Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.
André Malraux
The soul of our modern era does not just sin, it curates.
Once, sinning used to be an act against God, creation, goodness, or humanity. Now, it is more of an act against one’s own image.
We humans no longer ask for forgiveness; we ask for plausible deniability. Confessions are now digital, and merely typing a few words is taken as proof that we actually feel sorry for our actions, a flimsy guarantee that such actions will not be repeated again.
Humans do not truly wish to be good; they only wish to appear to be trying. We sin with a convenience-tempered conscience, a lie softened by our own point of view and intention. Cruelty gets passed off as “truth.” Indulgence is rebranded as “self-care.”
No one conceals anything anymore; they do not even try. They simply rebrand their darkness into something acceptable to their conscience and to society. I would call this selective sinning, the new gold standard of morality.
Nowadays, everyone has a mental scoreboard. Do someone a favour, and that cancels out last week’s sarcastic jab. Speak honestly today, and maybe that balances the cruel joke you posted online. It is not about forgiveness or genuine change anymore, it is just about breaking even. Morality has become a maths problem, balancing the equation of good and bad.
And this subtle, quiet, methodical tracking? It dulls the sharp edge of guilt. Wrongdoing no longer feels like a beast gnawing at your conscience; it is more like a polite guest, calmly sipping tea in your living room while you find excuses to let it stay.
Nobody strives for perfect innocence now. That is considered old-fashioned, almost laughable. Try too hard and people mock you. Admit your flaws and everyone nods approvingly, as if you have achieved some higher state of self-awareness, a modern-day monk living on the internet instead of the Himalayas.
So what is the foolproof solution to all this? People sin softly now, subtly, almost courteously. Small sins, neatly tucked between long apologies and excuses, just real enough to feel human, but never real enough to be noticed.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Contemporary hypocrisy has changed. It no longer masks itself in religiosity; it stinks of empathy. The new moralist shouts for justice online while starving mercy offline. They loudly condemn but quietly forgive, for the conscience’s sake of being clean and for the soul’s sake of being curated.
What could once have been shame has become irony; confession has become content. The contemporary sinner does not repent anymore; they justify. Each defect is a “phase.” Like yes bro, will it ever go? Every act of violence inflicted is nothing but a “reaction to trauma.” And while truth still exists somewhere beneath the act, it is drowned out by applause for vulnerability.
No one lies in this theatre of transparency; they simply modify the truth to flatter themselves and others.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Charles Baudelaire
Maybe the Devil never left; maybe He just evolved. Now He speaks your words, but full of empathy. He talks about compassion and self-love. He urges you to relax, indulge, and let things slide. He turns “You deserve this” into therapy, so you hardly notice when comfort becomes compromise.
We do not break the rules anymore; instead, we reshape them to fit, reshape them in such a way that people accept us despite our evident flaws. Each time we find a new excuse, something sacred within us fades so quietly that we barely notice it is gone.
The real loss is not that we sin; it is how willingly we accept it. We call it wisdom, or simply getting by. We tell ourselves it is maturity. But when everything falls silent and the light from our screens dims, a voice remains inside. It does not sound like peace; it sounds like mourning, heavy with pain and regret, at least for some of us.
And in that quiet, the light we once promised to follow slowly fades from our vision, not because it truly vanished, but because we forgot how to face it.
Discover more stories on Her Campus at MUJ. More articles by me coming soon at Vaibhav Chaudhary at HCMUJ; he who watches the world and its miracles closely, noticing what slips between moments, between the infinite realities.