Comments on Notes From the Underground.

Although it has been almost two weeks since we discussed the thoughts and works of Feodor Dostoyevsky in class, I still find the ideas which he presented in Notes From the Underground to be my favorite batch of existential thoughts discussed thus far. I find a great deal of truth in his theory that man will do whatever it takes to avoid being thought of as an object or an organism behaving formulaically. Dostoyevsky firmly states his belief that the most imortant thing to humans, often outweighing even the desire for survival, is the desire to be free and to excercise our free will. Within Notes From the Underground he writes, "for what is a man without desire, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ."

It seems to me that examples of this thought process and this desire of man to excercise free will, even unrationally at times, are displayed regularly in modern society. In class last week, I brought up the subject of extreme human behaviors such as rock climbing and skydiving. To me, these are perfect examples of humans rejecting what is rational in an effort to feel free and non-formulaic in nature. Activities like these are obviously not contributing to our well being, in fact, they often put us at great risk of dying or becoming seriously injured. However, humans still participate in these activities regularly, and often pay large sums of money to do so! What is rational about this type of behavior? It appears that humans participate in activities such as this to satisfy a need. In Notes From the Underground, Dostoyevsky speaks through the character of a diseased man who refuses to seek medical attention when it could most likely save his life. The man claims, "I know better than anyone else that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, it is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then let it get worse!" Again, althought this type of behavior seems ridiculous, we can find examples of similar behavior all throughout human history. Most people know the story of Chris McCandless, the young man who, after graduating from Emory University, gave all of his money to charity and proceeded to live a life of complete randomness, travelling around the United States, living on almost nothing before finally starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness. At anytime McCandless could have turned back and gone home to his wealthy family who could have provided him with all of the creature comforts man might want. He didn't though. Again, this type of behavior is anything but rational. However, people are drawn to stories like this. McCandless' story was published as a book and eventually made into a movie while being hailed as the "ultimate quest for freedom" and a story that "will touch audiences deeply". Why is it that we are drawn to irrational behavior such as this. Chris McCandless, in all his irrationality, has attracted swarms of followers who praise him and the things which he did. "Pilgrimages" are frequently made to his gravesite as people pay homage to someone whom they now consider a hero.

Although many of us will never abandon our belongings and take off into the wild, we tend to all have our own instances of rebelion against the ordinary grind of everyday life. We all seem to do things that are irrational at times just to escape the monotony. Dostoyevsky states, "there is one case, one only, when man may purposely, consciously, desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid-simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is rational." I think this sums up human nature very clearly and concisely. What seems to make us different from every other living organism on earth is that we perform the action of choosing. We do not simply react to stimuli, we experience the stimuli and then choose how we will react and very often, the decision we make is not the most beneficial to our existence on this planet.