The Chthonic and the Ironic

What is your acquaintance with the chthonic?

Do you believe it exists as a supernatural underworld or entirely in human minds, entirely or mostly or partly under the surface of their consciousness?

What is your acquaintance with irony?

Does your inner voice often or rarely point out ironies to you?

How do you define the chthonic?

How do you define the ironic?

Perhaps you deliberately seek out information and experiences likely to turn your expectations upside down.

Perhaps you prefer to remain within your psychological and/or physical and/or financial comfort zone.

How do you tell the difference between seeking thrills and seeking the truth?

Perhaps you seek the truth and/or express the truth through comedy.

Perhaps you are amused by ironies within ironies.

Perhaps you are annoyed when people do not appreciate and/or acknowledge the ironies you notice and find amusing, or distressing.

The chthonic and the ironic both involve what is underneath the superficiality of daily routines, mind-numbing habits, the blandness of boredom, the arrogance of complacency and the cruelty of indifference.

Exploring the chthonic in practice tends to involve the deliberate uncovering surprising, and possibly shocking, truths.

The ironic cannot really be deliberately explored in practice.  It can only be deliberately explored in theory, through known examples. 

In practice, irony mostly involves the accidental discovery of surprising truths.

Yet uncovering and discovering truth can be dangerous, though not necessarily for the discoverer.

How do you usually assess the possible consequences of your discoveries?

What do you know about criminal underworlds and oppressive overworlds?

What do you know about the ironic, and dangerous, internalisation of oppressive practices?

What do you know about the ironies and tragedies associated with mistaking reasonableness for oppression?

What do you know about the ironies and tragedies associated with mistaking oppression for reasonableness?

What do you know about fables and parables?

How do you distinguish between order and justice?

How do you distinguish between chaos and freedom?

How do you distinguish between the living parts of the Earth and the non-living parts?

What do you know about the interactions between the living and non-living, whether through the intervention of human activity or otherwise?

What do you know about your own nature, and how do you know it?

What does investing in pleasant interdependence mean to you in terms of productivity?

What does investing in amazingly successful planning mean to you in terms of justice?

Where have you most recently been investing in purposeful reviews, and why, and how?

How are you investing in good relationships and what are your policies in relation to such matters?

What do you know about intelligent frugality and liminality in relation to productivity?  

Where have you been investing in enlightened productivity, and where, and how do you know?

How have you attempted to identify your own implicit assumptions and their origins?

What is your attitude towards freethinking, and why?

What is your definition of freedom of thought, and why?

How do you define the meaning of harm, and why do you do so?

How do you ascertain the causes of harm, and how do you do so?

What do you know about metaphysics?

What do you regard as cruel, and why?

Perhaps you regard illness, injury, ageing, suffering, death and dying as cruel.

If so, to whom or what should revenge for that cruelty be directed?

What do you know without evidence?

What do you know through evidence?

What do you assume through presuppositions?

How do you respond when a point of view makes no sense to you, particularly when the point of view is expressed by someone with power over you and/or many other people?

How do you prefer to address contradictions?

How do you prefer to address the general public, and when, and why?

Perhaps you regard most of history and all of pre-history to be figuratively chthonic.

Perhaps you regard most geological aspects of the Earth to be literally chthonic.

What do you know about the geological history of the Earth?

This introductory grimoire to the work of wonderful witches is intended as a highly serious volume.  It s purpose, and the purpose of your temporary access to it, is to help you make the world a much better place than it would be without you.

What, in fact, makes the world a better place?

Is it thinking?

Is it war?

Is it government?

Is it amusement?

Is it the willingness to carry out the promise expressed through an oath?

When, if ever, have you feigned ignorance to encourage people to become aware of, and acknowledge, their actual ignorance?

Is your attitude to most situations, and people, imbued with presumptuousness?

Perhaps you are saturated with self-satisfaction and self-importance.

Perhaps you feel you are powerlessly drowning in despair.

Perhaps you have been spending too much time in a thinkery, or military, or parliamentary, or hedonistic situation. 

Perhaps you regard all comedy as hedonistic.

Perhaps you enjoy amusing yourself whilst awaiting the arrival of a muse in your mind.

 

Or perhaps your mental health has been so harmed by intolerable stresses that you now experience nothing particularly amusing or creative as a consequence.

Perhaps your measurements of productivity usually aim to measure laziness.

How do you define morality and immorality, and do you ever do so through Socratic irony?

How do you prefer to interpret evidence of the past?

How do you prefer to interpret evidence of the future?

Perhaps you prefer to examine the past through comparative methods.

Perhaps you prefer to interpret the future through the Socratic method.

Perhaps you regard the future as chthonic.

Perhaps you prefer to assess the future through the speculations associated with imagined divination and self-fulfilling prophecies.

But are your assumptions accurate?

Perhaps you have reflected on the work of Søren Kierkegaard, including his thesis On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates.

How do you think about irony in relation to the absurd, and to absurdity?

What do you know about the chthonic and the ironic in relation to the ridiculous and the vicious?

What do you know about the abusiveness and tragedy of misdirected revenge?

What do you know about redirected but relatively well-placed revenge?

All well-placed and misplaced revenge is obviously unreasonable from a societal point of view, like all other oppressive and violent acts. 

Yet there is an important role for parody and satire and irony in every society.  That role is political.  Its purpose is to address oppression and deception.

What do you know about internalised oppression, including internalised racism and internalised sexism?

What do you know about the political, practical and comedic uses of mockery? 

How do you tell the difference between justified mockery and the bullying associated with unjustified mockery?

When, if ever, have you used irony to address unjust and wilful ignorance?

How do you ascertain blame for wrongdoing, particularly ignored wrongdoing?

How do you respond when you witness and/or learn about the causes and consequences of plausible deniability? 

What do you know about surreal humour as a response to doubt, despair and indignation?

What do you know about the concept of kicking the dog/cat?

What do you know about the crab mentality?

How do you think your life has been influenced by Socrates, at least if you think at all.

How do you think your life has been influenced by the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, and how do you know?

How, if at all, is your life meaningful, and how do you know?