Neither Guilty nor Innocent
“Finally, man is not entirely to blame; it was not he who started history; nor is he entirely innocent, since he continues it.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE REBEL
Camus called it calculated culpability. Arguing in The Rebel that every ethic needs a share of realism and every realism a share of ethics, he arrives at a formula for how to hold your own record.
Both halves are working. Not entirely to blame protects you from a guilt so total that it becomes useless. You inherited a world already in motion, its cruelties and its advantages arranged long before you showed up. Whoever takes responsibility for all of it collapses, and collapsed people help nobody. Not entirely innocent closes the other exit, the one most of us prefer. You did not start it, but you are keeping it running, in the small daily ways that carry any arrangement forward.
Camus thought the pose of complete innocence was the more dangerous of the two, because a person convinced he is perfectly clean will feel entitled to punish everyone who is not. Total guilt paralyzes. Total innocence arms. The livable position is the uncomfortable middle, where you can act without needing to be spotless first.
Take one thing you feel implicated in and say both sentences about it out loud. I did not start this. I am continuing it. Then do the one thing actually available to you, which is smaller than absolution and much larger than nothing.
