the IQ pill
A bit of a painful read, getting through the first chapter with the Underground Man as the unnamed narrator was the hardest part. The good part is there’s nothing to “get,” I think the work is an experience in and of itself. It can be a little overbearing though, every line has significant meaning, but in short: the Underground Man represents someone caught between eras. He’s too self-aware for romantic idealism but also rejects the utilitarian rationalism that was replacing it at the time. Dostoevsky critiques both romanticism and cold rationalism as inadequate for understanding human nature. I think I agree with this.
The Underground Man is someone who is hyper-intellectual (but a failed intellectual — a petty guy whose consciousness is more rumination than genuine insight), and because of this, he is paralyzed by his own hyper-consciousness. He can’t act because he sees through everything, including his own motives. His suffering comes from not believing life is meaningless but from being unable to escape his own relentless self-analysis. This is why he views himself inferior to those less intellectually capable, as they can actually act - whereas he is stagnant, stuck in a perpetual, bitter cycle of self-loathing and hate.
In this case, the Underground Man’s tragedy is that his intelligence has become a prison; he knows too much about himself and others to find true peace or authentic connection, leaving him with not much other than nihilistic emptiness. I found myself asking: “if the Underground Man is so intelligent, why can he not mold his psyche to focus on other things, to break out of the cycle he’s in?”
I guess the problem is that that consciousness isn’t really something you can just turn off or redirect once it reaches a certain level. Maybe it’s like asking someone who’s learned that magic tricks are illusions to go back to believing in magic. The Underground Man has seen through the comforting lies and social conventions that allow most people to function, and he can’t “unsee” them. It’s a metacognitive trap: he’s not just self-aware, he’s aware that he’s self-aware, and then aware that he’s aware of being aware, and so on. Every time he tries to act naturally or spontaneously, he immediately recognizes that he’s performing “naturalness” or “spontaneity,” which makes it feel fake. Plus, his intelligence has become tied to his identity. If he stopped analyzing everything, who would he be? His suffering is terrible, but it’s also what makes him feel superior to others. Giving up his hyperawareness would mean giving up the thing that sets him apart.
`Side Note: human perversity is expressed incredibly well in this, especially in Part II through the cruel treatment of Liza, a young prostitute.`
I think this was Dostoevsky’s response to Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism. Rational egoism states that humans are naturally rational beings who, when properly educated and informed, will always act in their own enlightened self-interest - and that this rational self-interest would naturally lead to social harmony and progress. The rational egoists believed that if you could just explain to people what was truly good for them (and for society), they’d logically choose to do it. Crime, suffering, and social problems existed only because people were ignorant or misinformed. Give everyone education and rational thinking, and you’d create a utopia (like in Chernyshevsky’s ‘What Is to Be Done?’).
Dostoevsky thought this to be false. The Underground Man demonstrates that humans will often act against their rational self-interest just to prove they have free will. He’ll choose suffering over happiness, humiliation over dignity, simply because choosing the “rational” option feels like being a puppet.
“[Sometimes a person will act against their own advantage] simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid.”
He argues that human nature is fundamentally irrational and contradictory. We’re not logical machines that can be perfected through education. We’re messy, self-destructive, and paradoxical, and any political or social theory that ignores this is doomed to fail. It’s important to note that Dostoevsky isnt anti-reason. He’s just exploring the limits of reason when living a life divorced from spiritual and emotional constraints.
I’ve read about how Underground parallels the average 4chan user who believes cynicism is intelligence and over-intellectualizes (if that’s a word) everything. I think this is a little intellectually lazy; it flattens the Underground Man’s genuine torment into mere internet cynicism, missing the religious and metaphysical dimensions of his suffering which are most clear in his defense of free will.
I think this novella is Dostoevsky’s warning against modernity and isolation, and the over-analyzation that follows, which often comes with people like himself. It captures the essence of existentialism and answers the very basic question: “You’ve been granted consciousness in a world full of constant pain and confusion - what will you do with it?”
The irony is that he does nothing. And the title of the novella is a reflection of this.
“Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don’t know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we … yes, I assure you … we should be begging to be under control again at once.”
“perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained,”
“But still, two times two is four is a most obnoxious thing.” — my favorite quote. I interpreted this as nihilistic and hopelessness.