(no subject)

from "On the Pleasures of Hating", Hazlitt

Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others, and ignorance of ourselves,--seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy--mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love;--have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.


[The sensiblest man who ever lived, much at his best when carried away. How let himself be carried away? The sensiblest man who ever lived.]

(no subject)

1 We do not know anything.
I do not want to listen to you.
2 We can never know whether we know anything.
I will kick the ground out from beneath us both sooner than listen to you.
3 There is no knowledge, only opinion.
I refuse to let you send me back to square one with your criticisms.
4 There is no knowledge, only assertion.
I do not need to support what I feel like believing.
5 We know only that we know nothing.
You can argue with me all day but when you go silent I win.
A I do not know that we are a we.
I need space.
B I do not know that you exist as I do.
I need you to not just go away but leave my memory also.
C I do not know that anything exists but myself.
It would also be nice if you weren't here tomorrow.
D I do not know that I exist.
I may leave myself just to get rid of you.
E I cannot define being, thus cannot say whether I'm doing it.
You think you have something on me but look how easily I ignore you.
! We are and know but cannot speak of these.
See? Your words are just blah blah blah to me.
@ We are and know but never know we are and know as we say.
You think you're right but what if you're wrong? Huh?
# We are and know but what we say--we feel--just gets it wrong.
There's stuff you don't know about. I'd tell you but you wouldn't get it.
$ We are and know but always lie about it; truth when spoken kills.
You're not so hot yourself.
% We are, we know, we tell you of it thus.
Oh yeah? But what about this!

(no subject)

The five skepticisms: of being, knowing, saying, willing and sensing (these last AKA determinism and solipsism respectively). I don't believe in any of these not-believings (a sixth skepticism, skepticism-skepticism?); yes, people have died to keep believing they didn't believe in these basics, but they never stopped believing in them.

Can thinking/reasoning be one more? I think it's subsumed under knowing. Or saying.

Those not peer-pressured into adopting these come to them on their own, always for defense. Adopting one but unhappily--does this entail craving one aspect (certainty, say; getting to give up) but balking at others? Notice no one would move on to these if they could accept the apathies of the liar or nonsense-spouter. The most irritating of phenomena is when a skeptic senses a leak in her skepticism and tosses in some "you can't/won't stop me" responses to fill the breach; unless that would be the mad palace of misconnections and spreadings of language she produces afterward to assimilate that burst of infantine chaos.

Distraction is a more primal defense than skepticism, which is essentially an argument. Though arguments themselves may be just distractions that proved durable. Well, not just.