Rationalism, sabotage and prosperity: Revisiting Notes From The Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

 It is time, once again, to revisit Fyodor Dostoevsky.  My motivation for our reconsideration is the oh, so modern phenomenon of existential dread in the face of predictive algorithms, the coming AIpocalypse, and rebellion through irrationality.  Consider Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground.  The novel is somewhat less famous than his most prominent novels, and much darker than both Crime & Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, which are fundamentally about redemption.  Notes From The Underground addresses self-destruction, to some degree in response to or in rebellion against the scientific modernism of the 19th Century, and its infringement on free will.  As with any Dostoevsky novel, one finds new and timely insights that Fyodor would not have predicted at the time, nor even would a reader have derived ten years earlier.  Perhaps not even a year earlier.  This is why we keep going back to Dostoevsky.

The narrator begins by critiquing and rejecting the rise of a kind of hyper-rationalism emerging in the 19th century, which combines proto-utility theory with a "devil with an adding machine" predictive model towards which social science was tilting and aspiring.  Think of it like a combination of microeconomic theory and the mechanical mind of a materialistic world.  What if the world is purely deterministic and materialistic, and everyone acts in rational self-interest?  The world is set along a path that is fully predicted by the devil with an adding machine, free will is an illusion, and these are the notions addressed by Dostoevsky and distressing the very distressed narrator.  Are people rational actors?  What are the bounds of rationality?  Let Dostoevsky (and the narrator) have this, for the purposes of a 19th Century novel.  The narrator is bothered by what this means for free will, and challenges the notion of self-interest, from the perspective of one who wallows in self-destructive impulses.

The narrator asserts that his self-interest is in self-destruction, challenging the arising notions of rationality and self-interest.  He then proceeds to tell a few tales, filled with his own internal monologue, describing how he ruins his own life while wallowing in a combination of self-aggrandizement and self-pity.

Because this is his self-interest, and no hyper-rational 19th Century scholar is going to tell him otherwise.  So there.  He'll show you.  (Or rather, you won't notice, because you won't notice him.)

There are a few brief tales.  In one, the narrator decides to try to pick a bar fight.  He encounters an officer, but the officer fails to notice his existence, casually moves him aside, and goes about his evening.  The narrator becomes so obsessed that he spends literally years stewing about having been ignored and brushed aside at a bar.  He tracks down the officer, and makes an elaborate plan to confront the officer on a crowded promenade.  Because the narrator is insignificant and unnoticeable, the officer walks along, and the narrator moves aside for him.  The narrator stews, lather, rinse repeat, until the narrator says to himself that he will finally work up the courage to keep walking and not step aside, like this is the greatest prize fight in history.  They bump shoulders, the officer doesn't even register that, and the narrator tells himself that he has achieved a great victory.

Behold, the antithesis of rationality, self-destruction embodied.

Next?  He invites himself to the going-away party of someone he knew in childhood, but actually doesn't like.  He makes everyone miserable, gets drunk, acts like an ass, and decides that even after this, he'll still stick around to try to make everyone else miserable.  Then he goes to a brothel, finally sounds like he is getting a clue, gives a woman a speech about a life of virtue that sounds like he's getting through to her, she starts to have a life revelation, and because the narrator is an ass, he flips it around as soon as he recognizes this and tries to wound her.

Why?

Self-pitying self-sabotage within a rebellion against modern rationality.  It is horrifying, and in many ways, more horrifying than the genre called "horror" because there is nothing supernatural about it.  It's just a look inside the mind of a deeply sick man committed to his own self-destruction.

The narrator is actually rather intelligent, adding tragedy, and if he would just stop this, he could make something of himself.  Accomplish something.  Do something beyond petty vengeance fantasies, petty vengeance itself, and stewing.

Horror, indeed.

Now consider.  Let us begin consideration with a passage from the text, as Dostoevsky (or rather, the narrator) leans into the concept.

"I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, a propos of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: 'I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!'"

What was I saying about the scary things that happen when you keep going back to Dostoevsky, years later?  Am I the only one who reads this paragraph and thinks of a certain politician, posing as a gentleman, quite ignoble, of certain exaggerated gestures, whose platform has generally been to destroy rather than build, contrary to his claims?  The anti-rational?

Just me?

Of course, there is something more systematic.  Dostoevsky was writing about the 19th Century and a supposed rise of rationalism, but consider Fukuyama and the wrong-est book of the 20th Century, The End of History and the Last Man.  Fukuyama predicted that the fall of communism indicated the final victory of Western liberal democracy, classical liberalism and Shangri-La.

Then we had 9/11, the world has had to grapple with Islamism and various other challenges, yet many are manageable so long as we do not abandon rationalism.  Even into the early 21st Century, we managed the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 remarkably well, and then... oy.  And why?  For what?

Yes, there has been a rejection of rationalism, and it has been contagious, globally and cross-ideologically.  I see little rationalism on the left or right, in either the Democratic or Republican Party, and we are not seeing rationalism falter in the face of insurmountable challenge, rather, it faltered at a point of prosperity because some assholes wanted to kick rationality to the wind and live once more in their own sweet foolish will.  One might say.

To wallow in self-destruction, picking fights, to show... someone.

Even digging into the mind of the narrator, horrifying as it is, consider his dualistic self-image.  It is both one of remarkable egotism and self-loathing.  He sees himself as one of great worthiness, uniquely genius and deserving of love and praise, yet also low and terrible.  He admires, in a sense, those he sees as lower, those less intelligent, blaming his supposed superiority for his stifling inability to do anything productive, because his genius makes him indecisive.  He wants to be loved and admired and feted for all that is great and worthy within him, and he formulates so many plans, plans the conclusions of which will be that everyone sees the true, inner him.

Most sociology is bullshit, but here is one you should read, and thanks to my grad school advisor for this one, lo' those many years ago.  Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life.  Goffman proposed a model of social interaction based on theater.  We are all engaged in theater, at all times.  We are all simultaneously actor and audience, at all times.  We are never trying to be our true selves.  We are always playing a role, the goal of which is the management of embarrassment.  Fascinating.  Can you take it too far?  As with any model, yes, but there is a lot that one can take from the model.  Read the book.

Vitally, you are never "your true self" in social interaction because you are always presenting yourself in a particular way.  You present yourself differently to different people.  Which is the true you?  None.  That's the only answer.  Is the inner you the true you?  Who cares?  I don't care what you say to yourself in your head any more than you care what I say to myself in my head.

What if Hitler said really beautiful, insightful things, inside his head?  Would you care?

The narrator has it in his head-- as so many do-- that he needs to show the world the true him, that him in his head, which is brilliant and wonderful and all that shit, and then everyone will love and admire him.

While he acts like a petty, little shit.

Remember-- rebellion against the rational.

Yet consider social breakdown in the social media era.  Consider the phenomenon of the belief in a true, inner self, which must be shown to the world, and understood by the world.  How different is this?

Note, then, how the narrator lashes out.

There is a corollary to George Orwell.  Just as there is no such thing as thoughtcrime, there is no such thing as thoughtvirtue.  As an empirical point, the more you work yourself up in fits of anger, the more likely you are to lose your temper.  You don't get it out of your system in private, but rather, you practice losing your temper.  There is something to be said for reinforcement of thoughts and patterns.

Yet nobody cares what anyone thinks independently of the actions that follow.  Hence, the narrator's brilliant and insightful thoughts are irrelevant, which is why he is a bug.  To some degree, he knows it, and he knows that he is being irrational.  That's the point.  He wallows, as an act of stupid, futile rebellion against the rational.

For whatever discussions we have about rationality in an era dealing with predictive algorithms, to throw away rationality amid prosperity is even dumber now, yet if Dostoevsky could see it, no one should be surprised.  The narrator was deeply concerned with how others saw him.  He wanted to be feted and respected and all of that, but how and why?  No answers, in either case.

The real answer, then and now, is to ignore such things.  Goffman's point is an empirical point, but neither a moral point nor practical guidance.  It matters not one whit how others see you, and the narrator's obsession, inverted as it was, with his image was always his undoing anyway.  His lack of doing, so to speak.  He cared more about trying to find a way to make himself understood as the genius he believed himself to be than finding any purpose, and as a consequence, he accomplished nothing and served no purpose, perfectly demonstrating anti-rationalism.

For all the shit, to live in the Western world in 2024 presents so many opportunities that if you are not using them, then why?  For some, like the narrator, wallowing may be an end, and a rebellion against rationality the point.  The S&P crossed 5000, unemployment is at a low, and the distinction between the problems that are easy and the problems that are hard is stark.  Yet some really are easy.

Unless you kick rationality to the wind, thinking that the free will you suppose you claim gives you something sweet in exchange.

Yazz Ahmed, the title track from La Saboteuse.  Rush was too obvious.  Couldn't do it.