The
future is really a species of memory. And the memory is made up of items
suitable for present equilibrium, especially as one fact and not another might
serve as ballast for a teetering social relationship. Our accuracy with the past and future are never
more vulnerable nor strongly felt than during a realignment of friends and
foes.
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