The Experience of Clarity

328 Habit, conditioning, evolved machinery, if ignored, account for a large part of what humans call “depth.” That we consider this fact “depressing” signals another aspect of human perception: we do not really want truth so much as we want to escape from superficiality. We prisoners of the heart! At last we have the key in our hand — but do not know which side of the door is out and which is in. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

158 There is less difference between inferior and insubordinate than insubordination will admit. Righteousness goes one step further and claims no relation at all to either of them. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

329 The argument is not stimulating enough; consequently, it is invalid. Also, arguments grow invalid as I distance myself from a key stimulus. Now that I am aware of the growth and decay involved in human reasoning, my task is to grow a new, grand argument, an accretion of disparate but necessary relationships with things, where all of these disparate truths, through cultivation, grow towards each other and eventually join, not logically, but nonetheless necessarily. The unifying principle? The germ of a grand argument? ... the repetition of key stimuli. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

159 Good never conquers Evil more decisively than when our identity alone remains to compensate our overwhelming disadvantage, and this identity only emerges if we believe that it constitutes our superiority. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

330 A truth may not mention repetition, but it is always dependent upon it. Truth is the manifestation of repetition. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

160 To ask the salesman of a defective product to be honest is to ask him to find another profession. If he should do so, he might now claim integrity. He has let go of a lower standard and lower image of himself and grasps the higher standard from which he now esteems himself to be not only superior to his previous identity but superior to all who hold to the previous standard. To say that he has been virtuous for the sake of virtue is to deny that he had the end of an imagined promotion within the ranks of society. It is a form of dishonesty to thrust this fact into the black box of unwanted and therefore unresolved facts. But that is precisely what integrity requires. Now he sells a defective morality. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

331 An admired thinker becomes something like a favorite comedian: everything the comedian does, even walking on stage with a serious face, provokes laughter ... as with the thinker, everything petty finds its way toward significance. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

161 Integrity is the virtue that you lose by having to be convinced of it. There is no integrity without self-reliance. One is never quite half whom one wishes to be without confirmation, because one depends upon it. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

332 We are meaningless within the realm of reason and surface, but not within that of sensation. And within the realm of sensation there are two types: that which passes and that which endures. The former is the instance provoking a sensation. It is both the promise of meaning and the breaking of that promise. The latter is the sensation of repetition itself. It alone has the power to keep promises. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

162 There is a type of integrity which is more concerned with getting there first than with getting there intact. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

333 A desire gratified does not enlarge the container; it widens the drain. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

When all of the key points are on the other side of tact and “appropriate” conduct, you know that you have the moral moral point, but in solitude. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Rational societies don’t last very long. Most of us approach a rational argument as we do our pasta, something to be enjoyed for the sake of its flavor and according to our present appetite. Unknotting a conversation because it has been flavored with rationality is to break with social etiquette.   This is also why our moralities thus far have been more dependent upon “appropriateness” than in making sense. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

We crave duration in our narrative of ourselves, with smooth transitions from context to context and assistance from our friends. We seek to lose ourselves in our own drama.   Any success here leaves the interrupted self as the real self. Frustration is no signpost to the truth, but from our truths to the real. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

163 A “Moral System” is how we stunt our potential contribution to humanity in the attempt to convince ourselves that our right to a higher rank by way of its discovery and presentation is incidental and not causal. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

334 A desire resisted is not a sacrifice.  That one desires serves as proof that one does not have the object in question.  How can one sacrifice something one does not have?  One sacrifices the hope and not the object of hope.  And if one does not need “it” but needs time devoted to what happiness needs, why isn’t the resistance also a gift?  If lacking nothing is fullness, then why isn’t the state of mind which no longer hopes the greatest gift of all? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

164 One objection to taking the cynical out of morality again is that one's style is heightened when one speaks the truth. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

335 Patience is not a virtue. It is a consolation. When we extend a desire too far nature lops it off, and we call our surviving half, Patience. Let us not give false honor to a maimed virtue. Understanding, harnessed to the necessary, is no longer “patient,” but is the goddess herself, natural ... eager. Give me that happy harness … that passion for the necessary, shield my eyes from all that begs and whines for hope, and I will sing my way up the mountain, and only as high as the goddess will take me ... with never a need to console myself in the knowledge that I cannot climb higher. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Of two who purchased a fraudulent map, it is the clearest thinker who is confused first. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Having the courage to prick one’s own complacency, the elements that would otherwise have constituted confusion now trip us down in cascading experiences of clarity. How effortless it becomes …. once the courage alone stands … the courage to let all of the rest fall. With this courage, observe how much misfortune is redeemed with providence. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

The Big Trade: You thought you had discovered a piece of cultural reality.  But not so, reality is what you hit when your relation then pushed your message aside.  You quickly hit reality again when you called the other’s attention to the slight.  It is a strong moment to know that reality has got your back precisely when … because your relations do not. You make the big trade, between the necessity of division within the provincial and the consequential unity of cosmic thinking. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

The higher the intelligence in one’s realism, the less of that reality one has: The most intelligent realism has promoted itself to little more than an involuntary spider which by rational necessity extends its design beyond human reach … the math is invincible … to which, this literal pebble in a child’s hand is merely real, for our moment in the figurative. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Don’t overestimate the value of clarity.  To be beaten one’s whole life through is not half the misery of realizing it.  But then, from a different angle, do not overestimate the pursuit of happiness. In the inevitable failure of such arrogance, clarity emerges again, in the distinction, as supreme. Never in the beginning, but always in the end, our education was worth any cost and one is never merely happy to realize this. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

When life is perfect, life was always perfect: Reality is not an answer on the other side of a question. Even if one asks  – “what is real?” – reality does not belong to the question. Real “answers” survive the intense scrutiny of failed questions. The quickest path to reality is the answer to the question, “What frustrates me?” The “answer” in this case is the cognitive result of a human discipline, a contact, not a logical necessity. When we see that frustration is our educator and self-education is our goal, then life is perfect. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

336 My Life Strategy: The management of immediate stimuli for a necessarily slow, accumulative indulgence in the approach toward a grand end. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

165 A maxim is an exaggeration of truth.  It is not a truth in the same way that a doctor’s photograph is actual .  That sort of truth nauseates.  The maxim is more of a rallying cry ... a stimulus ... a pose not very different from that of a comic book superhero. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism