“The supreme vice is shallowness.”Oscar Wilde · De Profundis · 1905 · Partea I
Sin at least forces you to know yourself; shallowness lets you live without ever looking inward.
Wilde, famous for epigrams about sin and pleasure, overturns the expectation: sin at least involves intensity, a real confrontation with oneself. Shallowness means living without examining anything. Someone who cheats on a partner with a businessman's efficiency and then confesses as a formality is not wicked out of passion, but careless toward their own life.
Wilde does not ask for perfection, only for attention. A person can make a grave mistake and still remain deep, if his view of his own life is honest. Shallowness is something else: the habit of avoiding the discomfort of knowing yourself. Think of someone who quits a job on impulse and calls it passion, when really they fled a question they never dared to ask. The mistake itself can be repaired. Carelessness about your own motives repeats itself. And if shallowness is a habit, it has an antidote: a small daily act of honesty with yourself. What would that act look like?
Why it matters A useful test for any major decision: if you cannot say why you truly want what you want, the problem is not morality but the depth with which you have looked inside.