The Experience of Clarity

191 Potential will pursue an end, at the expense of a higher end, only because one had the means at one’s immediate disposal. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

36 Innocence-or-Sin? – a vehicle where one begins life’s journey with a foot on the brake.   Ignorance-or-Experience? – the same vehicle, but one accelerates.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

192 The problem with irrelevant potential is that one needs to feel capable and suddenly finds that here — at the juncture of decision — one is not only capable but already congratulating oneself. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

37 The righteous claim innocence, while the wise claim experience.  What?  Is it foolish to be righteous? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

193 There is a difference between asking, “What is my potential?”  — and the question, “How can I elevate potential itself?” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

38 Sin is an obstacle to the goal of innocence?  But if so, then experience would be an obstacle to the goal of ignorance....  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

194 There is a virtue in postponing a valuable act ... if in its place a lesser act has greater value as a habit.  Obvious enough, yet the seduction of an immediate victory is more than the average human can withstand. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

195 A possibility: One resists a victory which is merely available — resists the seduction of every cheap and easy display, knowing that the strength of its seduction lies in its availability and in a deficit of self-esteem. We often build up our weakness into our “elevated purpose.” Such “potential” is the bubble which bursts at its weakest point, the rapid deflation of the human spirit creating the illusion of “explosive power.” The ability to create a goal, to resist every distraction, to hurdle cheap gratifications of pride, to regard them as obstacles and pitfalls, these too should have their claims to “potential” ... our potential intelligence. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

39 Eve may only have sinned because Adam was stupid.  Offer an idiot any fruit from the tree of knowledge and he will no doubt blame you for his cognitive dissonance. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

196 I spin the globe on my desk.  North is up and south is down.  To what extent my orientation to the world has been set by the ethnocentricity of Europe I cannot begin to imagine.  Had America been discovered from the ports of Australia I would perhaps have to read the globe while standing on my head to see what I now see.  But a responsible assumption serves me well.  The need to appropriate an orientation outweighs the obligation to justify that orientation.  One must begin somewhere, but do we see that our beginning is necessarily smug?  ... that the beginning is a privilege granting too much license?  ... that before our personal science begins we have already made the choice: we either affirm reality by our opposing it — as one confronts an opponent and thereby grows stronger as a reality — or we oppose reality with a frantic desire to fly from it and thereby ... A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

40 True contempt is an indifference that dodges an unworthy object and that to a third party often looks more like good manners than arrogance. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

197 We do not roll smoothly toward the highest goal.  In fact, we trundle over day-to-day pits and bumps that necessarily lower our sight away from any higher destination. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism