The Experience of Clarity

aphorism 209, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

aphorism 387, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

aphorism 247, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

42 Duty and Meaning: Where our duty has no personal meaning we wish for a little understanding from our superiors.  But they can spare none, for without our duty, their meaninglessness is exposed. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

43 The only irrefutable systems of philosophy are those we preserve with physical force. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

44 Most of our thoughts on world peace descend from institutions with a vested interest in preserving the invisibility of their dominance.  No one avoids conflict like an established conqueror.  Under this light, Christian peace is indeed the end of war ... as the final step of its conquest. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

41 Every principle for personal growth, once institutionalized, shifts from serving as a vehicle for self-actualization to serving the actualization of the vehicle itself.  We are no longer nurtured, but managed. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

45 To achieve peace for all, the disadvantaged must be given a false “advantage” that they can call their own (serving as a human weapon as a “patriot” ... or remaining with one’s own cultural inheritance as “one of the faithful”).  We hold up every label which secures the tractability of the individual, such as “good citizenship” or “virtuous.”  The contentment of the masses depends upon this trade of a disadvantage for an illusory status, as does the illusory contentment of the “powerful elite.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

46 Why I flee from all social movements: It is not their threat to tear all non-members apart as much as it is the morass I would have to wade through in search of an acceptable stand.  Authenticity betrays a need for cleanliness that perhaps outweighs the destiny of all mankind ... but I’ll stop here; I sully myself with the explanation. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

47 As reformers, we resent not only our opponents but most of all the honest critics of our own devices and motives.  Not one motive of ours can be tinkered with ... not one ray of light enter our own closets.  Our reformation of other people is not as much a will to improve mankind as it is a diversion away from our own failings and responsibilities. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

48 A man should not build an institution until all his creative powers have been exhausted on something worthwhile. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

52 I appear to protect her, and that is more than a duty I impose upon myself.  I do not know what would become of me if I did not have to protect my angel ... but how she fully justifies her independence!  And I, being a rational man, must now confront the brutality of my “protecting her.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

49 What is our weakness?  Not the falsehood of our inherited morality, nor its harm, but that we need it. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

50 The profit-loss man, lacking all taste, has at least purchased a little tact through the demands of the marketplace: he has had to influence people on a daily basis and therefore knows how to move people to his own advantage.  Those who have been sheltered by luxury and good taste have never felt themselves moved in this manner and thus confuse his salesmanship with taste; perhaps they even feel themselves indebted to him.  It may be said that a refined and inherited taste preserves and cultivates only what tact will harvest later.  That is to say, the tactful acquire the sensibilities of the privileged ... and soon thereafter, their graceful signatures.  Tact over taste — it seems to conform to the natural justice of the species ... as when the privileged have lost their grip on the fundamentals to their power and so lose it over a truffle. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

51 I am rude when I do not point my act toward the other person.  I can break any rule of etiquette but this and keep the other’s sympathy. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

53 Man is the reasonable ape which will swing from tree to tree to get the banana, but when satisfied, will sit and brood about how his logic should not have to swing about with such indignity ... should not have to leave one vine for another, for there is no real “connection” after all.  What he really should do, he decides, is find one infinitely long vine on an infinitely tall tree by which he might have the whole jungle at his disposal, or to hell with it, he won’t swing at all.  This lasts for a few hours or so, depending upon the metabolism of the ape, but if he is a professional logician, then his metabolism is quite low, and so the hours of non-foraging can be quite long, but not so extensive that they cannot be calculated with precision: he broods, without fail, between the hours of nine to five ... then leaps to the nearest vine, confused by his unreasonable craving for bananas, but which he quickly and decisively refutes again by eating a few. A Human Strategy ** T