The Experience of Clarity

234 How cheaply we could purchase another’s heart: a few puffs of breath!  ... but we would rather sell our grand idea of ourselves, which is to say, we are purchased by another’s breath. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

235 What am I if I am a serf who refuses to obey?  And then discover after my banishment that I have no instinct for command?  The king will not take me back, and I fear the next leg of my journey ... for all roads end here.  I wander through the wilderness, taken aback with my new fear of freedom, whimpering and crying out for a new master to serve ... and finding none better than the one I had before.  I know, I know ... I have heard it all before, but how?  ... and with what?  How does second nature command first nature without finding itself suddenly dispatched on yet another errand? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

236 Thus far I have found myself rooted in middle-class soil and have dutifully and passionately continued the battle for the leveling of all classes and cultures.  However, lately I have had a thousand modern conveniences as my servants, too much time for thinking, and much too much time for leisure.  I have become bored and even begin to take on, comically enough, aristocratic airs ... and with this first step back in time, toward this banished morality, the comedy plays itself out: “The king is dead ... the throne is vacant ... can I do this without hurting anybody?”  All in my audience split their sides with laughter as I apologize for each harmless step forward ... like a peasant of the lowest order, who still believes he must be granted the right to self-possession before he can claim it. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

238 To stop behaving as a slave it is just as important to stop obeying as it is to demand the master to stop commanding.  We understand this in word, but cannot leave “our debt” to the master unpaid, not a single order unfulfilled.  We can imagine ourselves as free spirits, but not as deadbeats. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

237 We are not freemen.  We are not even serfs, but the shadows of serfdom.  We search in vain ... carry our torches and find nothing that will burn hot and bright enough to light up our faces.  And what exasperates us most is that we find no one to blame for our anger ... and we have searched everywhere.  But it is here, as our flame dims for a lack of oil, that we come upon a leaf cool and beaded with morning dew ... something that we consume in a forgotten manner ... something we can finally keep down and digest ... we, the middle class with our public education ... we, the cows of social science, have at last found something pleasant to ruminate:  There is no blame in a world already condemned to function at the animal level.  There is no demand for merit where there is no merit.  There is no duty where there is no misunderstanding.  There is no value or meaning, only the momentary relief of scratching the itch of an insufficient rank...

239 Only “hard workers” have a real chance for an authentic existence and high fate.  Unfortunately, it is almost always the master-servant morality which produces these hard workers.  When the servant finally breaks with the master, the language appropriate to their former ranks still persists within society.  For the master, the moral predicament remains unchanged.  This free man has become “lazy” ... “a quitter” ... “a threat to society” ... and all of this while the free man endures the roughest labor ... struggling to stand alone ... and on the other side of that unbridgeable gulf between the old rank and the new. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

240 We cannot both befriend our master and gain self-mastery, since our approach to his rank is the insult of all insults.  Moreover, his rebuke will always sound off with a ring of legitimacy, while our condemnation of “power” does not defeat power, but promotes its dissipation among those of us who would otherwise be his equals.  We must therefore acquire equal force before we proclaim equal status.  Until then, we conspire with necessity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

67 When tolerance is a condescending pity, it is so easy that it cannot honestly accept the title.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

241 How do we serve?  We, the many, without resources to command, and who condemn ourselves for our fate ... it would do us well to remember that all humans serve.  If nothing else, they serve nature.  Here, even a king can overstep his authority.  The real question is: Do we have a perfect strategy for the next conquest?  That is, have we applied what little resources we have in order to accumulate more resources ... and at an optimum rate? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

68 There is no such thing as forced tolerance.  It would be more honest if it went by the name of resentment ... or perhaps by, patient revenge. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

242 A multiple choice test: Who mediates our genius? A) The greats of history are our mediators: genius is an external authority to which I must appeal.  A personal conclusion must first receive authorization from these mediators before it can be considered true or false.  And this is of course all in order since anyone who is anybody knows that one has no right to one’s own reality.  To claim the contrary is to overstep my bounds, is a symptom of megalomania, and remains contrary to what I need most, humility ... also known as, low self-esteem.   B) Those with the greatest number of stored facts are our mediators: A genius is a type of filing cabinet, the recognition of which is quite simple: if we meet another who has been nominated for the office of genius, we must immediately request a file and test whether the nominee can produce that file without hesitation and without any sign of concern on his brow.  The file itself is of no importance....

69 If one has not found oneself in a superior position, one cannot grant freedom, one can only fight for it.  From the inferior position, tolerance is demanded from the superior... and in a way that resembles intolerance.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

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

240 We cannot both befriend our master and gain self-mastery, since our approach to his rank is the insult of all insults.  Moreover, his rebuke will always sound off with a ring of legitimacy, while our condemnation of “power” does not defeat power, but promotes its dissipation among those of us who would otherwise be his equals.  We must therefore acquire equal force before we proclaim equal status.  Until then, we conspire with necessity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

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

241 How do we serve?   We, the many, without resources to command, and who condemn ourselves for our fate ... it would do us well to remember that all humans serve.   If nothing else, they serve nature.   Here, even a king can overstep his authority.   The real question is: Do we have a perfect strategy for the next conquest?   That is, have we applied what little resources we have in order to accumulate more resources ... and at an optimum rate? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

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

242 A multiple choice test: Who mediates our genius? A) The greats of history are our mediators: genius is an external authority to which I must appeal.  A personal conclusion must first receive authorization from these mediators before it can be considered true or false.  And this is of course all in order since anyone who is anybody knows that one has no right to one’s own reality.  To claim the contrary is to overstep my bounds, is a symptom of megalomania, and remains contrary to what I need most, humility ... also known as, low self-esteem.   B) Those with the greatest number of stored facts are our mediators: A genius is a type of filing cabinet, the recognition of which is quite simple: if we meet another who has been nominated for the office of genius, we must immediately request a file and test whether the nominee can produce that file without hesitation and without any sign of concern on his brow.  The file itself is of no importance....

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

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

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

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

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

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

243 My goal: To lift the finger to the act of questioning itself. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

70 Of those who demand tolerance, few – if any – would be capable of conferring it themselves if the roles of the adversaries were suddenly reversed.  This is because one cannot know what tolerance really is without first being in a superior position from which to confer it, but being in such a position precludes the motivation from which it had been demanded. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

244 No one can teach me; I can only learn. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

71 Only from the superior position can tolerance be conferred .  Yet it is precisely this tolerance which those in inferior positions condemn as “permissiveness” – and all the while of course, they themselves continue to demand tolerance for their own customs.  There is hope however.  Their demand is a belligerent use of a concept whose declared aim, if held long enough, might become a custom itself.  That is, the declared aim of tolerance might survive the success of its own intolerant motives. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

245 Only I have the metaphor for my center. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

72 For a genuine tolerance , a struggle must exist and result in our granting an opponent freedom for the sake of our higher law – and precisely when one is absolutely certain that the opponent is in the wrong .   For if one were uncertain , one should not appeal to tolerance at all ... but to the wisdom of waiting for adequate information.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

246 What are the modern stigmata?  Sympathetic suffering ... another’s suffering, or distant suffering, but always safe ... as when at a dinner party we wear our brows heavily over the latest crisis in the news media.  To do away with stigmata ... to do away with the need to prove our sympathetic suffering is the next task.  Our need to exhibit ourselves involves a kind of suffering, albeit quite different from the suffering communicated.  That one privately suffers in the struggle away from suffering is enough to make a Buddha out of the least of us.  How false and unholy do all stigmata appear after we sanctify ourselves with our own crucified presumptions? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

73 The Parasites: He was a person so self-indulgent he had more enemies than friends and was in the end left no resort but to take tolerance as genuine affection. He got closer; the tolerant did not budge.  In this social contract, they did not entangle themselves with something beneath them and he believed he sucked blood from stone. The weak are saved by their imagination.  We should not take it from them.  If we should feel the need to swat the parasite, we would perhaps only be in need of salvation ourselves. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

247 I cannot fully separate myself from society, and I cannot fully integrate myself.  I am nothing apart, and nothing wholly within.  Individualism must lie in remaining a small part of a great mountain ... never disintegrating under pressure, but using that same pressure to become, like a diamond from a lump of coal, harder and brighter over time. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

74 We can tolerate almost any difficulty except those expectations we peg high on ideals which exist, not to guide us toward happiness (although that was the original promise), but to squeeze our imagination through this ignorance of our own condition and out into a discovery of who we really are.  Suddenly we find that the limitless toleration demanded of us by others is often only how we avoid having to tolerate our own plodding minds.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

248 Society is the fast talking salesman, talks us into the corner and then charges rent for the whole of our existence.  I am indebted for as long as I listen ... as long as I look beyond myself for rules. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

75 An escapist is someone who refuses to entangle himself with the crowd's projection of his moral duty. He is at his most reprehensible when he refuses to call an outlet for moral superiority his concern for others. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

249 Any device the institution uses to enslave I can use to master myself. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

76 He had an excess of genius, talent, power, and freedom.  This magnanimous overflow was a sheltering strength ... his compassion.   They were choking hopelessly on their envy  – then one day he fell and converted their envy into their strength and compassion.  Why, now they even love their enemy. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

250 Look into the machinery of every lasting institution dedicated to a moral end: their power, manipulation, and indoctrination are not evil; only my own control of my own fate is evil.  Very well then, I confess.  I am the devil’s closest ally, for this is the one thing I will never relinquish. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

77 A refusal to congratulate is an offense which cannot be prosecuted, for the victor who demands the congratulations of a rival exposes not only his dependence upon the other’s approval but his own vanity as well.  The refusal to congratulate may reveal a petty nature, but it gets its little revenge with impunity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

251 The question is not, “Where is society going?”  ... but, “Where would ‘I’ go if I could take control ... of myself? ” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

78 As for those who would not congratulate me for a success, I would find it unbearable if they should have the opportunity to show sympathy for my downfall.  The more sincerely they believe in their sympathy the more my rude dismissal is compounded with an ingratitude that I can neither defend nor endure.  Their best wishes on my behalf hasten the circulation of the poison already running through my veins.  Humiliating another through sympathy is the perfect crime. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

252 Talking about control and having control are as different as giving a sermon is from passing the collection plate around. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

254 Truth is what it is to be human.  If something is True, then it already belongs to us.  If it belongs to us from the beginning it cannot be plagiarized.  We should reserve the word “plagiarism” for those non-Me facts certified by others and which we paste together “with originality,” imitating a very precise method of association with another’s genius, all to secure our authority by appeasing those who have secured it themselves, in exactly the same way ... but in its stead we find the word “scholarship” and assign it to those who are ashamed of their own naked thought but somehow manage nonetheless to stand before us confidently, wearing only their caps of authority. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

253 Which is the greater school for life, to enjoy privileges or to suffer deprivation?  I do not know the answer, but I do know this at least, that I must learn from life as it presents itself.  And in what other way could I learn this than to grip whatever good or bad luck falls into my hand.  But in either pampering or adversity to complain — “Why precisely this?”  — is to drop the most valuable gem in life : our direct relationship with reality .  Real life begins only after we shout boldly and firmly, “Even this!” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

79 It is impossible in this awareness to pity – with sincerity – an enemy who actually craves our sympathy for his misfortune.  We can no longer indulge in the petty revenge of looking down on another through the label, “sympathy . ”  And on the other hand we are not built to refuse our sympathy without ourselves suffering from an unavoidable sense of inhuman behavior.  But now this unfortunate soul, in craving a sympathy that we withhold, believes we are cruel precisely where we sought magnanimous behavior .  Hypocrisy here is not so much the best as it is the only course of action.  And for this hypocrisy, the unfortunate yields us his gratitude!  It is either him or us ... at first glance anyway.  We looked again and found a symbiotic arrangement. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

80 With the intelligent and dignified rival, all is well.  For his misfortune we refuse to pity out of our sincerest compassion, and for this we have both his gratitude and our own reprieve from a petty dilemma, and for which he has our gratitude as well. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

81 When the proud suffer misfortune: Grace and peace of mind are nearly impossible for one who places a high value on self-sufficiency but who is suddenly found in a dependent position. Consequently, it is our own complacency and is not a truly magnanimous gesture to throw upon the unfortunate the burden of having to accept our generosity, for he cannot be both polite and refuse us – that is, if he places the same value on magnanimous and self-reliant behavior as we do ourselves.  He now is in the excruciating predicament of having to forgive us magnanimously – yet from a position which has already precluded natural magnanimity.  His conduct is the result of a calculated gesture, not a behavioral response.  Our behavior, on the other hand, lacked accurate calculation.  That is, where he is in the nervous position of being forced into the heartless gesture of magnanimity, we indulge naturally, but crudely.   If we were skillfully magnanimous, we would not...

255 Before, I could not stomach existence and had an appetite only for reading.  Now I cannot keep a single word down.  Books sit before me and I must talk myself into their value or my eyes will not move.   I consider this real progress. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

82 Others may use their own victimization or weakness to enlist our services.  We do not step in as a benefactor; rather their necessity lords it over us.  They exploit and even cultivate their disadvantage , and we now serve them with the same sort of dedication that a butler serves his master.   We are hooked by our own ethic of sympathy .  We hold to a moral standard by which we cannot endure the sight of ourselves as “scoundrels” ... “brutes” ... and nor can we endure the awareness that our “virtues” are only a pretext for serving a different sort of master. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

256 1) Arguments that are built upon names, dates and places are held by people wandering, as it were, through a labyrinth.  There are conflicting signs, a historical “graffiti,” strewn upon the walls, and it is up to the arguers to refute some of the signs and support some of the others, and through this method find their way from room to room.  Of course, it goes without saying that for every passageway “correctly understood” there is an authoritative stamp which one might add to one’s portfolio.   How do two such arguers proceed?  At first we ourselves, as we listen and evaluate, are lost in the labyrinth of ideas, and so we cannot quite discern a method.  However, if we were to conduct a small experiment and stop up our ears, while at the same time trusting only in our observations of human behavior , we would then discover their very simple method: the first task of two such arguers is to open their portfolios immediately and compare stamps. 2) If,...

83 Gratitude ought to extend beyond sufficiency. The less one needs, the weaker the grip that resentment ought to have on us.  One needs very little, has quite a bit, and consequently, there should be very little resentment and much gratitude. This is however conceptual geometry, not physiological consequence. Resentment does not emerge from an awareness of insufficiency .   Thirst wants the water and does not first seek its revenge on the one who withholds it.  Only after quenching its thirst is an overwhelming resentment possible.  Resentment whines and pleads, not for that extravagantly rich dessert others are obviously enjoying, but for their rank and for which the enjoyment is only a badge.  It is not so much food but worthiness that is withheld. Resentment thus wants more than sufficiency could ever provide.  Usually, it only wants this little pleasure of revenging a slight, however costly the diversion or ugly the behavior. Gratitude doe...

257 The true benefit of our approach to a great mind is in our subsequent breaking away. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

84 To be dissatisfied with sufficiency is a very human tendency against private happiness but for the advance of civilization. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

258 I must dust off this line between my sovereignty and my dependency every day.  And I will not let others tell me to “be reasonable” with an encroachment, for it is always their encroachment that demands “reasonable behavior,” while my every move toward independence serves as an excuse for their “retribution”: conquest and the expulsion of my right to myself.  “Be reasonable?”  Let us recall the history of our borders.  I met their external force with my force.  They pressed all points of my sphere inward.  I ceded much, but what I lost in size, I gained in force — until our opposing forces equalized.  This point, where we both stopped, became our border.  But “Be reasonable?”  I have won what little force I have by ceding much too much already.  I won this ground and not by the laws of debate.  I do not claim it by the laws of their institutions, but have it by the laws of nature.  But “Be reasonable?”  What?...

85 We lend something instead of making a gift of it because we desire it in our possession ... but lending something that we want back really ought to go by name of “borrowing.”  The desire itself inverts the transaction so that the other has lent us our dignity .   Then of course he refuses to return the item.  He had lent us our dignity, and now he wants it back.... A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

259 Life itself prepares, but not all “preparing” encourages life.  To see this clearly one must know that what we must do often opposes what we should do ... and if one is to have the scales tip toward life one must remove enough of the “shoulds” from the other side. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

86 What one borrows for dignity is also borrowed from it. What one lends for dignity is also borrowed from it.  There is no such thing as Dignity in the marketplace.  Dignity is not transacting.  It gives or refuses to give.   It is joined at birth to self-sufficiency and cannot sever itself and live . A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

260 Our public “morality” : The justifications for our inherited customs, which we defend tooth and nail for the sole reason that we have inherited them. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

87 One purchases a religious faith with expenditures of truth; hope, with expenditures of means. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

261 Moral behavior : Not only that which keeps a people together, but also the justification for their staying together. Immoral behavior : Breaking rank, breaking away, becoming incomprehensibly simple ... unforgivably self-possessed. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

88 One cannot overflow with gratitude without implying that one has more than what is sufficient, not less.  It is a contradiction even to ask the question: Why would an overflowing spirit need Hope?  Only the empty spirit needs hope. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

261 Moral behavior : Not only that which keeps a people together, but also the justification for their staying together. Immoral behavior : Breaking rank, breaking away, becoming incomprehensibly simple ... unforgivably self-possessed. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

262 Conceptual Shell games: To be “Moral” in society is to begin with the answer provided.  To be “immoral” is to begin with a question.   That which manages to justify our beginning with questions can only be “amoral.”  It is not “moral” in so far as it begins with the question.  It is not “immoral” in that it has managed to justify such questioning.  Even the actualization of honesty, they would have us believe, must be “amoral.”   It is difficult to imagine a society where it is forbidden to expose the con-artist, and yet that is precisely how its morality survives.  If I expose this actualized honesty as the only possible kernel under their shell of “amorality,” my head bounces around in a basket.  If I palm this kernel of actualized honesty, loudly and boldly shuffling these emptied concepts, “morality” – “immorality” – “amorality,” their heads bob in approval.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** ...

89 Hope is a species of fear.  It increases to the precise degree that our chances for success diminish. One most fervently appeals to Hope when one’s resources are at their lowest, when one is closest to the certainty of hopelessness.  Hope is thus more closely related to hopelessness than to its own proposed object. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

263 Public “Morals” and the Solitary Hunter: A true integrity respects the myriad offspring of existence ... both predator and prey.  It never tries to reconcile two opposing, but necessary arguments.  It maintains an ecological balance that will be destroyed if a species is allowed into an incompatible habitat ... for example, if our highest ambition were to stalk its prey within the meadow of “accepted morality.”  To tame the wilderness ... to make an organic process “moral” ... is to grope with a pale, hairless hand into the very depths of nausea.  When will we understand our world?  The lamb shall never lie with the lion ... although the lion may very well lie with some lamb. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism