The Experience of Clarity

Introduction Habit is satisfied by maintaining its own inertia, whether by removing an obstacle, by returning from a diversion ... but usually by simply persisting, that is, by doing nothing at all .  An accustomed thought ... a concept upon the screen of consciousness must persist.  An accustomed action too must persist.  A concept and an action that accompany each other do not have to “match up” or “be consistent” – they only need to persist alongside each other as they have persisted before. In sum, for the inertia of a habit to persist , right or wrong, society must remove every obstacle presented. Now, what should happen if the habit-script were a mandate for an action which threatened the inertia of the script itself?  For example, the actualization of a chant for “fearless honesty”?  This inherited (and therefore revered) message sets the stage for a passion play.  The herd receives its Holy Habit, but the chant requires an action which supersedes “mere chanting.”  The

123 Waiting for thoughts to leap out and letting the idea govern its own length, leaves one with a clean conscience ... as opposed to writing a long, calculated essay, where point after point must be compromised in order to fit into a logical whole.  No cartographer, after exhausting available time with the city streets, would then take this limited experience and ‘leap’ up into a mathematical conclusion of how the streets and buildings should be unified according to a demand for geometric precision.  What should we have learned two thousand years ago?  That the gulf between who I am and who I imagine myself to be is as wide as the gulf between a collage of observations and a reconciled system. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

1 If he remained completely honest about his vices, an otherwise completely vicious creature would at least not be a hypocrite.  In fact, a completely vicious creature is impossible, for he either pays tribute to virtue through his hypocrisy, as La Rochefoucauld said – or he maintains a fearless honesty and is at least incapable of hypocrisy.  Therefore, he is to the sharp eye neither dangerous to morality nor without educational benefit.  On the contrary, it is through him that we see virtue’s invincibility. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

124 I am as yet unknown ... invisible ... and it is only through the needle of my experience and the pigment of my words that I can at least make an illustration of myself. Yet this man says my illustrations are crude and in poor taste.  But what do I care of beauty and taste when, until now, I could not be seen at all. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

2 There are some of us who are falling and for whom questioning the bottom is an attempt to find a bottom. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

3 One’s own hypocrisy is certain when one plucks out the eye on self-interest.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

125 I have no spontaneity.  I am not pouring out from a center of nothingness.  On the contrary, I am trying to fill that very emptiness. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

4 The difference between truth and dogma is that truth does not need to resist an attack. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

126 We perform surgery on the living language, and it dies on the table.  We work and work feverishly to bring it back to life.  We give it up for dead and bury it without ceremony.  It rises again, untimely, as a crude monstrosity of hunger and revenge.  It is here at our home again, screaming out vulgarities and pounding fiercely upon our door.  What have we done?  What have we done? A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

5 Those who attack truth can only fail.  Those who protect their presumptions can only fail.  Only one of the two however can align the mind to its reality. Truth is too often a presumption that “gets away with it.”  Where we succeed, we take pride ... in ourselves.   Where we fail , truth wins our deepest respect.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

127 An aphorism is never my focus.  My focus is more like the steel blade that I press to the grindstone.  The sparks that fly off, spectacular and brief, get all of the attention. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

6 I claim that two plus two equals four and another one-ups me with his more optimistic answer of five. Only a pessimist would survive the argument.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

128 A caution: Once a writer leaves the immediate world and begins to throw ideas onto the page, he can rearrange key words at random and still feel like he has said something meaningful. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

7 When your whole world is built upon a lie, there is an important stage where truth arrives only as the great destroyer. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism