Day 15

Dostoevsky’s Underground Man was hard for me to connect with on a personal level. I was tempted to push the red button, (so to speak write) for this post.

So the Underground Man says (conceptually) to the gentlefolk. You are all mistaken when making the claim that people act immorally because they don’t known their desires/wants/interests. Claiming that humans as a species are naturally inclined to treat one another morally and just, in accordance to rationality, preposterous! People rarely act in a way that will bring them the most advantage. Man derives the most pleasure out of going against reason to assert his individuality.

I bolded the above sentence because I felt it the strongest.

We do often act without reason

We often do desire what is knowingly harmful to us.

I do.

I am an individual.

What is this protagonist trying to tell me about this ridiculousness?

Boxes are uncomfortable, especially small ones. In class Doug’s initial response was pushing the red button, to spite the arrogant and wealthy businessman. He thought he was not so simple, and he was going to prove it. The “Fuck-It Factor”, stubbornness, pride.  Whatever, it’s all basically the same.

“In short, one may say anything about the history of the world – anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one cannot say is that it is rational.”

But, The Underground Man lost me not too long after that. Or I lost him. Either way, I was on my own.

Why would desire be gone when choices are known?  And why would there only be one reasonable choice? Can two choices/courses of actions be equally desirable? Is desire that easily reducible? What if reason and desire go hand in hand(In some situations)? Is the Underground Man claiming that when one acts completely irrationally, it is exclusively because of the defiance of reason or the restrictions that the individual feels is placed upon her? That the, as it was called in class, “Fuck-It Factor” is the cause of courses of action that people view as “for no reason whatsoever.”

For no reason.

“He will devise destruction and chaos, will devise sufferings of all sorts, and will thereby have his own way.”

For all of immorality to be linked to this defiance factor …