-perceiving the physical world and the world of meanings. The "flashed before your eyes" is more like calculation than playback -- the implications of my dying now are x, y, and z... Human deer in headlights aren't simply stunned, but are also busy processing.
All of which is unhelpful, of course -- thinking, and thinking that you're thinking.
Reflection doesn't help here -- reflex helps.
***
It's what you don't want to hear that's most worth hearing.
When choosing the sound for an alarm clock, it should always be at least a little bit annoying.
***
Although some attention has been given to the nature of friendship, by Derrida and Cicero and others, comparatively little attention has been paid to friendship's endings -- to what counts as a deal-breaker, to the status of ex-friends, to the places they can hold in one's consciousness (painful reminder? enemy? detested object? or stranger again, mere civilian?).
***
Blarney Stone. Centuries of people salivating over it. Wikipedia calls it the world's most unhygienic tourist attraction.
A friend of mine, AC, refused to go near it, so her boyfriend pressed his lips to it, and then to hers.
On the tour bus afterwards, the guide asked who was brave enough, and then laughed at the group: "When the local Irish get drunk, they wander up the stairs, and urinate all over that rock."
***
The longer you write in any one place, or in any one format, the greater the inclination to lie.
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