The Experience of Clarity

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