How to minimize guilt, pandemic edition.
Through The Plague we see characters employ a dazzling array of internal and external narrative techniques as an excuse for their inability to take “the plague” seriously and lead to the mass death of innocent people. At the center of these techniques are Paneloux’s sermons, centered upon the fact that the effects of the plague are inevitable, and nothing can or really should be done to try to mitigate its effects. Disregard the religious nature of his argument, and consider its empirical effects on people. People kind of like this argument, for secular reasons, because they feel less guilty about their failures to prevent the spread of the epidemic themselves. There’s a reason why people eat this crap up, and it isn’t necessarily because people share the exact religious views of Paneloux, but because they love how he assuages their guilt. And in my opinion, it’s this exact mindset that drives the plague to become as devastating as it got. When Paneloux describes the suffering that the people of Oran have to undertake as “God’s way of testing the faith of his followers,” it’s not the religious message that is bad for Oran, but rather Paneloux’s message that faith is everything, and action is meaningless, that leads to a ridiculous amount of human loss. And people don’t just like this message because of its optimistic religious implications, but because it allows them to assuage their guilt. This message has a serious application to the contemporary world, as people work to minimize their guilt by their failure to help minimize fatalities from the COVID pandemic. People could never say, “oh, masks help but I’m deffo too lazy to remember to wear one around friends, so screw at-risk people, I’ll live my normal life,” they’d feel too guilty. Instead, anti-maskers make up crap about how “masks are bad because they cut off oxygen CO2 poisoning can’t breathe well suffocate also they don’t protect anyone” so they don’t feel this guilt about their lack of empathy.
I think Paneloux's assertion that action is meaningless is rooted in the idea that everything exists for a reason which directly counteracts existentialism. So if we look at "The Plague" through binaries, Rieux represents existentialism and Paneloux represents the opposite.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've been seeing a parallel between what is happening in this book and people who try to find excuses even though they just don't care about if other people survive or not.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post that details many peoples' inclination to project fault onto some higher being. I think that in terms of Camus's existentialist beliefs, Paneloux actually represents what he is in the novel: a religious person who can't come to terms with the plague. Paneloux is put into a dangerous position where he can't do anything to prevent the spread of the plague without denouncing his own religion. You disregard the religious aspects of Paneloux's argument in your blog post (Nothing wrong with that, I agree with what you say about the empirical effects it has on people), but I feel like religion is at the core of Camus's argument. The base of the Existentialist belief, to my knowledge, is that life has no meaning but the meaning people put into life. To me, religion is one of the most visible examples of this. I won't speak about whether I believe this to be true or not, but I think what Camus is trying to show is that at a time where it may be more logical to give up on religion and do something to stop the spread of the pandemic, people flock to the fantastical idea that there is a higher power who is punishing them for a reason. Like you said, it gives people an excuse to shift blame while also allowing them a means to justify their actions.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting way of looking at Paneloux's sermons and why they had an effect on people. You also make an interesting point about human nature and people's attempts to avoid feeling as though they are at fault. The point about the masks that you brought up is a really interesting example from our current pandemic of avoiding guilt that I hadn't really thought about. I agree that their excuses for not wearing a mask allow them to avoid feeling guilty for potentially putting other people in danger.
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