This is Montaigne thinking very much like Dostoevsky. He believes that the conscience is always betraying us, bringing to light the wrongs we know we’ve committed, speaking the words we intended to conceal.

One aspect of this belief that I haven’t explored returns to Montaigne’s anarchistic streak. He has no use for laws and, similarly, doesn’t really believe in punishment. Our own consciences punish us sufficiently, keeping us from getting away with our worst acts.

This isn’t true for psychopaths, of course, who seem capable of doing and saying anything without remorse. But let us put those aside and consider them outside of the norm. Does this Montaigne/Dostoevsky construction hold up for most people and their deeds?

It all depends on culture, I believe. If right and wrong are widely accepted, even if not enforced, the guilty conscience would emerge. But what about in cultures where morality has become shaded in grays? For example, among young people during the pandemic, there was this belief that there was nothing in particular wrong with shoplifting. It became a generational cultural norm. And as a result now, you can’t go into a Walgreens in Chicago anymore and just purchase a container of shampoo, a store employee needs to be summoned to unlock it.

In this case, the bad conscience has been socialized to everyone — we are now all assumed guilty of shoplifting by virtue of living in Chicago and are treated like potential thieves. The underlying social needs that create morality do not disappear, the defensive actions merely shift out broadly and damage the quality of life.

This is also the case with the relationships between men and women. All men are now deemed suspect of being on a spectrum from creepy to predatory when it comes to their treatment of women. I do not blame women for taking the Walgreens locked-down shampoo approach to men. Rather, I see it as a matter of moral decay — it’s the men who make the world so routinely unsafe for women, giving them no choice but to lock things down for everyone.

When I travel internationally, I notice that this is not the case everywhere, that there are places where women can walk the streets safely alone and not feel in immediate danger. So what are we doing wrong and how can we turn this around? If men find the status quo intolerable, it’s incumbent on them to figure out solutions.

It’s interesting that the essay has evolved this way, because I didn’t sit down to write with the intention of telling this story. I just followed the logic of the thought Montaigne introduced, and I think it leads to an interesting place.

Montaigne also mentions in the essay that the converse of the guilty conscience is a profound sense of confidence that you are in the right, that your intentions were good and even if misfortune results, you know you did nothing to deserve it. He ends the piece with an extensive discussion of torture that is right on the mark — and very contemporary in its explanation of why it is a terrible tool for determining truth.

Is there anything personal I could add to this? Only that when I have done things in my life that I deeply regretted, I wasn’t always capable of confessing my wrongs, but I believe strongly that Montaigne was right — that I couldn’t help but give myself away in small, daily actions and gestures, that whatever force was in control, the conscience or an unconscious mind, that force was determined to bring truth to light.

This raises one final question that Montaigne did not explore. When we behave wrongly — and especially when we do things knowingly in the wrong — are we in fact self sabotaging, doing something wrong to stop us from doing something we feel powerless to end on its own accord? In that sense, the guilty conscience activity, surfacing the feelings we’re outwardly trying to conceal, becomes entirely the point.

Or to put this in even darker terms — does our conscience actually compel us towards actions we know that we will regret, not because it enjoys the transgression, but because it wants to compel punishment? Perhaps that punishment is the thing we actually desire.