The Experience of Clarity

Of two who purchased a fraudulent map, it is the clearest thinker who is confused first. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Having the courage to prick one’s own complacency, the elements that would otherwise have constituted confusion now trip us down in cascading experiences of clarity. How effortless it becomes …. once the courage alone stands … the courage to let all of the rest fall. With this courage, observe how much misfortune is redeemed with providence. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

The Big Trade: You thought you had discovered a piece of cultural reality.  But not so, reality is what you hit when your relation then pushed your message aside.  You quickly hit reality again when you called the other’s attention to the slight.  It is a strong moment to know that reality has got your back precisely when … because your relations do not. You make the big trade, between the necessity of division within the provincial and the consequential unity of cosmic thinking. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

The higher the intelligence in one’s realism, the less of that reality one has: The most intelligent realism has promoted itself to little more than an involuntary spider which by rational necessity extends its design beyond human reach … the math is invincible … to which, this literal pebble in a child’s hand is merely real, for our moment in the figurative. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Don’t overestimate the value of clarity.  To be beaten one’s whole life through is not half the misery of realizing it.  But then, from a different angle, do not overestimate the pursuit of happiness. In the inevitable failure of such arrogance, clarity emerges again, in the distinction, as supreme. Never in the beginning, but always in the end, our education was worth any cost and one is never merely happy to realize this. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

When life is perfect, life was always perfect: Reality is not an answer on the other side of a question. Even if one asks  – “what is real?” – reality does not belong to the question. Real “answers” survive the intense scrutiny of failed questions. The quickest path to reality is the answer to the question, “What frustrates me?” The “answer” in this case is the cognitive result of a human discipline, a contact, not a logical necessity. When we see that frustration is our educator and self-education is our goal, then life is perfect. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

There is sometimes an advantage … even to insecurity -- and there can be an ironic vulnerability to security: One who must prove his strength constantly represses a suspicion of inadequacy, and thus works up a belief that he has strength … and that he can prove it . With repetitive exercise proportional to the suspicion of inadequacy and the constant need to suppress that suspicion through attempts at proof , he just might develop it in the end. One who already has strength and knows it does not need to prove it and so needs not exercise it, and so he just might no longer have it in the end. The lesson is to … make an effort … do your best … even when feeling inadequate.   Work on your world, again and again. The repetition will take care of you: your efforts cannot come to nothing, for you will be stronger.

“Voluntary” is behavior that the memory holds dear. Bad memories are of the “involuntary,” someone else’s fault. Bad memories project our innocence; good memories, our merit.

I don’t think that any person sufficiently experienced with fearless honesty is that enamored with truth.   What you don’t know … is creeping up on you.   And what you know has already got you.  It needs to be enough to experience the other definition of “petrified” ... to be solid … to be stone. Ironic, that this realism emerges as a hope.

Alone.   I worked very hard to find positive feelings within my inherited culture. I found accuracy instead.   Sometimes painful, always an investment. And now the positive I assign to clarity makes contact with the positive others feel in cultural adhesion and we shock each other.

What if the last failed truth-experiment is only the final door to immediate reality? … and to continue to think of this as a “failure” is to fail to open that door?

In a theory of moral relativity, the speed of our education transmutes the chemistry of our most critical virtue. Behavioral science proceeds at such an accelerated pace that fearless honesty is no longer the substance, but the corrosive to inherited morals.