our public moral system, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 268
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.