The Experience of Clarity

197 What we claim to be our motivation is often incompatible with our motivation as we observe it.  For example, sweetness and high ideals in the journalist do not sell newspapers.  He might however claim them on the page ... and certainly most readers will attest to their interest in, and motivation by, “decency and high ideals.”  However, under observation, decency and ideals are only the shiny plumbing through which something fluid might pass ... something unintentionally vague – unintentional, for if it should harden into a shape that we might identify, we would then have to confess to it as intentional and this would interfere with the easy flow of this substance which must be discharged: our aggression .   Just as a plumbing system serves the greater hygiene of a city, so might our high ideals serve the greater hygiene of consciousness.  We appear to be especially interested in those high ideals which permit us to look down upon dominating ...

369 I am the topographical map of my environment ... a slowly changing map.  What repeats, cuts.  What is intense, cuts.  Moreover, I carry the maps of the past into the present.  In fact, I am not looking at maps of two dimensions, but a blending of many maps and many more dimensions than I can number: the five senses, the blood, the heart, the stomach ... to name a few.  My “consciousness,” therefore, is a fusion of past and present influences and impressions ... always a distortion of the current environment. If I am ever to gain any sort of control over my own development, I must learn how to mold the topography on my own terms ... and the only way I can do this is to manipulate my surface world.  This is no easy task, considering that I can never see this world perfectly. Because my impressions are multi-layered and ever changing, my first step is to stabilize the surface world: eat well, reduce stimuli, simplify my environment, and get t...

198 When courage is considered the foundation to one’s integrity, one can even bait oneself with the “cowardice” of a cautious regard for probable outcomes, or with the “timidity” of doubt.  That is, one can even bait oneself with the “cowardice” of clear thinking . A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

370 How I let go: I pick up something else ... or even better, I have something thrown to me at a key point of the day. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

199 We have a poor eye for power, even in its crudest forms.  In the place of actual power we project our behavioral reaction.  We have no eye for the “mechanisms” or “impulses” but only for the consequent display ... for that which has been triggered and not for that which triggers.  Consequently, we cannot distinguish between power and beauty – that is to say, between mechanics and seduction.  And what could be more seductive and beautiful than the superhero of virtue who represents our promotion from a subordinate status ... the overthrow of the dominant?  Here, the seduction of beauty triumphs over actual power and we dominate vicariously – that is to say, we remain subordinate, subtly. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism

Ambition is our love for this reality. A Human Strategy  

200 Integrity often precludes itself with the question: Integrity or Conformity?   Now one is even tractable to the accusation of one’s “lack of integrity.”  A parallel example might be cowardice-baiting, where person A calls person B a coward unless B reads from precisely that script which A suggests is the one and only role for the performance of courage.  Ironically, B now performs the “courageous” action out of the fear of moral failing or public censure.  Likewise, the man of integrity often whips himself into a public display that is more like conformity than its opposite.  Even as he takes a stand against the “majority view,” the framework behind his boldest and most sincere activism is, “If I do not perform action X, then I cannot imagine my rank among those heroic models who have real integrity.” A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism