A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 237

237
We are not freemen.  We are not even serfs, but the shadows of serfdom.  We search in vain ... carry our torches and find nothing that will burn hot and bright enough to light up our faces.  And what exasperates us most is that we find no one to blame for our anger ... and we have searched everywhere.  But it is here, as our flame dims for a lack of oil, that we come upon a leaf cool and beaded with morning dew ... something that we consume in a forgotten manner ... something we can finally keep down and digest ... we, the middle class with our public education ... we, the cows of social science, have at last found something pleasant to ruminate: 


There is no blame in a world already condemned to function at the animal level.  There is no demand for merit where there is no merit.  There is no duty where there is no misunderstanding.  There is no value or meaning, only the momentary relief of scratching the itch of an insufficient rank.  There are none such  ... not because we are incapable of them but because they are fictions.  If there is to be any superiority, our “permitting” it is only how we console ourselves for its unavoidability.  Let it be this then: not being deluded by rank is superior to believing in it.  Sufficiency is its own perfection.




A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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