The Stranger

I would like to point out an irony about morality. Morality is premised on the idea that human beings are basically selfish, or at least that we are selfish to an inappropriate degree. Conscience is therefore a corrective to help us redirect our attention and caring toward others: what needs and desires they have, how our actions might affect them for better or worse, and hence how we ought to behave. The irony, however, is that even without morality, human attention is, in fact, directed outward. Our naïve view of the world is entirely "externally" oriented. Do not our eyes point away from us? Is not a course in art required to make the average observer aware of her own visual field, wherein parallel railroad tracks converge toward the horizon? Do we not readily see the mote in our neighbor's eye but not the beam in our own? Is not our very selfishness unknown to us? 

Therefore it is oneself who is unknown, and so what human beings suffer from is not first and foremost an ego preoccupation but rather an other preoccupation. What is needed is precisely to know thyself. It is we who are the stranger.

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