A Human Strategy, Matt Berry aphorism 97
97
Habits are invisible and effortless and therefore dangerous. As the decadent habit bores away at one’s hull, one neither feels nor hears anything ... and can only console oneself as the ship goes down with a resignation to one’s “Fate.”
Another danger: a single bad habit has wound itself so tightly into a thousand strands of good habits that one senses only the braided whole ... and concludes that only the tonsure can save.
Another difficulty lies in the intricate makeup of the universe and the flow of time: “cause and effect” itself becomes a riddle. One can not see clearly enough ... does not have an organ to see all of the contributions to an “action” ... yet how readily, almost eagerly, do we hold ourselves accountable ... how we reason backwards toward shame or pride. Never mind that we cannot see far enough down the paths of our own histories ... never mind that what little we do see is cut up by the woven shadows of other events ... somehow we have managed to conjure up “intent” ... with proof!