Good luck,
AK
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Berwick Academy's World Literature class. A blog that dabbles in Universal Truths and steeped in true thoughts. A judgment free zone that promotes thoughtful conversations about difficult questions.
15 comments:
Oh, I posted both my responses, the Hamlet and Dostoyevsky ones, in the "I am, I am, I am" comments page. Should I re-post it here?
The Truth of Consciousness and Logic
As I was reading the final parts of the first chapter of Notes from Underground, I realized the incredible amount of contradictions that are laced throughout the book. I came to think that perhaps these contradictions come out of the introspection that is so intertwined with the idea of an underground man. His thoughts are complex and scattered, and often follow no particular plan or point. However, this is the true beauty of the underground. It is a place of discovery, but there is never a right or wrong answer. There is only an answer that makes sense to the thinker. Dostoyevsky claims to be writing for the reader, but he is really just creating a maze in which the reader with always find themselves doubling back upon the same few paths. He trusts that the conscious reader will be able to understand and either agree with or challenge his ideas. While the unconscious reader will merely see a confusion of words mixed upon a page of useless ideas.
The problem then becomes, how do we measure our consciousness or our awareness? I don’t think other people can measure it, but only the individual can determine their depth of understanding. Dostoyevsky states “suffering – after all is the sole cause of consciousness”(41). Maybe he is right, but it could be that consciousness comes from something much broader, perhaps, experience or a lack of it. I’m not exactly sure, but if determining consciousness is a personal diagnosis then I suppose the criteria it is based upon is a personal decision as well. These personal criteria should be made up of the truths that one keeps from oneself. The more truths correspond to the greater consciousness. If this is true then the individual can be the only possible one to make the evaluation of consciousness, and there lies the problem. The problems are the lies that we concoct about ourselves for our own protection. Dostoyevsky restates a remark by Heine saying, “a man will probably never tell the truth about himself”(45). If this is true, I reason that maybe he does not tell the truth because he does not know the truth or maybe he is unaware of it. Perhaps, to some extent man will always be somewhat unaware. He will understand that he exists, but he does not know exactly why he exists. These are the innate truths that we will understand, but not know in their entirety. Those of us that seek the answers by means of reason and logic will take a scientific or mathematical path, and those who wander will not seek the answers at all. The people of a concrete nature will accept what is and get lost in what is not. The thinkers, the believers, the men and women of the underground will throw out logic and rationality to exist in their truest form of consciousness, while everyone else is twisting the truth to find a comfortable existence.
“In order to justify his logic he is willing to distort the truth intentionally”(31), and this is the scholar’s fundamental flaw. The laws, proofs, and theorems of the scholar’s world are so concrete that truth falls victim to their walls. We have been mistaken as thinkers to believe that truth is not directly connected to logic. Logic is pure, real, and rational, but it is limited by all of those qualities. If one is altering a truth in order to satisfy a sense of logic then the logic is wrong, not the truth. In theory, logic must prove a truth, and truth must confirm logic. However, this relationship is dependent on the truth and not the logic. Truth must be accepted as it stands, but only if it is a truth that we know to be certain.
Thinkers must contradict themselves because it is the process of thought.
In Chapter seven Dostoyevsky asserts that: “It is indeed possible, and sometimes positively imperative (in my view), to act directly contrary to one’s own best interests; one’s own free and unfettered volition, one’s own caprice, however wild, one’s own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness- that is the best and greatest good.
What Dostoyevsky proposes here is dangerous, but liberating. He feels that to be “normal” and “virtuous” is at times a disservice to the self; that the mad wishes and desires of the individual should be indulged because they are inspired by something honest and untainted. Above order and civic duty, there is a need for independence and a responsibility to act on that independence even above one’s “best interest” as a member of society. The idea certainly sounds appealing at times when one’s personal ideals conflict with what is expected, and Dostoyevsky is bold to suggest that the “greatest good” lies in the satisfaction of those personal ideals. There is truth in the idea, but also the potential for a hedonistic catastrophe and the collapse of families, institutions, and communities that are fueled by compromise and sacrifice. To the individual, Dostoyevsky’s proposition is tempting, but he was an isolated man. Take into account how intertwined most people are with each other and Dostoyevsky’s plan begins to sound chaotic and destructive.
While freewill can undoubtedly lead to poor decisions that impact others and have extending negative consequences, it can also be defended as something beautiful. Dostoyevsky concludes, “Reason is only reason and satisfies only man’s intellectual faculties, while volition is a manifestation of the whole life” (35). Rather than selfishness that can lead to a dysfunctional collective experience, Dostoyevsky focuses on the wholeness of volition. There is certainly a purity in it that is constantly stifled when we consciously make the decision to conform, and also when we unconsciously become caught up in routines and reaching a predetermined endpoint. In society we work in a linear manner: school which builds the foundation for a successful career which in turn guarantees financial security so that family, legacy, and some sense of purpose can be achieved. We are motivated by a short term goals that keep us moving forward and long term goals that loom ahead, driving us onward with tunnel vision. In that singular, reasonable, intellectual pursuit we lose something of ourselves: those tangent thoughts and those diversions that pop into our heads like balloons for a moment before we pop them with a pin of logic because “that’s not a part of the plan.” Our identical resumes and similar nine to five jobs do not truly define us. It’s those random thoughts and wishes which we learn to eradicate that comprise our individual identity. When Dostoyevsky speaks of uninhibited freewill he encompasses the past, present, future, dreams, desires, and essence of what a person wants, thinks, feels. Volition as Dostoyevsky defines it satisfies the need to express the whole, true self in a society that splices and edits in order to neaten up the edges of our lives.
Is Dostoyevsky’s thought process a harmful one? He advises us to act against our best interest in order to achieve “the greatest good” of fulfilling our desires. It seems illogical that our best interest and our greatest good are not synonymous but rather in direct opposition to each other. Perhaps then it is unwise to always live one’s life in accordance with either extreme all the time; the two choices are equally detrimental. To allow society to dictate what is right for you will destroy your individuality, but to always follow your own “free and unfettered volition” can ruin human connections. There is a balance that can be struck between satisfying the individual and functioning within society, and that balance is what keeps you sane no matter how many walls are erected all around you.
Dostoyevsky likes walls. He likes them a lot. As a reader, I think that he is silly. He contradicts himself every other sentence and doesn’t seem to explain anything in a way that it would make sense to me but maybe that in itself is his point: why are we so avidly reading his work when the underground man concept is so greatly about self trust and looking within yourself for the answers? Dostoyevsky’s ideas about walls are similar to the usual perceptions of walls. Only in the ways of walls regarding segregation, forced separation and unjustified imprisonment etc... do we ever challenge that they are bad. Each of us has our own opinions about what walls are good and what walls are bad but in my opinion, I think that the wall dividing my living room and my kitchen should really just not be there. I should tear that one down. I wish it were this simple.
Dostoyevsky challenges that if I bang my head against that wall it wont do a thing. My head will just hurt. In the physical sense, this would really cause a dent in the wall depending on how hard I hit it with my head but in the non physical sense, I can bang my head against my homework all I want and I will still have another assignment tomorrow night. The walls that we like (not homework but anyways…) are the ones we don’t want to tear down. Though one night I might be frustrated with my sister, I don’t really want her to go away, and as many times as I have disliked my curfew and thought “everything would be much easier if it didn’t exist,” I will always have to get over it and understand that there are reasons my walls exist and reasons even bigger than those that will always prove to me why I should like them. I should “like” having a curfew because it helps my parents know when I’ll be home and this makes their lives easier.
On the other hand, as much as I dislike getting up on Sunday mornings at 7:30 to go to work, it’s a constant and I know that I can rely on having that schedule. The thought that I can put in my two weeks notice at any day, is probably a large factor that helps me keep going, I know also that I am sort of needed and relied on in return. I have moved 22 times and I still haven’t escaped any of the walls of my life. But I guess if I had escaped them and broken them down, then I would have stopped counting by now. If I stopped counting though and pretending I had lived in one place for my whole life then I would be ignoring a large part of who I am as a person. My walls shape and define me. I am more than them but mainly I am them… But this is only part of me. I am more than waking up early to go to work, having to be home by 12 on weekend nights and knowing that if I don’t do my homework tonight, it will snow ball into a bigger mess than just what I am thinking at the moment.
Even with the man of action’s tank, I won’t take my walls down. I will try to make the conscious decision to not bang my head anymore. The underground man, is the person who makes that decision successfully: to stop and change the way things are going and to change the way things will happen because he/ she can see ahead and recognize that it just makes sense to.
Dostoyevsky though, seems to emit the flaws to his ideas and contradictory style of writing. He will not have finished the thought he started on page 2 as he cuts himself off and maybe that is proof that he is diseased by thinking too much. Common side effects include, shortness of breath, loss of memory, dizziness, nausea and trouble with speech and failure regarding completion of sentences. Dostoyevsky has definetly caught the very disease he warns his readers about.
Okay, here it goes…
“Oh, gentlemen, perhaps the only reason I consider myself a clever man is that I have never in all my life been able to either begin or finish anything.” A curious thing, responsibility. An absurd, unfair thing, actually. Dostoyevsky is the Underground, and perhaps you and I are, as well. But what do we make of the underground man? He likes resentment but dislikes revenge. He is not lazy but he does nothing. And he is wise, maybe even brilliant, but he does not like to yell. He is, in a sense, one walking (and constantly talking) contradiction. Also, the Underground man is not a “man of action.” Men of action like above ground but are completely in the dark. They try to take on the world but immediately when ther is a challenge they cannot conquer. I think that this has a lot to do with second glances. The UM talks a lot about things dwelling in his mind and ideas not leaving him alone. If and when he meets a challenge, he lets it sit in front of him for a great amount of time—he gives it time to simmer (if you will…). He examines, searches for an answer.
Well, I don’t think that answers exist. Although, how are you to know if you don’t really look? The problem with “men of action,” according to Dostoyevsky, is that they have no problems, or at least they do not make it known. I feel as though these are the people who the UM looks upon and judges as the epitome of mediocrity. He feels this way merely because they are not at his intellectual level. He thinks that these “men of action” fail in acknowledging their problems so they cannot solve them. And God forbid you live a life without problems…?
Although I guess it would be better to accept that you have problems than to be oblivious to their existence.
…
Those three dots actually really fascinate me. I don’t know what it is about them that intrigue me so but I do know that they slow me down. I appreciate them and how they control the speed of my mind as it struggles to comprehend the words that lay in front of me.
Why did Dostoyevsky use them? I think that they allude to something that is to come, but something that I might never discover myself. Quite honestly, I think that they could be taken as a wall of sorts. They know something that none of us see. And they wave it in our faces, taunting us, pushing us to keep looking. He wrote, “ The only straightforward task of every intelligent man is pointless chattering, the deliberate pouring out of emptiness.”
Emptiness…
Is that what is behind my walls? The three evil dots? Maybe.
Is everyone born innocent? Fyodor Dostoyevsky seems to think so. He says that everyone is born innocent and only when they stray from the “appointed path” that turns a person from the road of good. I would say, and Dostoyevsky would probably agree, that he was one of the children who strayed from the appointed path. I would even go so far as to argue that it is better for one to stray off the path than it is to follow in the footsteps of the legions of others who are just following in the footsteps of those who plough on in front of them. Those followers of the path given to them are conformists who bend to the will of their superiors. Everything they do is in order with another persons standards, and it is not for their own benefit, it is for someone else’s. These are the people who are at school for the GPA not the experience or the learning. That is the complete wrong way to take school. If anything forget about the grade you are receiving and instead focus on the things you learn. Remember how Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats pulled a nation together in a time when its need was dire, not how you got a C- on the Great Depression Unit test in your U.S. History class.
While following the well traveled path of the peon is the wrong choice, it also causes one to become unaware. Instead of focusing on what is happening in the world around them they are focused on the walls that hold them on the path. They never look up from their worn out feet. They trudge ever onward, only pausing to change their direction if someone else tells them too. I really hope I am not one of these people. But I feel as though I am aware of the walls that surround me and I have begun the slow process of pulling them down one idea at a time. Any progress they had made toward becoming the underground man is lost, and they become swallowed up in the masses of unknowns. The key to abandoning the path and blazing ones own path, or taking the path that is less traveled if one is not up to the challenge of creating their own is awareness. If one can become aware of the situation then they can do something to change it. An underground man can rise up from the ranks of normalcy by becoming aware of their situation and then choosing to abandon the path beaten into the dust by the previous generations. Choosing to abandon the path is the first step in a series of many. After that one can begin his journey toward becoming the ultimate underground man. They begin the search for answers and that elusive sanctuary of thought that all underground men are looking for. Dostoyevsky even says “the idea of free will meant more to them than any kind of advantage.” One’s mind and opinion and free will are more important than the wants and desires of anyone else. If you subject yourself to the whims of another you are giving up your free will. And no one should be forced to give up their free will, or willingly place it in the hands of another. Free will is something that we prize in this day and age. When a country is to authoritative we criticize them endlessly and call for reforms and UN intervention. So when there is so much revolving around free will, with people being killed, why do some people choose to forgo their free will? I believe it is because they haven’t realized that free will yet. They have lived in such a structured society all their lives that they cannot tell that their opinions are being restricted. Which is why they have not been able to see the path to imprisonment that they are currently traveling.
Dostoyevsky states “Suffering- after all, that is the sole cause of consciousness”(41).
It is clear that to be underground means one is conscious of their condition, and Dostoyevsky believes that his is an underground man. But I am unsure as to how much suffering one has to under go to be conscious. It seems that Dostoyevsky is miserable. He believes he is ugly, there is something wrong with his liver, he is always alone and he feels inadequate to most people. However I feel that all of these things are self-inflicted, which I can not take to be suffering.
He speaks of suffering from a toothache for a whole month, and enjoying it, “There is pleasure even in a toothache...people don’t suffer in silence, they groan...Those groans are an expression of the sufferer’s pleasure”(24). His groans of pain bring him pleasure which actually doesn’t mean his is suffering. He could easily be put out of his pain but chooses to ‘suffer’. Suffering should be inflicted from an outside source that one can not turn on or off. Much like his liver, he lets the toothache get worse, all for pleasure. Dostoyevsky beings his book by saying his illness is his liver, he knows there is something wrong with it but he refuses to seek treatment out of spite. This spite is supposed to be directed to others, to the world that he in not apart of for he is underground, and he is aware of it, “I know better than anybody I am harming nobody but myself”. Dostoyevsky may let his body be taken over or weakened by his illness but it only sharpens his mind, and a sharpened mind allows him to realize his consciousness gives him pleasure.
The choice to suffer when others are suffering at the will of another force seems to me to be a false showing of consciousness. If one believes they are conscious of their condition, then they will always be so from that point on, renewing their suffering does not make them anymore conscious. I feel that at some point you would become numb to all suffering and perhaps the sharpness of your mind would dull, and soon there would be no way to regain consciousness. But Dostoyevsky does not seems to think along those lines “Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering- that is a fact”(41). I believe he is speaking about himself, because without his suffering he is left with nothing. He is sculpted his life in a way that he suffers at all times. He is mostly alone with only his conscious mind, and he is alone because of his feelings of inadequacy. Because he has been this way for so long, I feel his is numb to a life about ground. Whenever we see him interact with people he immediately regrets it. If he could not suffer, he would not be. And if he is not longer, than neither his is consciousness.
Dostoyevsky suffers because he thinks it will help him remain conscious and underground, but I feel that he had built a life upon intended suffering, which may have come from true suffering, but soon he will no longer feel its effects, and no longer be a thinking man.
The definitive characteristic of life, in my opinion, is the will to live. Life is such a challenging endeavor that every organism would just give up if it were not for that innate desire to exist.
I hate the fact that we feel so strongly compelled to live. I can't stand all those things we feel that aren't connected to any conscious decision; love, fear, jealousy, rage, lust. (Lust may be the worst of all; for something that compels us so powerfully, I can think of few things more meaningless.) I hope that one day, I can evolve enough so that all of these will be the result of a choice, a choice that I have made to reflect my worldview and my goals in life.
It is interesting that ending one's own life prematurely is widely considered to be amoral. In fact, it is illegal everywhere but the two most progressive parts of the world, the Pacific Northwest and the Benelux countries. People in general are horrified by the concept of suicide. This is because, inherently within the decision to choose death over life is the frank and purposeful reflection on the nature of living. This would include reflection on why it is we live, why it is many of us would do unspeakable things in order to continue living, and why it is that death is our greatest fear of all, looming over us our entire lives.
This sort of reflection upon the choice to die leads to reflection upon the choice to live. What quickly becomes obvious is the fact that we never actually made the choice to live. We live out of little more than habit, never stopping to ask ourselves why. Thinking down this train of thought, it becomes difficult to justify all the complex fears and motivations that determine our choices in life. Maybe, when we learn to strip away that innate desire to live (and I personally am not there yet), we will finally reach a point at which we are not slaves to the fact that we will eventually die. Then, with all purpose torn away from life, we will finally be free to imagine our own...
I am here writing because I must tear down a wall. I thought about tearing down an actual wall, but I am tired and an inward journey is needed more than the physical pleasure and dominance over the destroyed wall.
I will start by explaining which wall will be torn down. I had a big issue with Fyodor saying that, "twice two is five." It wasn't clear to me, the message that he was trying to get across. I knew that there was one, and I assumed that I would find it eventually. I believe that I have at least started chiseling away at the monolith that stands before me and maybe even made a small hole so that I can peak at the other side. Perhaps I am thinking too logically about this, but here I go.
"Thinking is a disease, a real actual disease." I will start with those words. He is telling us that the aware man or the underground man is trapped by rules and expectations given to him by everyone. He is forced to live and think within these boundaries. This is the first part that I am unsure about. Mr. Kasprzak once said that our mind is the key, but then wouldn't thinking be the act of turning the key? And thinking is a disease that exists within these walls, but maybe the act of turning the key would better be represented by figuring out both the wall and what is on the other side. So, what is this wall? I would like to think of it as the laws of nature, or rather, what we are led to believe about the laws of nature. We follow them and think within them because we have been taught that they are never wrong. They are two times two being four, and gravity, and the structures of bones. They are unchanging. So if this wall bounds our thought so as to make it a disease, then what is on the other side? Free thought. Free thought is on the other side. Ideas that make two times two equal five and the cure to this disease. It is true imagination unbounded and free from any restraints that society or I might want to use to chain it down.
I once heard a true story about a young doctor. He had a patient that was afflicted with a skin disease that was believed to be incurable. This young doctor refused to accept this diagnosis. Instead of using conventional treatments, the young doctor tried hypnosis and to everyones surprise, it worked. The incurable patient was cured. He repeated this technique to cure other patients. This technique that should not have worked in a room in the underground. Eventually the young doctor went before a board of medical professionals. Each one with more "experience" than the young doctor. They told him that his feats were impossible. Up went the wall that told him, "no," and the young doctor was incapable of curing a patient with hypnosis again.
This doctor was missing this wall that I am so desperately trying to tear down, and the medical board built it up again. His idea to use this type of treatment and what made it work is what lies on the other side of that wall. They are ideas so convoluted that they don't even make sense and are considered to be impossible and their practitioners to be insane, but they are more sane than any of us. They understand everything so deeply that they are able to defy society and the laws of nature that they are led to believe. They can mold those laws into whatever form is needed.
I am re-posting the second entry here, mostly so it won't bother me any more that it's in the wrong place...So:
This is somewhat in conjunction as my Hamlet post, but more about Dostoyevsky and kind of a rant…
Reading about the incident with the officer who picked Dostoyevsky up and moved him aside in Chapter One of Part Two, I am forced to think of the vanity in his outrage. By his own admission, the fact that he wanted to fight the officer and then backed out was the cause of his “boundless vanity.” But that bit he says, “to be brushed aside without being noticed” (130), struck me as really rather vain. Understandable, yes, but I cannot help but wonder if he says all of this in tongue and cheek. If it is, it says a great deal about human weaknesses, if not, then his actions are more unforgiveable than the officer’s.
The thing is that that kind of vanity is very human. It, too, is a wall. Only I cannot help but separate his ‘I’ from mine, and therefore I have a hard time truly understanding him.
The whole event with the officer struck me as very bizarre. I cannot understand his dire need to be apologized to. I’ve reread it about three times now and I am still grasping at straws, as they say. See, I could see if, at the moment the deed was done and Dostoyevsky was offended, he demanded an apology. It was fairly rude, but I do not think it was a slight to his being. However, he says he still feels vengeful two years later. To what end, Mr. Dostoyevsky? I must agree with him that it is for the better he did not send the letter to challenge him with a duel.
Back in Chapter Three of Part One, he spoke of the revenge of the “mouse” who seeks revenge because it was “disgraced” and “humiliated” (96). I think he is even saying that the vengeful man is “the real, normal man” (96). I admit there is some kind of justice in revenge but I have never liked the idea of it. Further, I am baffled by the methods used and the extremes people go to in attempting to achieve it. If Dostoyevsky wishes to instruct this officer of his ignorance, because I would agree that he is rather ignorant, that makes sense to me. I do not think, though, that Dostoyevsky’s breed of revenge in this instance is really revenge at all…
To say a word in his favor though, I thought his reasoning for his ‘revenge,’ “Why must I always get out of his way?” (133) was sound. The irony here is that it is entirely possible that Dostoyevsky wrote this as a type of, to borrow a phrase from Joanna Newsom, “inflammatory writ.” If so, it worked and I took the bait.
In conclusion, the event reminded me of a poem by Stephen Crane we read last year in English:
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Brings me back to the point I made in my Hamlet post about our need to assert our existence to ourselves rather than someone else. If Dostoyevsky was truly mad at the officer, his anguish fell on deaf ears. However, he himself was made aware of, perhaps, some of his weaknesses and his existence.
Shaun Millerick
The Underground Man is victim of his own actions. He suffers most from the fact that he keeps himself contained inside behind his own walls. For whatever reason, whether he is too lazy, or simply doesn't care, like his liver, he is stuck in his own corner and can only entertain himself by reading. But is he alone? I would argue no. He is taking in the knowledge, of the author, and is with the characters in the book. When the Underground man ventures out beyond his he despises most people he comes across, and at the same time fears them. He feels smaller than his colleagues in his department, at times rating himself lower than them. "But whether I despised them or rated them above myself, I dropped my eyes before everyone I came across." This occurs later when the Underground Man can not look prostitute Liza in the eyes. Looking into the eyes of this prostitute, would make him look even worse than her, as he is despicable to have "bought" the girl just 4 nights before. He does not want to come to terms that he himself is despicable to a prostitute. During this time, the Underground Man spoke assured that he was not ashamed of his own poverty. This statement later changed when he stated that he was in fact ashamed. But not of the lack of money that he had, but how poor his character was. When you come up from the Underground your ways are different than those of society. Breaking down the walls, your walls are not easy, and can be a difficult, and can only be worked out through time.
On October 8th, we discussed the definition of what a slave and coward are, as well as what an act of bravery is.
A coward is one who abuses their power. In the modern day world, one must be a coward to be successful. Teachers, coaches, bosses, and leaders are all cowards. They use their power to control people and dictate how they live their lives. Anyone who is civilized is a coward in some part of their lives. The teachers mood can strictly result in one or more students receiving a bad grade on a test or quiz. If the student does not answer the question on the test exactly like the teacher would, they may get points taken off. What if the teachers answer to the question is not completely correct? Doesn’t matter. In my opinion, the grade one receives in each class depends as much on the teacher as the student. If the teacher and student have a good connection or the teacher likes the student, the student is more likely to do well in this teachers’ class than if the teacher does not like the student. That is just a plain fact. No matter how much teachers try not to have a bias, they do. Coaches abuse their power also. How much their players suffer depends more on the coaches mood than anything the players do. If Coach Lathrop in a bad mood, he is much more likely to make us skate sprints than if he is in a lighthearted mood. Bosses are cowards as well. Anything they tell their employees to do, they must do it or they will be fired. How can our society work like this. If a worker and their boss do not get along, the worker may be out of a job and begging for money all in a month’s time. This is something to question in our society, the amount of power teachers, coaches and bosses have over their inferiors. Students, players, employees, and followers are all slaves of cowards. They have no form of individuality and are seen as a number in most situations. Students especially would do almost anything their teachers tell them to do. They will do almost anything to achieve the highest grade. The best students use cheating and memorization as their most important scholastic tools. Grades are given to those who can copy peoples work the best. In English, they memorize people’s theories about symbolism and re-write them on tests and it is seen as good. How is this good? Someone who reads a book and thinks of his/her own ideas and theories should be graded higher, but that is why formal education is wrong. It rewards those who attain high grades, at any cost. In large high schools and colleges, most teachers do not even know the names of some of their students. That is why I am a big fan of small schools, where personality is valued as much as achievement. Slaves are victims of conformity. They give in to society because they realize they must be slaves in the early parts of their lives to move up the rank and become cowards and become….successful. Our society is made up of nothing but slaves, cowards, and brave people. The people who are the bravest are the ones who can take up the pen without any worry of what people think of them or their work. They are the ones who are superior. Usually seen as outcasts, these are the brilliant people. Writers and artists are brave. Artists of all fields, any field. Taking up the pen, paintbrush, pencil, hockey stick, or a baseball bat is an act of bravery.
Dostoyevsky insists that twice two can equal whatever you want it to; he suggests 5. We’ve been taught that 2 x 2= 4 but in reality, it’s all been made up. The math that we know isn’t necessarily exactly defined; it’s a system made to make things easier. What Dostoyevsky argues is that, why does it have to be like that? I personally don’t like to think beyond the common truths like 2 x 2= 4. It’s just easier on the mind. It kind of hurts my head to try and wrap my mind around the fact that everything is really nothing. These names we came up with for certain things are just that, made up; such as a pen. When giving names to things, a pen could have been called a table and vice versa. Just think what it’d be like if you were to switch those two names. Next time you’re in need of a writing utensil imagine saying, “I need to find a table so I can write my essay, then I’m going to sit at the pen while I do it.” It’s strange to think about it that way; that everything that we know and teach to our small children is just made up. The only reason for twice two equaling four is because long ago someone decided that and now it’s just become common knowledge. The underground man tries to see things in ways that the “men of action” don’t. He distinguishes himself from them by thinking outside of the set guidelines, because these “guidelines” were made by previous “men of action”. The “men of thought” think closer to how the underground man thinks, they try to prove the “guidelines” wrong by attempting to discover new meanings and different ways of accomplishing certain things. The underground man, however, diverges even more from that by trying to disprove the “guidelines” and thus proving that they aren’t set; they’re not something 100% proven and 100% correct. In doing this he tears down the walls that surround him because he feels the need to show that they are insignificant and not something that everyone is contained by. Although he tears down these walls, he puts up new ones. New ones that are constructed of the ideas and thoughts that he’s come up with, that he now wants to disprove this time.
What is the Underground Man searching for?
The Underground Man is looking for purpose. It is this lack of purpose that keeps him Underground. He is underground because he has nothing, no one to live for. He cannot find a reason to come above ground. Does he even want to? I would think that he does, that he really suffers in Underground. Then again, we know how much likes to complain...
What is the Underground? Is it conciousness? If so, then it must imply solitude, for there aren't a great many conscious people out there. The Underground man is always alone. Even when he is in a crowd. Was Thourou in the Underground as well? Are all enlightened thinkers? Is the Underground simply solitude? No, because you can be by yourself and be perfectly at peace.
Does the Underground man consider his Notes his Purpose? If he does, he must find their message and apply it to his life, which is in shambles. Why does he detest his peers so much? It must be for their lack of consciousness, because, you can't be Underground unless you re aware the Underground exists and you are there.
Being Underground must be a state of discontentment. Discontentment with yourself, with society, the world around you. To be Underground you must be infuriated by others and seclude yourself from them. But, even then you are infuriated by your own presence as well. It must be a discontentment you cannot escape and that you eventually are desensitized towards. You still know it is there, but you simply do not care anymore. To be Underground is to be apathetic.
Dostoyevsky is a very intricate and difficult author to be reading. His message to his readers is frankly unknown. He is a man of many ideas, and this creates contradicting concepts and a realization that not even he really knows who he is, or what he stands for. In this way however, we can all relate to the Underground Man. He is searching, contradicting, and thinking to reach a happy medium with himself. Even this is one of his many contradictions. He tells us that "to think too much is a disease." Through his compilations of thoughts and ideas, we discover the Underground Man. He is lost, secluded and alone in a world that he doesn't quite understand. With all this said, so far I like the underground man. He i confused and not quite sure what to make of the situations and person that he is. The ideas he proposes and lessons he preaches may seem preposterous and absurd to us, but he is being honest to himself and what he believes. He is arrogant and self-centered, but at least he doesn't pose to be someone he's not. I respect him for this because at least he is being truthful and honest. I liked the passage about the person who has the toothache and continuously whines about it. He complains to his family and peers all day, but it doesn't resolve his misery. When it comes down to it, man does it for attention. We all can admit to doing someone of this nature in our lives. It is human nature to act this way, as long as we are aware of it and conscious of our being. Dostoyevsky has a lot to offer us, as long as we read intentionally and pick up on the ideas that we believe to be true. Afterall, if anything to learn from Dostoyevsky, it should be to think for ourselves, and find our purpose through digging into our souls.
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