The Experience of Clarity

57 Just when the siren of my highest ideal seduced me, honesty violently saved me again from the most beautiful and graceful complacency.  Honesty, the last ideal ... and the lowest. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

215 Memory is the absence of pre-existing impressions, and especially that of repeated impressions.  We do not have the impression or repetition in mind when we remember; our not having them is rather the thing .  In fact, sometimes we need to part with them before we can see them at all. What happens?  Impressions leave gaps in the slate of mind and create a new template with which we view and re-organize the world according to our harder, more enduring past.  I say “re-organize” because we must change the world to make sense of it: the world is understood only so far as it can be forced into our “templates.” How does this “memory” lend control?  Can I blindly grope forward, away from the bright stimuli of the present ... construct a template for the better interpretation and organization of my future ... while having no idea whatsoever what that future will be?  ... since I have no means of understanding how to make or even how to comprehend the ...

58 Polite or honest?  We swear for honesty, for that is polite. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

216 One sets up a high goal, for which one then develops potential.  Easy enough, if one disregards the small matter of one's inability to see beyond the threshold of one's current potential.  One's ultimate vision is very often robbed by containing itself to what is required for the execution of the original goal.  To compound one's potential one must constantly surrender the goal to the next highest vision, which only that goal could have enabled.  It is an eternal surrender of misunderstood ends to honest means.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

217 One can take the fear of another and mistake the reaction within oneself for courage.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

60 Not only is the appearance of virtue often rewarding, but intelligent honesty does not resemble virtue at all. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

59 It is easier for the higher ranks to be sincere; consequently, they rarely know how much their sincerity costs them. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

219 There is more to fear from the coward than the courageous. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

61 There is nothing more beneficial to the writer’s work than honesty, nor more detrimental to the writer’s ability to get to his work. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

220 Fear is egotistical ... as if the bee actually hated my existence more than it loved the flower behind me. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

218 The occasion for cowardice increases with knowledge. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism