Therefore We Exist

“I think, therefore I am.” Camus knew the line. He answers it with his own. “I rebel, therefore we exist.” Two changes. Thinking becomes rebellion. The single self becomes plural.

Camus is doing something unusual here. The act of saying no, which can look like the most isolating thing a person can do, turns out to be the most binding. When you refuse on your own behalf, you find you have not refused alone. You have refused on behalf of anyone who could be in your place.

Consider a small case. You finally push back at the colleague who has been talking over you in meetings. The action looks individual.

But it is also, immediately, a refusal on behalf of every other person who might be talked over. The no widens as it leaves your mouth. You stand up for yourself, and you discover, sometimes to your surprise, that you have stood up for others.

That is the discovery at the heart of the rebel’s life. The group did not exist before the refusal. Nobody had noticed what they shared. The act of rebellion calls a we into being and surfaces what was underneath all along, the common ground of dignity that is defended in one person or defended in everyone. Your next refusal will find people you did not know were there.