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Gil O'Teane
https://www.goodreads.com/giloteane
your most urgent desires are only a filthy vitalist trick to keep the show on the road.
“Guerrilla war is a total war. This is the path on which the Situationist International is set: calculated harassment on every front—cultural, political, economic, and social. The battlefield is everyday life, which guarantees the unity of the struggle.”
― The Revolution of Everyday Life
― The Revolution of Everyday Life
“Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. How to answer it?”
― The Myth of Sisyphus
― The Myth of Sisyphus
“If thought discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of summing them up and summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessed would be but a ridiculous imitation. That nostalgia for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse for the human drama. But the fact of that nostalgia’s existence does not imply that it is to be immediately satisfied. For if, bridging the gulf that separates desire from conquest, we assert with Parmenides the reality of the One (whatever it may be) we fall into the ridiculous contradiction of a mind that asserts total unity and proves by its very assertion its own difference and the diversity it claimed to resolve. This other vicious circle is enough to stifle our hopes.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus
― The Myth of Sisyphus
“Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to England, Norway and so forth - in these countries the real business of the 'state' is preformed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs. Parliament itself is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the 'common people.”
― The State and Revolution
― The State and Revolution
“If the theme of the intentional claims to illustrate merely a psychological attitude, by which reality is drained instead of being explained, nothing in fact separates it from the absurd spirit. It aims to enumerate what it cannot transcend. It affirms solely that without any unifying principle thought can still take delight in describing and understanding every aspect of experience. The truth involved then for each of those aspects is psychological in nature. It simply testifies to the ‘interest’ that reality can offer. It is a way of awaking a sleeping world and of making it vivid to the mind. But if one attempts to extend and give a rational basis to that notion of truth, if one claims to discover in this way the ‘essence’ of each object of knowledge, one restores its depth to experience. For an absurd mind that is incomprehensible.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus
― The Myth of Sisyphus
Gil’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Gil’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,095 books
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5,404 friends
1,792 books
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227 friends
2,487 books
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113 friends
356 books
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38 friends
2,810 books
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236 friends
336 books
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40 friends
288 books
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165 friends
205 books
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69 friends
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