Judgement

I've been jittery around people lately, like a socially activated coffee high. The judgment hides in a semi-reflective pause, an involuntary look-over, even from those I trust my life with. Their looks imply confusion as to why I'm even alive. They're waiting for me to do something, to show them a reason for why I'm attached to the universe, and I'm too caught up in waiting for them to discard their waiting. Things tighten, and I'm looking for an escape route. Better luck next time.

That's all that our culture is, right? A coiled-up pause for the time to strike -- to judge, to burn, to destroy; loot the pure souls, wherever they might be found, and homogenize everything to a bland, socialistic mass of the uninteresting.

That's why school is downright Hell, right? Judgment incarnates in the ostracizing grins of the puberty stricken, the mini materialists, the jocks, preps, pricks, imbeciles. Well then.

The question is not to remain logical. The question is to slip through and, above all -- yes, above all, the question is to elude judgment..., of avoiding being forever judged without ever having a sentence pronounced. -- Camus, The Fall

The essential skill of a social animal lies in this "slip" -- in the art of slipping. To live you must slip -- slip and strike first! Amazing how snake-like the requirements for human beings are. To be in the inner ring, legs must be abandoned. Slide on your belly and label your humiliation victory.

Probably every non-genetic psychological disorder erupts from the eternal fear of society's transparent eyes. Transparent, inexorably, for society is an abstraction. Where is the limit? Where does it end? Who is included? Nobody; an individual has flesh. To fear society means to fear nothing, and the self that fears nothing will soon enough become what it fears.

And simple psychology still comes a-knockin'. Why the psyche slash from the judgement of another, even an anonymous self, even a criminal? Because we want approval. Why that? Because, well, we have nothing better to do. You get to Heaven, mind you, after you die. Now you have to pay tithes and wonder why.

And classy nihilism throws a shadow even at noon. Onward, Monsieur Camus!

Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime.... I'll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.