“Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: An Anatomy of Human Self-Destructiveness (Part 1)

What is the cause of human self-destructiveness? According to Dostoyevkys’s underground man, this “most advantageous advantage” is designed to save freedom from the constraints of rationality, and vitality from the quiescence that follows success. Yet he himself finds freedom only in spite and fantasy, while in real life he oscillates between failed and humiliating attempts to dominate or ingratiate himself with other people. Wes & Erin discuss “Notes from the Underground,” and its agonized rumination on whether freedom can be reconciled with love, individuality with virtue, and action with reflection. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: What is the cause of human self destructiveness? According to Dostoevsky's Underground man, our most advantageous advantage is designed to save freedom from the constraints of rationality and vitality from the quiescence that follows success. Yet he himself finds freedom only in spite and fantasy. In real life, he oscillates between failed and humiliating attempts to dominate or ingratiate himself with other people. Today we discuss Notes from the Underground and its agonized rumination on whether freedom can be reconciled with love, individuality with virtue, and action with reflection. This is Wes Alwan. And this is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Erin, you know, I had actually never read this book. 1:25 Erin: Neither had I. 1:26 Wes: And I didn't know what I was getting into when I suggested it. Why did I suggest it? Do you remember? Did I tell you why I suggested this? 1:34 Erin: We were looking for short fiction, right? Maybe we were due for a novella. Is that it? 1:39 Wes: No, I mean, I wasn't actually actively searching for something. I came across a mention of this, I think, but I can't remember where I came across it. But in any case, I'm a big fan of the Brothers Karamazov, which I've read a few times, and we did a live show on it for the Partially Examined Life. And I thought, wow, it'd be interesting to do to see what it's like when Dostoevsky writes something short. But there's a way in which this doesn't quite feel short. And perhaps that's because of this division into two parts, the second part of which is an actual story, the first part of which is just this philosophical ranting, let's say. And the character, the Persona, the narrator who's doing that ranting is not an attractive guy. And you have to live with him for what, I don't know. Is it 120 pages that you have to be with this guy? 2:33 Erin: Seems like 240, but yeah. 2:35 Wes: Yeah, so it definitely feels longer than it actually is. What was your overall general reaction to this? 2:43 Erin: Disgust? Anger. I mean, it was fascinating. I particularly like. I liked the second half, though. That is what made me angriest. I also hadn't read it. And I thought that I had. I've read, I guess then the Idiot and not this. I'd gotten the two confused. So I've read the Idiot, Crime and Punishment and Brothers K. I guess I'm the idiot in that case. I don't know. 3:06 Wes: So idiot's a little bit longer than this, but it's protagonist is a nicer guy, let's put it that way. 3:13 Erin: Well, and this is, you know, the. The forerunner, I'm assuming, to what's his name? Raskalnikov. Raskolnikov. Yeah. 3:21 Wes: And there's a bit of Ivan in here too, I think. 3:24 Erin: You know, I'm glad I read it. It felt like a slog. The other element to this is, I think I told you that I've been sick with. I've had this. This really bad cold that won't go away, which is why I might sound a little bit nasal to our listeners. I'm not sure how this is going to come out, but I've had a sinus infection and two ear infections and one ear in particular is in a lot of pain. So as he was talking about pain people have in their toothaches, I was. It was making me angry. 3:52 Wes: Are you. Are you getting pleasure out of moaning? 3:55 Erin: I don't moan, but I don't get pleasure out of my. My ear again. I was on a plane yesterday, so I'm. It's. It's really aggravated right now. I'm on antibiotics. It's fine. But. Yeah, no, I just. I see his. I see his point in certain instances, but I. There's going to be a lot of subjectivity in this episode. I can feel it. Me subjectively arguing with Dostoevsky, which I always say that I. Or not with. With the Underground man, which I always say that I don't enjoy doing when I actually do. So maybe I'm. I'm perverse too. 4:26 Wes: Well, I think I've been induced with a little perverseness because I think when you were talking about your different ailments, I was thinking of what Oscar Wilde would say. 4:34 Erin: What? 4:35 Wes: Yeah, like what's his quip about the death of parents? The death of one parent is a misfortune, but the death of the second parent is a. I always forget how that ends. 4:45 Erin: That's from. 4:46 Wes: Which is telling. 4:47 Erin: Importance of Being Earnest. Yeah. It seems like carelessness. Is that it? 4:52 Wes: Yes, 4:55 Erin: I know. Too many infections. 4:56 Wes: That's a very unsympathetic reaction. But I'm going to blame it on the Underground Man. Or is he unsympathetic I don't know. But I think one of the challenges of this is going to be connecting the first part and the second part. And I think in typical Dostoevsky style, there's a lot going on thematically and then with philosophy explicitly brought into the mix, but it's not all that clear how it's all related and how much care he's putting into a tight relationship between all these things. You just get the sense he just throws everything into a bucket and then, you know, it gets mixed up and somehow it works. But he's not the most. He's not the most careful writer. Right. I think he was with the Brothers Karamazov. He was essentially dictating it and working against deadlines, trying to get it out into a magazine as quickly as possible. I get the sense that's part of what's so, you know, that's what in some sense is so appealing about his writing is the. Is the lack of. I think there's almost a lack of inhibition, but gives his characters a feeling of being real. They're not overly crafted, which is interesting because, you know. You know, you always have the suspicion that these types of characters. There's a lot of Dostoevsky in him. And I think what I know of his personal life, he was kind of a weird, unpleasant guy, at least in some contexts. Probably read some contemporaneous accounts of what. How people. What people actually thought of him. And so I think, yeah, I say that it's interesting because the. This underground man is all about inhibition. In the first part of the novella, we hear about his spitefulness and inhibition and envy and pride and vengeful fantasies, and then also a philosophical theory regarding freedom which is somehow connected to that. 6:51 Erin: Yeah. I think part of the difficulties that you're describing about pinning down this person, I think, you know, I think we can attribute them to realism. I think we can attribute them to Dostoevsky style. But also he builds in a lot of inherent contradictions into the character. Right. I mean, this is a very unreliable narrator who constantly contradicts himself or says, no, that's, you know, I was lying just then, you know, or. I don't actually believe any of this, but I think. I think inhibition is an interesting word. It's not one I would use because I think he's the narrator in the first part. He's describing all of this, you know, this freedom to do bad and everything, but ultimately what it is, is seems freedom to freedom not to act. So I think of him as a very well, you're right. Yeah. No, he's an inhibited person. Yes, I agree. How do you think that's distinct from the second part? Like, why do you think the two parts aren't working? 7:42 Wes: Well, I do think they work together. Ultimately. It just, it wasn't easy for me to figure out. There's not. The connection isn't all that obvious to me. But between. So in the first part, so I'll say inhibition, right, because he is stuck in fantasy land and he calls himself inhibited, as opposed to the man of action. In the beginning. And that's the very first part of the first part one, chapter one, he's contrasting the man of action with the intelligent man, the man who's too conscious, self conscious, such that he can't become anything. And when he feels slighted, he can't act. Because unlike the intelligent man, he is full of doubt. Sorry. Unlike the man of action, he is full of doubt. The man of action can view any conflict through the lens of justice and automatically sides with himself. And so if he wants to take vengeance, he can just automatically take vengeance. It sounds a lot. There's a lot in here that sounds like Nietzsche. And obviously this has very much influenced Nietzsche in both its style and content. Right, because it's the. This uninhibited man, this man of action, sounds like, you know, the Nietzsche master or blond beast who is running around killing peasants and not feeling bad about it. They are, they are. They exist before the advent of conscience, before the advent of morality in our sense. So. But I see why you're puzzled at me saying he's inhibited because he does things. He's impulsive in a lot of ways and self. Self indulgent. And the impulsivity. Part of the impulsivity, right, involves going to prostitutes, but for the most part he was drunk. Those are his two. In the first part, those are his two occupations, reading and going to prostitutes. So he lives in this world of fantasy. And when he steps outside of this world of fantasy, it's generally. It sounds like for prostitution, which he doesn't explicitly refer to, I don't think in the first part, but talks about a filthy vice and wanting to go unseen and all of these other stuff. So you get the gist in the first part that he's visiting brothels. 9:58 Erin: Maybe this doesn't bode well for the rest of our conversation, but you're absolutely right. I was thinking uninhibited when you had said that, even though I was saying inhibited, I thought that you meant uninhibited Oh, I see. Yeah, I'm just being a little slow. Slow as we're getting started. But I think you're absolutely right. That is how I would characterize him fundamentally. But I do think that my mistake does point to this compulsive need that he has in the second half to ostensibly to exert a kind of control or mastery over others. He doesn't understand how to have real relationships with others. He wants to be worshiped and adored and admired. But I would think that the psychological motivation for these encounters is more of he's deliberately enraging people or committing social faux pas or somewhere in between as a way to confirm his own biases against people, or as a way to be hated by people and thereby justify his own retreat from society, it seems. So he goes out, I think, into the world in the second half as a way to retreat deeper into his own solipsism and into his inhibitions further, if you will. Because this is also, what, 15 years before. The events he describes predate the writing of this text by 15 years. And at this point, he seems to have made a full retreat into his underground, his hidey hole, whatever you want to call it. His man cave has been his man cave. Right, right. Where he. He trolls on Reddit and. Yeah. And has retired also. So he's not even engaging in work. 11:43 Wes: Well, why is it called. Yeah, why is it? Why underground? I think this is a question that we'll probably come back to as we go through the novella. 11:51 Erin: But is this a reference. This is a direct reference to the. This is a direct response, I think, to the Crystal Palace. 11:59 Wes: So the Crystal palace is the way he describes this idealized realm where, what is it, morality reigns. Is that the way to put it? 12:10 Erin: Yes. And this sort of utopian ideal of acting in. So this is from Nikolai Chernyshevsky's what Is To Be Done, which is a utopian novel which advocates for enlightened self interest, I think, is the. And rational. Rational egoism. And I believe there's a specific line from that book which I can no longer find, in which a character says, you know, come out from your. From your underground, or something like that. And this, in a way, is like a direct response. This is sort of the opposite of the ideals espoused in that novel. Dostoevsky is responding to them from the position of the underground man as a. I see. Yeah. As a counter to these ideas, but I don't know enough about enlightened self interest to. To speak on it, other than the ways in which it's attacked in Notes from Underground. I don't know enough about Chernyshevsky's novel. I haven't read it though it's, it's inspired Lenin and you know, a lot of, a lot of Russian thought. 13:16 Wes: Yeah. So this first comes up in chapter seven, actually. So here's. This is just a few pair. Well, this is all what you say. New economic relations will be established, already made and worked out with mathematical exactitude so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the Crystal Palace will be built then. In fact, those will be the halcyon days. Of course, there is no guaranteeing, this is my comment, that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then. And for that will one have. For what will one have to do when everything will be calculated according to tables. But on the other hand, everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course, boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking gold pins into people. It's a reference to something earlier, Cleopatra. But all that does not matter. So, okay, so I see the note here in this Constance Garnett edition that I have the Crystal palace figures and the picture of the future socialist society. What's to be done? And this is a recurrent thing with Dostoevsky not liking socialism. And it's in the Brothers Karamazov as well. And it's all over this. And he's associating socialism with, interestingly he's associating a bunch of different philosophical theories. So one of them is this socialist idea, the ideal of a socialist utopia. But another one sounds a lot like Plato. So he attacks in chapter three, maybe he really gets into it in chapter seven. So it's in chapter seven that he brings up this idea that human beings only do nasty things because they don't know their own real normal interests. And this is an echo of Plato's idea that no human being knowingly does evil. But if we knew that to know what the good is is to be motivated to do the good. And that's the idea that he's going to challenge here. But he associates it with conflicts between free will and determinism. He doesn't. One of the theses, one of the underground man's theses, is that human beings are self destructive just because it can be a manifestation of freedom. That if we are so, if we are thinking about the good in terms of as something that's accessible by reason, something that we can reason our way to. Then in a way we're bound by the laws of rationality and we're not free to do the thing that we seem seemingly decide to do because we've deliberated about it. And that the only way to rebel against that is to do something that is not in our best interest or not, you know, isn't explicitly about our good. Something that is self destructive. Which is an odd idea because traditionally in early modern philosophy, say, including for instance Leibniz's theodicy, but all over the place that there's this idea and I think it's in Augustine, St. Augustine as well. But the idea is that you can. That there's a sense in which rationality is the only way to be free, which is to say to be unfree is to be a slave to one's desires and to be, you know, again, we can think about this in terms of determinism. We're, you know, we're material beings in a world of physics and chemistry and it's perhaps the case that we're marionettes because of that, that everything that we do is determined by that. But if there is any freedom, according to many philosophical schools of thought, it comes about by way of our capacity to be conscious of the good and conscious of reasons that in a way is a way out. Even though reasons are binding, reasons limit our freedom in some sense, or they seem to. The traditional idea is, in fact they are the only way out, they are the only path to freedom. But for the underground men, in fact, these reasons and rationality are bonds and they're associated with determinism because apparently he's associating them with scientific determinism where we figure out the correct course of action according to say, mathematical tables or our scientific understanding of what's in our own best interest. And if we do that, we don't really have any choice in the end. I don't know if I've put that 17:38 Erin: very well, but yes, definitely, I think you're exposing for me what's so difficult about this word rational or reason. In the same way, I think consciousness is a word that's very tricky in this book because when he says. When he says consciousness and that consciousness itself is a kind of a disease, I think what he actually means is self consciousness. I wonder if the same thing can be applied to this rationality or that reason. The kind of reason he's talking about is actually far, far more narrow than the word actually suggests. He sees, you know, sort of scientific rationality on the one hand and chaos, disorder and destruction on the other. And says the only way to escape these things are through chaos, destruction, disorder, sticking gold pins in someone. Right? So this, this example that he gives, that Cleopatra just stuck gold pins in the breasts of her servant girls just for the pure pleasure of watching them scream, right. With, with pain, like she, she derived some satisfaction out of this. I'm assuming this story is apocryphal. I don't know. So that the opposite of this scientific rationalism would be, you know, in air quotes I'm using that incorrectly, would be chaos, destruction, disorder. But you know, maybe, maybe his terminology is wrong, maybe his thinking is wrong. I mean, I agree when he says on, in chapter eight, he says reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature. While will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is of the whole human life, including reason and all the impulses. I would agree with that. But I think that we don't just have the impulse to do wrong, we also have. We can also exert our will beyond reason for irrational impulses which have positive ends. He seems to be taking only the negative view. Am I wrong there? Like, you know, you could argue that maybe love is irrational or that, you know, for some reason what comes to mind is someone who, like in the Aurora, Colorado shooting, you know, the mass shooter who killed everyone. Right. There were all those, those boys, teenage boys that were on dates with their girlfriends who threw themselves on top of their girlfriends, saving their girlfriends lives and they were murdered. I think four of them were murdered. Right. I'm assuming that in the kind of reason he's talking about, whatever it is, rational egoism or whatever they would, that would be acting in one's. Against one's own self interest to die for someone else. 20:12 Wes: Yeah, I think this, I think this is good because it, you know, I had this thought and connecting the first and the second part, the second part. In the second part, he's experimenting with the idea that human relationships, including love, are in fact the only way to gain freedom. And he has a germ. He never says it explicitly, but he seems to have a germ of that idea and even says that to Liza, the prostitute. He will basically say to her, you are in bondage and the way out is to get married and to be in love. That's the way out. It's not advice he ever explicitly gives to them, to himself. And it's obviously not advice he can take. As we find out, the second part, the attempt to leave his fantasy world and to find a version of freedom which is not fantasy. Because that for him amounts to what freedom is. Right. Just living in a fantasy world is freedom. And his attempt to find this other form of freedom, which I think is set off as the. In opposition to the fantasy version of freedom is. Is love. So that, and that attempt, Sorry, is. Doesn't go well for him for obvious reasons. 21:24 Erin: Right, right. Well, yeah, so I, I just, I think that I want to make the connection with consciousness and self consciousness and maybe, maybe this is just a, you know, too obvious of a distinction. Right. But it seems that the reason he's talking about that he wants to fight against, you know, what he's describing is like a tantrum, like a self interested tantrum that where you're reacting against reason, there are lot people react against or people do things that are beyond reason or even against reason for the sake of others that involve emptying the self, reaching out beyond the self. Even when you think about something like, you know, faith, faith that is beyond reason. Right. Like faith in a higher power that's putting trust in something beyond the self. Whereas anything that he sees as anti rational is ultimately solipsistic. And about, ultimately it's about exerting one's will over and above other people or other, or objects. Right. Even if it's just like smashing the crystal palace or you know, going to one of those places where you, where you throw axes at things or destroy things with baseball bats in order to get out your aggression. Right. That seems to be the only anti rational impulse that he's interested in exploring, which is a destructive selfish one. Yeah. So I mean it's difficult. So these things are weedy, Right. Because I think we do have more in us than the rational, but more also than he is willing to discuss. 22:46 Wes: Yeah. I think part of the complication is that if we are determinists in the modern scientific sense, right. And we see ourselves as the product of the fact that we're material beings run by physics and laws of nature, as he puts it, and he uses this phrase the laws of nature over then we have no freedom to act. And that lack of freedom manifests itself as just all these natural sentiments that we have. And desires were driven by desire, for instance, including altruistic desires, including not just aggression, but by love. All of, all of these things could be relegated to a deterministic picture of what it is to be human and then what is it to be free on that picture? For him, the reason why it involves self. Well, okay, so then there's the one way out of that deterministic picture, as I mentioned, is to think of rationality as the key to being free. So one deliberates rationally and that includes being attentive to what is good for you. And then one can do the thing that is good for you. And the rebellion for him is to do something that's not good for you. And then the question that you're asking is, well, why can't love be just as much a, a rebellion? And the other question is do we need, do we need a rebellion at all? But yeah, so I think we get all these different, we get all these different varieties of potential freedom. Being self destructive or running out and trying to be spiteful towards people or being loving. 24:28 Erin: The rebellion seems to me to be from people who say that you're a machine, right? You are just these, these chemicals and you know, this he says a piano key or an organ stop. And your circumstances just play on you. And they make you, you know, they make you jump or do various things according to the laws of nature. So the rebellion is against people who would want to think us a machine. And so I wonder if, I mean, he doesn't address this, but I wonder if the underground man would, would say that religion too treats humans as, as machines and that therefore this, you know, the only way to rebel is to have the machine break down or to make it, you know, to make HAL turn on you instead of doing your bidding. You know, Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. So would he critique the Platonic suggestion that. Would he, would he critique morality and say that morality just turns us into do gooding machines or. 25:30 Wes: I don't know enough about this idea and that's the one that I'm calling odd, but actually now I'm reminded of Blood Meridian novel. We did a Partially Examined Life show on where this sort of idea is at play as well. The idea that morality as a system of rules based on reasons is just confining and makes freedom impossible. When again, the traditional philosophical view is that morality just is freedom, that is, and being reasonable just is freedom. The argument here is no, that's not the case. And in fact not only does it not free us from determinism, it is of a kind with determinism because it's deterministic forces in science that tell us what's good for us. Ultimately, I think the idea is, so maybe there's a kind of moral naturalism to this. All we have to do is figure out all the laws of nature and by doing that we Know what's good for human beings and then we are bound just to do that. So rational freedom just collapses back into scientific determinism. I think that's the idea. And all that's left for us is to rebel. Because once you have this conflation of determinism with a concern for one's own good, then it seems like self destructiveness is the only way out. But again, I think the novel, clearly the thesis of the novel is that he's wrong about that and that love ultimately is the way out. But he ignores that. 26:58 Erin: Yeah, that's good. That helps me understand. I'm looking to it when he actually explicitly lists the advantages that reason in his estimation works towards. And he says they're prosperity, wealth, freedom and peace. So I was wondering if freedom was in there. And it is. So, you know, he's advocating freedom from freedom. This is very, you know, two plus two equals five, of course, immediately makes me think Orwell. And now, now I'm realizing he even mentions that. 27:26 Wes: Right. Sometimes it's pretty. It's nice to make two plus two equals five. 27:30 Erin: Yes, exactly. 27:31 Wes: Brings up that idea. 27:32 Erin: Yeah, yeah. So Freedom from Freedom is another possibly Orwellian ancestor of the underground man. 27:41 Wes: Sounds like a country song. Freedom from Freedom. 27:48 Erin: I think. Yeah. I'd like freedom for that kind of freedom. 27:52 Wes: Right. Freedom means driving a massive pickup truck and doing deer hunting or I don't know, what other writing facile associations can I make with that? 28:06 Erin: Terrible songs with simplistic chord progressions. Yeah, 28:12 Wes: yeah. So maybe we should backtrack a little bit too, to this idea. You know, the famous first lines, which I think I had seen a reference to this and then I wanted to remind myself and opened it up and saw the first few lines. I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased and I'm like, wow. Yeah, let's read this next. This will be fun. But he associates this position that he's in as this spiteful, sickly man with consciousness, which as you point out, it's probably better described as self consciousness. And that includes for him being capable of aesthetic and moral refinement, being especially intelligent. He had been a good student and that was kind of his only way out of being socially alienated. I think he associates this intelligence and self consciousness and inhibition. He associates that kind of lack of freedom with science. You can see the connection between these two ideas. The idea that concern with morality inhibits freedom, science inhibits freedom. And then his own Intelligence and level of refinement and consciousness is an inhibition of freedom. In fact, it's a disease. 29:28 Erin: This is insufferable. I think he demonstrates, especially in the latter half of the novel, that he's not as intelligent as. Or rather Dostoevsky demonstrates for us, Right. That he's not as intelligent as he thinks he is. But, you know, I'm very taken with this idea that he's. That he's used to comfort himself, that self consciousness produces inertia. I mean, it's, you know, I think it's true on its face, right. That any kind of self consciousness impedes action, but he takes it as itself a sign of his own intelligence and therefore of his own superiority. And he wants to say at once that he's, you know, a mouse and not a man, that he's. He's not superior because of his inability to act. And yet that inability to act is itself a marker of intelligence, which is itself a marker of his superiority above others. Right. So there's a. There's a circular logic. He'll also argue the other way and say that his inability. Or maybe I already said that, but. Right. Like at first he says intelligence produces inertia, therefore not doing anything is a sign of intelligence. And then he says that inertia is itself a sign of intelligence as well. He argues it in both directions. I'm trying to. I'm trying to say. 30:35 Wes: Right. 30:36 Erin: And you know, and he argues, he argues that he's a characteristic man of his age, that the 19th century man is also plagued by this, which is in itself perhaps a contradiction, unless he thinks of himself as being the one man of his own age who's, you know, who's also somehow the prototypical man. But he says in the first section, yes, a man in the 19th century must and morally ought to be preeminently a characterless creature. A man of character, an active man, is preeminently a limited creature. This, of course, put me in mind of our frequent discussions of Hedda Gabler. Right. And the idea that you remain in the. Yeah, you remain in the. The realm of all possibilities are open to you if you don't act. 31:24 Wes: Right. 31:24 Erin: But this is so striking coming from someone who is sitting in his. His underground hole, right. Doing nothing, saying that a man who is capable of action is. Is limited, you know, So, I mean, this man does nothing all day but sit and dream and then write this manifesto, which is in itself an argument against. Right. He's actually accomplishing something by writing this. He says he does nothing but he's writing this. So in a way it's. It's a sort of. The entire novella is a self contradiction. But I mean, what do we. What more can we say about this idea of limitation in action or through action? 32:07 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting idea. So. And again, that's the question is where freedom lies. So the people he's calling direct persons of action are the real normal man as opposed to what he is, which is the retort made man, which I love that phrase, the retort made man, that is his antithesis and acutely conscious mouse. So obviously he's the one who's impotent and inhibited. And you have all these other real normal men running around doing what they want, like the Zverkovs, as we'll find out, being active in the world. And that seems to be another picture of freedom. But on the other hand, one might think of that kind of freedom as just people behaving instinctually and without any self conscious and therefore being cogs in the deterministic machine of reality of not obtaining any freedom at all. In that way they're more active, they're less inhibited, but their freedom is an illusion. So I think everywhere you turn, freedom is foreclosed. And as you pointed out, I think the fundamental idea is that the realm of ultimate freedom is fantasy, which is, I think, what the underground is. It's. It's a fantasy world in which one actually does nothing but daydream. He daydream, you know, he has all these fantasies about being the hero and riding in on a white horse and all that ridiculous stuff that he's gotten from himself from reading books. But on the other hand, he's going to explore the idea that writing and fantasy can be turned into something therapeutic. So in the last chapter of the first part he essentially says, well, let me try to tell this story. Maybe that'll be helpful. How does he put it? He's going to basically experiment with telling the truth. So he'll start out the chapter by saying chapter 11 in the first part, it's better to do nothing to stay in the conscious inertia of the underground. But he says, no, actually I'm thirsting for something different. I don't believe what I just wrote. As you pointed out, he's always contradicting himself, saying he doesn't believe it. And then he has this part where he imagines the readers attacking him, which he does frequently. We're all brought into this story, he imagines us attacking him and then he says, well, why am I writing as if the readers are addressing me back? And then he'll say part of that, I mean, part of that is just because he's being pompous. But part of it is that he wants to remember things that he's too afraid to tell himself. Which is to say he wants to use the fantasy of a reader as something like a therapist. Right. I can't tell this to myself, but maybe I can tell it to another person. He's going to experiment to see if he can tell the whole truth. Yes, true autobiography is impossible. And it may even be the case that he's going to exaggerate all the bad things that he did out of vanity. Right. So we can't even necessarily believe that he's being as terrible as he says he is in his story. But perhaps there will be relief in writing, especially for this one memory that haunts him. So the interesting thing here, he's read a lot of novels. At the end of this he'll tell us a novel should really have a proper hero. But I'm a terrible person. I have all the makings of an anti hero. So why. It's just not such a fun story to read. But it's interesting that the writing a novel or novella is an exercise in going into a fantasy world. And he's several, you know, several times he's going to blame the world of books and ideas and man's, the advancement of culture to a certain point with putting kind of trapping people in a fantasy world. But this novella in particular is experimenting with the idea that some sort of brutal self confession and honesty in which one comes across terribly and is an anti hero, that that somehow can be therapeutic for the writer even if it's not so fun for the reader. And so that, you know, that gives us another path towards freedom. There's love, but then there's also the potential for a therapeutic path. And the therapeutic path still goes inward in a sense. Right. It's still an exploration. It's not trying to make us less conscious, it's trying to make us more conscious. Right. If we're doing actual therapy, maybe even making things that are unconscious, conscious. And the goal is a certain type of freedom to gain a certain type of freedom. And the freedom to be gained is typically love of some sort. The freedom to love that's being inhibited by one's hang ups. Now this therapy session of course doesn't work. 37:01 Erin: It ends tragically, I was going to say. 37:04 Wes: And then he tells us, you know, he tells us off and tells us, us we're all essentially in the same boat at the end. We'll have to go into that, into detail in the second part. 37:14 Erin: But yeah, yeah, this is interesting because it seems that from something you said before, it seems that he's motivated by self punishment in pretty much all of the actions that he takes. With the exception perhaps of writing this, though there is an element of that as well. The idea that he wants the reader to attack him or is anticipating the reader's attack. But I like this idea of the writing of the book as a, as a therapy session which maybe then escapes the continual pattern of looking for punishment from the world and then being satisfied when he receives it. It seems that this as conceived as a therapy session is the one act which is, which could be redemptive rather than self punishing. And then at the end we find that he's been cut off by, by the Dostoevsky figure, you know, who, who also is sort of like, well, he goes on, but we don't need to read any more of this. The therapist walks away from the session before the time is up or something, or says, I have to drop you as a patient because you're too depressing. But yes, and also he's obviously learned nothing from his past mistakes, but his ability to sort of recognize in the present the mistakes of the past is, is, is also not, not allowed to him. So, you know, but, but I'm interested in this idea that all that, all of his, his actions that his, he's expressing a desire at times to dominate people, to lord things over people, to be like the Cleopatra sticking pins in. But it seems that ultimately he wants to be both Cleopatra and the, the servant girls who get the pins stuck in them. Right? He, he, he has this extreme desire to punish himself. And I think ultimately, like he seems one of the reasons why this is so, so painful to read is because he obviously hates himself so much. Right? He routinely puts himself in situations where he's going to be punished or humiliated and then use that as, as sort of ammunition against the world and in favor of his continual retreat from it. 39:28 Wes: Right. 39:28 Erin: But in this first part, you know, talking about being a man of his age, like, I think, I think the, the idea that he's a, he's a bureaucrat in a ministry in Petersburg and he talks repeatedly about how Petersburg has all of the necessary characteristics of a place that would produce a man like him. You know, thinking about why this is, you know, this is a place where these bureaucrats seem to routinely take Bribes. Right. So there's a. This is a denatured corrupt society. This is a government that's not functioning properly. I mean, that's not unusual. But this seems to be particularly. A particularly bad instance of a sort of governmental charade. Right. And which outward appearance contradicts reality. There's a lot of empty show that takes the place of real action. So there's no real government activity going on. It seems a real legislation, no reform, what have you. Everything is about back scratching, paying people off and not really doing any work, just sitting in an office and receiving a salary for nothing. Right. And I'm wondering about that, connecting that, and I'm sorry to be throwing this to you when it's a half baked thought of mine. Connecting a sort of charade society. So say Petersburg being the, you know, if we want to take Dostoevsky's word for it or the underground man's, the ultimate example of a society that's sort of all show and no substance. Connecting that to the magical thinking of the underground man in which the mechanism for his self punishment seems to be to imagine that everyone in the world is against him, that everyone hates him, and then getting, then inducing behavior in other people to reinforce that belief. Is this an outward extension of Petersburg or is this a. Is what he's doing in an almost kind of perverse animation of the world a sort of like negative re. Enchantment of the world to try and get it so that everyone is against him? And is that almost like a. Like a, you know, the opposite of redemption? Do you know what I'm trying to say? Like. Like he's trying, he's trying to make things have meaning again even if the meaning is that everything has no meaning and everyone's against him. Do you know what I mean? 41:46 Wes: Yeah. 41:47 Erin: Or am I wrong to be connecting these things? 41:49 Wes: No, I think, I mean, that sounds right. I think. Well, he lives, obviously he lives in a society in which status is very important and it's manifested even in what people do when they're walking by each other on the sidewalk. Who's gonna move to the side? 42:05 Erin: Oh, this is the problem. This is the one thing. 42:08 Wes: Yes. 42:09 Erin: Oh my gosh. I was gonna say, like. No, no woman who, who reads this could not be moved by that particular instance. Right. Because I feel like this is particularly. I talk about this with women all the time, especially shorter. I'm. I'm on the shorter side. And for. I'm not telling you, I guess I'm telling the listeners, but I'm on the shorter Side. And oftentimes people don't even see me. And I feel very much like this. Really sorry to interrupt with everyone does it. I just. I feel like there are just people who walk around there like they own the sidewalk. And then there are people like me who get out of everyone's way and then feel really resentful. And then sometimes, no, I don't. 42:50 Wes: I don't get out of anybody. 42:51 Erin: Barge into people. 42:52 Wes: The underground man thing. But I'd stay on the right side of the sidewalk. See, I try to follow the rules. 42:56 Erin: I do too. 42:57 Wes: But if someone's gonna cross and then it's. It's a showdown. If someone wants to walk on the left side of the sidewalk, then it's a showdown. 43:05 Erin: I'll see. What happens is I'm always walking on the sidewalk and then there are always like three guys walking abreast, taking up the whole sidewalk, who then I have to move out of their way. And then sometimes I'll just like walk right at them in this game of chicken. Exactly what he's describing. And I've. I've actually had men like almost knock me to the ground and then be surpr. Surprised. 43:23 Wes: Yeah. No, I mean, it happens. 43:25 Erin: No such thing as chivalry anymore. 43:29 Wes: Yeah, I experience the same thing. And then I wonder if I'm crazy. Am I crazy? I don't know if you ever have that feeling. But is this actually happening? Or am I the one who's just being too inflexible here? Or are people just really, really unaware of what they're doing? But yeah, so there is that. So that I think is in the domain of politeness and considerateness of others. And it's hard not to be a bit paranoid. I think most people are probably just going about their lives and not being. They're not just not being especially careful and they're not paying much attention to others. And that's really the way this all unfolds. But it's hard not to look at that and say, well, you're offending me. You're not respecting me. And for him, I think it's even more. It's more intense because it's a more stratified society in some ways, and lower ranked people are actually expected to step aside for the higher rank people, which really bothers him. And he himself was a good student and he had been set up with a promising job. But partly because he wanted to cut off all the people he had gone to school with, he turned down that job and took a job that wasn't as good. Which one gets the sense that this is a big part of the problem. He doesn't feel successful, and his pride has been wounded, has been injured by that. And so he's obsessed, in a way, with his low status in society, and he can't get beyond that. So all the things that he does revolve around status and pride and, you know, wanting to get people to notice him, wanting to get in. Wanting to be the one who doesn't have to step aside and, and wanting to get in fights and challenge people to duels and, and. And whatever it is. He essentially feels humiliated, but humiliated by himself. 45:31 Erin: I mean, he's, he's done this to himself. 45:33 Wes: But I think I was trying to draw a connection to your point about this being at least his claim. Right. St. Petersburg is the perfect place for this type of story. Right. And I mean, really, you could just say civilization in general is the location of the story. And it's just a story about civilization and its discontents. And being discontent with it is because it is inherently humiliating in certain ways. We are put into competitive situations. We are in certain hierarchies. And it may not be as explicit as it is in St. Petersburg at this particular time, but we are all subject to it. It's just that we don't end up necessarily scurrying underground as a. He can't face up to it. He has to retreat for various, you know, various reasons. But the conditions that create the impetus to retreat, I think they're a natural part of civilization as we experience it. And the type of thing that, by the way, wouldn't go away if we had communism, if we had perfect economic relations, these problems of status and pride and who's better at this or that, all of that stuff would still remain. So he's pointing to something important. So he in particular is an extreme case. But I think we all, you know, one could argue that we are all to some extent prone to the maneuver that he's making, this retreating maneuver and especially the retreat into fantasy and sometimes into envy and despite. Into all these other pride and emotions that we're familiar with. So I guess he's an extreme case. It's a limiting case in a way. He doesn't do. He doesn't do a school shooting or something. But. So that's good. But. 47:27 Erin: Well, we haven't read the rest of it. We don't know how Dostoevsky came into possession of these documents. 47:34 Wes: All right, so in Part two, we will get more into the nitty gritty of the story in part two, the novella. And you can listen to that right away by becoming a subscriber. Or you can wait a week and listen to it then. 47:51 Erin: Thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. 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