Psycho Pass: Colorful World

10

"In his poem, Invictus, William Ernest Henley writes about a life surrounded by darkness:

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

"In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

"Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

"It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul."

There was so much calm and confidence in the deep sound of his voice, that anyone would even find it persuasive. Makishima Shougo was standing at the edge of the building. The night was a little cold and a soft breeze stirred his messy white hair at his back. He was wearing a wrinkled white shirt, that was on the left tucked into his light purple pants. He finally closed his book.

"They say I cross the line between right and wrong so many times that I may not see it anymore. I agree," her voice was soft and distant, the same way her confession weighed down upon her shoulders.

Yashiro was next to him in a beige coat over a black dress shirt, with her hands in her dark pants pockets. Her brown hair fell down her back except for several long strands of bangs that were blown by the wind. They were looking at the cars below with bored indifference. Yashiro's eyes were more narrowed than his own, with clear dark circles beneath them.

"They see you're a person of conviction, someone who is not loyal to a country but to your own principles, and they're afraid because you can't be controlled, nor bought. You don't see through the eyes of others, you hold onto yours and stand on your own judgement, without letting anyone tell you otherwise. A man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. For you must judge yourself before judging others. Descartes said that... you have to conquer yourself rather than the world."

"I hesitated. I was willing to let a man kill his mother, because I could have ended the same. I could have been like him. Blinded by.... anger," Yashiro lifted her head to the black sky.

"Anger is not an unhealthy emotion. It's followed by passion. The desire to cross a line. I'm drawn to that. You are too. In this world people suppress their emotions, their nature," Makishima stretched out his palm to the sky, as if trying to find the moon in all that black. "Reason possesses the will and the ability to make decisions. These people don't think, judge, or desire—they allow others to direct them. Having renounced their mind, they are devoid of individuality.

"The freer a society is, the greater will be the diversity among men, since the unique and individual personality of each of them will be more developed. On the other hand, the more despotic a society is, the greater the restrictions on the freedom of the individual, the more uniformity, the less diversity there will be and the less developed will be the personality of each man. Meaning that... a despotic society prevents its members from being fully human."