The Experience of Clarity

If it is capable of promoting the intellect, then it proceeds from the "correct" to the recognition of the incorrect, and its passageway is  confusion .  At some point our skepticism realizes that there is nothing truly correct; there is only that which survives our most rigorous examination.  And confusion and frustration is by far  not  the enemy of clarity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

80 Sometimes the illusion yields to the reality and sometimes the reality yields to the illusion.  So to which do I hold fast?  Whichever makes me stronger at the given moment.  The essential thing is to remember that the one always returns to the other.  On the other hand, the suggestion here that reality and illusion want to meet is not evident to me.  That they want to collide is rather the case. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

81 I take my observations at face value, but their conclusions depreciate. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

82 Out of hunger, we swoop down from the idea, and snatch up our prey, lift it back to our heights ... and find ... just another idea. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

83 An idea is not a creation, but an object knocked out of place by another object and made obvious by the threat of disorder.  We round it off to shape and fit it into a familiar environment again ... to hide the danger.  This repression and falsifying, this chipping off certain pieces and allowing others to remain we wrongly call the “idea.”  To grasp the matter more fully we would have to include the confusion. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

84 The Self-made Man: How the mighty hunter caught a snake with his ankle. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

85 The mind is not more than the sum of its parts.  In fact, if we were all-knowing, mind would show itself to be much less ... since human vanity would have no place in the equation. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

86 The old question, Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? The new question, What part of this whole valued itself less by finding nothing amiss? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

87 The third thing: Water is part hydrogen and part oxygen and that third thing?  ... one part human. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

88 As the cloud of mentalism floats away, we see only this small, delicate mechanism which operates beyond our capacity for explanation ... and it is its simplicity which baffles us.  We are tempted to call it free will , but that too floats away.  We would call it determinism , but that would offend us.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

89 The Chess Player: We celebrate the fallibility of the computer, but only as long as its human origins remain concealed.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

90 I am incorrigible.  I would have every object of the universe mechanically predictable but myself. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

91 The greatest threat to self-mastery lies in the testimony of successful people.  Where there is fortune there is an excess of vanity and where there is vanity there is “cause and effect” ... all reasons twisted smugly inward ... toward the fortunate. The second greatest threat lies in the testimony of failures.  Where there is misfortune there is self-reproach and denial ... all “reasons” mangled and pointing everywhere. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

92 I do not despair for lack of meaning, but for lack of increase .  It is decreasing that forces the question of futility upon me.  Upon a sudden and incredible increase I do not have enough words for the meaning of life: its wonder is too great for me, yet I gratify myself in the attempt anyway.  I reason backwards and reconstruct a flattering chain of events, all of them “causes” of my success ... all previous events and “attributes,” good and bad, redeemed in this one unspeakable moment of victory. And yet all has been reversed ... all a rationalization of the egotist.  Every thought has run ahead, like an excited boy marching in front of a victory parade ... every word inverted before a vanity mirror ... so that in disaster one looks at the world for the first time without this mirror ... and all is a cryptic, meaningless tangle of arguments. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

93 That which produces hand movement is the same as that which produces these words ... and it is not “consciousness.”  When I “tell” my feet to move gracefully, in any motion approaching a dance, I cannot honestly say that I am consciously controlling my feet.  Consciousness, in fact, gets in the way ... trips up the dance.  Consciousness is never more sure of itself than when it restricts itself to its own area of competence: judgment — and here it is without rival in taking all of the credit. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

94 I am sure of the world.  Then one day the tide of fortune ebbs and I find all the braces to my life on one side only. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

95 The infinite is too much for me to understand or use, but the thought of a smaller universe crushes me. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

96 He climbs the ship’s ladder faster than the ship sinks ... and feels proud of himself ... up to his neck and still bragging. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

97 Habits are invisible and effortless and therefore dangerous.  As the decadent habit bores away at one’s hull, one neither feels nor hears anything ... and can only console oneself as the ship goes down with a resignation to one’s “Fate.” Another danger: a single bad habit has wound itself so tightly into a thousand strands of good habits that one senses only the braided whole ... and concludes that only the tonsure can save. Another difficulty lies in the intricate makeup of the universe and the flow of time: “cause and effect” itself becomes a riddle.  One can not see clearly enough ... does not have an organ to see all of the contributions to an “action” ... yet how readily, almost eagerly, do we hold ourselves accountable ... how we reason backwards toward shame or pride.  Never mind that we cannot see far enough down the paths of our own histories ... never mind that what little we do see is cut up by the woven shadows of other events ... somehow we have managed to conj

98 Often one feels a tremor without seeing anything at all ... not merely a subconscious tremor which can be coaxed out and understood, but a collision of invisible, alien fates with histories which precede all observers.  As in a collision of two icebergs, one feels the tremor, but from tip to tip the distance is so great and there is so much sea and fog between them that one is truly confused as to what has just happened. One of the icebergs may even break up, ground into pieces between several older and harder mountains of ice, leaving some observers with a sense of victory and others with defeat. This is how a man wakes up one day and congratulates himself while another gnashes his teeth, simply because each found himself atop his own berg when the two collided.  They do not really understand why or how it happened but take what little they have seen thus far for all that has happened thus far ... concluding with some personal quality that gratifies or blames—or with a co

99 The habitual contact with a stimulus (or collective stimuli) plus the subject’s inevitable reaction(s) create what I call a drive .  This drive becomes weaker when the stimulus is kept at a distance over time, most effectively when severed from all sensory contact.  Each move towards the stimulus increases the force of this river ... and each move away adds another brick to the dam of this now undiverted energy.  The drive weakens.  Below the dam, the river lowers.  However, the spring of energy remains, and having no channel in which to pour, its force accumulates.  That is to say, the tendency toward a particular response has decreased in direct proportion to the increase in the potential for a response to any stimulus which might happen to show itself — whether that be the reintroduction of the old stimulus or the introduction of a new one. On the one hand, the subject now has a deep, empty riverbed into which many other tributaries are still pouring ... while the main bo

100 Searching for a Black Tack on a Black Wall: A human is a creature who makes things disappear through repeated contact.  After living on a ship for a month, the sailor has accustomed himself to the waves of the sea.  Within his sensory world, it is as if the rolling and pitching have ceased.  Then this creature goes ashore and nearly falls down because it is the land that now pitches and moves: it is a movement that now exists as an absence of movement ... and only as such can it be “sensed.” A question: how can I see forces which affect me without the cessation of these forces?  ... or create an environment where I am at least thrown out of synchronization with these forces?  Perhaps even now there is a key force, a stimulus, a recurring event, with which I am, through ceaseless contact, unable to “perceive” and therefore unable to put to my advantage or remove as an obstacle.  If so, there seems to be no end to the forces I take for granted ... nor an end to my ingratitude .

101 The problem of “Truth” is not half so useful as a little observation.  Unfortunately, “Truth” is twice as interesting.  Our problem-solving faculty, we observe, is one of our problems. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

102 Once in a while, a bad dream: in the end one is not free, just vain ... and to wake up from this vanity is to find oneself falling from a great height.  Freedom, here, is only time to reflect ... with nothing to push against or grab onto ... freedom no longer as a struggle toward something, but as a frantic squirming toward the best posture for impact ... at most, freedom as learning to sleep well again. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

103 I will not stand and stare at that chalkboard for too long.  I want to thrust myself forward, not to linger or thrash about in the turbulence of argument and equation.  Mere argument offers justification, which is only a thrashing about to stay afloat.  It does not care for the phenomenon of force.  It cares little that even iron will float with enough velocity.  As a swimmer who propels himself forward by the movement of his own limbs, by pushing away , so do I push away each new argument and justification.  An argument supports me only as it propels me ... only as I leave it behind .   Only in this manner can I skim the surface with ease and move in my chosen direction.  I do not want to tread, thinking I have actually defined and justified myself, calculating that I have thereby fixed myself to the globe, while the current of the sea sends me five hundred miles south.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

104 There is a point where Logic loses control ... in precisely the same way in which there is a height beyond which a building will fall. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

105 Nature never makes a mistake, despite all our hopes and efforts. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

106 We are here because fearless honesty has led us to misfortune or to admissions of failure everywhere else, yet here we find ourselves alone, at last, with our first real victory — not because we are stronger or wiser than others but because there are no others here. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

107 Upon the surface of things we do not see anything of value other than our explanation.  We grope along each new path in life, until our explaining becomes habitual and our eyes seem a hindrance to insight. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

108 In nature the ear is as good as the eye.  But in society, the eye is superior.  One feeds the institutionalized with stories and maxims.  But in the quest toward real satisfaction one must stop listening and start watching.  Let one’s eyes follow the bread; where it disappears, there is need. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

109 To say that we are finally content with the superficial betrays our disappointment ... implies that what we lost had been esteemed at greater value.  We placed our highest bid on the illusion, but settled for reality.  Only humans measure in this way: our cherished illusions thumbing the scales against our reality. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

110 In life, as in the kernel of wheat, much of the value lies in the shell, yet everyone wants to show me the “inner” world of man ... to feed me the husked “essence” of experience, and I am to be satisfied today to the same extent that I will be malnourished tomorrow. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

111 Some quasi-humans crawl through life as miners of the soul only because they have never stood up to see themselves against a fostering background ... or at least not long enough to feel the influences of the immediate world: people, objects, perspectives, smells, sounds, digestion, metabolism ... The mishap in the evolution of our species is that our background teaches us that there is something “inside” ... something “under the surface” — and so we burrow after it, neglecting our grip upon the surface in order to dig toward shiny little ideas .  Perhaps one day we even pierce through one side of our dark mountain, stand up in the cloud of our own dust, blinded by the light of the sun — choking in the purity of the air.  We are repulsed by its brilliant shallowness and thus further convinced that the superior, deeper reality lies within that dark tunnel and toward the “soul,” for we can see something shiny just a few paces ahead ... and our forehead ... it seems to glow and le

112 An eye for nothingness: Let’s admit it.  We no longer believe in God, but we search on for something like Him , for something like eternity ... in vain .  And nature, as they say, hates a vacuum and threatens to fill this one with the superficial.  “Anything but this!” we shout and guard the vacuum with our lives. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

113 My reality is only as valuable as it is final.  What am I saying!?  ... it is only as real as it is final. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

114 It is impossible to think deeply without a relation to the surface. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

115 Even if the water  were  deep, we still could not see beyond our reflections. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

116 Each time a truth falls from my night sky, it streaks across my horizon in a flame of wonder.  This falling too is not Truth, but the heart beats faster at the sight.  Our night is full of stars, fixed and persistent, but somehow we find ourselves wishing upon those which fall. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

117 Perhaps our worst suspicions hereby prove themselves.  We have no contradictions because we have already collided with our own actuality.  We are stopped silent, realizing we had been standing in a doorway, mumbling to ourselves and waving our arms before our closest friends. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

118 Concluding with the Surface:  A thought is a fly in a jar.  As long as it respects its limits, remains in the center, it can see far and clear and feel its freedom, but as soon as it tries to fly “beyond” its reality ... tries this angle and that ... to get “behind” the fact ... beneath the surface ... “in the world but not of the world” ... as soon as it flies off in a buzzing fury toward the  “ultimate,”  we hear nothing but the frenzied pit-pat of its own scared ideas.  Do not misunderstand me here.  To be the fly in the jar is not the despair, but quite the contrary, to be the fly  and believe that there is no jar  is the madness.  We need not transcend reality —  reality is the goal —  we must transcend “ mind” ...  to see through the glass but never forget that it is there. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

119 Why I use aphorisms:  I have no chart or destination.  I can only  correct  my course.  I sail against the wind, tacking against each discovered error.  At most I have only a tendency to behave in a certain manner, and I have altered my course so many times that I would not dare calculate a destination based upon my present direction, so forgive my methods here.  If I could put together a treatise on the course and destination of my efforts, I would.  As it is, I can only record each correction as it occurs. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

120 When one comes upon a stimulus which promotes confusion, do we stop to sort out the confusion?  If one takes a hallucinogen and if this drug presents the user with a problem, does one then feel obligated to take the drug again tomorrow, in order to solve that problem?  Perhaps.  But if one has made the attempt day after day, and if one is so lucky as to have a few sober moments, ought one not to conclude, after so many failures, that the problem itself is a hallucination?  ... the solution being to abstain from the drug?  ... my case against seeking solutions to book-induced problems. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

121 Much of the great literature in the world seems to be merely a compensation for the author having failed in some ambition ... a lifelong attempt to justify oneself, “I’m better off this way.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

122 To think without writing: to face the same mountain of ice every day ... simply because I will not use ropes. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

123 Waiting for thoughts to leap out and letting the idea govern its own length, leaves one with a clean conscience ... as opposed to writing a long, calculated essay, where point after point must be compromised in order to fit into a logical whole.  No cartographer, after exhausting available time with the city streets, would then take this limited experience and ‘leap’ up into a mathematical conclusion of how the streets and buildings should be unified according to a demand for geometric precision.  What should we have learned two thousand years ago?  That the gulf between who I am and who I imagine myself to be is as wide as the gulf between a collage of observations and a reconciled system. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism