Dostoevsky: Too Romantic for My Taste

At the end of class on Thursday, I had trouble determining how the gas station attendant in the clip from No Country for Old Men fit into the Dostoevsky’s conception of man as inherently disinclined to have his freedom taken away. The Underground Man says, “The whole work of man seems really to consist in nothing but proving to himself continually that he is a man and not an organ stop” (Solomon 47). In other words, man’s inclination is to do whatever it takes to demonstrate that he cannot be reduced to some functional explanation, but rather is unpredictable and free. Even if we proved that human behavior could be reduced to a mathematical equation, man would “devise destruction and chaos, devise sufferings of all sorts, and [would] thereby have his own way” (47). And yet, in embracing a formulaic, calculable lifestyle, the gas station attendant behaves in a way that stands in stark contrast to Dostoevsky’s description of human nature. Presumably, day in and day out, the gas station attendant wakes up in the morning, opens the store, serves his customers, closes at dark, and goes to sleep. His life can be reduced to nothing more than this - an algorithm that is comfortable but absolutely meaningless. In other words, he is, and more importantly, seems inclined to be, nothing more than an organ stop. After all, he married into it.

As far as I can tell, scenarios like this are not unusual. I suspect we all know people, and in many ways are people, who live a routine, formulaic lifestyle and wouldn’t have it any other way. This sort of behavior is nicely conveyed by the character Cypher in The Matrix. For anyone unfamiliar with the movie, it’s about the world in which humans naively assume they exist. The catch is that none of it’s real. Instead, the actual world has been taken over by an army of artificially intelligent beings who have plugged the human race into what’s known as “The Matrix” or a computer generated world that looks just like the one we see around us. Then, while the humans are plugged into cyber space, the artificially intelligent beings use their bodies for energy. A few humans, including Cypher, escape the Matrix and try to take down the machines as a means to free humanity. However, Cypher the traitor in the group, turns against them in favor of returning to the imaginary world. The following scene depicts Cypher making a deal with the agents in charge of the Matrix that will allow him to return.

Here we see Cypher deliberately trading his freedom from the machine world for the Matrix, and in doing so, implicitly accepting that he is reducible to nothing more than a mere battery. He thus chooses meaninglessness instead of freedom and offers another clear counterexample to what the Underground Man argues is inherent in human nature.

To me, this suggests that Dostoevsky has offered an overly glorified and romantic assessment of humanity. In light of the examples above and our experience with human beings in general, I’d say we are very much inclined to be piano keys and organ stops. On rare occasion, a human might reject this and do something nutty to prove he has some semblance of control over his life. However, more often than not, we simply slide into what’s comfortable and exist that way until we die, despite how reducible that makes us. If humans did routinely commit acts of capriciousness as a means to assert their freedom and the meaningfulness of their lives, we would no doubt be a wonderful and unique species. However, as it stands, I remain unconvinced that it is in any way inherent in us to transcend our formulaic lifestyles. Instead, I think that we are greatly inclined to do just the opposite, making us far less remarkable than Dostoevsky suggests.