the backward thinking creature, aphorism 368, A Human Strategy by Matt Berry

368

Unless I see the mind as the backward thinking creature ... unless I see “will” as a look into a mirror ... as merely a conditioned response to stimuli and therefore inverted and late ... then I am more presumptuous than free.

Where “mind” has not yet trained the muscles and nerves, fed the stomach, rearranged the surface, discriminated between stimuli, has not rewritten the history of the man ... where mind is not yet machine, but “soul” ... “operating” somewhere “beyond” the material world ... where all immediate stimuli and past conditioning are scratched out of the equation of an act ... in short, where ‘will’ thinks of itself as captain, there I will find only a deluded stowaway who, upon seeing a reef just ahead, leaps up from below deck and commands the ship to turn away ... by pointing his finger.  Never mind the current of the sea, the inertia of the vessel, never mind the wind, the rudder, the sails, never mind the undisciplined crew, never mind the total subordination of “will” to its own causes ... it seems enough to point the finger.


“Will,” if it even exists at all, is the weakest of the influences upon a man’s destiny; consequently, it must become the most cunning, flattering, knowledgeable stowaway a ship has ever held below deck ... but then one does not ... can not realize this until after ... if!  one has been so lucky as to survive a shipwreck.



A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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