Speaker 1: Most people go through life feeling that something is misaligned
Speaker 1: inside them. They sense a distance between who they are
Speaker 1: and who they should be, but they rarely manage to
Speaker 1: explain this sensation. To avoid the discomfort, they learn to
Speaker 1: wear social masks, acceptable behaviors and rehearsed emotions, and little
Speaker 1: by little they become strangers to themselves. Instead of looking
Speaker 1: at what they truly feel, they prefer to adjust to
Speaker 1: what the world expects of them, even if it costs
Speaker 1: them authenticity and presence. Thus they create a life that
Speaker 1: works on the outside but remains empty on the inside.
Speaker 1: Over time, they develop two versions of themselves, the one
Speaker 1: they show the world and the one they hide even
Speaker 1: from themselves. The first is constructed with fragments of identity
Speaker 1: considered except the second gathers everything that doesn't fit the
Speaker 1: social ideal, and when this division grows too large, a
Speaker 1: profound feeling of alienation emerges, a silent sensation of living
Speaker 1: as a stranger within one's own existence, present in body
Speaker 1: but absent in experience. In nineteen forty two, a French
Speaker 1: Algerian writer Albert Camieue described exactly this feeling, and society
Speaker 1: decided to execute the character because of it. His name
Speaker 1: was Mursau, and the most frightening part is that he
Speaker 1: lives inside each one of us. Mursau is a strange character, uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: hard to like. He doesn't display the emotions we expect
Speaker 1: from him, doesn't follow the emotional scripts that society imposes,
Speaker 1: and doesn't seem to care about anything we were taught
Speaker 1: to value. When his mother dies, he doesn't cry. At
Speaker 1: the wake, he accepts coffee and smokes a cigarette. The
Speaker 1: next day, he goes to the beach, watches a comedy film,
Speaker 1: and starts an affair with Marie. Society observes this and
Speaker 1: thinks there's something deeply wrong with this man. But is
Speaker 1: the error really in him, or is the true strangeness
Speaker 1: in us who need to constantly pretend to be accepted.
Speaker 1: Muso disturbs us because he exposes something we prefer not
Speaker 1: to see, the possibility that everything we call normal might
Speaker 1: just be collective theater, a carefully rehearsed performance to avoid
Speaker 1: confronting the emptiness of existence. When we look at Mersa,
Speaker 1: we feel repulsion and fascination at the same time, because
Speaker 1: deep down we recognize in him something that dwells within us.
Speaker 1: A silent part that observes everything from Afar, that doesn't
Speaker 1: feel what it should feel, that's tired of pretending. He's
Speaker 1: the mirror we don't want to face. And perhaps that's
Speaker 1: exactly why we judge him so harshly, why we condemn
Speaker 1: him with such conviction, why we need to turn him
Speaker 1: into a monster. Because if he's just human, if he's
Speaker 1: just someone who refused to lie, then what does that
Speaker 1: say about all of us who lie daily? What does
Speaker 1: it reveal about the fragility of our moral certainties? What
Speaker 1: does it expose about the artificiality of our emotional performances.
Speaker 1: Muso doesn't need to do anything extraordinary to disturb us.
Speaker 1: His simple existence, his refusal to participate in the social game,
Speaker 1: his brutal honesty are already enough to destabilize the entire
Speaker 1: edifice of collective lies upon which we've built our shared reality.
Speaker 1: What makes this character so disturbing isn't exactly what he does,
Speaker 1: but what he refuses to do. Lie. He doesn't fake
Speaker 1: sadness he doesn't feel, doesn't perform grief to please others,
Speaker 1: doesn't declare an eternal love that doesn't exist within him,
Speaker 1: doesn't invent remorse to appear human, and this for society
Speaker 1: is unbearable because we live in a world that values
Speaker 1: the appearance of emotion more than honesty about its absence.
Speaker 1: We prefer someone who fakes can passion to someone who
Speaker 1: admits indifference. We demand emotional performances as proof of humanity,
Speaker 1: and when someone refuses to act, we declare that person sick, strange, dangerous,
Speaker 1: mersal doesn't hate anyone, doesn't wish to do harm. He
Speaker 1: simply can't or doesn't want to participate in the game
Speaker 1: of masks. And perhaps that's what scares us most about him,
Speaker 1: the possibility that these masks are all that separate us
Speaker 1: from emptiness, that without them, only the unbearable silence of
Speaker 1: an existence without a prior script remains. Looking at Mrso
Speaker 1: is like looking at our own fragility disguised as normalcy.
Speaker 1: It's as if he were saying without words that everything
Speaker 1: we consider essential, demonstrable empathy, performative mourning, declared love, visible
Speaker 1: ambition might just be a social construction, a tacit agreement
Speaker 1: that will all pretend together to maintain the illusion that
Speaker 1: there's a sh shared meaning, that there's a common humanity,
Speaker 1: that there's something uniting us beyond the fear of emptiness,
Speaker 1: and when someone breaks that agreement, when someone stops pretending,
Speaker 1: the entire structure begins to crack, Because if one person
Speaker 1: can live without lying, then everyone could, And if everyone
Speaker 1: stopped lying, what would remain, perhaps only the embarrassing silence
Speaker 1: of people who no longer know how to relate without masks,
Speaker 1: who no longer know who they are without the roles
Speaker 1: they play, who discover too late that they spent their
Speaker 1: entire lives being characters and never people. Life in society
Speaker 1: requires that we all be actors. From an early age,
Speaker 1: we learn that there are correct ways to react to
Speaker 1: each situation, how to demonstrate joy at parties, how to
Speaker 1: express sadness at funerals, how to perform love in relationships,
Speaker 1: how to fake interest in empty conversations. We build an
Speaker 1: entire repertoire of appropriate gestures, acceptable voice tones, expected facial expressions,
Speaker 1: and the more skilled we become at this performance, the
Speaker 1: more we're recognized as well adjusted, empathetic, functional people. The
Speaker 1: problem is that this constant acting creates an increasingly larger
Speaker 1: distance between what we feel and what we show, between
Speaker 1: who we are and who we pretend to be. Over time,
Speaker 1: we lose the ability to distinguish authenticity from performance. We
Speaker 1: start believing in our own masks, and when we encounter
Speaker 1: someone like Mrsault who simply refuses to enter the stage,
Speaker 1: we feel as if the very structure of social reality
Speaker 1: is being threatened, because if he can exist without pretending,
Speaker 1: then perhaps all our performances are unnecessary. Perhaps the compassion
Speaker 1: we demonstrate is false. Perhaps the love we declare is convention.
Speaker 1: Perhaps we're all just repeating memorized lines in a play
Speaker 1: that nobody really believes, but that everyone agreed to perform
Speaker 1: to avoid the collapse of collective meaning. And what's most
Speaker 1: disturbing is realizing how perfectly this works. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: nobody questions, nobody stops to ask if they really feel
Speaker 1: what they're demonstrating. Nobody admits they're just following an invisible script,
Speaker 1: repeating empty gestures, performing emotions that don't truly inhabit them.
Speaker 1: And so we continue from generation to generation teaching our
Speaker 1: children the same art of dissimulation, passing along the manual
Speaker 1: of how to be accepted instead of the manual of
Speaker 1: how to be true, Until one day, someone like Mrso
Speaker 1: appears and simply says no, and the entire theater panics,
Speaker 1: because if one person can live without acting, then the
Speaker 1: play loses meaning. And if the play loses meaning, then
Speaker 1: what do we do with all these false emotions we've kept?
Speaker 1: What do we do with all these moral certainties built
Speaker 1: upon empty performances? What do we do with the entire
Speaker 1: life we've dedicated to being approved in instead of being real.
Speaker 1: Mrsau isn't just a literary character from nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: He's the portrait of a sensation that inhabits millions of
Speaker 1: people today. How many times have you felt physically present
Speaker 1: but completely emotionally absent. How many conversations have you had
Speaker 1: where each word seemed empty, mechanical, without any real connection.
Speaker 1: How many times have you looked at your own life
Speaker 1: and felt as if you were watching everything from afar,
Speaker 1: like a spectator of your own existence. This feeling of estrangement,
Speaker 1: of being a stranger within your own life isn't exclusive
Speaker 1: to Mersol. It pulses in every person who wakes up
Speaker 1: in the morning without feeling purpose, who goes to work
Speaker 1: repeating meaningless tasks, who interacts with people without creating true bonds,
Speaker 1: who consumes entertainment to fill the void, who scrolls the
Speaker 1: feed infinitely looking for something that makes sense. Who sleeps
Speaker 1: at night with the feeling of having lived another day
Speaker 1: that didn't matter. Mursou's alienation is the alienation of the
Speaker 1: modern world, a life lived on autopilot, where everything functions
Speaker 1: but nothing really exists physical presence, emotional absence, constant movement,
Speaker 1: internal paralysis, infinite stimuli, existential boredom. And what's most frightening
Speaker 1: is realizing that this isn't the exception, it's the rule.
Speaker 1: We live in an error where everyone is connected, but
Speaker 1: nobody truly connects, where everyone is busy but nobody is
Speaker 1: really doing something that matters, Where everyone is alive but
Speaker 1: few are actually living. Mrso simply admitted this. He looked
Speaker 1: at his own indifference and didn't try to hide it,
Speaker 1: didn't try to justify it, didn't try to transform it
Speaker 1: into something acceptable. He simply existed with it. And we,
Speaker 1: who spend our entire lives hiding our own alienation, who
Speaker 1: pretend to be present when we're absent, who perform connection
Speaker 1: when we're isolated, whose smile when we're empty, we condemn
Speaker 1: him for admitting what we all feel, but nobody has
Speaker 1: the courage to say, because it's easier to point at
Speaker 1: Mersul and call him a monster than to look in
Speaker 1: the mirror and recognize that perhaps we're all strangers, living
Speaker 1: borrowed lives, inhabiting bodies that function but don't feel existing,
Speaker 1: without ever really being present. And perhaps that's exactly what
Speaker 1: Camu wanted to show. That the true monstrosity isn't in
Speaker 1: those who admit emptiness, but in those who spend their
Speaker 1: entire lives pretending it doesn't exist. Mrsul's indifference isn't psychopathic coldness.
Speaker 1: It's a symptom, it's a diagnosis. It's the natural response
Speaker 1: of someone living in a world where nothing seems to
Speaker 1: have true importance. When you grow up in a society
Speaker 1: that values appearances more than essences, productivity more than presence,
Speaker 1: consumption more than connection. When you realize that everything you
Speaker 1: were taught to pursue success, cognition, status, accumulation, brings no
Speaker 1: real satisfaction. When you look around and see people living
Speaker 1: empty lives. They didn't choose themselves, They just inherited and repeat.
Speaker 1: When you understand that the stories they tell us about love, happiness,
Speaker 1: fulfillment are just convenient narratives, to keep the system functioning.
Speaker 1: What happens you start to feel less, not because you're
Speaker 1: incapable of emotion, but because feeling deeply in a superficial
Speaker 1: world is too painful. Indifference becomes armor, emotional distance becomes
Speaker 1: a survival strategy. And then you wake up one day
Speaker 1: realizing your living like mrsol present in body, absent in experience,
Speaker 1: functioning without really being alive, and society looks at you
Speaker 1: and says, the problem is in you, that you need
Speaker 1: to adjust, get treatment, fit in. But perhaps the problem
Speaker 1: isn't in those who feel little. Perhaps it's in a
Speaker 1: world that offers so little to feel. Think about your
Speaker 1: own experiences. How many times have you felt that emotional numbness,
Speaker 1: that inability to be moved by things that theoretically should
Speaker 1: move you. How many times have you faked enthusiasm you
Speaker 1: didn't feel, love that didn't exist, sadness that wasn't present,
Speaker 1: And why did you do it? Because you learned that
Speaker 1: demonstrating indifference is socially unacceptable, That admitting nothing touches you
Speaker 1: is confessing a moral failure, that revealing the emptiness inside
Speaker 1: you is exposing yourself to judgment and rejection. So you
Speaker 1: learn to manufacture emotions. You learn to smile at the
Speaker 1: right moment, to cry when expected, to be indignant when necessary,
Speaker 1: and over time, this manufacturing becomes so automatic that you
Speaker 1: forget your pretending. You forget there's a difference between truly
Speaker 1: feeling and demonstrating what's expected. Until one day you encounter Mersol,
Speaker 1: someone who never learned to manufacture, someone who simply exists
Speaker 1: with their indifference exposed, and you feel a mixture of
Speaker 1: horror and envy. Horror because he exposes the lie you live.
Speaker 1: Envy because he has the courage to be what you hide.
Speaker 1: Camu constructed The Stranger as a philosophical illustration of the absurd,
Speaker 1: and what is the absurd. It's the brutal collision between
Speaker 1: two irreconcilable truths. On one side, the human need to
Speaker 1: find meaning, purpose, explanation for everything. On the other, the
Speaker 1: indifferent silence of the universe, which offers no answers, no
Speaker 1: predefined purpose, no guarantee that anything matters. We're born seeking
Speaker 1: meaning in a world that wasn't built to provide it.
Speaker 1: We want clear answers in an existence that only offers ambiguity.
Speaker 1: We desire control over a fundamentally uncontrollable reality, and Mersol
Speaker 1: perfectly embodies this experience. He lives without seeking justifications, without
Speaker 1: creating comforting narratives, without pretending there's a hidden meaning waiting
Speaker 1: to be discovered. He accepts the world as it is, contingent, arbitrary, indifferent,
Speaker 1: and this terrifies society because if Mersor is right, if
Speaker 1: there really is no objective meaning in life, then all
Speaker 1: our certainties, all our values, all our moral hierarchies are
Speaker 1: just human inventions, fragile constructs we created to avoid confronting emptiness.
Speaker 1: The absurd isn't nihilism. It's not saying nothing matters. It's
Speaker 1: recognizing that nothing matters objectively, and that this perception places
Speaker 1: us before a terrifying freedom, the freedom to create our
Speaker 1: own meaning, without a script, without guarantees, without promised salvation.
Speaker 1: Think about how we spend our lives looking for signs,
Speaker 1: for reasons, for explanations. When something bad happens, we need
Speaker 1: to believe there's a why. When something good happens, we
Speaker 1: want to believe we deserve it. When we look to
Speaker 1: the future, we need plans, goals, clear destinations. And when
Speaker 1: none of this makes sense, when life reveals its random nature,
Speaker 1: its lack of logic, its absolute indifference to our desires
Speaker 1: and efforts. We panic because we were raised to believe
Speaker 1: there's an order, a plan, cosmic justice, and discovering there's
Speaker 1: none of that, that we're floating in a universe that
Speaker 1: doesn't care about us, that owes us nothing, that doesn't
Speaker 1: give a damn about our suffering or our joy. This
Speaker 1: is almost unbearable. Mrso doesn't panic. He simply accepts. And
Speaker 1: it's this acceptance, this peace with the absurd, that transforms
Speaker 1: him into a threat, because if he can live without
Speaker 1: the illusion of meaning, then perhaps all our illusions are unnecessary.
Speaker 1: And if our illusions are unnecessary, then we spent our
Speaker 1: entire lives deceiving ourselves, building castles of meaning on sand,
Speaker 1: inventing purposes that only exist because we collectively agreed to
Speaker 1: pretend they exist. Since we're born, we're presented with invisible
Speaker 1: scripts about how to live. They tell us when to cry,
Speaker 1: when to laugh, when to love, when to hate, when
Speaker 1: to fight, when to give up. There's a script for everything.
Speaker 1: How to behave at a funeral, how to react to
Speaker 1: a promotion, how to demonstrate affection, how to express ambition,
Speaker 1: how to perform morality, and most of us follow these
Speaker 1: scripts without questioning, because following is easier than creating, because
Speaker 1: belonging is more comfortable than being alone, because faking normalcy
Speaker 1: is less scary than assuming authenticity. But Merceaux simply can't
Speaker 1: follow the script. When his mother dies, he doesn't fake sadness.
Speaker 1: He doesn't feel. When Marie asks if he loves her,
Speaker 1: he answers honestly that love means nothing to him. When
Speaker 1: his boss offers a promotion in Paris, he declares indifference,
Speaker 1: not because he's lazy, but because professional advancement has no
Speaker 1: intrinsic value to him. When the priest tries to convert
Speaker 1: him on death row, he rejects religious consolation. And each
Speaker 1: of these refusals is an affront to social order because
Speaker 1: it exposes that the scripts we all follow aren't universal truths.
Speaker 1: They're just arbitrary conventions we accept to avoid the chaos
Speaker 1: of total freedom. Musou shows us it's possible to exist
Speaker 1: outside the script, and this is simultaneously liberating and terrifying.
Speaker 1: Think about how many of these scripts you follow daily
Speaker 1: without even noticing. You smile when you don't want to smile.
Speaker 1: You ask how are you without really wanting to know?
Speaker 1: You say I love you because it's expected, not because
Speaker 1: you feel something specific in that moment. You go to
Speaker 1: social events you don't want to attend. You maintain relationships
Speaker 1: that don't nourish you. You pursue goals that were never yours,
Speaker 1: they were just sold to you as essential. You perform
Speaker 1: interest in conversations that bore you. You pretend to understand
Speaker 1: things you don't understand. You agree with opinions that aren't yours.
Speaker 1: And you do all this automatically without questioning, because you
Speaker 1: were trained from a young age to follow the script,
Speaker 1: not to cause discomfort, to fit perfectly in the social machinery.
Speaker 1: But what happens when you stop and ask yourself? Why
Speaker 1: why do I need to follow this script? Who wrote
Speaker 1: these rules? What happens if I simply say no? And
Speaker 1: that's where Musaul becomes dangerous Because he asked these questions,
Speaker 1: even if silently, and decided he wasn't going to participate.
Speaker 1: He decided he was going to exist as he was,
Speaker 1: not as he should be. And this decision, as simple
Speaker 1: as it seems, is revolutionary because if everyone had this courage,
Speaker 1: if everyone stopped following others' scripts and started living according
Speaker 1: to what they really feel, the world as we know
Speaker 1: it would cease to exist. Society's reaction to Mursaul reveals
Speaker 1: much more about it than about him. When someone behaves
Speaker 1: outside expected emotional standards, when someone refuses conventional performances, when
Speaker 1: someone doesn't reproduce shared moral codes, society doesn't try to
Speaker 1: understand it condemns because Mersor's existence is a threat. If
Speaker 1: he can live without pretending, then perhaps we're all pretending.
Speaker 1: If he can exist without following emotional rules, then perhaps
Speaker 1: these rules are arbitrary. If he can look at life
Speaker 1: and declare it without inherent meaning, then perhaps all our
Speaker 1: certainties are shared illusions, and society doesn't tolerate those who
Speaker 1: expose its illusions, so it transforms him into a monster,
Speaker 1: calls him cold, insensitive, dangerous, says that someone incapable of
Speaker 1: crying for his mother is capable of any atrocity, and
Speaker 1: thus creates a narrative that places him outside humanity, allowing
Speaker 1: everyone else to feel comfortably inside. Because it's easier to
Speaker 1: point at Mursau and say he's different, he's the problem.
Speaker 1: To recognize that perhaps we're also living disconnected also pretending,
Speaker 1: also performing emotions we don't truly feel. The rejection of
Speaker 1: Murceaux is at bottom, a desperate defense against the possibility
Speaker 1: that he's right and that we're all wrong. Observe how
Speaker 1: this works in your own life. When you encounter someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't follow social rules, someone who's excessively honest, someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't fake interest when bored, someone who doesn't perform empathy,
Speaker 1: they don't feel what's your first reaction? You feel discomfort.
Speaker 1: You judge them. You think there's something wrong with that person,
Speaker 1: because they're breaking the implicit social agreement that we'll all
Speaker 1: pretend together, that we'll all keep up appearances, that will
Speaker 1: all perform normalcy, so nobody has to confront the uncomfortable
Speaker 1: truth that perhaps none of this is real. And when
Speaker 1: someone refuses to participate in this game, when someone insists
Speaker 1: on being authentic, even if it's socially unacceptable, you feel
Speaker 1: as a personal threat, because if that person can exist
Speaker 1: without masks, then why can't you. If that person can
Speaker 1: tell the truth without being destroyed, then why do you
Speaker 1: keep lying? And these questions are too dangerous to ask,
Speaker 1: so instead of asking them, you simply condemn the person
Speaker 1: who provoked them. You put them in the box of
Speaker 1: the strange, the different, the problematic, and thus protect yourself
Speaker 1: from the possibility of having to look at your own
Speaker 1: life and recognize that perhaps you're also a stranger, just
Speaker 1: one who learn to hide better. Mersaul's trial is a farce,
Speaker 1: not because he's innocent of the crime, but because the
Speaker 1: court isn't really interested in what happened on the beach.
Speaker 1: What's being judged isn't the act of killing the Arab,
Speaker 1: but Mersoul's inability to demonstrate acceptable remorse, to perform guilt convincingly,
Speaker 1: to pretend he understands the moral gravity of what he did.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor doesn't accuse him of homicide. He accuses him
Speaker 1: of not having cried at his mother's funeral, of having
Speaker 1: gone to the movies the next day, of not believing
Speaker 1: in God, of living without clear purpose, of existing outside
Speaker 1: society's emotional codes. And the jury formed by people who
Speaker 1: follow these same codes, who believe in the same shared illusions,
Speaker 1: who need to believe life has meaning and morality is absolute,
Speaker 1: condemns Mursau not for what he did, but for what
Speaker 1: he is, someone who refuses to lie. If Musau had cried,
Speaker 1: if he'd invented a narrative of repentance. If he'd performed
Speaker 1: the expected guilt, perhaps he would have been acquitted. But
Speaker 1: he can't or doesn't want to pretend, and this brutal
Speaker 1: honesty is what condemns him. The court punishes authenticity, rewards
Speaker 1: socially acceptable lies, and thus reveals an uncomfortable truth. Society
Speaker 1: prefers comforting falsehood to disturbing truth, prefers those who fake
Speaker 1: repentance to those who admit in difference, prefers the illusion
Speaker 1: of meaning to the recognition of the absurd. Think about
Speaker 1: how our justice systems work, not just legal ones, but
Speaker 1: social ones. When someone makes a mistake, what does society
Speaker 1: demand not just that the persons stop making the mistake,
Speaker 1: but that they perform repentance, that they cry in public,
Speaker 1: that they make emotional declarations, that they demonstrate visually performatively,
Speaker 1: that they understand the gravity of what they did. And
Speaker 1: if the person doesn't do this, if they simply acknowledge
Speaker 1: the error and move on without the expected emotional theater,
Speaker 1: they're judged more harshly than someone who actually feels less
Speaker 1: but performs better. We value demonstration more than substance. We
Speaker 1: want the spectacle of redemption, not redemption itself, and this
Speaker 1: reveals something profound about how we construct our values. They're
Speaker 1: not based on truth but on convention, not on essence
Speaker 1: but on appearance, not on being but on seeming. Musol
Speaker 1: refuses this game. He doesn't say he doesn't regret. He
Speaker 1: simply can't manufacture a regret. He doesn't feel. And for this,
Speaker 1: in the court's eyes, he's worse than a common murderer.
Speaker 1: He's someone who challenges the very basis of social morality.
Speaker 1: He's someone who exposes that our moral certainties depend on
Speaker 1: collective performances, on tacit agreements, on mutually accepted lies. And
Speaker 1: when these lies are exposed, when someone refuses to participate
Speaker 1: in moral theater, society panics, because if morality depends on pretense,
Speaker 1: then perhaps it's not as solid as we thought. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it's just another fragile construction we keep alive through collective repetition,
Speaker 1: through shared pretense, through refusing to admit that deep down,
Speaker 1: nobody really knows what's right or wrong, only what's expected.
Speaker 1: In a world built on masks, brutal sincerity is revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Musou doesn't fake compassion. He doesn't feel doesn't invent narratives
Speaker 1: to seem more human, doesn't adjust his responses to please
Speaker 1: others expectations, and this makes him deeply dangerous, because his
Speaker 1: existence questions the entire foundation of social order. If we
Speaker 1: all had Mersau's courage to say only what we really feel,
Speaker 1: to live only according to what genuinely matters to us,
Speaker 1: without pretending, without performing, without adjusting, society as we know
Speaker 1: it would collapse because so many of our interactions are
Speaker 1: built on courteous lies, So many of our relationships are
Speaker 1: sustained by mutual pretenses, so many of our institutions depend
Speaker 1: on all of us agreeing to believe in the same illusions.
Speaker 1: Mrso exposes that we're all participating in collective theater, and
Speaker 1: the play only continues because nobody has the courage to
Speaker 1: say out loud that the Emperor is naked. But there's
Speaker 1: something profoundly human about this need for shared illusions. Perhaps
Speaker 1: we need them. Perhaps without them, without the lies we
Speaker 1: tell each other and ourselves, without the comforting narratives about love, justice, purpose,
Speaker 1: life becomes unbearable. Perhaps Mersau is right in his honesty,
Speaker 1: but perhaps this honesty is also a form of cruelty,
Speaker 1: not against others, but against the very possibility of living
Speaker 1: in community. And perhaps that's exactly what Camu wants to
Speaker 1: show us. That there's no easy answer, that both lies
Speaker 1: and truth carry their own violences, and that each of
Speaker 1: us needs to decide which violence we're willing to carry.
Speaker 1: Because there's violence in lying. There's violence in spending your
Speaker 1: entire life pretending, in never showing who you really are,
Speaker 1: in dying without anyone having truly known you. But there's
Speaker 1: also violence in being brutally honest, in refusing every form
Speaker 1: of social kindness, in constantly exposing the fragility of collective
Speaker 1: constructions that keep people functioning. And perhaps the question isn't
Speaker 1: choosing between total honesty and total lies, but finding some
Speaker 1: middle ground where you can be true to yourself without
Speaker 1: completely destroying others. But Mersul doesn't find this middle ground.
Speaker 1: He lives at the extreme of honesty and pays the
Speaker 1: price for it, And by paying this price, he forces
Speaker 1: us to ask is it worth it? Is it worth
Speaker 1: being authentic if it means being eternally alone? Is it
Speaker 1: worth refusing masks if it means never belonging? Is it
Speaker 1: worth living in truth if it means always being in
Speaker 1: conflict with the world. There are no easy answers, but
Speaker 1: the simple fact of asking these questions is already revolutionary
Speaker 1: because most people never ask them. Most simply accept the masks,
Speaker 1: accept the lies, accept the theater, and keep living without questioning.
Speaker 1: And perhaps they're right. Perhaps life is easier that way.
Speaker 1: But does easier mean better? Does comfort mean truth? Is
Speaker 1: belonging to a false world better than being alone in
Speaker 1: your authoricicity. At the end of the book, Mersault has
Speaker 1: a revelation. Waiting for execution. He looks at his life
Speaker 1: and realizes he was happy not because he achieved something grand,
Speaker 1: not because he found transcendent purpose, but because he lived
Speaker 1: according to what he was, without pretending, without adjusting, without
Speaker 1: betraying himself. And in this perception something is born that
Speaker 1: few managed to reach. True freedom, the freedom that comes
Speaker 1: from accepting the absurd, from recognizing that life has no
Speaker 1: predefined meaning, and that precisely because of this, each moment
Speaker 1: can have the meaning we choose to give it. Mrso
Speaker 1: understands that his entire life was preparation for this consciousness.
Speaker 1: He lived authentically without realizing its value, and now, on
Speaker 1: the eve of death, he finally comprehends The absence of
Speaker 1: meaning isn't prison, its liberation, because if nothing matters objectively,
Speaker 1: then every thing can matter subjectively. If there's no script
Speaker 1: to follow, then we're free to write our own. If
Speaker 1: there's no divine purpose, then we can create our own purpose.
Speaker 1: And this freedom is simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. It places
Speaker 1: us before total responsibility. We can no longer blame God, fate, society, circumstances.
Speaker 1: We're radically free, radically responsible, radically alone. And it's precisely
Speaker 1: this solitude that allows us, for the first time, to
Speaker 1: truly exist, not as copies of an external ideal, but
Speaker 1: as authors of our own existence. But think about the
Speaker 1: weight of this. Think about waking up one day and
Speaker 1: realizing you're completely responsible for every choice you made and
Speaker 1: will make, that there's nobody to blame when things go wrong,
Speaker 1: that there's no fate guiding you, that there's no cosmic
Speaker 1: purpose waiting for you, that you're completely alone before an
Speaker 1: indifferent universe, and that the only thing that gives meaning
Speaker 1: to your life is the meaning you create yourself. This
Speaker 1: is terrifying, it's paralyzing. It's the vertigo of total freedom,
Speaker 1: and most people flee from this, they prefer to believe
Speaker 1: in fate, in divine purpose, in greater plans, in anything
Speaker 1: that removes from them the unbearable weight of total responsibility.
Speaker 1: But Mursau doesn't flee. He accepts, and in this acceptance
Speaker 1: he finds a piece that religious people, people who follow scripts,
Speaker 1: people who live according to external purposes, can never find.
Speaker 1: Because Murso's peace doesn't depend on anything external, doesn't depend
Speaker 1: on divine approval, social recognition, material achievements. It comes from within,
Speaker 1: from this profound understanding that he's free, that he always
Speaker 1: was free, that freedom was there all along, but he
Speaker 1: was too busy looking for external meaning to notice it.
Speaker 1: And perhaps that's what Camu wants to tell us. That
Speaker 1: the search for me is the prison itself, That while
Speaker 1: you look for purpose outside yourself, you'll never be free.
Speaker 1: That only when you accept there's no objective purpose. Only
Speaker 1: then can you create your own purpose. Only when you
Speaker 1: stop looking for answers can you begin to live the questions.
Speaker 1: Only when you accept the absurd can you begin to
Speaker 1: truly exist. Camus's warning couldn't be clearer. Living disconnected from yourself,
Speaker 1: performing emotions you don't feel, following scripts you didn't choose
Speaker 1: is a form of death in life. It's existing without
Speaker 1: being alive. It's breathing without feeling, it's occupying space without
Speaker 1: inhabiting the world. And the tragedy isn't in Mrsaux, who
Speaker 1: at least had the courage to live authentically until the end.
Speaker 1: The tragedy is in all those who spend their entire
Speaker 1: lives pretending, adjusting, betraying themselves little by little, until one
Speaker 1: day they wake up and realize they no longer know
Speaker 1: who they are, that they've completely lot contact with anything
Speaker 1: they once called essence. How many people live like this?
Speaker 1: How many wake up every day and put on a
Speaker 1: mask before even brushing their teeth. How many go to
Speaker 1: work playing a role, return home playing another, meet friends
Speaker 1: playing a third, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: alone with themselves, realize nothing real is left. Camu tells
Speaker 1: us this is the true horror, not physical death, but
Speaker 1: emotional death disguised as normalcy. Not the end of life,
Speaker 1: but an entire life lived without presence. And what's most
Speaker 1: frightening is realizing how common this is, how accepted it is,
Speaker 1: how it's even encouraged. Because an authentic person is dangerous,
Speaker 1: they question, they destabilize, they expose collective lies. So we
Speaker 1: prefer people dead in life as long as they're well behaved,
Speaker 1: well adjusted, well integrated into the system. We prefer functional
Speaker 1: zombies to living and uncomfortable hume Huan beings. Think about
Speaker 1: your own trajectory. At what moment did you start betraying yourself?
Speaker 1: At what moment did you decide being accepted was more
Speaker 1: important than being true? At what moment did you trade
Speaker 1: authenticity for approval, presence for performance, essence for appearance. Was
Speaker 1: it a specific moment or was it a slow process,
Speaker 1: a gradual erosion of your truth until one day you
Speaker 1: woke up and realized you no longer knew who you were.
Speaker 1: And the worst isn't having done this once. The worst
Speaker 1: is continuing to do it every day, knowing you're doing it,
Speaker 1: feeling the pain of this constant betrayal, but being unable
Speaker 1: to stop, because stopping would mean confronting everything you built
Speaker 1: on lies, would mean admitting you wasted time living someone
Speaker 1: else's life, would mean having to start from zero with
Speaker 1: no guarantee it'll work out. So you continue, continue performing,
Speaker 1: continue pretending, continue dying slowly inside while smiling outside. And
Speaker 1: you call this adult life, responsibility, maturity. But Camu challenges you,
Speaker 1: this isn't maturity. This is cowardice disguised as pragmatism. This
Speaker 1: is death disguised as life. This is the absurd, accepted
Speaker 1: without consciousness, lived without revolt, endured without questioning. If Morsault
Speaker 1: scares us in nineteen forty two, imagine what he'd say
Speaker 1: about today's world. We live in an era of alienation
Speaker 1: on an industrial scale. We wake up and the first
Speaker 1: thing we do is grab our phone, not because we
Speaker 1: want to, but because we've become slaves to the instant
Speaker 1: dopamine it offers. We scroll infinite feeds of edited lives,
Speaker 1: performed happiness, staged achievements, and compare our messy reality with
Speaker 1: these polished fictions. Always feeling insufficient, we go to work,
Speaker 1: executing tasks that don't matter to us at companies we
Speaker 1: don't respect, for salaries that barely cover bills, and we
Speaker 1: call this earning a living, when in reality, we're losing
Speaker 1: our lives, trading time for money, trading presence for survival,
Speaker 1: trading authenticity for security. We return home, exhausted and throw
Speaker 1: ourselves in front of a screen, consuming series, videos, content,
Speaker 1: anything that fills the void that distracts us from the
Speaker 1: uncomfortable question what am I living for? We have thousands
Speaker 1: of digital connections and no real connection. We're constantly stimulated
Speaker 1: and profoundly bored. We're free to do anything and incapable
Speaker 1: of doing anything that truly matters. And the worst part
Speaker 1: is we've normalized this. We call it adult life, responsibility reality.
Speaker 1: We say that's how things are, and keep functioning increasingly
Speaker 1: distant from ourselves, increasingly strangers within our own existence. Muso
Speaker 1: is no longer a literary exception. He's the portrait of
Speaker 1: modern humanity. And if this doesn't scare us, it's because
Speaker 1: we're already asleep. Think about how many hours a day
Speaker 1: you spend on autopilot. You wake up, grab your phone,
Speaker 1: scroll the feed without really seeing anything, just consuming empty stimuli.
Speaker 1: You get ready, repeating the same mechanical gestures. You go
Speaker 1: to work, the same route, greeting the same people with
Speaker 1: the same empty phrases. You execute the same tasks you
Speaker 1: executed yesterday and will execute tomorrow. You return home, eat
Speaker 1: something quick, throw yourself on the couch, watch something you
Speaker 1: won't remember tomorrow. You sleep, and the next day everything
Speaker 1: repeats and you call this life. But how many of
Speaker 1: these moments did you really live? How many of them
Speaker 1: were you really present? How many of them did you
Speaker 1: consciously choose instead of just following the automatic script that
Speaker 1: was programmed into you. And when you stop to think
Speaker 1: about this, when you really look at your life and
Speaker 1: realize you're living on autopilot, that you're just surviving instead
Speaker 1: of living, that you're functioning instead of existing, what do
Speaker 1: you feel? You feel that mersal sensation, that profound indifference,
Speaker 1: that disconnection, that feeling of watching your own life from afar,
Speaker 1: And then you understand you're also a stranger. You're also alienated,
Speaker 1: You're also dead in life. The difference is mersor admitted it,
Speaker 1: and you keep pretending everything's fine. But perhaps there's a
Speaker 1: way out. Perhaps the first step is recognizing the stranger
Speaker 1: within you, that silent voice that observes everything from afar,
Speaker 1: that doesn't truly connect with anything you do, that feels
Speaker 1: as if it's living someone else's life, that's tired of pretending,
Speaker 1: tired of performing, tired of constantly adjusting. This voice isn't
Speaker 1: the problem. It's lucidity. It's the part of you that's
Speaker 1: still alive, that still refuses to accept the collective lie
Speaker 1: that still perceives something is profoundly wrong, and recognizing this
Speaker 1: isn't defeat. It's the beginning. Because you can't change what
Speaker 1: you don't see. Can't live authentically if you don't admit
Speaker 1: your living falsely, can't reconnect with yourself if you keep
Speaker 1: pretending everything's fine. Looking at your own alienation hurts. Admitting
Speaker 1: your living on autopilot, that your emotions are mechanical, that
Speaker 1: your relationships are superficial, that your life doesn't have the
Speaker 1: meaning you pretend it has. This hurts, But this pain
Speaker 1: is necessary. It's the price of consciousness. And without consciousness,
Speaker 1: there's no transformation. You can keep functioning forever adjusted, well behaved,
Speaker 1: socially accepted, emotionally dead. Or you can wake up, can
Speaker 1: look at the truth, however uncomfortable it is, can stop pretending,
Speaker 1: can start living according to what you really feel, with
Speaker 1: what really matters to you, with who you really are.
Speaker 1: And yes, this will cost. It'll cost relationships that were
Speaker 1: based on masks, It'll cost social acceptance, It'll cost the
Speaker 1: illusion of security. But what you gain in return is
Speaker 1: the only thing that truly matters, The possibility of being
Speaker 1: truly alive, of being truly yourself, of living a life
Speaker 1: that's genuinely yours. And look, I know it seems impossible.
Speaker 1: I know when you look at your life, at all
Speaker 1: the obligations, at all the expectations, at all the masks
Speaker 1: you wear, it might seem there's no way out, that
Speaker 1: you're trapped in this role you built, that change is
Speaker 1: too late, that authenticity is a luxury you can't afford,
Speaker 1: but can you would tell you can always choose. You
Speaker 1: were always free. The prison is in your head, not
Speaker 1: in reality. The chains that bind you are constructed by you,
Speaker 1: maintained by you, and can be broken by you. It
Speaker 1: won't be easy, it won't be quick, it won't be painless,
Speaker 1: but it'll be real, and that, after an entire life
Speaker 1: of falseness, might be the most important thing you ever do,
Speaker 1: because recognizing the stranger within you isn't admitting defeat. It's
Speaker 1: admitting truth. It's looking at yourself without judgment and saying yes,
Speaker 1: I'm alienated, Yes I'm disconnected, Yes I'm living on autopilot,
Speaker 1: and no, this isn't all I can be. This admission,
Speaker 1: however painful it is, is the first step toward any
Speaker 1: real change, because you can't heal what you don't recognize,
Speaker 1: can't change what you don't admit, can't wake up if
Speaker 1: you keep pretending you're awake. Camu doesn't offer ready made answers.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say what to do, doesn't promise salvation, doesn't
Speaker 1: guarantee everything will be fine. He just places us before
Speaker 1: a choice. Keep sleeping or wake up, keep pretending or
Speaker 1: start living, Keep following others' scripts, or write your own script.
Speaker 1: And this choice is frightening, because waking up means assuming
Speaker 1: total responsibility for your own existence, means accepting there's nobody
Speaker 1: to blame, no fate to follow, no guarantee you're doing
Speaker 1: the right thing. But it also means freedom means you
Speaker 1: can create the meaning of your life, can choose what matters,
Speaker 1: can decide who you want to be. There's no right answer,
Speaker 1: there's no guaranteed path. There's only you, before the absurd,
Speaker 1: before the silence of the universe, before the impossibility of
Speaker 1: absolute certainty, deciding what to do with the time you have.
Speaker 1: And perhaps that's exactly where beauty lies. Perhaps life doesn't
Speaker 1: need to have universal meaning to be worthwhile. Perhaps each
Speaker 1: moment can be sufficient if you're really present in it.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you don't need to be someone important, achieve great feats,
Speaker 1: leave a legacy. Perhaps it's enough to be alive, to
Speaker 1: truly feel, to authentically connect, to live according to what's
Speaker 1: real within you. Mrsou discovered this too late, on the
Speaker 1: eve of his own death, But you still have time.
Speaker 1: You can still choose to stop being a stranger within
Speaker 1: your own life, can choose to wake up, can choose
Speaker 1: to live. And this choice, as simple as it seems,
Speaker 1: is the bravest you can make, because choosing to truly
Speaker 1: live means choosing to truly feel, and truly feeling means
Speaker 1: giving up protections, masks, defenses you built over years to
Speaker 1: avoid suffering means allowing yourself to be vulnerable. To be authentic,
Speaker 1: to be seen as you really are, means risking rejection,
Speaker 1: risking solitude, risking failure means giving up the security of
Speaker 1: automatic life in exchange for the insecurity of conscious life.
Speaker 1: And many people aren't willing to make this trade. They
Speaker 1: prefer the security of prison to the insecurity of freedom.
Speaker 1: They prefer the predictability of death in life to the
Speaker 1: unpredictability of true life. And that's okay. Everyone makes their choices,
Speaker 1: everyone carries their consequences. But if you're reading this, if
Speaker 1: you've made it this far, if something in these works
Speaker 1: words resonated within you, then perhaps you're different. Perhaps you're
Speaker 1: someone who's tired of pretending, tired of performing, tired of
Speaker 1: living on autopilot. Perhaps you're someone who's ready to wake up,
Speaker 1: even if you don't yet know what to do after waking.
Speaker 1: And that's already enough, because awakening doesn't come with an
Speaker 1: instruction manual, doesn't come with guarantees, doesn't come with certainties.
Speaker 1: It comes only with the uncomfortable clarity that you can
Speaker 1: no longer continue living as you were living. And sometimes
Speaker 1: this clarity is all you need to begin. So stop
Speaker 1: for a second. Look at your life. Ask yourself, how
Speaker 1: many of the things I do are really mine? How
Speaker 1: many choices did I make because I wanted to? And
Speaker 1: how many did I make because it was expected? How
Speaker 1: much of my life is authentic and how much is performance?
Speaker 1: How much of me is really present and how much
Speaker 1: is just functioning on autopilot. These questions hurt, but they
Speaker 1: need to be asked because the alto alternative is spending
Speaker 1: your entire life as a stranger. Present in body, absent
Speaker 1: in experience, living a life that was never really yours.
Speaker 1: And when you reach the end, when you look back,
Speaker 1: what will hurt more? Having lived imperfectly but truly or
Speaker 1: having lived impeccably but falsely. Camu already answered, Mersul already answered.
Speaker 1: Now it's your turn to answer, and there's no right
Speaker 1: or wrong answer. There's only your answer, and it will
Speaker 1: determine whether you live or just survive, whether you exist
Speaker 1: or just function, whether you're a stranger or you're yourself.
Speaker 1: And look, I know all this might sound heavy, might
Speaker 1: seem desperate, might make you feel even more lost. But
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this to make you anguished. I'm saying
Speaker 1: it because maybe you need to hear it. Maybe you
Speaker 1: need to know you're not alone in this feeling of displacement,
Speaker 1: That there's nothing wrong with you for not fitting perfect
Speaker 1: the world, that the feeling of being a stranger isn't
Speaker 1: a flaw. It's consciousness, and consciousness hurts, but it also liberates.
Speaker 1: Because when you finally stop pretending, when you finally admit
Speaker 1: you're tired of acting, when you finally look at the
Speaker 1: truth and accept the absurd, something changes. You realize you
Speaker 1: don't need external approval to exist, don't need to follow
Speaker 1: a pre defined script to have value, don't need to
Speaker 1: achieve anything grand for your life to matter. You're already enough,
Speaker 1: You always were, And perhaps it's time to start living
Speaker 1: as if you believed that. Not tomorrow, not after you
Speaker 1: achieve such and such thing, not when you finally feel ready. Now,
Speaker 1: because this moment is all you have, and it can
Speaker 1: be enough if you let it. You don't have to
Speaker 1: read any of us, be cont