Notes from Underground

So, twice a week, my program participates in split seminars where the students form two groups with a professor each and discuss the reading for that week. Today, we seminared on Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky. It was truly the day in my education that I  can remember. And it taught me a valuable lesson.

First, beyond the fact that it is the greatest work on philosophy I have read, I almost didn't even read it before seminar. In fact, I was so busy and tired this week (i.e. lazy) that I put it off until this morning between class. The way my schedule works is this: 9-11am I have lecture; 12-2pm language class; 2-4pm seminar. At 11, I walked to the cafe next door and sat down with my book. I was expecting to read for an hour, then head back to class. However, once I started, I couldn't put it down. I read the whole thing from 11 to 1:30 and then sat in the cafe, staring at my coffee for a half hour.  

Seminar, then, was even more captivating. After having read one of the best books written, we got to talk about it. For two hours. With a group of amazingly smart and engaged individuals. It's like everything I ever wanted from my education. We sat around, contemplating some of life's greatest questions for credit. I decided then that I'm never putting off my reading again. What if I had missed this seminar?!

Just to interject here, the book is all about the complexity of human nature and identity, the cycle of redemption and sin, the battle between emotion and rationalism, the balance between freedom and constraints, and the fight for knowledge and understanding. It's essentially the journal of a man whose contradictions and paradoxes are many and difficult. And acknowledged. He's a self-loathing egoist, an intellectual idiot, an extremely emotive logician, and many others. He's a man forced into inaction by all the contradiction, all the suffering, he endures every day. He's a man who exacts revenge knowing that it's unjust to do so. He's a man who makes decisions based on spite: in spite of himself, in spite of others. He's a man who can't respect himself but can't stand others who don't respect him. He envies those around him, yet wants to be as far from who they are as possible. He hurts others because they love him. He hurts others because they hate him. He hurts others because he hates himself. He hurts others because he hates the decisions he's made. All his actions are based in anger and frustration. The only people who've ever paid attention to him are destroyed by him. He revels in the suffering inflicted on him by the uncaring world, and yet he resents its indifference to him. He is incredibly honest, and yet can't face the reality of his own emotions. He needs to inflict the pain on others that he feels in order to see it. His guilt and self-hatred are equal to his sense of moral superiority and righteousness.

It's fantastically complex and heartbreaking. And so engaging. I feel like my entire life has suddenly changed. I'm so focused on something beyond my own perception and reality right now. Everyone and everything is new. My very room, the music I'm listening to as I write this, my roommate who I had lunch with earlier. A new perspective. It's bizarre. And yet I feel exactly the same. It's like the strange paradox this nameless narrator deals with. I feel like my knowledge and understanding have expanded so exponentially this year - especially on days like this - and I feel much more objective and informed about life, and yet I feel my human nature will eventually kill this stimulating mind frame and throw me back into the troubles of being an eighteen-year-old in college. I'm still trying to figure this all out, and I probably always will be. Life's a mystery.

Everyone should read this novel. It's fucking awesome

Peace&love