Excess Is a Comfort
“In 1950, excess is always a comfort, and sometimes a career. Moderation, on the one hand, is nothing but pure tension.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE REBEL
Near the end of The Rebel, Camus looks at the temper of his own moment and reaches for an unexpected word. Not dangerous. Not thrilling. Comfortable. Extremity, in his account, is the restful option, and the charge is worth sitting with.
Comfort is the right word because a total position ends the work of judging. Once you hold the far end of an argument, every new fact arrives already sorted. Nothing needs weighing. Nothing costs you an evening of doubt. The position thinks on your behalf.
Then comes the harder half. Sometimes a career. He could already watch attention gather around whoever refused to qualify anything, and saw that a person could make a living from the refusal. The machinery is faster now and pays better, and it still points in one direction.
Against that he sets a phrase with no glamour in it at all. Pure tension. Moderation in his hands has nothing to do with lukewarmness or splitting the difference. It is the strain of holding two true things that pull apart, and refusing to drop either one.
Take a question where your position is clean and name the strongest fact on the other side. Do not resolve it today. Carry both, and notice how much more tiring that is than certainty. That tiredness is what measure feels like from the inside.
