“Deep down in your heart you don’t believe in your suffering, there is a stirring of mockery, and yet you suffer – in the most genuine, honest-to-goodness way. I’d be jealous, I’d be beside myself . . . . And all was out of boredom, gentlemen, all because I was crushed by sheer inertia. For the direct, inevitable, and logical product of consciousness is inertia – a conscious sitting down with folded arms. I have spoken about this before. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all direct and active men are active precisely because they are dull and limited. How can this be explained? Well, it’s this way : because of their limitation, they mistake the most immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and so convince themselves more quickly and more easily than others that that they have found a firm, incontestable basis for their activity This puts their minds at ease, and that, after all, is the main thing. For, naturally, to enter upon any course of action, one must be completely reassured in advance, and free of any trace of doubt. And how am I, for instance, to put my mind at ease? Where are the primary causes I can lean on, where are my basic premises? Where am I to find them? I exercise myself in thought, and hence, within my mind, every primary cause immediately drags after itself another, still more primary, and so on to infinity. Such is the very essence of all consciousness and thought. We’re back, then, to the laws of nature. And what is the ultimate result? Why, the same thing again.”
What did he mean by this?
Man, Dostoevsky really needed an editor. He needs to learn about paragraph breaks.
"Omit needless words." - Stunk and White
>>8134015
Rules were made to be broken --arnold
>>8134015
really, dude?
Anyways, I'm more upset by that cover design
Somebody asks themselves "what they really want" in order to achieve a sense of unity. But there is a long mental road that comes with that.
He just means that people in general are simple and that they are so at ease with talking and so spontaneous because they believe simple things which cause them to not doubt themselves
People like the author on the other hand question things a lot naturally, and he begins to doubt things etc... He cannot easily fall into believe a lot of things that the average person does... So he therefore cannot spontaneously be and all that crap
I can write exactly what he means but im having a hard time giving 2 fucks to explain something to anons lol
>>8134055
This fucker hit the shit right on the money. Yes, that is exactly what he means
He wants to find the source, but the ending
>Why, the same thing again.
Makes it sound like he's given up his belief in it. Can't be 100% sure though because I don't know all the context.
Bruh
He's saying he's mad lazy, but purposefully. That people are insecure or dumb, and just move in a direction because, why not? Ya dig? They're simple and just take the most immediate path to being something, to acting on something. Whereas ya boy wants to be correct. He wants to weigh all the opportunities life affords and not jump in to quickly having misstepped. Instead of shooting first and never asking questions later, he wants to make sure he's aware of all the weaponry he can use so as to select the right piece to bang out with. 2ez
>>8134110
Lmao bangbang
>>8134110
Does he mention how none of his kind has ever succeeded?
1. People know that the reasons for their suffering are bullshit, but choose to suffer anyways.
2. The most honest way to live is to do nothing. Anything else is based upon a false pretense. The acting man is stupid because he believes what he is doing is true even though he has no idea what is true, no one does.
>>8134139
he means to supercede the idea of "success" by living willfully impoverished both financially and socially.
I don't know if you've read the book but this is clear on the last page.
>I have merely carried to an extreme in my life that you have not dared to carry even halfway etc.
>you've taken cowardice for good sense, comfort in deceiving yourselves etc.
>leave us to ourselves, without a book, and we get confused/lost etc.
He's equating the lives of common man and their knee-jerk reactionary search for success to lifeless stillborns.
>>8134180
Would you consider yourself the same type of person?
>>8134231
I don't know.
I found myself disagreeing with Dosto's character almost completely throughout the story, even cringed at his actions a few times, but his rationale I could agree with. Much of the introductory essay was sound logic.
I agree with his rationale in the final chapter, but not in the path that his character has chosen to take in life
>>8134177
You can still be a "man of action" in the eyes of others, but you will never see yourself that way unless you find the deep hidden truths of the world.
>>8133988
Holy shit you guys.
He's saying that men of action (doers, makers, non-NEETs) can shut off or simplify their rationalizing to allow themselves to act confidently and assuredly, whereas thinkers continue questioning until they can't be sure of anything.
>>8134030
cover is edgy and has a pretty face
about as good marketing you can do for this kind of book
>>8134015
The structure of this novel is that it is the "found" writings of an insane man. The first few pages of the book are the "editor" saying that we're about to read some weird shit.
