The Experience of Clarity

276 There must be, of course, only one ultimate reality.  (I am speaking of a physical and not a conceptual ultimate reality.) However, the human brain is not equipped to perceive that single reality.  Instead we have multiple and therefore fragmented perceptions upon this single ultimate reality ... perceptions from which we then reconstruct, on our own terms, a “mental whole.”  This mental whole is not the same as the physical ultimate reality.  However, the evolution of the mental whole is more than just a series of errors: it serves as a kind of signposting ...  a finding one’s way toward higher and higher perceptions .  This mental whole , this reconstruction of the universe through the resolution of contradictions, is my “spiritual” process and is dependent upon a natural phenomenon which I like to call, “Repetition.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

102 One of the animal behaviorist’s tricks is to take something from or add something to the harmony of a creature.  He leaves one creature alone, throws the other out of harmony, and then compares the two.  He can then calculate what this missing or added thing does or does not do.  After such an experiment, the scientist is in a better position to describe the parts that contribute to its normal state.   I consider an ethologist the desirable model for an individual's quest for truth.  If the reader can accept this premise, then it follows that an introspective truth seeker is neither himself capable of permanent happiness nor of honestly proposing the discovery of truth as a means toward happiness.  For truth, the seeker constantly throws himself out of balance, recording the push out of and the return toward equilibrium, comparing states and securing knowledge – whose method entails a cycle from order to chaos to order .  Again and again, he...

277 The Manifestations of Reality: A. As incomprehensible immediate sensory impressions. B. As impressions held in the memory in two important forms and thereby rendered comprehensible and useful: 1. As an instance, a fact isolated from a whole. As involuntary snapshots of reality.  As scientific method: facts subjected to empirical confirmation and sound reasoning, creating a sort of periscope from which we might see around the limitations of our senses.  Thus, we see beyond “common sense,” learning that it is the Earth which revolves around the Sun and not the reverse. 2. As a type, a repetition of instances forming a single, cerebral impression, isolated from a whole. With the instances preceding consciousness through evolution or forgotten through repetition-blindness, the events manifest themselves cerebrally as “Reasons,” “Ideals,” “Laws,” “a priori,” “Causation,” “Truth,” “Universal,” etc. Such repetitions, when flayed by the “surface” v...

103 Work Ethic, 1) the stamina consequent of the fear of being thought lazy; 2) a moral gymnastic where the inability to throw off the master becomes a virtue again; 3) a unique accounting system where being less greedy amounts to more than one’s contribution to the master’s productivity. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

278 Is repetition real ?  Or is it only a poor memory which makes repetition appear real?  Are the eyes truthful, when their immediate scrutiny never finds a repetition? Is there some other region of the brain which makes the instance … the very real particular only appear real, memory performing greater judgment than the eyes?  ... every particular, in some minute aspect, deviant and foreign to the repetition.  And yet the engineer predicts ... Yet these mutually exclusive aspects of reality belong to a universe which can only be one .  That we cannot fathom the inconsistency can just as easily be explained by admitting to a limitation of the human mind as by our capitulation to the concepts of “infinity” or “eternity.” Reality is one thing .  It is the mind that must split, contrast, see the particular at one moment and then the repetition in the next ... for it craves both the material and its law from which it might re- construct that one t...

104 Leisure Ethic, 1) a sphere of awareness that remains impenetrable to any concerns of the work ethic; 2) an energy and health so great that any task becomes a game again; 3) an evil seen only from the perspective of the work ethic.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

279 For my not having been born Emperor, I have been fortunate.  I simmered ... I plotted ... I changed the rules and object of the game ... and in the end found compensation in my rise to a very real sovereignty.  My cunning had stumbled upon the only thing which could remain pure without being at the same time smug. But all those around me see only a crown without jewels and studded with only the “smallest” concerns: fish for breakfast, “cerebral hygiene,” and a handful of petty habits.  They laugh and propose my “coronation,” not rejecting a higher nobility as much as showing disgust for reality.  Their reality, it seems, is beneath them. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

105 When a fish tears the hook from its mouth, there are fishermen who cry out in pain.  And there are also masters who suffer ungrateful servants.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

280 There is a man I know who thinks that an earthquake in Chile which killed 30,000 people is more calamitous than the handful of petty habits which will kill him before the year is up. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

106 They are the poor in spirit who seek the approval of the advantaged – and are thus on the right path toward serving them.  Those who refuse to seek the approval of the advantaged are poor workers ... and to the precise degree that they are rich in spirit. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

281 I just turn the key and the tiger in me leaps out, does whatever damage it pleases, and then trots back to its cage with that majestic presumption that I will feed it again for tomorrow’s romp.  And I do ... because I am nothing without this key. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

107 When the poor are squeezed by necessity, they have no words but only a blank stare for the rich man who is dissatisfied with sufficiency.  And for the rich man to be dissatisfied with sufficiency, he must have no eyes for the poor. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

282 I suspect that my ideas will grow together, not so much as evidence that the universe is ordered, but that the brain tends to organize chaos into a single, orderly perspective.  It would roll up my many jewels into a single velvet cloth ... as the evidence and redemption of my experience. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

108 Does his work ethic rest on a lazy principle?  The one who imagines that leisure is easy may only be too lazy to struggle with his inherited work ethic.  The workaholic often has the smaller labor of shirking the business of freedom.  It is easy to maintain the inertia set by our masters; it is harder work to slow down. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

283 The captain who tacked east and west against the north wind could never be seen in his northward bent ... but at last he struck the ice .  Now suppose that this collision cracked open the side of the ship and a prisoner held within the dark hull for the entire journey stepped out upon the ice, held up his fists to the sky and rejoiced.  This cerebral actuality, this beginning, this single point has no historical accounting with which to recognize a tendency.   It is not seen as a destination and will soon become a point of departure for the memory. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

109 Public morality: having all of the answers without the bother of asking any of the questions. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

284 The universal and the particular are two different manifestations of one reality.  That is all.  It is the human experience that makes a duality of nature.  It could be said that (1) the Ideal, (2) the cerebral consequence of repetition, and (3) the particular are three separate manifestations ... if it were not that the Ideal is merely an appropriation of the natural phenomenon of repetition ... a natural error (and every human’s illusion) being that this manifestation is independent of the human experience preceding it — whereas countless instances have in the meanwhile played upon the senses, have worked in the memory … have fallen into tendencies with the same precision with which types of sand are separated in a gold miner’s pan ... have appeared identical from deficiencies in human perception … even disappearing due to repetition-blindness … have gained the force of habit and conditioning, yielding a sensation of a distinct “substance” at the withdrawal of ...

110 There are truths that one can only accept within the solitude of a hotel room. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism