A Human Strategy, Matt Berry aphorism 92

92
I do not despair for lack of meaning, but for lack of increase.  It is decreasing that forces the question of futility upon me.  Upon a sudden and incredible increase I do not have enough words for the meaning of life: its wonder is too great for me, yet I gratify myself in the attempt anyway.  I reason backwards and reconstruct a flattering chain of events, all of them “causes” of my success ... all previous events and “attributes,” good and bad, redeemed in this one unspeakable moment of victory.

And yet all has been reversed ... all a rationalization of the egotist.  Every thought has run ahead, like an excited boy marching in front of a victory parade ... every word inverted before a vanity mirror ... so that in disaster one looks at the world for the first time without this mirror ... and all is a cryptic, meaningless tangle of arguments.




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



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