“Feeling guilty or not feeling guilty—I think that’s the whole issue. Life is a struggle of all against all. It’s a known fact. But how does that struggle work in a society that’s more or less civilized? People can’t just attack each other on sight. So instead they try to cast the shame of culpability on each other. The person who manages to make the other one guilty will win. The one who confesses his crime will lose. You’re walking along the street, lost in thought. Along comes a girl, walking straight ahead, as if she were the only person in the world, looking neither left nor right. You jostle each other. And there it is, the moment of truth: Who’s going to bawl out the other person, and who’s going to apologize? It’s a classic situation: actually, each of them is both the jostled and the jostler. And yet some people always—immediately, spontaneously—consider themselves the jostlers, and thus in the wrong. And others always—immediately, spontaneously—consider themselves the jostled, and therefore in the right, quick to accuse the other and get him punished. What about you—in that situation, would you apologize or accuse?”
“Me, I’d certainly apologize.”
“Ah, my poor friend, so you, too, belong to the army of apologizers. You expect to mollify the other person with your apologies.”
“Absolutely.”
“And you’re wrong. The person who apologizes is declaring himself guilty. And if you declare yourself guilty you encourage the other to go on insulting you, blaming you, publicly, unto death. Such are the inevitable consequences of the first apology.”
“That’s true. One should not apologize. And yet I prefer a world where everyone would apologize, with no exception, pointlessly, excessively, for nothing at all, where they’d load themselves down with apologies.”
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