What one is holding on to, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 271

271
My “Good” is a progression from lower states of clarity toward higher states.  By experimenting with conditions, I do not chain myself to any particular “understanding” but to the physiological progression itself.  Any given “understanding” will soon be discarded in favor of the next, higher interpretation.  What one is holding on to, by way of a few iron habits, can also be called the right to the future.  The entire process demands greater and greater acquisitions of self-control.  This self-control itself turns upon the aim of greater clarity ... and again, for the sake of finding the way to even more control.

Now, if you, dear reader, also seek the same progression, then you understand me, for you live me.  And your understanding me is only confirmation that you have understood yourself.  And this constitutes the interdependence of our immortality.  Each of us must first draw our own line, scratching out the boundary claimed by our own external authorities (from whom we never receive “permission”) and, without moving so much as a hair’s breadth, find ourselves already within this self-appropriated center ... within the genuine experience, the explanation of which forces a contradiction: You and I share the uniqueness of what it is to exist ... you and I, and others like us, will experience each other ... come alive and recognize each other.  We pass along this genuine experience like a flame, from torch to torch — and here and there, looking down upon the vast expanse of darkness, find a flicker or two lighting up the way.



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



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