The Experience of Clarity

139 What is uncompromising behavior?   The strength one finds in compromising all but the present object of one’s monomania. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

314 The one who does not want control but wants to live is doomed. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

140 But the ideal is the goal? But if so, then it is that sort which compromises the range of attainable goals. I am frustrated with the inability to confer value upon myself through the attainment of ambitious goals, and so I compensate this frustration by constructing a superior identity within my imagination. My new sense of superiority requires that I argue against ambition. Now to the precise degree that I indulge in the narcotic of my spiritual justification, I compromise my future ability to confer value upon myself through ambitious achievements. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

141 One means of self-destruction is our sacrificing the end for the thrilling display found through increasing the force or velocity of the means. We did not realize that we had two ends, one of time and space and one of an identity achieved thereby, the latter of which often remains hidden to the intellect and which may in fact be the impetus to the former. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

142 The end does not justify the means; it determines the means. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

313 Every stout realist admits himself a slave to necessity, but for him alone is there a choice between types of slavery. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

143 The end proposed decides the beginning. In consciousness, it is the end that arrives first. We travel as inchworms. The end has set itself forward, and it is the beginning that then curls up and joins the ending. We say that a cause produces an effect and therefore “precedes” it, but we realize that the proposed effect is a behavioral cause, a stimulus that is itself an additional means by which we plant the “goal” down and then muster all necessary “means” toward it. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

314 The one who does not want control but wants to live is doomed. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

144 A great advance in science breaks with a custom and thus constitutes a public immorality, which then, after this new custom is set, becomes the next scientific impediment. A great discovery in science is an Evil that threatens the present Good while establishing the conditions from which it emerges again as the next Good. Pure Evil then would be indistinguishable from an acceleration of scientific discovery no longer hindered by the friction of a “moral Good.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

315 Mediocrity is unrestricted force. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

145 Science has the human limp forward, but it is his strong leg that accounts for his Evil appearance. Had he two bad legs ... had he stood still, he would have appeared perfectly normal ... Good. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

316 We seek the absence of limits ... crave to feel ourselves free of all constraints. Of the grain of sand, we would see infinity ... of this passing moment, eternity. Somehow we are to blink away the wall of reality. However, suppose one sought freedom in the opposite direction, groped hand over hand along the wall, so as to be sure of its inexorability ... to have something unyielding from which to push off. One cannot push off from unlimited freedom. Freedom as I have experienced it requires a limit, for this limit renders control. We need a courage to face reality and not a flight that we call our “freedom.” However disappointing it may feel, this limit ... this control is something like freedom. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

146 In the Mirror: A conclusion in urgent need of a premise is usually a stimulus whose gratification leads to disaster or atrocity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

317 There are those who see mechanical control over thoughts as a loss of freedom, and so reject the idea. There are others, fewer, who see the same, but affirm it. All dwell however within the same reality. The only difference between them is the speed of their progress. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

147 Honesty is as violent as complacency is tender. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

318 What we would never believe : Picking the lock is an admission that one has been chained. One feels humiliated. Consequently, one denies the existence of one’s chains. What we often believe : Dealing with human mechanics is an admission that one is not as free as one would like to believe. Consciousness is threatened with humiliation. Ironically, this threat itself is a stimulus whose response denies the machinery. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

148 There are few who claim betrayal with sharper indignation than those scorpions who had offered their claw in friendship and were refused. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism