How to not get away with murder, according to Albert Camus

We experience reality from two perspectives. If I point to a dog and ask what that is, everyone will say that it’s a dog. But, the sight of the dog isn’t the only component of the experience. Two people looking at the same dog might have different emotional reactions to it. Maybe one of them loves dogs and might feel happy by the sight. The other person had got bitten by a dog, so they look at it with fear. In short, we constantly interpret the objective reality – according to our experience, wants and desires – that we experience, making it subjective.

Meursault, the protagonist of “The Stranger” written by Albert Camus, doesn’t seem to experience reality subjectively. He perceives reality just as it is, without any interpretations. That’s why I think everything feels meaningless to him. The opening of the novel reads “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know.” Meursault isn’t affected much by the death of his mother, noting that nothing in his life had changed and the world would go on as usual. He doesn’t feel any form of remorse after killing a man by shooting him 5 times. In the court, to prove that he is guilty of murder, his reaction to his mother’s death is constantly brought up. The book ends with him being hated by everyone at the court and facing the death penalty.

God and consumerism – arguably the two most powerful forces in human civilization – work because we interpret reality subjectively. We associate the statue of God with divinity although it’s just a man-made structure. When buying any product, we go beyond its functionality. We think about how that product represents us, how it adds prestige, how it might make us feel, etc. Our civilization is built upon our ability to see things for more than what they are. Someone like Meursault threatens the foundation that human civilization is built upon. It makes sense that society deemed him as a criminal at heart devoid of a soul and sent him to die.