The Experience of Clarity

72 From the horrible monster, Reality , we organize ourselves behind a standard, en masse, ... in brilliant tactical retreats.  Forever looking for a fixed, naturally fortified position from which to make a final stand.  A few of us exhaust ourselves in the attempt, see the futility, stray, then unconditionally surrender all that we have.  The irony is that only then do we find our sanctuary ... but within the walls of our former fear, Realism , and the new horror is not that we have become, nor even that we always have been, this solitary monster, but that now the others have found us out.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

71 It is not difficult to find a man who accepts himself as a pincushion, and if he is under our care, we protect him from himself and from the others who must find something to prick, if for no other reason than to prove that they can prick. This act — drawing our own sharp weapons and keeping the others at bay — is not duty.  On the contrary, it is one of the pleasures of the flesh, for we too must prove that we can prick. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

73 We were not born realists , nor did we make a choice.  The civilized climb from what-is to the peak of what-should-be has been so mob-driven and the height so fearsome that we can not even contemplate the solitary descent back down to the truth.  And it is no matter that this problem never shows itself to consciousness — for we are not without help.  Our friends elected us to the congress of complacency, then dispatched us for the public discovery that we were real.  It is possible that no one became a realist who was not first carried up to this Tarpeian Rock upon the shoulders of his fellows.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

74 The question sets the trajectory of the answer.  The crowd stands safely behind.  If the crowd has aimed the canon askew, I can only lose: if I answer, my answer will be set off in vain ... if I refuse to answer, I have “avoided the battle” ... if I stop to debate the positioning of the question itself, there will be no crowd pleasing thunder ... if I seize the question and turn it round, correctly aiming at the problem — the crowd — I will be torn to pieces.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

75 Is it really possible that we were selected by nature according to our arrogance?  That the human is the highest possible creature?  It is more likely that we were selected according to our humiliation.  The fact that ten humans united by a fear are stronger than the highest, most refined species possible has perhaps devalued our planet ... but we protect ourselves from such belittling discoveries by banding together and surrounding the bastard.   A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

76 The positive function of the masses upon the individual: silently to revere strength so much that once a man has acquired the right to this reverence they have at last the fear to tear it back out of him ... and this makes him even stronger. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

77 Object A falls with great velocity.  Object B falls slowly.  From the perspective of Object A , Object B rises ... reason why after we fall from a lofty religious experience, the idea of “mind” or “metaphysics” remains seductive. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

78 We laugh at ourselves and our foolishness, for until now we had thought that “meaning” was a need, an undernourished organ of human nature, and when we found it impossible to satisfy “our need,” we found a name for this absence of meaning, “nothingness.”  In reaction, we even thought on occasion that this vacuum was the goal.  At last we had a voice to sound out the depths of our souls ... and with great success, for we had become hollow. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

79 Sometimes I feel as though I am the last to get the joke — and it took me an inordinately long time just to crack a smile.  Now I look around me and find no one else chuckling.  But the humor is so obvious to me that I cannot presume to be the first among my acquaintances to have laughed out loud.  It can only be that everyone else has, once again, found something more serious than existence. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism