Society instills two principal things in a person: guilt and shame.

 Society instills two principal things in a person: guilt and shame. In the first, one may see oneself as “wrong” for having done something “unfair”; in the second, one asks, “What will they think of me if I wear this?” and thus dresses as though only for others. This normative influence leads to social conditioning, and social conditioning leads to conformity. It’s as if there is a “happiness race”: the unhappy, drowning in anger over this “shameful failure,” complain that their “brain doesn’t work right,” while the happy, celebrating this “superior achievement,” flaunt their socially rewarded status that stems purely from their conformism. And so, in the public face of society, everyone appears so good, so attractive, so happy, and ultimately so perfect—to the unseeing eye. This becomes the source of an internalized self-doubt eventually leading to self-hatred, for the ordinary person, unable to perceive the enduring hell beneath this artificial paradise, automatically concludes, “If I cannot blend in with them, there must be something wrong with me,” for the deceptive face of the society they admire is unconsciously accepted as the true and the real. Yet the one who perceives all this and refuses to conform, when ignored, thinks first: “I am alone—therefore I must be awake.” Even if seeing what others do not see appears as a kind of “madness” to the self-dissatisfied person who is a jester of society, in their own eyes it is no illusion but prophecy. The concept of “scandal” is nothing more than the tearing of the deceptive public face of the “veil of greatness.” And for this person, society itself is a scandal.