Hidden gems from a youtube video discussion about The Brothers Karamazov
The following is a transcription from minute 34:50 to 41:15 of the video https://youtu.be/GMeaVM6sXAE
“I think the thing that we see these characters having in common is that, in one way or another, they are very big fans of ideation—but they’re not good at any of it in practice. I remember listening to a TED talk about how so many people can be great at writing up their own exercise or diet plan, but they would be far better served using that 15 minutes just walking around the block. Because they’re not going to actually follow through, it’s still just living in the imagination.
I think it’s interesting that, when you contrast it with the more sophisticated ends—like the Alyosha–Siobhan conversation—they’re always trying to come back to the real. Regardless of whether they’re coming from an atheistic perspective or from a spiritual perspective, they’re always trying to get down to how it confronts them and their actions in the here and now.
But with Khokhlakov and Dmitri, whether they’re going to be secularists or religious, it’s all about trying to have whatever idea gives them comfort in the moment. And it’s interesting—I think Dostoevsky is doing something brilliant. He’s showing that people often say religion is an escape from reality, but secularism, greed, and dreams of success can also be an escape from reality.
I think the constant theme of Dostoevsky is always going to be showing that mature people—the people who know what’s going on—are always going to try to stay on the level of the real. And that’s the thing, right? Like, neither Dmitri nor Khokhlakov—they are completely, you know, Plan 9 from Outer Space right now, because they’re just so desperate for newness and comfort. They don’t seem to understand that the real change they want is going to require going through the shame and the pain and the accountability.
Isn’t it so interesting when Dmitri says, “Wherever we go, no one can know me,” right? “I have to be completely free from my shame. I have to be completely free from my guilt.” And that’s just not realistic—not only because word travels, but also because Dostoevsky always says that you bear it in your body. Even when he was on the train and called himself a scoundrel, he carried it with him. It was in his bones.
And I just feel like what’s so brilliant about what Dostoevsky is doing is that he shows us wise spirituality and a wise, sophisticated secularism—and now he’s showing us foolish spirituality and foolish secularism.
Well, when you were saying that about Dmitri and Khokhlakov, the thing I kept coming back to is, I feel like this book is trying to say that we’re all the same. Because I think, underneath it all, everybody just wants to be happy and secure. And that’s why these ideas are so foolish—these escapes and this willingness to do completely irrational things.
I have a good friend who’s trying to convince another friend that this Russian girl he’s been talking to online for three months doesn’t actually exist. And yet, he’s willing to set up bank accounts for her, to send these passive amounts of money—the level of delusion. We’re reading this book that is just dripping with delusion, and I’m just thinking to myself: it’s for that promise, right?
And then it hit me. In the same way that people are willing to do these foolish things for that dream of internet bliss and happiness, people are also willing to make religious pilgrimages, go thousands of miles to Mount Athos or wherever, just to find the one person. As if, “If I can only get to this one person, this one spiritual event, this one revelation—this whatever—then everything will be alright. If I can just find the panacea key.”
And they’re all just searching for the panacea key.
I think it’s amazing how Zosima is always about the same thing. He’s like, “No, there’s no key. You just have to love your neighbor in front of you, starting now.” But nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to. And I just feel like the priest is there earlier precisely to indicate that again: just do the little thing. Just do the next right thing.
But no—we all want to do the big, grandiose, out-of-this-world, risky thing. Because that’s where the dream is.”