resistentialism

Several of his pieces touched on the invented philosophical movement of Resistentialism.

Reports of resistentialism abound in ephemeral literature as well.

Perhaps because resistentialism is nonverbal, which I suspect is why it's the driving force behind so much comedy.

Developments in Resistentialism.

An expanded Report on Resistentialism, Paul Jennings, Town & Country magazine.

The slogan of Resistentialism is "Les choses sont contre nous" ("Things are against us").

Although Jennings coined the word in jest, I must object to Oxford's dubbing resistentialism a "mock philosophy."

The Peter Tamony Collection at the University of Missouri, Columbia, contains dozens of newspaper clippings documenting the phenomenon of resistentialism in everyday life.

I was thumbing through Paul Hellweg's "Insomniac's Dictionary" when I stumbled upon the word resistentialism, which Hellweg defines as "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects."

However, it should be pointed out that prior work in this field, as it relates to tumbling toast, was first performed by Paul Jennings in 1950, in his "Report on Resistentialism."

The movement is a spoof of existentialism in general, and Jean-Paul Sartre in particular, Jennings naming the fictional inventor of Resistentialism as Pierre-Marie Ventre.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines resistentialism as a "mock philosophy which maintains that inanimate objects are hostile to humans" and calls it a "humorous blend" of the Latin res, thing(s), and French résister, to resist, with existentialism.

One approach is to treat this as a game against nature (see move by nature), and using a similar mindset as Murphy's law or resistentialism, take an approach which minimizes the maximum expected loss, using the same techniques as in the two-person zero-sum games.

In 1948, humorist Paul Jennings coined the term resistentialism, a jocular play on resistance and existentialism, to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans.