I’ve been meaning to blog about this for days and it’s something that’s been grating on my whole philosophical system. I was reading that Simone de Beauvoir novel and she had this amazing scene where the main character realized that all of her friends were just empty. I should hunt down the exact passage:
All at once the flame died out. He was just a few feet away from her, watching her. He saw her looking at Sanier, looking into his eyes, trying to set his heart afire. He saw the give-and-take of words and glances, the play of mirrors, and empty mirrors, reflecting only each others’ emptiness.
When I first read that last sentence, it just clicked with my whole worldview. But then as I was thinking about it… with the evidence for this? So everyone is empty? Surely someone has something to contribute. It dawned on me then that believing that everyone is empty, vapid, and soulless is just as naive as believing that everyone is good. I guess it should have been more obvious, but it never dawned on me until that moment.