The Experience of Clarity

94 Your Royal Highness, The Intellect....  As requested from the carpeted dais, a different version of the story to accommodate your obvious displeasure with the previous.... A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

268 Strength is not in supporting blindly our public moral system.  That is weakness.  Strength is the adjustment of morality according to our private confirmation.  However, what public morality has ever tolerated the adjustment of one of its own members without an involuntary defense: that of re-interpreting this as an “attack” and as originating from outside the bounds of the inherited morality?  (Let us not forget that an externally imposed moral system will always appropriate the “ entire” realm of morality to its own ends, which is usually nothing more than its own survival.)  We in turn defend ourselves on our moral ground, which we regard as an attempt at moral legitimacy: our coldest observations of our nearest realities.  We can not be immoral then, they say, for we lack passionate self-abandonment.  No, we are worse than immoral , for we have no concern whatsoever for their morality. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

95 The Invisible Footprints of Bliss: A keen insight into human machinery provokes exasperation.  It contrasts our rank against others, sets off what is against what could have been , and finds that our freedom is more often the consequence of desire than the existence of choice.  When ignorance, however, paints itself into a corner, it does not know it for the matching color. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

269 We consider science to be amoral.  It does not act according to self-interest.  It sees what it sees regardless of whether it is “Good” or “Evil.”  Its observations are grounded by solid reasoning and not distorted with human vanity, fear, or fancy.  There is no place for the loss of pride when the scientist is in error, nor for the abundance of pride when his experiment is proven correct.   However, science is still a type of morality and can never be fully severed from the human tendency to apply the labels “good” and “bad.”  Consider: if empirical science precludes the “Ideal,” it must then preclude “perfect objectivity” as well.  In fact, the very rigidity of the scientific discipline implies our imperfection in this regard — not to mention our method of “trial and error.”  We are subject to sensory distortion, human drives, “paradigm shifts,” cultural borders, etc.  Next, consider that the scientist is still a herd animal ... a member of his own community, the members of

96 The struggle for a stability advantageous to the truth seeker often appears to be the worship of futility.  Complacency and stability are two sides to a single human event: habituation.  What we need is what we resist and what we resist is what we need. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

270 If the reader truly understands what I mean with the word “amorality,” then the reader will understand that the choice of this word is of the least importance, while that which I attempt to represent is of the greatest.  There is a problem with morality: that is, there are two claims to the throne.  The usurper has crowned himself and laid down his self-serving laws, appropriating the title, “Morality.”  He is widely known by this name and has gained the approval of the entire realm, so that when the rightful claimant speaks of his private realm, and the laws pertaining to it, also under the name of “Morality,” no one understands.  They presume the definition as set by the usurper’s culture, by which they either defend or attack. We rightful claimants must find a new name — one which suggests our honest claim and direct descent from sovereign nature — one which suggests that our private laws are not built upon the same cornerstone as that of the public laws ... so that when

97 It is easy in a moment of vulnerability to place one’s care into the hands of the excessively complacent, transmuting their bold display into our comforting trust in their “competence.”   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

271 My “Good” is a progression from lower states of clarity toward higher states.  By experimenting with conditions , I do not chain myself to any particular “understanding” but to the physiological progression itself.  Any given “understanding” will soon be discarded in favor of the next, higher interpretation.  What one is holding on to, by way of a few iron habits, can also be called the right to the future.  The entire process demands greater and greater acquisitions of self-control.  This self-control itself turns upon the aim of greater clarity ... and again, for the sake of finding the way to even more control. Now, if you , dear reader, also seek the same progression, then you understand me, for you live me.  And your understanding me is only confirmation that you have understood yourself.  And this constitutes the interdependence of our immortality.  Each of us must first draw our own line, scratching out the boundary claimed by our own external authorities (from w

98 The Joy of Running the Christian Maze: A pagan, we are to believe, is unworthy of any happiness he may have until convinced of his unworthiness.  Only then can he redeem this newfound unworthiness by acknowledging his debt for the happiness of being cured of his former, unmerited happiness. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

272 When the word “Expediency” becomes redundant, superfluous and irrelevant — when it remains as vestige ... as evidence of a previous misunderstanding of reality, it will also serve as proof that the word “Morality” no longer designates “tractability” nor “stupidity” ... but has gained legitimacy and our genuine respect.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

99 The conditions producing the effect of written happiness may not be happy at all. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

273 What the public morality calls “amoral” is nothing more than the highest morality possible ... never mind that it is the only morality possible.  What the public calls “moral” is only “wishful thinking” or a harness.   It is only when the individual cuts himself from the group, becomes a whole unto himself ... when he takes responsibility for his own life and accepts the bounds of his own reality ... it is only at this point that he becomes moral.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

100 The Volley of Ideas: Another's frustration enters one's own game, bounces back and forth between three walls, and often finds its way out all the faster if one does not close in a fourth wall with a suggestion of one's own. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

274 Morality does not depend upon whether or not one permits self-honesty within the equation — everyone does that — but whether or not one permits the destruction of a merely presumed morality for a genuine one by actualizing it.  For those who do not find the innocence in their morality their untested naïvety, we can only communicate our amorality, that being as far as their thought can go to meet our actualization without provoking their own.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

101 I know that it is important at times to do nothing with confusion but wait for habituation to re-establish my equilibrium, but I rarely have the patience for this sort of “neglect.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

275 The brain is the fulcrum upon which a trinket lifts the infinite. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism