Their mental exhaustion from carrying around their virtues for so long—and for others’ sakes—had made them so wound up, they were terrified their taut nerves would shatter any minute. They dreamed about the sum of the pleasures they had given up for the sake of virtue and out of their desire for respect and regard; now, it made them wallow in self-pity. All those sacrifices they made to the dictates of their conscience seemed meaningless to them. An honorable man today felt nothing but utter contempt for his own posturing and lofty ways. He wanted to roll naked on the grassy ground in the park. He wanted to go to the nightclub and dance with the women who gyrated their hips and shook their buttocks. He wanted to stand at the street corner and shout, “I am no saint! I am just an ordinary man!” and tear off his mantle so he might plunge himself into an ocean of pleasures.

Even as we internalized herd mentality and mocked everything as phony, we were also entranced by that very phoniness. In the same way, it was also true that when we frowned at teenage girls when they abandoned their natural gait and instead took on a new fancy one, we were, in fact, also enjoying it at the same time. We had become far too cowardly to admit that nature was not all that appealing after all. When women laughed after having unlearned their own laugh, when they moved their hands or their neck after unlearning their own gestures, when they sang in a voice that was not their own, it was, in fact, quite enchanting, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it true that any man or woman could only hope to secure the joy of being desired by others if they resorted to such borrowings? Perhaps in the past, the face was more beautiful than the mask. But we knew nothing about those days.