the courage to hold our ground, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 223

223
What we need is adequate lighting — courage, that close relative to dull-wittedness.  Cowardice illuminates, without fail, but to the point that we are blinded with this all too brilliant thought ... like the rabbit which stops before oncoming headlights.  Even if we somehow manage to move, we still recoil from an all too lucid conscience afterward, as if it had been a duty to be run over by an oncoming cultural presumption, calling it the “courage to hold our ground.”  To fear is to create an absurd double-bind.  To fear is to victimize oneself with one’s own intelligence, and all the while, appearing as the supreme example of “moral courage.”  A deeper courage would have made its stand against the word, “Duty.”



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



Popular posts from this blog

A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387

387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood.  To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process .  In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more
A benefactor's Moral Guide: what do you want that will not result in your ultimate dishonor?      ****    Meditation: "How do I get back to where I want to be?"
Read more

A theory of art

Interest is not in what you see. It’s in what you don’t see. It is sensed incompleteness completed reflexively by the spectator. It is a conflict in the otherwise imperceptible feeling that a sensory organ is “inadequate” … a mastery of scratching irritations, an “I” … “the” I. We love art the most when we scratch ourselves with what we view.  Art is valued at the interest that the passion from the incompletes in the work is instantly and successful satisfied by what the lover needs to sense … every time it senses the art.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more